Engine Research

For the past week as I've been at GDC I've been conducting engine research regarding the Unreal Engine and Unity, currently my two prime candidates. I even managed to acquire an Unrealscript DVD to start tutoring myself in the scripting language, finally, but it doesn't clear up a whole lot about the overall structure of the script library and what commands are or aren't available. Documentation is what I need more than tutorials, but it's a start at least, the most valuable thing it points out being a coding tool that does an awful lot more than the standard unrealscript program--namely Pixel Mine's nFringe for Microsoft Visual Studio--as well as the workflow for getting the scripts to show up and do their work. I'm continuing with hands-on work in Unity this week. I rather wish I had CryEngine 3 with its new Maya syncing feature, but alas, 'tis not meant to be. For the record I tried out the Sandbox editor as well, and ho boy, do I not want to open that can of worms. It's an awesome tool, but I know far too little about it versus Unity and Unreal for it to even be an option.

Additionally, I got back the review form from the office upstairs at Monty; evidently I passed with almost every flying color and my thesis is seen as being extraordinarily progressive. The only low note was on that of my demo, which I acknowledge was modest. The professors suggested that I aim for about 30-40 minutes rather than an hour worth of play time, so I'll be re-thinking my project with respect to that timeframe.