…while all this shiny big engines, including Unity, looks attractive, there is a dark downside they all have…for example, everything you will ever do, coding wise, in Unity, is literally useless outside of that system…you cant simply port codebase you have had there, to another engine, because all you do is scripting and injecting those scripts inside main loop, which you do not have control over, handling, and so on…similar situation is with big engines such as CryTek, Unreal, etc. Once, for some reason you are forced to move away your game from that system and use something else, i guarantee you, it means writing whole thing from scratch, including parts which did ‘automagically’ many things…thats where systems such as JME shines so bright for me…before i came here, I used few engines but conceptually same or very similar…and i had no real problems to port all my stuff to JME, on some pleasant way.
Then, media production. This big shiny engines, are nice long as you look over games done by them. But, what people don’t see behind AAA titles is hundreds of artists and programmers, working on particular game. Thats where beauty stops. You see, most of us, need tools which will do job, with less resources as possible, while offering relatively good visual style and good performance. Chances are, you will find yourself thinking of tweaking source of CryEngine or something else, in order to suit whole thing for your own goals, if your game step aside far from typical FPS (anyone remember Torque)…
Fact that its offered support for latest consoles, means nothing. Because without game done, which is good enough, been able to target consoles, doesn’t really mean much, if at all.
I really did walk full cycle around many AAA engines, way before they start been open, and i assure you that, SDK such as JME is one jewel and i will repeat again, im officially surprised that this system is not recognized much more than it is.
