Autodesk finally has a game engine to go along with its design tools. The company has just launched Stingray, which it built around the Bitsquid engine it bought last year. Autodesk kept the basic guts of the program --which has already been used on titles like Gauntlet from Warner Bros -- and revamped it with a new interface. The company told me the goal was to build an engine for smaller studios that can be customized without the need for a lot of complex programming. At the same time, Autodesk wanted Stingray to have all the bells and whistles of competing products like Unreal Engine 4 -- physical shading, post-processing effects, a high-performance reflection system and more.
Stingray is going up against time-tested game engines like Unreal 4 and Unity 5. That'll make it a hard sell to larger companies that use those products, especially if they have established pipelines that took years to create. However, Autodesk is hoping to attract small- to mid-sized studios without a huge programming staff, so it's equipped the engine with node-based scripting tools that make tweaking a drag-and-drop affair. At the same time, it's also offering Stingray's C++ source code (for a fee) to companies that want more customization.
One of the more interesting tools for developers (and therefore gamers) is "Live Link" multi-platform testing. Level designers won't need to wait for a rendering cycle to see how gameplay and visuals work on different systems. For instance, an artist can tweak shader settings on a character and instantly see the results, as shown in the video below. It works across a WiFi network on iOS, Android, Windows, Oculus Rift DK2, Xbox One and PS4. In theory, that should make games look and behave better, especially on platforms with less horsepower like iOS or Android.
Artists who use Maya, 3DS Max or other Autodesk 3D creation tools will benefit from some extra integration over tools like Unity. In fact, Maya LT will be bundled with each copy of Stingray to give artists basic modeling and animation tools. With Live Link, you can tweak a model inside Maya LT and see the changes in Stingray on any given platform in real time. You can also see live camera level flythroughs, animations and other game content. The company sees the tech as being useful for architectural and design visualization as well, either on a screen or via an AR or VR device like the Oculus Rift. Stingray also includes Autodesk's gameware tools like HumanIK, Scaleform, and FBX, while also supporting NVIDIA's PhysX.
There are some folks that think that Autodesk is already too dominant in gaming, however. The company makes many of the most commonly used creation products in gaming (Maya and 3DS Max) on top of the aforementioned gameware. Other options like Blender are available and free, however, so Autodesk doesn't have a complete monopoly. Still, without a lot of other competition, some find Autodesk's subscription prices to be a bit rich.
It'll be interesting, then, to see how Autodesk's pricing goes over: it's selling Stingray for $30 per month for each license, with a copy of Maya LT thrown in for free. By contrast, the Unreal 4 engine is free, but designers have to pay a 5 percent royalty on game sales after the first $5,000. Unity's basic engine is also free, but the pro version -- with a lot of useful features -- starts at $75 per month. Given the hook between Autodesk's already widely-used products, a more dev-friendly interface and real-time feedback, Autodesk's mid-priced offering might tempt a lot of companies. Stingray arrives on August 19th.
Filed under: Gaming
Tags: Autodesk, GameEngine, Gaming Engine, Stingray, unreal-engine, video
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