
Autodesk Stingray Game Engine - rinesh
http://stingrayengine.com/
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Claytonious22
Attempting to register for access takes you to a form that requires you to
have an "Autodesk ID" without any obvious way to obtain one - it does say that
existing Gameware customers can get access. Thus continues the very trend that
makes me dislike Autodesk: a highly corporate, private, limited-access,
secretive suite of tools that are only available to a closed club of very high
paying, deeply invested customers who are locked in to a pipeline comprised of
only Autodesk tools. It just feels so proprietary and exclusionary. I still
remember my parallel port dongle for 3D Studio Max back when I was locked into
that tool set and the many times I had to fight to make it work to earn the
privilege of using tools I had already paid thousands of dollars for.

Yuck.

~~~
omouse
Pretty much this; it's like they've got 90% sales and marketing and business
people running the show and the software devs are just sticking around because
Stockholm Syndrome.

~~~
swimfar
Actually, I took a tour of their SF office (across from the Ferry building)
and it seems like a really cool place to work. If anyone gets the chance, I'd
check out the little museum they have there which is open to the public. I had
always just associated Autodesk with the old 2D AutoCAD software, but they're
actually doing really interesting research at the company. I was really
impressed. One example I saw was simulations relating to self-assembling
machines/structures. And their engineering and industrial design influences
make it a nice art/science mixture.

Although not necessarily intended for kids, it's a place I would have loved to
visit as a 8+ year old kid.

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jaegerpicker
I'm having a hard time seeing the market for this. Most indies aren't using
Maya or 3DStudio Max because the price is too high. Modo and blender are much
more popular in my experience. Then shops big enough to afford them tend to
have a custom workflow built in already.

My source: Could be completely wrong and is based purely on personal data. I
help run a local indie game development meetup and have been involved with 3
others and only a few people were using Maya or 3DStudio Max. Mostly because
of pricing. However of those working with 3D assets the majority of them are
working with Blender or Modo with Unity and Unreal as the primary engines. One
or two scenekit/source sdk/cryengine people thrown in there.

~~~
chkuendig
> Most indies aren't using Maya or 3DStudio Max because the price is too high.

Unless you define indies strictly as amateur/hobbyist I seriously doubt this.
All the 3d guys i know (freelancers, small interactive studios, independent
developers etc. - none affiliated to a mayor publisher) use Maya or 3D Studio
Max.

It's the same as with the Adobe Suite or MS Office - once you consider labor
costs, licenses become a second thought if you use something professionally
and earn money doing it.

That being said, I don't really see this having a big market either, nobody
seems to have any major issues integrating with unity or unreal for now.

~~~
SloopJon
I haven't paid much attention to Maya since Autodesk bought it, but people
seemed pretty excited when the price dropped from $7,000 to $2,000. If the
other comment about pricing is accurate, it sounds like Stingray is
effectively bundled with Maya LT at no extra charge.

~~~
methodover
That was in 2002, right?

Yeah it hasn't gone down much since. The absolute cheapest price is a $1,470
annual subscription. A perpetual license will cost you $3,675.

I wish we had competition in that space. Maybe if Maya hadn't have sold out,
we'd have something like the current price war between Unity and Unreal, which
is great for games and game developers.

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danschuller
This was previously the Bitsquid engine. Really nice engine hope Autodesk can
take the tooling to the next level!

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dtf
Well that makes it more interesting. I've always been impressed with the stuff
written up on the BitSquid dev blog over the years.

[http://bitsquid.blogspot.co.uk/](http://bitsquid.blogspot.co.uk/)

~~~
felipesoc
Yeah, they are really conscious on performance which is one of the worst parts
in Unity.

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thenomad
Phew. That's a market I wouldn't want to enter.

I wish them the best of luck - and I love some of Autodesk's tools - but I
don't immediately see why I'd choose this over Unity or Unreal.

I hope they integrate the renderer into Motionbuilder, though. In 2015, the
quality of render it's possible to pull from that tool is just embarassing.

~~~
chrisper
From watching the video the two main points seem to be the seamless
integration between other Autodesk tools and this one and how you don't need
to be a big programmer. Maybe also the live preview.

(I don't know if this is the case with Unity etc. as I am not a game
developer).

~~~
golergka
The visual scripting is provided by Unreal in terms of Blueprints natively,
and Unity has a widely popular GameMaker package.

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Rexxar
It's probably a case of "innovator's dilemma' but I don't understand why all
company making 3D software for industry haven't try to enter this market
twenty years ago (maybe they is too much technical difference that I'm not
aware of). It's seems too late now, they haven't a huge technical advantage
any more. But competition is always good, so good luck to them !

~~~
brudgers
Companies start orbiting the same market as Autodesk and Autodesk acquires
them. That's been their strategy for 25 years starting with Generic CADD.
#DStudio and Maya were acquisitions Autodesk didn't kill off.

The only notable exception is Sketchup. Google bought it instead, just as it
went from MVP to software product line. Conveniently for Autodesk, Google
pulled the critical feature out of the entry version after a year or two
(DXF/DWG support), let development on the professional version languish, and
eventually ejected it as a drifting hulk after Revit gained enough traction
for institutions to start requiring it as a delivery format for construction
designs despite Revit's file format being closed proprietary.

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haberdasher
Try hitting 'esc' on this page...

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rblatz
That is extremely weird. Is that standard behavior for squarespace sites?

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moron4hire
I like how they talk about "changing the way games are made", then go on to
describe exactly the process that Unity and Unreal provide. So actually just
playing catch-up to the "way games are made."

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ErikRogneby
Great marketing. Now how do I get it? Where is the big shiny buy/try or
download link? I thought maybe the marketplace? Nope. Then I tried going to
autodesk.com and I scrolled to the footer and went to the store. I did a
search:
[http://www.autodesk.com/store/search?q=stingray](http://www.autodesk.com/store/search?q=stingray)

The upper funnel is serious broken here.

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gshx
Might want to start here:
[http://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/stingray](http://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/stingray)

