Just fyi, if any part of a codebase uses GPL, the entire codebase must be licensed under GPL or equivalent. This means, if you use GPL code in a library, game, or engine, you don't have a choice of whether it's opensource or not: It is legally required to be opensource by the license.

And that is why MIT license is the King of all licensees

The CC BY 3.0 is also very useful.

That's why the blender game engine is having problems.

The Blender Game Engine isn't having problems in that regard. The issue is that most people are users and not developers, license notwithstanding

When i asked on their forum, they said the license and lack of features was the problem

Of the people on BlenderArtists.org, only a small percentage can claim to have created a good game. Not even excellent, good. Because of this, the majority of people commenting on the viability of the engine have no authority to do so, and are usually repeating the scaremongering comments of another user.

If you read about the license, you will find it's actually quite permissive, it just requires you to modify how you go about doing things. The main issue raised is protecting content from the user. This is still possible with GPL and blender (it applies to the program not the data), but as a side note, most companies realise that trying to protect content is a big waste of time and money.

It will be extremely variable, because firstly there's a lot of variables (team size, full-time/part-time, experience, expectations, etc), and secondly there's no clear definition on what an engine is.
One might have a full editor for making every kind of content, another might have exporters for common 3rd party tools, another might have no tool support at all.
One might support a variety of scene/viewpoint types, such as overhead, planetary and indoor/corridor, others might support just one.
One might be extremely customizable, another might only work for a certain genre.
One might be mature enough to have had several games made with it, another might've never had a game made with it.

A while ago, I spent about 4 years (extremely part time) making a general purpose engine in C++, using Horde3D (a renderer built on OpenGL), Bullet, fmod, RakNet and some others. It was written in a very "modern C++" style, was aimed only at C++ programmers, and had a very poor toolchain. I made a few prototype games with it...

Recently, I've spent 1 year (full time) making a new general purpose engine in C++, using Direct3D, PhysX, fmod, LuaJIT and some others. It's written in a mixture of "modern C++" and "C with classes" styles, is aimed at good programmers, but also has an artist-friendly toolchain centred around Autodesk Softimage (XSI). It's being made specifically for one single game that's currently in development, but is flexible enough to be reused (some components are open-source, and other components are being licensed as stand-alone middleware).

Wait a minute, is the name of the engine Eighth engine and the game 22 series racing?

Codenames Henry (the Eighth) and Desmond (22) presumably?

Wait a minute, is the name of the engine Eighth engine and the game 22 series racing?

Yep. Why?

Thanks, we're not really trying to publicize '22' at the moment, but just have the website up early so we can start spreading a few links for google to pick up on now, so it's searchable in the future when we need it to be

Yeah I'm a bit slack updating the blogs because doing actual work usually takes priority over writing... I write a lot here, but off-hand advice is completely different to writing well-formed (hopefully share-worthy) blog posts. I'm actually working on a contract job at the moment, doing work on a different company's engine, so I'll get back to the Eighth / 22 blogs when that's done in a few months, hopefully

No, GOATi is a group of about 4 sister companies, I'm a shareholder in GOATi Entertainment along with 2 other owners. We also use a lot of casual staff via GOATi Outsourcing, which is handy.

Thanks, we're not really trying to publicize '22' at the moment, but just have the website up early so we can start spreading a few links for google to pick up on now, so it's searchable in the future when we need it to be :D
Yeah I'm a bit slack updating the blogs because doing actual work usually takes priority over writing... I write a lot here, but off-hand advice is completely different to writing well-formed (hopefully share-worthy) blog posts. I'm actually working on a contract job at the moment, doing work on a different company's engine, so I'll get back to the Eighth / 22 blogs when that's done in a few months, hopefully :cool:

No, GOATi is a group of about 4 sister companies, I'm a shareholder in GOATi Entertainment along with 2 other owners. We also use a lot of casual staff via GOATi Outsourcing, which is handy.

I started developing my (newest) game engine "Olypsum" in February 2011.

This is the list of features so far:

• C++ 11
• Mac OS 10.8 and Ubuntu 12.04
• Localization
• Deferred Lighting
• Dynamic Shadows
• Bump/Normal Mapping
• Glass Refraction
• Material Mapping
• Parallax Occlusion Mapping
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
• Depth of Field / Fog
• Logarithmic Depth Buffer
• Edge Smooth / Antialiasing
• Dynamic Reflections
• Mirrors and Water
• Texture Animation
• Particle Systems
• Deformable Terrain
• Skeletal Animation

could you say whose of this features were bigger amount of work and

which ones here were less work to run?

I started developing my (newest) game engine "Olypsum" in February 2011.

This is the list of features so far:

• 
  C++ 11
  
  
• Mac OS 10.8 and Ubuntu 12.04
• 
  Localization
  
  
• 
  Deferred Lighting
  
  
• 
  Dynamic Shadows
  
  
• 
  Bump/Normal Mapping
  
  
• 
  Glass Refraction
  
  
• 
  Material Mapping
  
  
• 
  Parallax Occlusion Mapping
  
  
• 
  Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
  
  
• 
  Depth of Field / Fog
  
  
• 
  Logarithmic Depth Buffer
  
  
• 
  Edge Smooth / Antialiasing
  
• 
  Dynamic Reflections
  
• 
  Mirrors and Water
  
• 
  Texture Animation
  
• 
  Particle Systems
  
• 
  Deformable Terrain
  
• 
  Skeletal Animation

could you say whose of this features were bigger amount of work and
which ones here were less work to run?