Hello!

I'm a computer programmer who's done a little bit of game development in the past.  I love game development and I'd like to work on a new game - just for fun.  The concept, in short, is that you're conducting a train.  My question is, which game engine should I use?

Initially I was drawn to Amazon Lumberyard, but the lack of documentation and desolate community forums have been problematic.  Maybe Unity or Unreal would be better?  

Here's my criteria:

1. Good documentation, tutorials, and an active community
2. Good at outdoor scenes, meaning good terrain support, sky, plants, fog, water, etc.
3. Low cost to get started, and not prohibitively expensive (< $2,000) if I ever wish to publish my game.
4. Available resources, especially texture packs and plant packs
5. Program in a higher level programming language than C++.  Any scripting language would be fine.

What does not matter to me:

1. Multiplayer support
2. Advanced dynamic lighting
3. Particles
4. Console support / iPhone support
5. VR support

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Bret

Unity, Cryengine has c# support but im afraid lacks the sheer amount of assets and community help unity offers.

Plus unity right now revamps their rendering pipe, and gfx are already almost on par with UE4 and Cryengine,

it's just a matter of time til it get's all the missing features.

Unity3D has by far the largest community and asset store (maybe Unreal is a rival here).

You should be able to use the free version to make the game, the only big downside with the free version is that you have to show a Unity Splash screen before your game starts.

Unreal in general has better graphics, free access to source and a much better license, but these things will probably affect you much.

Thank you both for your input!  I'll try Unity and see how it goes. :-)

19 hours ago, clone46 said:

Initially I was drawn to Amazon Lumberyard, but the lack of documentation and desolate community forums have been problematic.  Maybe Unity or Unreal would be better?  

Both Unity and Unreal tick all the objects on your list.

Use Unreal if you want the game to look amazing, Unreal has some really good stuff for this types of games. Even inexperienced developers can make good looking scenes with Unreal.

Unity also has some good tools for graphics but there is a huge amount of problems to fight with, so you will mostly end up with average to good graphics.

PS Book Of The Dead, like so many of the good looking Unity games, don't use the default Unity rendering Pipeline. Same for Unity's The Black Smith, that is why if you download it's assets of The Black Smith it looks nothing like there video.

In other words, your not getting that quality unless you can mod the Unity engine or your a wizard with shaders.

Just remember even if train sims are not open world games -that is you don't need to interact with it all- they still have large worlds to render. Research level streaming.

DO NOT use Cryengine or Lumberyard, just let those rotten engines die.