I tried to make a game this year. My body failed me. But I’ve been keeping up with the news in the world of game development, and 2016 has been exciting, if a bit frustrating.
Unity
Unity’s still the big kahuna for indie development. But they’ve gone to that same “rapid release” model that everyone else has, the same one that has all but ruined Firefox, Windows, and so many other projects. On top of that, they switched to a subscription model. Rather, they switched to a subscription-only model.
Yes, that’s right. You can only rent the Unity engine on a monthly basis now. It’s still free for tiny devs, but it actually costs more now for everybody else. Sure, there’s the new Plus tier (something like $40 a month, I think), but it doesn’t give you much over the Free version. By the time you need it, you can probably afford the full subscription.
On the technical side, they’re making progress towards Vulkan support, and there are rumblings about actually upgrading their version of C# to something approaching modern. That’s probably thanks to the .NET Core open-sourcing I mentioned last week, but I don’t care what the reasoning is. Any upgrade is welcome here.
The other rumor is that they might switch to C++. I…don’t know about that one. On the one hand, I have to say, “Yes, please!” Modern C++ is just as good as C# in almost every way. In many, it’s better. However, what does this do to that huge body of C# Unity code? If there’s a compatibility layer, then you’ve got inefficiencies. If they simply include the “old” engine, they’ve only made more work for themselves. And then you have JavaScript, which is still (mostly) a supported language for Unity coding. How would it fit in to a C++ future?
Godot
Godot is still my favorite 2D engine. It’s free, the source is open, and it’s very easy to use. 3D is a known problem, but that doesn’t bother me much; I’m not capable of making a 3D game anyway.
Well, Godot made their big announcement back in the summer, with the release of version 2.1. It’s not really revolutionary, but it sets the stage for greater things. Time will tell if those come to pass, but I think they will. With 2.2, we’re supposed to get a better renderer and possibly C# support. The big 3.0 might even add Vulkan to the mix, not that it helps me. And the Asset Library, well, it can only get bigger, right?
The main problem for Godot has been its documentation, and that’s much improved over this time last year. There’s a growing body of tutorials out there, too. I don’t think the engine has reached critical mass yet, but I also don’t think it has peaked.
Maybe—if I don’t get sick the day after I announce it—I’ll try another “game in a month” thing. If I do, it’ll be in Godot.
Lots of little ones
I didn’t do much in the way of development in 2016. I didn’t look at Unreal in anything other than passing, for example. But I’ve kept an eye on happenings in the game dev world, and here are some quick thoughts on other engines out there:
- Unreal is, like the C++ it’s written in, solid and relatively unexciting. That’s what makes it exciting.
- Superpowers might be a nice little JavaScript platform, but it’s got this horrible bug that makes all the dropdown boxes turn solid black. Makes it hard to use, you know?
- Clickteam Fusion may or may not be getting bigger in 2017. They’re working on their version 3 release, and it might be cross-platform. Stay tuned for more on that front.
- Amazon put out their Lumberyard (a fork of CryEngine). It’s free, as long as you’re willing to use their cloud services, but the real cost is in the machine you need to run the environment.
- CryEngine itself is…strange. They’ve put out source code, but it’s not open. In fact, reading the license, t’s almost impossible to find a game you could even make! Maybe they’ll fix that, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
- The Atomic Game Engine looked like a promising release a few months ago, but it seems to be dead. The developers haven’t put out any news since May, and the forums were shut down in favor of Facebook. Sounds like they don’t want new users to me.
- Finally, RPG Maker has a new version. It’s finally becoming something other than Windows-only, and the coding part has followed the hipster crowd from Ruby to JavaScript. In my opinion, that can only be a good thing.
I could go on, but I’m running out of year, so I’ll stop. Let’s just say this: 2016 was a good year for an independent game developer. 2017 will be even better. You’ve got a massive selection of engines at your disposal, from solid open-source offerings to AAA beasts. Maybe next year will be when we finally solve the asset problem. We’re getting there, slowly but surely.