Chosen Engine Justification

Deciding on a game engine to work on is one of the most important decisions that have to be made when developing a videogame. Several engines were considered for the development of our game, including Blender, Unity3D, Quest3D, Unreal, StudioDX and Torque. After taking into account their features and licensing fees, we narrowed down the list to Blender, Unity3D and Unreal

Although the three of them are really well designed game engines, we finally decided to work in Unity3D. Blender is free and has almost all the features that commercial game engines have, but Unity's ability to deploy the game on so many platforms and the fact that Blender's interface is not as user friendly as we would like, we had to eliminate Blender from the list. Unreal on the other hand was the most complete option of the lot, but for a small game developed by different people at different times, the learning curve could become an obstacle for future developers. We concluded that Unreal would be

Unity was chosen because it has one of the easiest user interfaces from the different engines available and its architecture allows fast prototyping as well as full blown game programming.

Unity has several features that will help us develop our game. It includes the PhisX physics engine which allows us to easily include physics in the game. Unity also allows easy audio managing with full 3D audio capabilities. Graphics-wise, Unity automatically optimizes it's scenes to obtain the best performance available.

This engine also includes easy to use editor which is mostly What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get and it allows programming in three different languages: Javascript, C# and a dialect of Python, Boo. This allows for different programmers who are comfortable in different programming languages to work together in the same project. Also, it allows the deployment of the game to be in either Windows, Mac or Web.

Serious game developers around the world have used Unity to create their games, some examples include: 'Timez Attack', a game that makes it easy for children to learn multiplications by repetition, 'WolfQuest', a game that educates players about wolves allowing them to play as one, and 'Global Conflicts', a game where players take the role of a journalist covering the Israel/Palestine conflict. These games have different styles, different gameplay mechanics and different target audiences, which is proof of the flexibility of Unity.

There are some differences between the free version and the Pro version of Unity, which includes some features like full screen effects, custom splash screens, and low level rendering access, but the free version has enough features for a small team to develop a high quality game.

Resources:

[1] Petridis, P.; Dunwell, I.; de Freitas, S.; Panzoli, D.; , "An Engine Selection Methodology for High Fidelity Serious Games," Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES), 2010 Second International Conference on , vol., no., pp.27-34, 25-26 March 2010

[2] Unity Technologies (2010). License Comparisons. Retrieved from http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses

[3] Unity Technologies (2010). Intelligent Games With Great Technology. Retrieved from http://unity3d.com/gallery/developer-profiles/serious-games

[4] Horta, Félix (2011). Motores de desarrollo serios. Retrieved from Agentes educativos para juegos serios:

http://agenteseducativosparajuegosserios.blogspot.com/2011/02/motores-de-desarrollo-serios.html

[5] Valle, Jonathan (2011). Game Engines. Retrieved from Serious Games: An AI Approach:

http//seriousgames-zheroth.blogspot.com/p/game-engines.html