Prospects For Open-Source Engines Now That UE4/Source2/Unity Are Free?

[clementl]

The now-free AAA game engines will probably not be an option for developers who want to do their development on Linux. The development/editor tools for Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 are not available in Linux-native versions. I am hoping that Source Engine 2 will have its toolchain fully available on Linux, but AFAIK nothing has been announced in that regard.

https://twitter.com/mike_fricker/status/573925147700162560

The UE4 Trello board has had an actively updated card for Linux editor support for a long time now.

[makson]

Free Engineer

I have the project:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?114823-Free-Engineer-easy-tool-to-install-games-with-free-engine

which allows you to test free engines on Ubuntu easily.
At the moment OpenJK (Jedi Academy) and Aliens vs Predator (avp) are present. Today I will add Doom3 BFG (rbdoom-3-bfg).
So check by yourself how good they are.

[Calinou]

Can these compete in your humble opinion?

Sure, they can. Some of them have already been used in production already. Game graphics are mostly dependent on the artwork you use. Use good quality, high-resolution textures, models and sounds and your game will look good.

I'll also mention Daemon (Unvanquished's engine) as a choice.

Well, in a limited fashion you can still use the gratis engines to make libre games. At least UE4 works via plugins. The entire game can and should be a plugin for the engine. And you can license the plugin however you want. Including GPL, if you add an exception for UE4 itself..

Then you still are running proprietary software; an engine you can't freely distribute and modify. I believe people should be able to create and play fully free games, from code to artwork.

[kwahoo]

The now-free AAA game engines will probably not be an option for developers who want to do their development on Linux. The development/editor tools for Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 are not available in Linux-native versions.

So, what is this?

[aksdb]

So you are saying that bad artwork - the bottleneck of many open source games - will not be a problem because the underlying engines are more awesome? I don't see that relation. Either you are a good artist or not. If the final model gets rendered by UE, Source or some custom engine is nearly irrelevant. One of the best modeling tools is Blender which is open-source and used by professionals. That a game has bad visuals is a problem of missing artists, not of missing technology.

(And I don't mean any disrespect to the many open source games. I couldn't develop a game myself. Not of missing programming skills, but because of the missing artwork skills. No textures, no models, no sound. It wouldn't matter how awesome my game mechanic would be, it would probably still suck. It's just nearly (!) impossible to do something like that on your own or with a too small team.)

[mike4]

@kwahoo you simply compiled the official ue4 git source? any link? All is working compared to Windows? I'll try also in the next days.

[kwahoo]

@kwahoo you simply compiled the official ue4 git source? any link? All is working compared to Windows? I'll try also in the next days.

Yes, official (https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine.git) w/o problems.

https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Building_On_Linux

Don't forget install Clang-3.5.

[Godzilla]

So you are saying that bad artwork - the bottleneck of many open source games - will not be a problem because the underlying engines are more awesome? I don't see that relation. Either you are a good artist or not. If the final model gets rendered by UE, Source or some custom engine is nearly irrelevant. One of the best modeling tools is Blender which is open-source and used by professionals. That a game has bad visuals is a problem of missing artists, not of missing technology.

(And I don't mean any disrespect to the many open source games. I couldn't develop a game myself. Not of missing programming skills, but because of the missing artwork skills. No textures, no models, no sound. It wouldn't matter how awesome my game mechanic would be, it would probably still suck. It's just nearly (!) impossible to do something like that on your own or with a too small team.)

I agree.

Although a good game requires more than good art assets, most engines are there to help display good assets. And usually that artwork and visual design is very expensive - much more than the game engine, free or not.

In one way its like asking 'How will buildings change now you have some more brick suppliers". Okay.. not a good metaphor, but in the ballpark I think.

[rice_nine]

One of the best modeling tools is Blender which is open-source and used by professionals.

Don't forget that Blender is a game engine, as well. I don't know how it stacks up as relevant but it is free-as-in-freedom, runs on Python, and ties in sound/network/physics/input as you'd expect. A certain Blender expert has been working on "racing game project" inspired by WipEout, F-Zero, Star Wars Ep.1 Racer, Extreme-G, etc.

[Calinou]

Don't forget that Blender is a game engine, as well. I don't know how it stacks up as relevant but it is free-as-in-freedom, runs on Python, and ties in sound/network/physics/input as you'd expect. A certain Blender expert has been working on "racing game project" inspired by WipEout, F-Zero, Star Wars Ep.1 Racer, Extreme-G, etc.

Game developers don't use it because it's GPL-licensed (like anything Quake-related, like DarkPlaces). Game developers would rather screw over their users?