~~~
ErikRogneby
maybe that's why... Not even for sale yet:
[http://www.autodesk.com/products/stingray/buy](http://www.autodesk.com/products/stingray/buy)

"Stingray will be available for purchase on August 19."

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thethinker1032
One: Why does it seem all the text is in caps?

Two: Why would we want a engine with Maya or 3DStudioMax interoperability?
Most indie developers would not be able to afford Autodesk products because
they are so pricey. The only people I know who use Autodesk in the gaming
industry are those who make AAA games. If you want to contact the least common
denominator, then you need to make some changes to the way you do things.

~~~
coldtea
It's not meant for hobbyists/indie developers.

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stickydink
People are wondering what the advantage of this is. It's worth noting that
Autodesk have not updated their Scaleform plugin to work with Unity 5. I was
pretty annoyed, and it seems like this could be the reason why.

Unity's UI got better recently (in 4.6+), but Scaleform is still leaps-and-
bounds above almost anything on the market.

That, combined with Autodesk Navigation - another very powerful tool they
previously charged a lot of money for (pricing for that was even on-demand
only), means there's genuine reason to consider this.

The obvious downsides are the lack of free access/assets that you get with
Unity, that Unity/Unreal have huge communities and years of YouTube tutorials.
But that might come in time.

Perhaps the claims about performance and ease are exaggerated, but maybe
they're not. I've worked with Unity for a while, and it certainly isn't
perfect. There are some clunky, unintuitive things going on. Don't get me
wrong, Unity is a fantastic tool, and our company wouldn't be what it is today
without it, but this atleast warrants a look at, for me :)

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bluepostitnote
Both Unity and Unreal have free tiers, but from the site it looks like
Stingray is $30/m I suppose the seamless integration pitch is an appealing
angle, but I'm surprised for a new engine there wouldn't be at least a time-
limited free tier.

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ai_ja_nai
"[...] to make sure your games looks amazing".

Please note the bad collision detection at 0:51 when the player walks through
the cube, right as the speaker says that.

Lol.

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arca_vorago
Thanks but no thanks Autodesk. Why do I feel like Autodesk is starting to take
it's cues from Oracle?

I've been working on a side project in Unreal Engine 4, which is amazing, but
you'll notice that the majority of Epic devs work in Maya. Autodesk realized
there was opportunity to make some money, and finally released Maya LT
subscription for devs, but there are still a ton of import/export and other
pipeline issues. I mean Autodesk owns the FBX format but can't get a good
pipeline mechanism going for it? Now that I see this, it totally makes sense.
They saw what the Epic guys were doing, probably even trolled their codebase
for ideas, said "Hey, we can do the same thing but make it proprietary and
cost a shit ton, just like all our other stuff, and make tons of bank! All we
have to do is make sure our tools work with our tools best and everything else
is subpar, and it will force devs who want those features into our camp!" Look
at the damn interface, it looks almost identical in layout to UE4!

On a similar note, as a sysadmin with Autocad users, and the most recent quote
I got for a single new sub license was $4k+, I am now investigating migrating
to open source solutions that can perform everything we need without being
licensed into the ground. Not every company has $20k just sitting around for
license upgrades...

Edit: I understand my tone is negative, but in this case I think it's
warranted. I would appreciate discussion instead of just a downvote please. I
also took out the needlessly negative last paragraph.

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vvanders
I wish them the best of luck but without a majot title tied to shipping with
this I'm dubious.

Without a clear vision of features needed feature creep can really set in.
Also different engines are built for different needs and a catchall engine
ends up being not too great at anything.

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georgeecollins
I think Unity shows that there is a place for an easy to use cross platform 3d
engine.

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moron4hire
I saw nothing about games on that page. It was a lot about 3D rendering, but
nothing about actual interaction.

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chrisper
You need to watch the video which has all the details.

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moron4hire
So they continue the trend that is my main gripe about Unity and Unreal: they
lock everything up in unsearchable, unskimmable videos.

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nekopa
Pricing?

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maccard
quick google led me to [http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/03/autodesk-
stingray/](http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/03/autodesk-stingray/) \- which
quotes $30/month

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iamcreasy
It also includes a copy of Maya LT.

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tapirl
no download?

> AND C++ SOURCE CODE, AVAILABLE FOR AN EXTRA FEE

not a good idea to get developers.

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mayoff
Yeah, that surprised me too, considering that Unreal Engine is free (until you
ship) _including_ source code, which is hosted on github (behind a free
registration).

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hundunpao
I wonder if they know about Steve Irwin

