Pros And Cons Of Best Game Development Tools

The growing number of mobile users accessing a variety of mobile applications for different purposes has inspired the mobile gaming industry to create and launch various exciting mobile games for different platforms. Today, mobile game app development has become a top priority for many companies to reach their target audience. Mobile game developers are preferring high-quality game development tools and are developing top-notch games with improved game features and user experiences. Mobile gaming applications are quite popular these days and are taking up the market on both Android & iOS platforms ie. App Store and Play Store. 

But developing a mobile game is a tedious & daunting process. It involves idea generation, game designing & development, marketing & many more. Furthermore, developers must possess enough knowledge in mobile game app development software that enables them to modify the design and features of their games. Professional mobile game developers generally develop the games right from the scratch by writing game codes and graphics. But these tools have both advantages & disadvantages. In this post, we are explaining the pros and cons of some of the most popular mobile game development tools which are being used by professional game developers. Let’s start:

Unity 2D and 3D Game Development Tool

Unity is considered to be one of the best & most widely used game app development tools. And why not? This all-inclusive platform for mobile game development has gained significant attention from mobile game developers due to its variety of gaming effects, exclusive features, affordability, and competitive structure for creating simple to high-quality 2D and 3D games. One of the prominent advantages of Unity is that it saves developers time in developing games for individual platforms with its functionality as a cross-platform app development tool. Ludo game development companies are more likely to use this platform since it reduces the complexity of the development process.

Pros:

1. It is the best game development tool for cross-platform development & multiplatform games. With Unity 3D, developers can build both 2D and 3D games with excellent graphics.
2. Moreover, its UI design is quite simple. The elements can be easily dragged & dropped and switched to code when it is required.
3. It offers high-quality editing tools for game app developers that can also be extended with plugins. Apart from this, it offers several assets to buy or add for free in Unity Asset Store.
4. It leverages Microsoft Visual Studio as its default integrated development environment while the default coding language is C# and UnityScript.
5. It is more cost-effective than other game app development tools. Also, it is easier to use compared to other technologies. 

Cons:

1. It is featured-rich that can make game developers feel overwhelmed. Also, the documentation of several features is outdated and in some cases, it is non-existent.
2. The Unity 3D Pro license doesn’t ensure all the features to mobile and the licenses are quite costly. It can be a limitation for professional designers. 
3. Unity game app development requires the developer to know the C++ programming language. Therefore, it would be difficult for a beginner without C++ knowledge to use the software.
4. The games developed by using Unity software consume more memory, leading to OOM errors and troubleshooting them in the application.
5. The source code is stable in Unity compared to other engines that result in complexities with finding, resolving, and fixing the performance issues.

Unreal Game Development Tool

Unreal is also one of the most popular game app development tools that support the C++ language. Developed by Epic Games in 1998, many developers are using this game engine for developing an array of high-end games with an engaging feature set and graphic output. Currently, it is in its fourth integration, Unreal Engine 4, and allows developers to create games in the VR supported by several platforms and operating systems with C++ and visual scripting.

Pros:

1. This engine is better known for developing high-tech triple-A games with greater types of graphics.
2. It offers good community support and a wide range of easy-to-operate tools that are simple to manage even by the person who doesn’t know this engine.
3. It is an excellent choice for leading operating system platforms.
4. It offers more tools and functionality for several situations that are not present in other games with similar types. It also has visual editors compared to other games.
5. It is the best tool for the optimization of the game.

Cons:

1. This mobile game development tool is now quite outdated when compared to other types of leading mobile game development tools.
2. It has some complex tools that are difficult to learn for beginners. For example, it only supports C++, a non-beginner-friendly language.
3. It is expensive.
4. For operating Unreal Engine, it requires a licensed copy and even payment of five percent of tax after the game is profitable.
5. For simple games, this engine is not suitable, not even for short-term tasks. But for long-life projects, it is best to use.
    

Recommended Read: Top Mobile Game App Development Trends in 2021

Cocos2D Game Development Tool

It is an open-source cross-platform mobile game app development tool that relies on GUI software to develop mobile gaming apps. As the name implies, it is a 2D engine that supports multiple platforms and languages. So, if you want to develop a 2D game for both Android & iOS platforms, it is the best option. It supports multiple languages such as Objective-C, Java, C++, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript. It is free, open-source, and more upgraded. 

Pros:

1. The game binaries can be easily generated by programming in C++ for iOS, Android, Mac platforms. 
2. Another advantage is it's open-source. It means that developers can configure this game engine based on their preferences.
3. The developers can directly develop android games without porting since the Cocos 2Ds game engine is cross-platform compatible.
4. As it supports 2D games, thus, programming is similar to an efficient library solution. 
5. It utilizes OpenGL to provide optimized 2D graphics OpenGL. 

Cons:

1. Cocos2D is an expensive game development tool. The license cost is between $ 1,500 and $ 4,500 more per person. Though it has a free license, it is inappropriate for professional mobile game app developers. 
2. It is more complex compared to other game engines.
3. It is not a cross-platform mobile game development tool. Developers use it for Mac or iOS.
4. It has no integrated design environment. The design of screens requires programming, loading images, and positioning with C++. 
5. It is a less efficient editor compared to other competitors. Its operation is based on an XML file and it generates a series of images from Coco’s libraries. 

Cry Engine

This is another powerful mobile game app development tool being preferred by game app developers these days. It offers graphic output and a wide range of quality gaming features. Though it is a heavy and powerful game development tool, it takes a little bit of time to use this platform effectively, especially for beginners. It supports VR and offers several visual effects including volumetric fog and a cloud rendering system. 

Pros:

1. It is known for providing a better UI game experience and quality-oriented audio tool which is Fmod.
2. It is a suitable mobile game development tool for beginners as it comes with various classes of handy tools with an impressive User Interface.

Cons:

1. It doesn’t offer a better class support facility if a free version of the engine is being considered.
2. Furthermore, it is also new and does not have sufficient support of the online support community for the developers.
    

So, in a nutshell, these are some of the best mobile game development tools which have their pros and cons for mobile game developers. If you are thinking of developing a mobile game, keep these things in mind and it would be great to consult with a professional mobile game app development company.