Posted an update to the TorchShips kickstarter page – we’re at 20% with 6 days to go – added a reward tier that includes a physical copy of the game & manual – plus committed to a stretch goal – if we hit $40k I will add full modding support to TorchShips – more details available here.
After evaluating 3d engines for iOS development I’ve decided we’re going to go with Unity3D.
I would prefer a native Objective-C engine but the ability to deliver for multiple platforms is very attractive (Unity can deploy to Android, iOS, Mac, Linux, XBox 360, and the Wii).
Unity development so far has been straight forward – scripts can be in c# or javascript – I’ve created several 3d scenes, used the extensive resources from the forum and Unity Answers to create a ship that uses realistic physics to move in orbit. The Unity Asset store has thousands of additional resources for Unity3D dev. Initially I’m using atmospheric planets and vectrosity for line drawing.
Unity3d scene
We play tested the game as turn based and real time multi-player – I was initially planning on a turn based approach using Apple’s Game Center for iOS but the game plays much better in real time. We evaluated several multi-player network solutions and are going to go with Photon Cloud – very well integrated with Unity, a great price, and should be able to scale.
I’m evaluating several different 3d engines for our planned iOS space combat game Torchships.
I found good overviews at Never Read Passively, Open Source iPhone game engine comparison, and The Commercial iPhone Game Engine Comparison (3D and 2D).
This week I’m digging more into Unity and cocos3d to get a better understanding of the pros and cons. Unity looks very nice but I’m not sure I want to go with a non-iOS-native solution.
Here is the list of 3D engines I’ve looked at so far…
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UDK – Unreal Development Kit for iOS – PC & iOS
The same toolset used to make Gears of War and Infinity Blade.
+ Beautiful graphics
+ Industry Standard, high performance
+ Completely integrated development system
– Development on PC only
– proprietary scripting
Unity 3D – web, flash, iOS, Android, PC & Mac, Wii, PS3, xBox 360
Very popular 3d engine that supports a large number of platforms.
+Large developer base and very active community
+Very nice 3d Graphics, physics, and particle effects.
+Integrated editor and asset pipeline
+Largest number of platforms available
+Javascript or C#
+Mac native development
-Not a native iOS app, all new iOS features may not be available right away
Engine to create of richer apps and games on iOS, Android and other platforms.
+based on c++
-based on c++ 🙂
3D game engine with a graphical editor to create applications and games for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry QNX, WebOS, Marmalade and Wii
An OpenGLES based cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine for iOS, Android, MacOS and Windows
An extension to cocos2d. A sophisticated 3D application development framework for the iOS platform.
+open source
+based on and can integrate with the very powerful and popular cocos2d library
+native iOS
iSGL3D (iOS Scene Graph Library) is a 3D framework for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch written in Objective-C, enabling the creativity of developers to flourish in a 3D world without the complexities of OpenGL.
+based on OpenGL
+iOS native
-author is not actively supporting, looking for new contributors
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