# Help picking out a game engine. Specifically Unity. **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [September 29, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862 "2014-09-29T14:26:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/1 "2014-09-29T14:26:02Z")
My son wants to start designing games. I was looking at [Unity 3D](http://unity3d.com/) because it is free and does PC and PS games. Anything I should know about it? Also, I know there are better engines to develop MMOs like Hero and Frostbite. Can Unity 3D be used to develop an MMO? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/2 "2014-09-29T15:48:14Z")
I don’t know a lot about game design, but I _strongly_ suggest he start with single player games. Multiplayer functionality makes everything more complicated. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/3 "2014-09-29T17:49:45Z")
Unity can handle online multi-player, certainly at the level that your son is likely to engage with it. If he ever starts a 500 million MMO project, well, he’ll probably be in his thirties and an engineer, and would have already bought you that island you wanted to retire to (that’s how things work, right??). Unity is a pretty good starting engine, however, if you are looking to actually deploy your creations to the world, there are steep fees associated with the tools you’ll need to purchase from them. I would have him take a look at Unreal 4 as a possibility. It is not as easy to get into though, so maybe start with the free version of Unity, and after a few projects under his belt, he might give Unreal 4 a try. Unreal is $25 a month, but you can cancel after the first month and use that version of the engine indefinitely (no updates though). They only charge a 5% royalty fee of any revenue made by the game (after a certain amount). The really good thing about Unity is the ginormous asset store and the ton fo community made tutorials out there. Unreal is making progress there too, but it’s not quite there yet. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/4 "2014-09-29T18:01:28Z")
The MMO idea is for me. I need to learn game design and the MMO would be for friends & family and maybe sell later on and make my bank. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/5 "2014-09-29T18:51:29Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > The MMO idea is for me. I need to learn game design and the MMO would be for friends & family and maybe sell later on and make my bank. Games like the very successful and popular Rust where made in Unity and the servers supported dozens of players in the same instance. Like I intimated above, if you actually intend to make something more complex than that, then you will eventually leave Unity behind. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/6 "2014-09-29T20:33:55Z")
**Moderator Action** Moving thread from General Questions to The Game Room. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/7 "2014-09-29T20:40:25Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#): > > Unreal is $25 a month, but you can cancel after the first month and use that version of the engine indefinitely (no updates though). They only charge a 5% royalty fee of any revenue made by the game (after a certain amount). It’s been a while since I looked into it, but the last time I looked, the unreal development kit was free to download. If you wanted to release a game with it, you had to pay something like $100, but then nothing more until you made more than something like $50,000 from it. Then after that, you had a fairly steep royalty fee. I don’t remember the amount but it was a lot more than 5 percent, more like 25 or 50 percent. Has that changed? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/8 "2014-09-29T20:59:11Z")
I work with a lot of indie game devs and Unity is the default. It’s free, it’s relatively easy to learn, and since it’s so popular there are lots of online tutorials. It can be used to build games for mobile platforms as well. If you’re interested in learning game design, DO NOT start with an MMO. That’s like saying you plan to teach yourself aerodynamics by building a jumbo jet in your garage. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/9 "2014-09-30T07:06:43Z")
This link, containing more links to a bunch of game design courses and tutorials, turned up on Reddit recently. [http://www.mysliderule.com/blog/free-online-courses-game-development-gamification/](http://www.mysliderule.com/blog/free-online-courses-game-development-gamification/) ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/10 "2014-09-30T09:05:30Z")
OP, I think your son should make a single player game with GameMaker: Studio. It’s designed for people who don’t know any programming yet it introduces them to the very basics of it. Games made with GameMaker include: Hotline Miami, Stealth Bastard, Spelunky and Gunpoint. > **[GameMaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameMaker:_Studio)** > > GameMaker (originally Animo, Game Maker (until 2011) and GameMaker Studio) is a series of cross-platform game engines created by Mark Overmars in 1999 and developed by YoYo Games since 2007. The latest iteration of GameMaker was released in 2022. > GameMaker accommodates the creation of cross-platform and multi-genre video games using a custom drag-and-drop visual programming language or a scripting language known as Game Maker Language (GML), which can be used to develop more advanced games tha... Yes, his first game will very likely be nothing to write home about. That’s a given no matter which engine he uses. GameMaker will just make the learning process a lot simpler. Start small and don’t use a tool that’s more complex than what you need. > [@Kinthalis](#): > > Unity is a pretty good starting engine, however, if you are looking to actually deploy your creations to the world, there are steep fees associated with the tools you’ll need to purchase from them. Doesn’t the free version of Unity allow publishing without paying anything? Do you mean the 1500$ fee if you make more than 100 000$ with the game? If so, having to pay 1.5K when you made more than 100Ks on your first game seems like a great problem to have. Many, many developers dream of having problems like that. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/11 "2014-09-30T10:50:01Z")
Saint Cad, I should have asked: How much experience do you and your son have when it comes to coding, modelling, texturing and animation? Because if you don’t already have some skills there _and_ you want to do something fancy, you’ll find the slope pretty steep. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/12 "2014-10-02T14:20:06Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Saint Cad, > > I should have asked: > > How much experience do you and your son have when it comes to coding, modelling, texturing and animation? Because if you don’t already have some skills there _and_ you want to do something fancy, you’ll find the slope pretty steep. I design web pages and my son wants to learn. I bought him an Ardino kit but he hasn’t really worked through it so he’s not really a coder. The MMO idea is the eventually down the road idea. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2014, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/13 "2014-10-03T19:22:01Z")
I think the Unity Engine would be a good choice. [Unturned](http://store.steampowered.com/app/304930/) was made with Unity and is among the top 10 most played games on Steam and it was coded by a 16 (now 17) year-old Canadian. From what I’ve seen Unity will greatly simplify making a 3D world, but there still probably will be lots of coding for the game logic and mechanics. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-picking-out-a-game-engine-specifically-unity/699862/14 "2014-10-03T19:33:23Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > I think the Unity Engine would be a good choice. [Unturned](http://store.steampowered.com/app/304930/) was made with Unity and is among the top 10 most played games on Steam and it was coded by a 16 (now 17) year-old Canadian. From what I’ve seen Unity will greatly simplify making a 3D world, but there still probably will be lots of coding for the game logic and mechanics. That’s true. It’s good to be familiar with coding. However, I wouldn’t want someone to think they’ll have to do it all from scratch. Unless you’re doing something quite unorthodox, about 99% of your coding problems can be solved by a Google search or, if that doesn’t work, a question on the Unity forum(s). Still, helps to be able to understand the code.