Unreal Engine

The Unreal Engine has been in use for two decades, and in that time its developed a legacy as one of the most popular game engines in the industry. As the beating heart behind both big budget hits and indie titles, it's proven itself able to scale to the demands of a wide range of developers. First created to power id's first person shooter Unreal, it's since been used as a development tool for genres ranging from RPGs to fighting games to stealth sims. The expansive tool kit and versatility of the engine is one of its main strengths, and with so much time in the marketplace, it's had plenty of time to polish its tools and polish up its strengths and weaknesses. Now in its fourth iteration, Unreal continues to be a powerhouse in the game development community. Unreal boasts that it can follow you through every step of the game development process, and it's proven its ability to deliver. From early conceptualization through QA and shipping, Unreal will make sure everything is polished, smooth, and free of bugs. All the fundamentals that a developer could need are ready in the box without the need for plugins. One of the main advantages to developers is the quality of the graphics it can produce and the strength of the cinematic and animation tools. Sporting many of the same features you'll find in 3D modeling and video editing software, these designs have been used to create settings as visually and aesthetically diverse as the cel-animated styling of Dragon Ball Fighter Z and the beautiful but barren galactic landscapes of Solus. While Unreal contains a deep and expansive feature set without the need for any additions, it is supported by a vast selection of plugins. The wide breadth of gaming possibilities means that no game engine can do everything, but the community is large, healthy, and seasoned from years of experience, and there are plenty of options available if you need to use Unreal to create a unique game with core or supplementary systems not easily accommodated by existing tools. Integration is generally easy, and that level of accessibility is something of a mantra for the Unreal team. Versions of the engine used for non-commercial purposes are free, and the licensing fees for professional developers are incredibly reasonable by industry standards. Unreal is built on C++, a language that's well known as a parent to many of the languages in operation today, but the need for blueprinting your code in Unreal means that it's hard to port your code over to other programs. Luckily, that will rarely be an issue for most developers. Unreal offers compatibility for most of the major gaming platforms available, and they've recently taken steps to adapting the Unreal engine to handle the demands of virtual reality development.