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What are the best 3D C++ game engines with full source code access?

10

Options
Considered

166

User
Recs.

Jul 26, 2020

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 8 OptionsWhy?

Best 3D C++ game engines with full source code access	Price	Dev platforms	Desktop targets
92 Unreal Engine 4	-	Windows, Mac OS X, Linux	Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOs, HTML5
86 Godot	-	Windows; OSX; Linux	Windows; OSX; Linux; HTML5
-- Panda3D	-	Windows; OSX; Linux; FreeBSD	Windows; OSX; Linux
-- Urho3D	-	Windows; OSX; Linux	Windows; OSX; Linux
-- Torque3D	-	Windows; OSX; Linux	Windows; OSX; Linux

Unreal Engine 4

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Top Pro

Full C++ source code

UE4 gives full access to the C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

Top Con

Very high build size

A blank project will build in to minimum 200 MB size. See More

ShrewdAmirani's Experience

Once you get around initially twisted learning curve, pieces for blue print creation are easy to work with. It's still heavy on learning simply because there are tons of variations accomplishing the same thing, but after you find your own way, it's a lot easier to complete projects. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOs, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

VR targets:SteamVR/HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, OSVR, , Google VR/Daydream, Samsung Gear VR

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Epic provides multiple official video tutorials, lots of free example projects and content, an extensive wiki and regular streams showing how to use latest features. See More

Top Con

No drawcall batching, performance is very bad on mobile

There's no dynamic batching support to minimize drawcalls. There's InstancedStaticmesh concept in UE4, but it's 3D only, functional limited and requires hardware support which rules out most mobile devices. See More

Top Pro

Free development license, including source code

UE4, including full access to source code, is licensed to developers for 5% royalty on resulting revenue. See More

Top Con

Royalty based

5% of profits will go to Unreal after $3000 earned in a quarter. See More

Top Pro

Physically based rendering

Phisically based rendering meanst that the graphics approximate what the light actually does naturally as opposed to what it should do. When this approach is taken, the end result is usually more accurate and more natural looking. See More

Top Con

Certain actions are slow

Compared to other engines, UE4 seems to perform various actions considerably slower. Actions like starting the engine, opening the editor, opening a project, rebuilding shaders, updating references, calculating lightmaps, saving projects, etc take long enough to get irritating and end up wasting precious development time. See More

Top Pro

A visual scripting system for non-coders enables quick prototyping

Blueprints are authoring tools designed for non programmers so designers and other team members can help tweak and prototype. UE4's Blueprint scripts resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish and games a lot faster to prototype. See More

Top Con

Unreal Editor isn't 100% stable, can crash from time to time

Be sure you have a enough amount of RAM, because Unreal Editor is very RAM dependent. See More

Top Pro

Active community

Forums have many active and friendly members that are quick to respond and help out. Even staff is very active on forums. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Especially when compared to its primary competitor, Unity. See More

Top Pro

Fast compilation for quick iteration

Recompiling an entire game to test a small change takes up a lot of time. UE4 quickly compiles in seconds instead of minutes improving iteration time by an order of magnitude. See More

Top Con

Editors function may not be used in final product

This is a BIG problem. Example: You want a SIMPLE way for your users to make or edit maps. Forcing your users to download, install and learn Unreal Engine is not an option. It's way to complex for such a simple task. You are not allowed to expose Editor function ingame, since this violated the Unreal Engine License agreement. So you are left to re-implement all the Editor functions yourself AND these functions have to be implemented in a different way they the original Unreal Engine implementation. See More

Top Pro

Quick release-cycle

New feature releases can be commonly expected about once a month. See More

Top Con

Hard engine for beginners

This engine not easy for beginners See More

Top Pro

An awesome marketplace

Where you can buy plugins, materials, textures, particles, environments, models, etc. See More

Top Con

Poor documentation

Most of the "documentation" for code is actually just automatically generated from the source. If you're interested in knowing how things are supposed to work, you must either go to their answers site or pay for UDN. Often their examples won't even compile, since they were written for now outdated versions. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic global illumination with voxel cone tracing

Voxel cone tracing is a similar algorithm to ray tracing, but uses thick rays instead of pixel thin rays to be able vastly decrease the amount of computational power needed. See More

Top Con

Extremely long build times

Making a full rebuild, including engine can take a good 30minutes. If you plan to use Unreal professionally, you better get some licenses for Incredibuild as well. See More

Top Pro

AAA-level games support built-in

This is the engine from creators of Unreal Tournament, used in dozens of AAA titles. By utilizing things such as a substantial community of developers who makes AAA-level games, a rendering engine that is capable of quality required by VR systems (which is 90FPS 4K picture quality minimum), built-in support for cinematic scenes preparation a realistic physics engine out of the box, photo-realistic light, shadows, occlusion and reflections that are also included as well as (since v4.12), it has VR support for the level editor itself, which means you can actually edit your level in illusion of being inside it. To top all of this off a full Unreal Tournament game with source code is included with everything, free of charge as a prime example which can be used as an inspiration/self-teaching material. See More

