001 Game Creator
Especially for the money, I don’t think you’ll find a program more fun to use when putting together your games. I haven’t found a more flexible engine (Short of maybe Unity, which still requires extra licensing) to quickly piece together scenes and basic mechanics to sketch out game ideas without diving into a million menus. They don’t even have to be simple prototypes, as I am also able to implement complex mechanics in no time at all using easy drag and drop scripting. I have found that my only limitation so far has been my own terrible math skill.
– Real player with 4553.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Game Development Utilities Games.
I’ve used 001 now for almost 15 years. I’m currently working for SoftWeir Inc. and have contributed to 001 in many ways. That being said, I originally purchased 001 years ago through their website as any other customer, and not just given a free copy as a team member. I’m not being paid to write this review.
001 is a very capable engine designed to bring your ideas to life, as quickly as possible. You can import assets, just plop them into a map or interface, tweak some triggers then start building a game. If you are familiar with the engine, and have the assets ready, you can quite literally prototype ideas in under an hour (Of course depending on how many existing systems and assets you can leverage, and what gameplay you are looking for)
– Real player with 1955.3 hrs in game
AppGameKit Studio
9 Out Of 10 Stars!
Hi,
Been using original “AppGameKit 2” (now called “Classic”) for a long time with great results.
I purchased “AppGameKit Studio” today.
First impressions are excellent.
I really love the new IDE and scene editor.
Definitely recommend this game creation software!
It’s missing some things that I hope are implemented soon:
(1) [DONE]HTML5/WebGL export with persistent data saving.
(2) “Steam Workshop” support.
(3) “Vulkan” rendering support for the other platforms.
Great game engine!
– Real player with 1454.9 hrs in game
AppGameKit Studio is the successor to the original AppGameKit and features several new improvements. However, if you are happy with the original AGK, there’s no urgent reason to upgrade - yet.
As for the software itself, although it was probably far from what the developers were hoping for, I wrote a visual novel with it called ‘Shark Dating Simulator’, available on Steam, which had a major boost when JackSepticEye reviewed it and sales were somewhat higher than I ever expected. As I was raised on the BASIC of old computers, AGK was not difficult to get into at all. AGK apps, for me on PC, run fast and smoothly and there are no watermarks or royalties to pay on your work - everything you make is yours. I would never have been able to make my game without AGK.
– Real player with 672.6 hrs in game
Axis Game Factory’s AGFPRO v3
Game factory does not make games. It is a level / world design tool. A really good level / world design tool for Unity based games. You see everything in real time. You can play test your levels, run around and stuff, but its not a stand alone game game engine, just a level / world design tool. However, calling yourself Game Factory was slightly misleading, but whatever. On the forum, the developers hint at wanting to one day make it a stand alone game engine, but I’m not sure if its a hint or misleading. Since they call it Game Factory, I have to lean toward the potential of misleading here.
– Real player with 238.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Game Development Utilities Games.
(tl;dr: Summary at bottom. Also pay attention to review dates….especially the positive ones….)
Update Jan 2019: Seems AGFPRO and Geovox have finally had the option to purchase them on Steam removed for Australians it seems.
Everyone else has my pity.
UPDATE: Some AGF content is game breakingly broken at the moment. Dev ZekeThe Defender aka Alex has posted a fix that requires rolling back AGF to older versions.
Sadly he has also quit AGF. So could be a while before a proper fix is provided. Until then consider AGF broken and I seriously recommend not buying it or it’s DLC’s until the matter is resolved.
– Real player with 135.1 hrs in game
CopperCube 5 Game Engine
Lets be clear, Coppercube is intended to be simple and easy to use. This is a software for non programers, or those like me who prefer to focus on art and design, rather than typing tons of code. For this Coppercube is the best out there. Porting between PC, MacOS, WebGl, Android, and flash is near seamless. Most of the time its as simple as clicking the publish to option. There are tons of behaviors and actions to mix and match to do most things you will need, and their is a Javascript API if you want even more control. I’ve used quite a few game engines over the years (Multimedia Fusion, Gamemaker, 3DRad, Jamagic, Gamesalad) and none were as easy and fast to develop 3D applications than Coppercube.
