Yeah I’m looking forward to Source as well, Tencent could probably still buy Autodesk if they agreed :D…
I’ve met a few people working with it and they hate it. It is still very early though - Unity took many years to really take off.
We all know how asset management is a pain in the ***. Specialy for complex human character models and animations.
Their selling point for this thing is the “real” live integrarion between Maya/Max tools and Stingray. You and your team do all your work in Maya or Max, click a button and that’s all. If THAT is really as advertised, from my point of view it will be the best game engine ever made for rapid art iterations. No more level blocking, mesh replacing, re-importing, Bsp, etc.
But Autodesk Gameworks used to have another product that did that deep integration inside of Maya and nobody cared about it and that thing is pretty much gone. It’s very possible to happen the same to this new engine if the kids and pirates don’t find a way to use it without paying the monthly fee or there’s no student license free of charge. When Unity and UE4 are free you can’t charge money for yours anymore, no matter how much, it’ll simply fail.
@Ambershee, any reasons why?
@ Bruno, I agree but Unity and UE4 aren’t free… One has 5% royalties the other has a 100K paywall which if you’re using IOS/Android/PC in Unity that’s 4.5K per user. But agreed, there should be student licenses…
Not saying any of them is a bad deal, or I’m ungrateful. I remember back in the day when engines cost hundreds of thousands.
They might release a “student” version, not sure.
@ Bruno, I think you are right to a certain extent. Unity is not free if you want to make games for IOS or want the professional version and UE 4 can potentially cost you a pretty penny. I already have 2016 Maya Lt and for sure will try Stingray I don’t think I see myself switching from UE4 unless Stingray blows me out of the water. Some things that I like from watching the trailer of Stingray is the integration with Maya Lt and everything being in one spot it reminds me of Blender in some ways. When I first heard of Stingray coming out I was hoping the Epic would find away to work with Blender and make things a little more integrated. I know that is harder than it sounds but I was dreaming. I use, or I should say I have a Subscription for Web animate and was thinking about getting a Subscription for the full version of Maya so I could use Epics rigging tool. I know you can use Blender but I have grown use to using Maya and it is easier to get assets out of Maya and into UE4. If Stingray is as integrated as they say and good. It could theoretically save me a lot of money. In reality it is hard to believe that Autodesk could be anywhere close to Unreal 4 or Unity for that matter. Again we shall see they might surprise me.
I think you guys are just speculating… unless you start using it for a few months, then all you see is good stuff (still on paper) - the grass is always look greener on the other side of the road.
Regarding games royalty, I can only say this - most of the games you started developing will not make it through the end, sold in Steam etc. And if you make it till the end, only very little percentage of it make profit. So you will want feature rich and tool friendly game engine so that you can complete games as fast as possible, and looking good too.
That’s what Stingray is apparently. We’ll see it in practice though.
From insiders friends , Stringray is not so good as advertised in practice.
Yeah someone else has said that, what exactly isn’t good?
“Big” companies license UE4 without royaltees, just like they’ve always done.
somebody knows if Stingray (the editor) will run on mac too?
i talk with someone at autodesk and he said that at the beggining we’ll have only a windows version. a mac version is planned for the future.
Not convinced that it’s going to have any major impact. Whose going to pay a ridiculously expensive (calling it) monthly fee to use an Engine that nobody is experienced with, with no community or support process or anything? Not even any history?
Seamless integration with Autodesk apps is kind of a mute point to be honest, it’s hardly difficult to export / import .fbx files…
I feel like this does have a chance though.
It’s Autodesk, a proven company.
If anything, I can smaller commercial companies going to it.
But, you’re right anyone who has already used UE4 and is comfortable with it probably won’t switch.
Then again, you never know.
How’s it ridiculously expensive? Go ask about a royalty free deal. Then tell me what’s expensive :D… Unity for mobile is $4500.00 per seat when over $100K, that’s a fair bit really…!
But agreed, it’s going to be tough for any new engine starting out without the community behind it. But y’never know it could be (or not)…
$30 / month is not expensive. UE4 is far more expensive (UE4 is only cheap if you fail).
If it can enable you to work faster and iterate more frequently, it can definitely be worth it.
That said, I don’t think Autodesk has a chance considering the competition. UE4 is far more featured and Unity free now comes with all engine features. It’s gonna be tough to compete against that. But either way, we as developers win. More options, more competition, better engines…
A new engine is always cool, and its something shiny to play with!, Its got some nice features going for it though.
I can see Unity 5 adjusting there pricing model due to Autodesk Stingray.
I do not think that Autodesk Stingray is really aimed at UE4 but more aimed at Unity 5.
Unity 5 Still costs 1500 USD per seat or 75 Dollars per month for a 12 month period.
Meanwhile Autodesk Stingray costs 30 dollars with a copy of Maya LT and looks allot easier to use than Unity 5.
Autodesk even have a asset market place ready to go.
The only downsides to using Stingray which are big IMO is Scaleform which is a Flash based UI toolset and the Wwise licensing structure.
Flash is a pretty old technology and is pretty vulnerable to some bad hacks and you still need to use Adobe Flash to author your UI.
The second is the Wwise Licensing structure which you can see here.
FMod is much cheaper IMHO but I do not know what autodesk has planned on this side of things.
- HeadClot
if you guys talking about Epic 5% royalty I think is not a big problem…
if you make $1.000.000, of course the 5% is high amount, but lets talk about team…
example:
Game finish = 1 Year /12 month
Team = 10 people
first cases:
with gross profit $3000
UE4= you sold the game and make >= $3K, $3000x5%=$150/quarter
Other engine lets say $30/month = $30x12 month= $360 x 10 people licenses = ($3600)
second cases:
with gross profit $1.000.000
UE4= you sold and make gross profit $1.000.000, $1.000.000x5%=$50.000/quarter (you are lucky enough to make $1.000.000 for every quarter)
Other engine lets say $30/month = $30x12 month= $360 x 10 people licenses = $3600
if you sure you will make that amount of money of course one engine will be cheap and the other will be expensive.
just not only thinking about the royalty or prices, thinking about your lovely studios too, how long you will finish your game, how much people, will your finished your game or not, and from the engine itself, Epic give you 100% source code, if other competitive engine give their source code by “special price” we dont know how much the price isnt?
But if you sure you will make a big gross profit and 5% is to high, dont forget Epic offer special custom license… 
But, stingray is new, people love a new thing, and I love it too.
The downside that I dont like in stingray is they not C++ (CMIIW) , Im not experienced programmer so I dont have much time to learn a new language or new visual scripting system, I think its better to use my precious time for improving my skill with my current engine, UE4
Man I am just getting the hang of UE 4 and I don’t think I will be switching. But I am going to play with the shinny new toy when it comes out.