As far as I understand both of these engines are open source and I was wondering which one would be best for some small independent C++ work. I won't be doing anything complicated, just some basic scripts for AI, weapons etc.
It's my understanding that unreal 3 is an open platform at this point? I may be wrong considering the recent lawsuit with silicon knights, but i'd say just in terms of availabitly unreal would be easier to work with. But if you become a beast with the crysis engine crytek will buy you and your non existent studio and build you your own building.
cryengine! free for non-commercial use and just looks better really in my opinion. i googled this a while back:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXNvmvaBNiY
if you're looking for better visuals..
you should ask Logan. They had this idea of doing a film and port it to both Unreal and Cryengine a while ago but somehow they didn't mention it since then.
By that video I would say they both have there merrits for beauty. Cryengine does look much more real... but Unreal has a very ominious day z feel to it.
I believe CryEngine looks better, but Unreal Engine made games like the Batman: Arkham Series. Plus it( Unreal) looks easier to use because of the default 4 window view, not sure if you can do that on the CryEngine.
I almost jumped the gun and just scream out ''Frostbite 2!!!" before reading your full question.
You're all focusing on unimportant stuff. He said he wants to do simple programming stuff, not create art (Okay, programming shaders might be relevant, if he'd said GLSL \ HLSL or something, not C++).
Firstly neither are open source. UDK and cryengine are free to use (afaik) but if you want to sell anything using it you'll need a license. afaik Cryengine is not suited to indie projects, and it's a bit of a pain to get content into (3d model wise, not sure if this is a good indicator of how noob friendly the whole thing can be).
If you can use C++ extensively with UDK (it uses unrealscript but I'm not sure what for / if c++ impimentation is limited) which they are ditching for unreal4, so it is not worth learning. If you can use C++ fine, then I'd say UDK. If not, I'd look into Unity and compare it with Cryengine.
Just as beck said, no open source unfortunately :(
There is no c++ access in UDK. It's extremely limited. You use unrealscript to do everything. For cryengine, it does let you use c++ for core components and you have to use Lua for small in-game scripts. Both support writing your own shaders, which is a major plus.
When it comes to comparison, cryengine beats UDK in every way. There is no argument. It's a lot more flexible and it has many more features. The look you can get in UDK, you can get in cryengine plus more. However, UDK is much easier and since it's been out longer, it's been getting more documentation and tutorials for unrealscript, while cryengine programming tutorials are really scarce. I haven't found any useful books for cryengine either. They're all useless drag-and-drop instructions for absolute beginners (especially the famous cryengine cookbook). Until a programming book is released for cryengine, I don't recommend you get into it unless you have a decent understanding of game engine architecture and have experience dealing with their APIs.
If you want to do some basic scripting in unrealscript, I recommend the unrealscript book by rachel cordone. I've been reading it every now and then on my free time, and I can say it's the best I've read so far. For Cryengine, try reading through the docs and forums on crydev and see if you can do it just from the info there.
as much as I like to learn game SDKs, I still don't have much experience with them, so my previous statement seemed amateur. But seems you got some serious feedback from some experienced guys here I wish you good luck with your project!
I think both of them produce equally good looking graphics. But, I have a feeling that performancewise games (the games designed for PC) based on Unreal Engine run better on medium and low end graphics cards with much smaller sacrifice of graphics quality. That means you will have to do less optimization yourself with Unreal Engine.
Since unrealscript is being phased out though, it's pretty much not worth learning.
Oh did they say they're phasing out unrealscript for udk? As far as I know, only full UE3 and UE4 allow users to write native c++ right now, and it doesn't seem UDK is going to change into UE4 and/or gain massive updates any time soon.
And sorry I read your username wrong the first time xD
Anyway, @Final Forger if any of these engines seem confusing at first, use unity 3d to learn basic scripting and such. It's a mediocre previous gen engine (yes, even unity 4 is still catching up to some 2008 games) and it's no match for UDK or Cryengine, but it gets the job done, supports the most platforms, and it's the easiest engine in the world for just getting in and writing scripts like character controllers, AI, physics, networking, etc. You can write your own shaders to improve it too. I've spent most of my free time on unity in the past year and it has almost no learning curve and a ton of tutorials.
I agree with Jafar25, your best bet is Unity. It has a very nice level editor, its very easy to import 3D assets that you make in a 3D modeling app like 3DsMax or Blender.There are a lot of good beginners books for Unity so that you can start making workable games right away.
I really hate the level editor for UDK, its like working with Sketchup where all you are doing is extruding cubes. So its only to make stuff like a city scene where all the buildings are square and paralel, but for anything else its a pain to make levels with. It represents really old game engine technology where only convex wireframe shapes can be rendered quickly in the game engine.
I'd use the Unreal Engine based solely on the difference in the fogging.. Fuck fog.
Personaly I use Cryengine 3 as there is much more you can do with it and it is infact in many peoples opinion, easyer to use. Plus it looks better. There are things that it cant do that other engines can like massive maps. You ca generate a map of over 200km's^2 but there are issues and there is no cell loading of multipul maps. UNITY and UDK both I believe can do it however. Just look at and chose what you prefer. Both support C++ I believe. I know CDK does. Remember their both not open source.
Go with Unreal, you're working on C++, Scipts and AI then Unreal is what you want imo. I've used it for many years now. It really doesn't make a difference in the end because they are realtively the same, once you know a couple SDKs then you know them all. I think UDK is simpler to start with than CryEngine, possibly just because I used UDK before CryEngine. Like Adobe Suite products or 3d modeling and animation programs... What experience do you have with SDK, 3d Modeling or even animation? If you have no experience then I definately suggest Unreal because its easy to use and pick up within a week or two. You can use their Kismet feature which makes scripting a breeze. If you end up using UDK then visit http://www.hourences.com/ He has excellent tutorials to get you started.