Howdy all!
I tell you... this is an exciting time for me. Lemmie 'splian.
for the past few *years*, I have scoured "the internets" looking for the perfect game engine for me. I know what it looks like. I know what it does... but sadly, I couldn't find it. I tried (and bought) everything I could get my hands on...
How's this for a partial list:
3D Rad
Blender
Unity
BigWorld
Corona
GameMaker
GameSalad
Havok Vision
Godot
Hero Engine
Leadwerks
LibGDX
Loom
Love
Marmalade
Project Anarchy
ShiVA
Stingray
Solpeo
Source 2
Turbulenz
Torque
V-Play
Copper Cube
Essentiel
GameGuru
Genesys 3D
Cafu
Maker3D
Dream Up
DX Studio
GameStudio
Minko
NeoAxis
Project Spark
Spark Inspirations
... and more.
And yes, I have tried almost all of them. And they all have failings of one form or another.
First, I don't mind paying for my tools. They are VERY hard to make, and those that make them deserve to be paid... especially if they do a good job.
But the failings are many... too dated (bad rendering engines), Development stopped (unsupported), far too complex (intended for the AAA market), missing features, too code centric (I don't like to code everything... WYSIWYG is my thing), not released yet (I have high hopes for Spark Inspirations for example... still waiting on the beta)...
Some are close. Neo Axis is... but for the dependence on C-programming... sigh... I'm not going there.
GameGuru is decent... kinda. It's not very powerful, and the rendering is sub par. It's too tailored to the FPS market...
And somehow I missed SkyLine. No idea how... because to me it seems perfect. Doing all the right things. Sweeet renderings, nice workflows... asset management improvements are looking good, as is the SkyGraph editor.
All I can say is that I'm way too excited about this, as I have a game in mind... my dream game, that I've been working on (in my head) for years now... and SkyLine is the tool to produce it.
I had another game, Rocket Factory... that predated Kerbal Space Program by YEARS... and is essentially the same... but I couldn't find the tool that I could use to make it happen (I tried Unity... but it was too complex for me... hey, I have a day job, ok?
If the SkyLine devs can keep this simple yet flexible (and deep when advanced users need to go there)... this is going to be the premiere Indie/hobbyist platform... sure of it.
Anyway, I'm thinking we need to promote this tool, guys! The best way, of course, is to produce good, playable games... but in the meantime, I plan to plug the heck out of SkyLine... and hopefully I can produce some YouTube vids as tutorials that showcase and teach... but as I'm just starting out, this won't happen for a bit.
Looking forward to making the acquaintance of the entire userbase, and hopefully we can do something amazing together, and help push SkyLine into the Spotlight.
Also... if you're using the free version... awesome... but if you like it, please consider saving your pennies and upgrading to the paid version. Anything that helps the devs, helps you in the end.
-Ryder-