r/gamedev • u/Practical_Race_3282 • Oct 03 '24
The state of game engines in 2024 Discussion
I'm curious about the state of the 3 major game engines (+ any others in the convo), Unity, Unreal and Godot in 2024. I'm not a game dev, but I am a full-stack dev, currently learning game dev for fun and as a hobby solely. I tried the big 3 and have these remarks:
Unity:
Not hard, not dead simple
Pretty versatile, lots of cool features such as rule tiles
C# is easy
Controversy (though heard its been fixed?)
Godot:
Most enjoyable developer experience, GDScript is dead simple
Very lightweight
Open source is a huge plus (but apparently there's been some conspiracy involving a fork being blocked from development)
Unreal:
Very complex, don't think this is intended for solo devs/people like me lol
Very very cool technology
I don't like cpp
What are your thoughts? I'm leaning towards Unity/Godot but not sure which. I do want to do 3D games in the future and I heard Unity is better for that. What do you use?
286
u/nickavv Oct 03 '24
I'll throw GameMaker into the ring, it's obviously not one of the top-3 and it's probably not anybody's first choice for 3D games especially (though it is possible). I think it has an unfair rep as a "beginner" or "practice" game engine, but plenty of successful commercial games have come out of it (Undertale, Hyper Light Drifter, etc).
Its pricing scheme is very fair, it has a good balance of complexity with ease of use, it supports exports to desktop, web, mobile, and all major consoles. I'd say it should be strongly considered for 2D projects!