The World of the Game Engines

Having only used a game engine for the first time a fortnight ago, It was a whole new world and I'm glad I caught on to UDK rather quickly (after much frustration/trial and error) since these pretty much summarise the remainder of this year and the whole of next year. Eeep. However it was also a lot of fun, being able to interact and blast it and all that. Know I'm familiar with file formats and the collisions I am hopeful that my issues won't arise again.

With the building the models we made were linar and cubiod in nature, so our collision meshes did not have to be elaboratly complex. However in future we will be importing meshes with more detail and may require collisions that require more definition. It is m sincere hope that that does not affect the muli/sub object or the collisions.

Unreal Developers Kit is currently in it's thrid generation, it is vastly popular amongst this generation of games. It has been used for many renounced franchises such as Mass Effect, BioShock and Gears of War.

Advantages:

Easier UI as opposed to CryEngine
Compatable for multiple platforms
Multiple rendering options
Ability to rescale/shape your assets as you do in Max

Disadvantages:

Soon to be replaced with Unreal Engine 4
Not capable of rendering outdoor environments to its maximum potential, due to having only four dynamic lighting modes.
Crashes Often, from personal experience due to multiple file locations etc
Not many basic tutorials for beginners like I was

CryEngine has been mentioned by senior students who are contemplating using it for their FMPs, I have yet to see it myself so I am optimistic about this. Certain things that caught my attention about it was that:

Advantages:
Crashes far less than Unreal Engine
Higher class rendering, allowing assets to appear more realistic
Works more smoother than Unreal
Excels in exterior environments
Still improving after the thrid version

Disadvantages:
Having only been released rather recently, it has not got many titles to its name.
Where Unreal can be run for multiple platforms, Cry is restricted to the primary three, Playstation, Xbox and PC

Both of these primary two clearly have their ups and downs, part of me would be happy to continue using Unreal simply due to the fact that I know know what I'm doing (so far), having said that I would gladly trade for an alternative that would allow me to import more meshes and information at once without the risk of crashing or the ruthless 'Not Responding'.

There is also another engine which whilst is new to me is Unity, it is far cheaper than the previous two engines and for that reason it is more common. Despite this however it isn't as detailed and adcanced so it has its limitations as to how much it can do to compete with them. However like Unreal it is compatable with more platforms than just the three primary game formats.