– Real player with 3991.5 hrs in game
I have been playing around with CopperCube the past couple of weeks and I have fallen in love. 1 being that it is easy to get something simple up and running but also the option and simplistic coding. I start messing with the action and coding behaviors and find it to be quite easy when following their tutorial (but I am coding savvy). Graphic wise it isn’t Unity but I am not out to make a AAA game either.
I am running this on my Surface 3 so anyone who comes across my review I would say it runs smoothly on it and isn’t a resource hog which is a huge plus to me.
– Real player with 357.7 hrs in game
GameGuru
Gameguru is a rough-around-the edges, cheap, underpowered game engine. It is a spiritual successor to TGC’s previos successful endeavor: FPS Creator. FPS creator was a dream come true for wanna-be mappers and newbie game designers wanting to create their own simple little first person experiences. It worked well enough for what it was, had a super active community, and lots of mods, an easy-to-learn custom scripting language, and many successful games were made with it.
FPS Creator reloaded promised to be the upgrade everyone wanted from FPS Creator. It was gonna feature all next gen graphical features, a bigger map editor, and in general more freedom and ability. This was proposed on kickstarter where it didn’t meet it’s exorbitant asking donation, so it later was rebranded and came out as GameGuru.
– Real player with 650.3 hrs in game
Yeah, okay, GameGuru doesn’t have the best graphics around, but they have a specific look to it, so there’s that. Making the graphics look as good as UE4 and Unity however, is practically impossible. But that’s not my point, my point is GameGuru’s graphics are good enough for making games for the hecc of it.
The engine is editable to certain extents, but not really enough for hardcore coders and developers. Again, this is an engine made more for the fun of it. Making some nice $$$ is possible, but not too easy.
– Real player with 387.7 hrs in game
Verto Studio VR
Best modelling tool I’ve used in VR so far!! I can’t wait to see what it grows into. I’ll be using this as my go-to tool while I wait!
– Real player with 17.8 hrs in game
BRILLIANT! Loving it so far! I’d compare it to Google Block’s bigger, bolder, better looking older brother :D
so i just spent 1 hour with verto studio in desktop mode after owning it, and being intimidated by it, for about two weeks. figured i’d dip my toes in the water on the desktop mode so that i could see how this software was different than what i’m used to in blender. i had previously read through the help manual, but to be honest, i forgot all of it before i opened verto studio again this evening. i generally like to freestyle because i figure if an app is intuitive enough, i should be able to just pick it up and go, being of (debatably, lol) average intelligence.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Leadwerks Game Engine
Leadwerks is a semi easy-to-use and very powerful game engine written in OpenGL 4 with a deferred renderer. The engine is crossplatform between Windows & Linux, frequently updated, and has a very friendly and active community. With Leadwerks, you can create any game you want, be it an FPS game, 3rd person shooter, a puzzle game, or something super wacky, you can make it in the Leadwerks engine.
Some Of The Great Features
The deferred renderer is the pride and joy in this engine, giving you the ability to easily add dynamic lights and/or static lights with realistic shadows instantly, no lightmap baking needed. CSG level editing (like Source Engine’s Hammer editor) is fun and fast in the Leadwerks editor, allowing you to map out and create a level to test out pretty quickly. The engine is built upon OpenGL 4, making the engine crossplatform between Windows and Linux. A Mac version is currently in the works and should be out sometime in the near future.
– Real player with 1535.7 hrs in game
If you read this before the end of the 2nd December 2014, and you are wanting to be be able to write a 3D game, get this now. Its incredible value at 50% off. If you have and use visual studio and write code in C++, and want to use it to write a game, splash out and get the Standard version too. I bought mine in a previous sale, with -25% off, and have invested many hours in using this latest version during the beta testing of 3.3.
There are lots of video tutorials on you-tube, which are really useful for a beginner to understand how to start to use Leadwerks. The Forum http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/ is a great community resource, which is always worth a visit when your stuck, answers to many of your questions can be found by searching in here. If its not already answered you can ask the community, and there are some really great people who have been using Leadwerks for years, including Josh (Leadwerks CEO) who respond with knowlegeable answers.
