Game Engines are an important element for game developers. It eliminates many of the technicalities involved in developing a game and offers game developers the flexibility to focus on building the game. A game engine typically offers wide range of time saving tools for game building. If you are a beginner or a professional developer these top 10 Game development engines will serve as a guide for you to choose the best game engine for your gaming needs.
Unity 3D
The unity 3D game engine is free and comes with a wide array of assets for game building. The WYSIWYG tools offer the flexibility of easily changing or adding things. The Unity3d comes in different programming languages including the C#, Boo and JavaScript. You have the flexibility of combining any of these programming languages during your project and developers can easily play games in the editor. The Unity3d has a user friendly publishing feature. It essentially builds a complete game package with the click of a button. The game engine supports web applications, Mac and Windows. There are available upgrades for iOS and consoles.
Gamesalad
The GameSalad development suite makes game building simple and easy. You don’t need to wade through complex codes to develop a game. The GameSalad features check boxes, dropdowns and the oddlist similar to features you will see when using utility software like Photoshop. GameSalad can be published to multiple platforms like the Mac or iPhone as well as to devices using the Android platform like the Nook. The game engine has a real-time editing feature enabling scenes to be edited while the game is in play. The game preview feature allows the testing and debugging of memory usage and performance of games. The scene editor makes it super easy to manipulate actors in a scene. All you need to do is to drag and drop actors to alter how they are visualized in a scene.
Torque 2D
The Torque 2D features a powerful and user friendly 2D game engine. It offers a lot of the features of the 3D game engine which is custom-made for 2D gameplay. This game engine can be published to Mac, Windows, Xbox 360, Wii and the iPhone. The Torque 2 D’s intuitive and powerful editor makes game creation simple and easy, making it is ideal for individuals with little or no experience. The Level Editor features a host of WYSIWYG tools for game designing and editing. The Level Editor is built into the Torque runtime and offers complete access to the entire Torque subsystem. The powerful rendering of the Torque 2D is great for achieving an excellent artistic style.
Stencyl
This is a game engine that can be used to create 2D video games for the web, mobile devices and computers.. Stencyl has extensive platform support. Games built in Stencyl can be released to the web through the Adobe Flash Player and HTML5, to PCs as executable games and can also be exported to various mobile platforms like Android and iOS applications. Stencyl projects use the Haxe programming language and offers flexibility via the NME game framework by using the write once, run anywhere style of game development. The Stencyl application has several modules that can be utilized to create games. These include the Behavior Editor, Tileset Editor, Actor Editor as well as the Scene Designer. Power users are able to import existing code libraries, create and share their own blocks and create customized classes that seamlessly interact with block based behaviors.
Pygame
This is a suite of Python modules designed for game creation. With its functionality and excellent SDL library, pygame enables the creation of fully featured games in the python language. This software is free and allows you to create free open source. It has an inbuilt sillness that makes game creation fun. It does not require an open GL and uses either directx, windib, X11 in addition to various backends. The Multi Core CPUs can easily be utilized. Pygame is compatible with many operating systems and does not require set up tools or ctypes for installation and its simple and easy to use.
Corona
Corona is a robust game engine that features industry standard technologies including Lua, OpenAL and OpenGL. The Corona comes with the Box2D physics engine, Game Center, Facebook Connect and sprite sheets. With the Corona you can access a wide array of features you will need to create an exciting mobile game. You can easily monetize games via advertising and app purchasing. The Corona can be used on the various platforms including iOS, Kindle Fire, Android and NOOK. Games can easily be built with a single codebase and eliminates the complexities involved in game creation. The Corona SDK starter offers free building and publishing of apps for users.
GL Basic
This game engine offers a user friendly, flexible fast to write programming language. GL Basic offers the easiest and most intuitive programming language available making it ideal for writing high performance programs. No need to change the source code when starting your Linux, iPhone development GP2X/Wiz and PocketPC after writing a program, allowing users to concentrate on essentials when building games. GL Basic game engine is free for personal projects on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. It is ideal for beginners who want to learn programming as a hobby.
Eclipse
Eclipse is a 2D game software based on the FMOD and SDL programming making it ideal for usage across different platforms. This game engine is easy to use and takes care of all the tedious tasks, enabling game developers to focus on other areas during the creation of the game.
RPG Maker VX
The RPG Maker VX features a simple operation that offers game builders the flexibility to create original role playing games with little or no expertise, making it an excellent game engine for beginner developers. The software comes with pre-made features so there is no need to learn the code. Simply build a game by pointing and clicking while adding a little creativity.
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