Couldn't find any approximate numbers on the net. All official (Valve) sources state that any discussions of the price w/ potential buyers are under NDAs, but anyone care to make a rough estimate?

I'm rather curious.

The source engine is ****.

10$

over 9000

LOL. I'm thinking it would be around 10-20k, but that's just a wild guess really. Maybe it's more like 1-2k.

The UT3 engine is around 250K to 500K so I'm guessing a Source engine license would probably be at least more than 50k.

Haha, yeah right. The Quake III engine cost $250,000 before it was open sourced. UT3 costs at least as much. Source is probably a little cheaper, but not by much.

All engines are licensed on a negotiable sliding scale. Depending on your business model, company size and profitability UT2 is around $350K, UE3 is around $800K, Doom 3 is around $1 million and so on.

I don't know about the actual source engine licensing cost but the included Havok license is around $50k by itself, so that should give you some idea of a starting point. It's going to be way outside your budget one way or the other.

Just make it a HL2 mod. If it's fun maybe Valve will even publish it for you at a 50% take.

hey guys we should all chip in to buy gold a license for source so he can use it for his mmorpg

have I ever told you that you're not funny?

I lol'd.

it was inappropriate and kroko should apologize

Looks like Kroko's comedy career is finnished.

How IS that mmorpg coming along?

Imagine if the careers of Steven Seagal and Dane Cook had a baby who died in a trainwreck. That's how it's coming along.

Hahahaha! What a unique burn.

Thanks Emon and Jon`C. That's exactly the info I was looking for.

I agree with Joncy, make it a Source Mod. You won't have access to the full source code (I think some mods have trouble doing stuff with the title screen and options dialog), but you can still customize the entire game engine.

Haha, That engine sucked even when it was new.

Still? Who would ever use UT2 these days, and for that matter why would anyone use Doom 3 over UT3, given those price differences?

Unreal Engine 2 works on Wii and PS2.

Perhaps that is why UE3 has hundreds of licensees, but Prey is the only released game using the Doom 3 engine that was not based on an id franchise.

You would use UT2 if you didn't need the capabilities of UT3. You could buy UT2 and, for less money (maybe), develop some of the same features in house and add them yourself.

Heh. You could get 90% of the way there just with shaders, but I can pretty much guarantee that the improved workflow of the UE3 toolset would more than make up the price difference by the end of a large project.

Yes, I think if you have a project that can justify a $350K license then you can justify $800K.

Yeah. Bioshock had a $20 million budget - UE3 and other middleware made up less than 5% of the total development cost. If $800k isn't affordable, $350k isn't affordable either.

How much of a $20 million budget goes into advertising? That's sick.

Are you seriously asking how much of a development budget goes into advertising?

Really? I would think that the lighting differences would make a bigger difference than that.

Interesting. I now actually have a gfx card that can run HL2 properly, got a good discount on a GEFORCE 6200, and seeing as my FX5200 failed, I had no other choice. So far, I can run a lot more games now, that I could run before. So I'm happy that they will run, even if they are on super low settings and only give me 15 fps.

The source engine is awesome in its backwards compatibility. I also believe it has a fairly decent physics engine. That being said I have never tested the full capabilities of the engine. I have however played half life 2 (the demo) and portal in the past on other computers, and it seemed ok. But if you're gonna to buy a game engine license like that, you should really have a big team to work with lest your money go to waste.

Semi offtopic: I'm looking for mapping courses... I've been trying to make good maps that can easily connect to each other (as if they were part of a giant continent that has been cut up into sectors), but I seem to do fairly terrible at that.

I understand mapping tools differ from one to another, but I'm sure there are some general concepts that I will find useful studying.

Well, most people with skill gain it through hard work, dedication to their craft and about 10 years of practice. Ever consider trying that?

Yeah... there is no "quick fix" to making good maps. I started well before my university course and it really shows when you compare my maps to other peoples.

20 million dollars is just development? That's mind boggling to me. I had no idea so much money went into a single game.

Look at the credits. The salaries of all those people for the entire development time (~3 years?) must be paid, plus equipment, buildings, utilities, software, etc.

Killing Floor was just released, its on UT2 I believe. It's not as good as it looked. Fun, but definately not a $20 game.

Seriously? The amount of money invested into major games these days are almost to the point of the financial backing of major film blockbusters. Especially for titles such as Halo 3, GTIV, Gears of War, etc.

I mean, with that much money behind the games, why do you think developers these days commonly choose to stick to an old formula instead of risking adventuring into new territory?

Then I now have barrels and barrels and barrels of respect for the smaller developers who can do twice the game for a 10th of the budget. That's just dumb. I'd feel bad getting paid that kind of money for the kind of output they've got. Halo 3 shouldn't cost that much money to make. It just shouldn't.

I think Halo 3's development costs were $30m. Considering the used their own engine, I can understand that.

Well, I'm sure the development staff is paid what they deserve, I just have a hard time understanding where all that money goes, how it's dealt over time, or anything like that.

I'm just saying, little games have been so much fun, and I've played games that I'm now reading had enormous budgets that were clearly ****.

Game programmers get paid about $20,000 a year less on average than the rest of the industry for equivalent experience.

I meant that they deserve every dollar they make, I just can't believe where all of 20 million dollars goes into for Bioshock.