RE: [GD-General] Prices of well-known 3D engines

[Gareth L. <GL...@cl...>]

> > > > And to answer your question, it's cheaper to buy :)
> >  >
> >  > Depend what you mean by cheaper. ;)
> >
> >  I mean that a good (read:"Really good") graphics engine 
> will make the
> final
> >  product cost less money to create.
> 
> I won't argue with that, but you said "it's cheaper to buy", 
> so are you
> implying that the only way to get a good (really good) 
> graphics engine is to
> buy one? Or just that, for many developers, it's more 
> realistic to buy one?

I'm not implying anything of the sort.

I'm saying, and I'm gonna be extremly specific as to not anger Phil again,
it's cheaper for a game starting from scratch with no pre-built technology
to buy an already made engine that is well designed, well documented and
suitable for the game.

Developing one yourself is very feasable, has a lot of pros over buying one,
but from a pure bottom line point of view is not as good.

And yes Phil, even that is a generalization and each company should do it's
own research, but a really good (for example the Quake III engine when Q3A
just came out) engine would take what ? 2 coders 18 months ? 2 really good
and expensive coders ? Say $100k a year. 3*100 = $300k. Remember that a
worker costs a lot more than their gross salary so that is a very low
estimate. 

I'm not saying that buying a 3d engine is better than making one yourself,
please don't read that into what I said.