Hi Guys,
Recently I've posted a new video that shows a demo of upcoming S2ENGINE HD 1.4.6 running at 1280x800 resolution on a 13" MacBookPro (equipped with Windows 7) with following specs:
Intel i5 quad core CPU
Intel HD 4000 integrated video card
4 GB RAM
Windows 7
[youtube]http:
I'm curious about this engine... why don't you open-source it? It sure would bring more users and create an ecosystem around it (services, support, asset store, etc.). Right now, i don't see any reason to buy it or even spend time learning it.
Both UDK and Unity are more powerful than this engine and free to use, only requiring payment at advanced stages of development, with different strategies and affordable prices (royalty-based, term-based or even single payment). If full-source is something you need, there are cheaper and more powerful alternatives like Leadwerks, C4 and Esenthel.
I'm curious about this engine... why don't you open-source it? It sure would bring more users and create an ecosystem around it (services, support, asset store, etc.). Right now, i don't see any reason to buy it or even spend time learning it.
Both UDK and Unity are more powerful than this engine and free to use, only requiring payment at advanced stages of development, with different strategies and affordable prices (royalty-based, term-based or even single payment). If full-source is something you need, there are cheaper and more powerful alternatives like Leadwerks, C4 and Esenthel.
But S2ENGINE HD is free to use. Go to www.s2powered.com to download it.
Are you sure Unity, C4, Leadwerks are more powerful than S2ENGINE? Have you tried it?
Here are some rendering feature available:
- Deferred shading
- Subsurface scattering and traslucency
- SSAO and SSGI
- Realtime local reflections
- local cubemap (updated basing on day time) both for specular and diffure ambient reflection
- Animated Vegetation
- Cascade shadow mapping
- Night and day cycle
- Atmosphere scattering
- Motion blur, DOF, color correction, lens flare
- HDR with filmic tonemapping
- Physical based BDRF
- Automatic exposure control
Also It is available a complete IDE for:
- terrain editing
- vegetation splatting/editing
- visual cutscene editing
- scripting
- Road generation/editing
- time of day and weather system editing
- Visual event handler system
And much, much much more...
All those graphical features are present, and many others, by default in UDK. In Unity, things like night and day cycle, dynamic GI and others are available at low prices at the Asset Store. Leadwerks has most of them as well, check the new version.
Also, judging by your EULA, it's only free if your game is small. It's similar to UDK's licensing, but i'm guessing that if i have to chose a middleware for my $100,000+ game, it surely won't be an unknown engine by an unknown company with no released games in the AAA market. It will be UDK, or even, a custom Unreal Engine 3 (or even 4) license. Do you see what i'm trying to tell you?
Your current business model is broken. It's free, but not really free because you have a flexible pricing based on each customer. So, you're not competing directly with Unity or Leadwerks, because they're much better and cheaper alternatives for indie. Apparently, you're focusing on big budgets, but in this case, the engine benefits are not comparable to UDK's, which has a much better product at the same price flexibility. And if you have a big budget, you want heavy support and a heavy name behind the buck. There also CryEngine.
So, if you're aiming for the big guys, you clearly can't compete with UDK or CryEngine in terms of product quality. But then, you try to compete with Unity and Leadwerks, and although comparable in terms of features, their pricing options are much better for indies. You stand nowhere in the middleware market. That's what i find curious about S2 Engine. And that's why i believe that open-sourcing this could be a much better option for your product. See Torque 3D and their market boost when they released everything under MIT.
ps.: No networking?
Business model aside and that the decision of the developer/creator, since we have no idean how much time and effort went into creating the product, how about offering some encouraging word to the developer(s). Its easy to sit on the sideline and say make this or that opensource. My understanding of opensource is that the source code is open and available, neither of any of the engine you mentioned above is opensourced. If opensource was such viable option, I'm sure everyone would be jumping onboard. I'm not at all against opensourcing software, but that should be the decision of the parties involved. I'm a full-time software software developer and whatever little spare time I have I spend working on by game framework, so if these developer(s) chose to monetize their work because they believe that they have invested blood, sweat and tears in their product, then let them do so...they've earn the right to. In closing, the posted video looks really good, keep up the good work.
S2Engine looks great to me, far better than what I've seen come out of Unity. It shows that a lot of work and commitment has been put into this engine.
@ Vinny.. Have you tried CE for a commercial product? There's more to an engine than tons of shiny stuff and feature set's, workflow for example and that's why Unity is so popular and it's well deserved.
I'm not saying that S2 Engine sucks because it's not open-source. I'm just saying that it would stand a better chance in competing with other solutions in the market if it had a solid marketing strategy. I guess that everyone agrees with me on this. My suggestion, however, was an aggressive marketing effort: making the whole thing open-source and profiting from the support and ecosystem around it.
I'm not saying that S2 Engine sucks because it's not open-source. I'm just saying that it would stand a better chance in competing with other solutions in the market if it had a solid marketing strategy. I guess that everyone agrees with me on this. My suggestion, however, was an aggressive marketing effort: making the whole thing open-source and profiting from the support and ecosystem around it.
I agree with having a solid licensing and sale strategy, but open source is never the way to go if you intend on profit.. Do you think Unity or Unreal should be open source?
Unity and UDK have a solid marketing strategy already, with clear targets. S2 Engine does not, and that's what you're failing to see in the discussion. Torque 3D didn't had a market anymore and decided to, instead of wasting resources in making itself significant in the market against Unity and UDK, publish the engine under a permissive license and focus on support and the ecosystem around T3D, which is live again and producing even more money.
Unity and UDK have a solid marketing strategy already, with clear targets. S2 Engine does not, and that's what you're failing to see in the discussion. Torque 3D didn't had a market anymore and decided to, instead of wasting resources in making itself significant in the market against Unity and UDK, publish the engine under a permissive license and focus on support and the ecosystem around T3D, which is live again and producing even more money.
I'm not really failing to see anything, all they have to do is re-adjust their marketing and sales strategy. It's not that difficult...
