5 Open-Source Game Engine You Have to Know!

5 Open-Source Game Engine You Have to Know!

Posted by H.Istvan under Game Engines, Open-source stuff

Choosing the right game engine can be a nightmare for novice game developers, not only because of the great number of engines that are out there, but also the price of the engines you have to pay for them. Today on my list there are 5 remarkable game engines (actually4 because one of them is a graphical engine, if we are strict) that had proven in the field of game development. . The best of it, they are open-source. But lets take a closer look:

1. Irrlicht. The development of Irrlicht started in 2003 by Nikolaus Gebhardt. In the next years of development Irrlicht became on of the best open-source engines available. Officially Irrlicht supports C++, but there is a .NET language binding, and bindings for other languages for example Pascal, Ruby, Java etc, but I don’t know how functional they are. It supports all majority renderers (Direct X and OpenGL) and also has a software renderer.

PROS:

- easy to learn

- software renderer

- integrated XML parser

- big community

CONS:

- lately the development of Irrlicht slowed down

2. Panda3D. Developed by Disney and maintained by Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. Python language is the recommended game development language, still C++ is also supported (but I would recommend Python, because of the manual and samples). For advanced programmers very easy to learn, but not heavily exhausting for novice programmers.

PROS:

-helpful community

- a lot of features

- regularly developed

CONS:

- lack of tools

- poor documentation (very poor, you have to rely on community and sample programs, that’s why you should use Python as programming language)!

3. jME (Java Monkey Engine). Written entirely in Java, started in 2004 by Mark Powell. Supported programming language is Java. How easy or hard is to learn jME I don’t know, because I’m not familiar with Java. But one thing is sure, that jME is one of the most popular Java game engine.

PROS:

- easy to use

- active community

- built-in physics engine

That’s what I have found!

CONS:

- I have no experience with this engine so I can’t say anything. You are encouraged to comment!

4. OGRE. This is a graphics engine, but the very best of them. Steve Streeting started the OGRE project in 2000. You have to be very familiar with programming if you want to use OGRE. For programming language C++ is recommended, but there are bindings to other languages. I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners.

PROS:

- lot of features

- good documentation

- big community

- book (Pro OGRE3D Programming)

- active development

CONS:

- not for beginners

- only a graphics engine

5. Crystal Space. Written in C++, the first release in 1997. Crossplatform (the previous 4 is crossplatform too)! C++ programming language is recommended to use.

PROS:

- good support and helpful community

- a lot of features

CONS:

- harder to learn

My personal advice for novice C++ programmers is to begin with Irrlicht. I found Irrlicht the easiest to start with. For Java I have no experience, but I think that jME is widely used, so it has a community big enough to help you to learn this engine.

Anybody who has any experience with these engines, or any other game engine is free to share his thought!