Divinity: Original Sin II - Funded!

Originally Posted by SteveTownsend
That had crossed my mind. Does the shipping of their increasingly sophisticated game editor make this effectively open source though?

Open source? I shouldn't think so. It's an in-house engine they've developed specifically for D:OS, AFAIK. If they manage to create a user-friendly and powerful editor, they could simply license it out as a complete RPG engine, assuming assets are easily imported, since I assume they have all the rights associated with their own engine.

If I think about games like Wasteland 2 or Shadowrun Returns - both of those would be much better if they took advantage of the interactivity of the D:OS engine.

Unity is a great engine for fast development - but I've yet to see developers take advantage of it in a way that I would call impressive.

The only game I know of that comes close is Endless Legend, as it is extremely slick, but it's also almost entirely static. Performance is a major issue in 9 out of 10 Unity games.

I'm sure our resident expert rune_74 will argue that all those developers suck at using it, but let's just say it doesn't seem very likely.

Originally Posted by rune_74
You really don't know what you are talking about when it comes to engines.

I was thinking the same thing as DArtagnan however I don't really know much about engines so why don't you elaborate as to why Larian can't license their engine? Or how Unity is better than Larian engine etc. I have played few games made on Unity engine and tbh I wasn't really impressed by any of them, PoE included.

Originally Posted by lostforever
I was thinking the same thing as DArtagnan however I don't really know much about engines so why don't you elaborate as to why Larian can't license their engine? Or how Unity is better than Larian engine etc. I have played few games made on Unity engine and tbh I wasn't really impressed by any of them PoE included.

The Unity engine doesn't actively prevent optimization or strong performance, which is probably what rune thinks he's alone in realising - but since it comes with a fully functional 3D engine that's relatively easy to customise for whatever type of game, I bet most developers don't see the point in rewriting much of the performance/rendering related stuff. One of the primary strengths of the engine is the multiplatform nature of it, and rewriting the rendering code would be counterproductive to that aspect of it, for one.

I could be wrong, though.