GDC 2014 - Well That Excalated Quickly

So last Tuesday Elliott told me GDC was coming up and it was going to be streaming the next day. I didn't think much, GDCs before have been pretty standard, new games, refreshed hardware and nothing particularly special. Around the labs everyone has been saying oh yea UE4 will take another few months to be public... Weren't they wrong.

So first Unreal 4 was unveiled as a subscription based service and I found out that it's going to support Linux and have a Linux-based editor! Well that's awesome. As a long time Linux experimenter I have always wanted to try and use Linux but the support for games just isn't there. I'm also an avid Steam OS supporter and I've been personally looking for Linux support not only for the games but also for the creation of the games. Up until now Leadwerks has been one of the few options for that and they've only just got there themselves so I'm pretty excited by Unreal 4. After finding out that it was actually out and that you could download and use it Elliott got straight on that and for $19/month it looks amazing! However from the frame rate it was clear that it's a massive step forward techwise, with SteamBoxes coming at the end of this year I really want to start developing for them and the choice between Unreal 4 and Leadwerks is tough. Leadwerks provides a lower required spec but also doesn't give the power and optimisation of Unreal 4. Decisions...

Head over to Develop for an interesting article about Linux based game development.
http://www.develop-online.net/tools-and-tech/opening-up-linux-is-the-os-becoming-ripe-for-game-development/0190717

Alongside the exciting UE4 announcement Next-Gen CryEngine was announced as a subscription based service for $10 a month. Rather than an entirely new editor and an entirely new program this CryEngine is pretty much the same but its the CryEngine that some of the Crytek Studios have been using for the past few months/years which has PBR and other next gen goodies. Unity 5 was announced with the same next gen awesomeness but also with some really nice extras like a pretty sweet sound editor and a pretty intuitive UI editor. This however is $75/month bare minimum which makes it less and less appealing. The lack of royalties is a nice thing but its definately something to research.

Probably the thing that excited me the most however was... Oculus Dev Kit 2.

Oculus DK2 is soo exciting and considering it will be shipped in July it is perfect timing for my final year of Uni. After spending the past 6 months thinking about trying to work on Oculus for my final year I have some very exciting things happening in my brain at the moment, especially because I have pre-ordered my very own. I hope that after the Easter I will have an elevator pitch ready for this FMP idea, I'm trying to get some things down on paper and trust me its exciting and awesome...