General Banter: Why FPS Creator: Reloaded?

Ok, so I know I said I was going to write something about the differences between writing and making games.  That, however, will take a lot more resources and time than I currently have available.

So instead, I thought I'd focus on why I ended up here with FPS Creator Reloaded instead of a different engine.

Don't get me wrong.  I've worked off and on with a number of engines.  Unity is pretty feature rich, albeit it didn't really 'make sense' in terms of code manipulating objects.  I didn't like the cost either; it was tremendously expensive by my standards and what's worse the game assets available on their store were not cheap either.  I mean pricewise it wasn't unexpected but at the same time it was just a lot to swallow.  If you wanted to make a worthwhile game, you had to shell out 1500 dollars.  That's not the kind of cash I had lying around.  The newer price of a monthly fee is pretty nice though and definitely bore consideration.  75/mo is similar to the structure that other engines use.

The Unreal engine is a similar setup, though vastly cheaper and ironically the industry standard. Currently they're doing a deal for like 20 dollars a month and 5% of your gross revenue.  That's pretty impressive and I may (or most likely) will go to that in due time.   The problem here is one of technical complexity.  This is not the kind of engine you want to bang off your ring rust with.

Prior to this I was very familiar with and comfortable with the Lite-C/Acknex A8 engine.  Don't get me wrong, I *LOVE* the A8 Engine.  It's awesome.  So easy to use, the object management is easy to code and intuitive, lite-c is a breeze, etc.  The problems?  Much like Unity, the only version worth a damn is the Pro version.  That's a cool 900 dollars, by the way.  The other huge problem is how absolutely outdated the engine was becoming.  They simply haven't touched it in 3-4 years and without a much needed update, it's simply not worth looking at.

None of the other engines really struck me.  There are plenty of good ones out there, sure, but they just didn't have what I wanted.  A simple, easy to make FPS engine that allowed coding and was reasonably up to date in terms of technology.  That means shaders, terrain, etc.

Enter FPS Creator Reloaded.

FPS Creator has been around a LONG time.  Like ten years long.   It's extremely basic, but it's amazing what has been done from a technical standpoint for a simple engine.  It's also got an extremely long running history where it's been updated over and over.   There have been debacles in the past with the company failing to deliver (FPS Creator X10 was fraught with failure) but overall the core premises in FPS Creator Reloaded were very well thought.  Moreover, the price was right.  I got in the pledging at the top level for eighty dollars.  This was  a steal given the sheer volume of assets I'd be receiving, let alone a shader enabled engine.

So I saw these videos:

And this one:

Both of these intrigued me.  For 80 dollars, I could afford to check it out.  Especially with the lifetime upgrades bundled in.

The engine since then languished after a brief trial period as I waited for further feature deployment. The promise of lifetime upgrades ensured if I simply waited, I'd have what I was looking for.  Now with LUA code implemented, physics, etc it's become a functional enough engine to work with. There's still some glaring faults, but it's saved me massive time in terms of programming an engine myself in lite-c.   The upcoming patch 1.0090 promises massive adjustments in lightmapping, engine performance, etc.  I for one, wait with baited breath.

If in the future I choose to move on to another engine, so be it.  But for 80 dollars what fool couldn't afford to at least keep this constantly improving tool in his toolbox?

Currently the price is 100 for the 'gold' level; if you're interested in a discount coupon, comment or message me.