Top Mobile Game Engines & Development Platform Explore how game engines and game development platforms are beneficial for developing a gaming application. Learn about their unique features, functionalities and which one would suit for developing a particular gaming app
What is a Game Engine?
When you are following the game trends and about their industry, you will hear constantly about the term “game engine”, “game architect”,” game framework” so, let’s understand what is game engine first. The game engine is used in making video games by developers for mobile phones, personal computers, consoles in the software development environment
The rendering engine for graphics in 2D or 3D, collision detection between different objects, physics engine, sound, artificial intelligence, scripting, graphical user interface, networking, streaming, video support, memory management, animation, a graphical user interface is the core functions provided by the game engine.
Features and tools that are now referred to as new technical advancements in-game engines keep evolving as time changes. Games should be a mix of the older generation and new features. The team should be elected for making updates in the existing engine with new features.
Advantages of Using a Game Engine
Recycling codes is a time and cost-saving approach – developers take a lot of time for creating images that are computer generated and creating animation, creating essential codes, by using code that is already existed in-game engine developer can save their time. Pre-existed code requires some alteration and addition instead of doing the same process again developer follow this method. Code recycling saves both time and cost and, in this way game is easily provided in the market in a short time.
Artificial Intelligence
AI in video games playing a very important role since 1950. artificial intelligence generates the human-like behavior and intelligence of non-player characters like how they will be adaptive, give response. Complex plot lines, multiple control, background scenario is becoming easy with AI in game engines.
Rendering and Lighting Technical Advancement
Real-time technical advancement made by the game developers which improves the game process. time calculation in rendering with older technology requires a longer time several hours but with new technology real-time in rendering improves as it requires milliseconds. Calculation of lighting is also becoming easy and done on a frame by frame basis.
3D Graphic Representation
The advancement of realistic appearance has also improved with the game engine in 3D and 2D. it also does not require any additional program for 3D and 2D graphics with the main object of creating a reflection of realistic scales in 3D graphics.
Top Ten Popular Game Engines
1. Unity
In 2005 unity technologies released its cross-platform game engine in a worldwide developer’s conference held at Apple inc. as Mac OS X-exclusive. Unity game engine is the perfect game engine for creating 2 dimensional, 3-dimensional, VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), creating simulation and creating a different experience. The latest version of unity 2020.1.16 is launched in 2020.
Unity game engine primary scripting API (application programming interface) in a c programming language with introducing different tools and features for allowing developers to create the game as per their requirement.
Popular games designed with unity game engine are Pokémon go, VR chat, the forest, Cuphead, hearthstone.
2. Unreal Engine
The Unreal game engine was developed by epic games first launched in 1988 for shooting games and the engine was developed for unreal. Lineage 2, tera, Blade & Soul, and single-player games: Mass Effect, Bioshock, and Borderlands are the popular MMORPGs designed with the help of the unreal game engine. Unreal Engine 5 is scheduled is expected to launch fully by 2021 and first released on May 13, 2020. C++ programming language is used in the unreal game engine. high-speed storage solutions with the next-generation console hardware with a mix of RAM and solid-state drives are the advantage received while using the unreal game engine. Spending less time in creating new detailed assets for creating detailed game worlds is the goal of the unreal game engine 5. Node-based interface by visual scripting system called blueprints offered by the unreal game engine.
Royalty amount has to be paid 5% if they earned 3000 $. The unreal game engine is suitable for android game development.
3. Corona SDK
The 2D Game Engines is an unlimited, powerful, free game engine. It is a cross-platform engine used in creating apps and games for mobile devices and desktop users. After creating a project from corona, it can be published on other devices like on my phone, iPad, tablet, and on apple tv, fire tv, android tv.
Supportive language in corona SDK is c, C++, obj.-C, java, or API application programming interface.
4. SpriteKit
2D sprite-based game engine is developed by Apple developer for apple products. It is very useful in creating 2D games that are high performance and battery efficient.
5. Marmalade SDK
It is a cross-platform software development kit and it was developed by Marmalade Technologies Limited. the software development kit contains library files, samples, documentation, and tools. This game engine is written in C++.
6. Buildbox
It doesn’t require any scripting, programming, or software design experience.
Developing games does not require coding and makes the process of creating games in 3D, 2D easier for mobile devices.
It requires a payment of 99$ to 299$ per year as per your package and purpose.
7. AppGameKit
It is a powerful game development engine, suitable for beginners, those who learning it as a hobby, indie developers. Appgamekit states that it is easy and quick to build an app for multiple platforms. The latest version of Appgamekit is V2020.11.16.
8. Construct
Construct game engine was developed by Scirra limited. it is a 2D game editor based on HTML5 (Hypertext mark-up language). It allows the creation of games through visual programming even by non-programmers.
9. GameMaker Studio 2
It was released by Yo-Yo Games in 1999 for developing 2D games. It supports the C++, C programming language. It has its scripting language that is game maker language. It requires a subscription for one-year 30$ and one-month 10$.
10. CocoonJS
It is a mobile development framework released by ludei. CocoonJS used in creating a mobile application. Instead of using Objective-C language, it uses CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript. The operating system in this software is Android, iOS, Tizen, pokki, ouya. 2.0.2 was its stable released version.
Conclusion
So, now you have a rough idea about using various game engines for developing gaming apps. Also, the choice of game engine by a gaming app development company can depend on other factors such as programming knowledge, visuals, features, app development team, etc.