– Real player with 979.8 hrs in game
RTS Creator
Update March 2021: So I decided I may as well try make something because I paid money for it. I gave Dune 2 another crack and put an additional 95 hours into this thing. So what have I learned. Its buggy as hell and will crash a lot. If there is one thing missing, such as an image it will crash. There are some totally broken features, for example the traditional RTS harvester functions are totally broken, you can not select “Drop off” with your harvester function or the game will crash. There are multiple things missing such as unit sounds, all 3d model files are flipped. Adding any sort of feature is a long and frustrating task. After the almost 100 extra hours I have put into this engine my recommendation is, do not buy this, use something else like the spring engine.
– Real player with 309.3 hrs in game
Please note I do no longer think about the engine this way, I currently think this is a piece of shit.
You can see why below.
I have used this engine for 60 (including time spended with demo) hours now, and after this time I can say, that it had potential and still has. I bought this engine for 10 euros which is about 12 dollars I think it is way worth it. Let me begin with some pros and cons,
Pros:
-Easy to use
-Scripting support
-some nice free to use models
-Particle creator
-Lots of customization
– Real player with 78.9 hrs in game
articy:draft 3
This is an over priced, under powered waste of your time. I have spent YEARS using ARTICY Draft. I spent thousands of hours on the first edition. And to date have spent almost 1000 USD on the suite. It’s a failed experiment. The development team has all but abandoned it, save for things that allow them to sell in new markets.
This has the power to be a wonderful tool for organization of an MMORPG or RPG game. You can cross reference quite a bit, and create some very unique flows. But it’s just not designed for anyone who either writes or creates game mechanics.
– Real player with 1610.3 hrs in game
In short, I highly recommend this software to anyone who is serious about making a video game. That said, here is my explanation as to why I say that. making a video game is not easy. You have a lot of tasks that need to be thought out and features to develop. In steps Articy:Draft 3 a tool that allows you to create your virtual world in one piece of software for export into you game engine of choice.
Now if you are like me and bought the Articy:Draft 2, you may ask yourself why upgrade? My answer, it depends upon your technical specs you want to get out of this software. Do you want to use XML and Excel or Word? Well then there isn’t too many reasons why you would want to upgrade. Otherwise, I would upgrade as the JSON exporter alone made the choice for me. As a game developer, I needed JSON in order to read the exported documents in my proprietary Game Engine. The other upgrades are nice ease of life features, but the ability o produce JSON documents and the ability to make plugins was my deciding factor and I’d bet many other people made the same conclusion.
– Real player with 534.3 hrs in game
3DF Zephyr Lite Steam Edition
If you aren’t making money with Photogrametry, but you are interested in turning photos / videos in to 3D models, then 3DF Zephyr should probably where you start. There are open source tools available if that is important to you, but setup time and quality of the results vary widely. The free (limit of 50 photos per model) and lite (available here on Steam for a reasonable price) versions of 3DF Zephyr compete with more expensive (outright purchase cost or monthly subscription) products in the market. The free edition on their website lets you use 50 photos, you can get a good feel for the software with it. This lite version on steam increases the limit to 500 which allows for some excellent results with high details. These versions have limitations, but Pro and Aerial features trickle down as they see fit. I’d love to see control points at the lite level, if my photoset isn’t working out of the box, I’m kind of SOL with it. Overall you have little or nothing to lose by trying this product out.
– Real player with 3304.5 hrs in game
I have almost 500 hours in this software. I also have used the Matter and Form V2 for a month. What I have discovered the difference between 3DF photogrammetry and M&F lasers.
3DF comes out with a model (assuming you spend hours doing proper masking) that is almost immediately usable in Unity (run it through PolyGone for a quick and dirty optimization solution).
M&F woah boy. Very high resolution, but the holes, the holes! The tutorial videos are wrong. I had to meet with their engineering team via skype to be walked through PROPER execution. Even so, it seems to work primarily works with certain textures and not others. while it does let you capture multiple scans and attempt to merge the cloud points automatically, it is very hit or miss. You get one scan to capture texture, so if you do 2 texture scans from different angles it will be unusable and blur. So the holes will not fill with textured polygons.
– Real player with 524.9 hrs in game