Beginner-friendly Engine ?

Hey Guys

iam a computer science student with to much time so i thought i could improve my skills as a developer.

i am wondering how you guys started working with an engine ?
All the big engine you can work with cost money, UDK,CryEngine, UnityPro.

Did you pay the monthly price to learn to work with the engine / programm language ?
seems kinda weird for me if you think about it, maybe i need a few years to get comfortable with C# / the engine. maybe i never make anything with it.

 

Unity is free. http://unity3d.com/unity/download

--Eric

 

I've already read a lot that Unity confuses beginners. I felt the same until i really wanted to use it and improve my skills. I built some small scenes which contained basic game logic that you usually find in games. Only by doing that, you'll probably dig further into it, asking yourself how a specific game logic/mechanism from your favourite game can be recreated within Unity. It's a great experience to see yourself being able to do that stuff. Hell yea, game developers are no magicians.
So, that's a really nice way to get started in my opinion, it's rather not recommended to start a complete game right away.

Also, it helps a lot if you have at least a basic knowledge of coding, i guess you are, according to your post. If not, it can still be easy to get started, you may have to focus a bit more on coding first, you'll get familiar with Unity while doing so for sure.

 

When I was researching the best engine for myself, I tried everything I get get for free or at least try for free. Game Maker was the easiest but the weakest and most limiting.FPS creator was pretty easy but limited to only FPS and fairly dated but they have recently updated.

Of the big boys, Unity was by far the easiest to learn. Not quite as powerful as others in some ways, but the sheer number of tutorials, assets, and a friendly community combined with ease of use made it the ideal choice for me.

Five years later, I am still happy with my decision. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it's the best deal for a hobbyist or new game developer: free.
But in the end, only one person can tell you which game engine is the easiest for you. Go try them all. Give them all a week of really trying. Make the same simple prototype in each one and see.

 

UDK,CryEngine, Unity. All of these you can download for free and have a crack at them.

UDK: With free version you don't get the source code of engine itself. You don't need a license until you want to publish and there is indie license where you only put some small fee up front and then share profits with Epic. There is a cap on this of something like $50,000 in profit. If you earn more then that you need full license.

CryEngine: pretty much same model.

Unity: With free version you can develop and publish no fee what so ever. Compared to Pro version it lacks a few advanced features. There are paid licenses for some of the platforms: https://store.unity3d.com/ Pro or not I don't think you ever get source code for the engine itself.

All that info is from top of my head and outdated but you can find all of the details right there on engine websites.