Top Con

Slow

Compared to other engines, UE4 seems to perform various actions considerably slower. Actions like starting the engine, opening the editor, opening a project, rebuilding shaders, updating references, calculating lightmaps, saving projects, etc take long enough to get irritating and end up wasting precious development time. See More

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7 Other Options Considered

Godot

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Top Pro

Free and open source

Users are free to add and fix features. Source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Con

Multiplayer support is very limited

Godot networking has its roots in peer-to-peer multiplayer-coming-from-last-century, and peer-to-peer-based networking is inherently limited to very small communities of people-who-trust-each-other. While it is technically possible to write an authoritative-server-based game (which is a prerequisite for serious games) with Godot, it is going to be quite challenging. Also, lots of very important concepts (such as Interest Management and Low-Latency Compression) don't seem to exist in Godot universe. See More

HonestIusaaset's Experience

Documentation is Excellent!! 3D performance is fine with full PBR, SSR and more. Has a drag+drop GUI that is second to none. Physics works well and the engine overall is chock full of features! Use multiple scripting languages in addition to GDScript which is just too easy to learn. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux; HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android, BB10

Top Pro

Fully featured

This is a multi-purpose game engine that can deploy to variety of platforms. It has been an in-house engine for over a decade but now anyone can get access to it including full source code. Professional tool from developers for developers. See More

Top Con

Tileset management could be more efficient

The tileset creation and management is lacking common features found in more developed tileset managers. However, it features support for Tiled - the only downside being that it is an external program. See More

Top Pro

Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks

Godot 2.1 has a improved 2d engine with many features used by modern 2D games. See More

Top Con

Very bad documentation

The documentation is poorly written, and has very few examples of real application and even fewer design guidelines about how to program a game in the engine. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform editor

Editor works in Window, OSX and Linux as well as having a Linux CLI server version (useful for testing and build tasks). See More

Top Con

No built-in way to import atlases

Godot does not have an easy and automatic way to import atlases created by other tools. However, there are plugins that can be used to import atlases from other engines. See More

Top Pro

Really good community

The community is great and really cares about the engine. It is easy to get help and to be part of Godot's future. See More

Top Con

C++ Engine API not very friendly

The base C++ code from Godot is not documented, it's hard to set it up, to compile and hard to extend, it could use better programming standards. See More

Top Pro

Under constant development

This engine barely released one year ago has more than 1000 forks on github and about 100 developers. Not only that just a bit of browsing trough issues you will quickly find out the dev community loves new esp free technology and does not shy away from completely rewriting parts of the engine. The audio engine is being completely rewritten to use threads and so forth. See More

Top Con

2DPhysics is weak compared to Box2d

Box2d has much more features. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn scripting language

Godot has their own scripting language called GDscript. The scripting language is easy to learn with python-like format, but it is not python. More like a mix of Javascript, PHP, C++. It's very powerful, easy to learn, and it's free of unnecessary things because it's designed for this purpose. It can be used to add custom behaviors to any object by extending it with scripting, using the built-in editor with syntax highlighting and code completion. A built-in debugger with breakpoints and stepping can be used and graphs for possible bottlenecks can be checked. See More

Top Con

Not good for 3d

Godot is a great 2d engine, however, compared to Unreal it is way behind in the 3d department. See More

Top Pro

Built-in physics

Physics can be added to 2D and 3D scenes, through rigid and static bodies, characters, raycasts, vehicles and more. See More

Top Con

Own scripting language

Uses it own scripting language (GDScript) instead of one of the thousands languages available. However, for those of you that have their own ways to code and things like that, Godot also came with C# support and bindings to a lot of languages like C, C++, Python, Rust, etc. See More

Top Pro

Drag & drop interface

Many parts of the editor allow you to drag & drop, which makes working with assets and scene trees a joy. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

The executable is portable and less than 40 MB in size. See More

Top Pro

Editor and runtime are fully cross-platform

You can run Godot on all 3 major operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux) and build your game to all available platforms from each without any platform-specific work needed. All platforms including Linux are supported first class. See More

Top Pro

Can be deployed to multiple platforms

Deploy games to desktops (Windows/OS X/Linux), smartphones (iOS/Android/BlackBerry), and the web (HTML5 via Emscripten). See More

Top Pro

Fun to use

An important aspect that can't be grasped without using the engine for a few days. The Interface is evolving nicely and making games is just fun. See More

Top Pro

Friendly towards Version Control Systems

The engine is build not only to support version control but to really use it. Scene files for example which usually get compiled into some sort of unreadable data stay in a text format - that way you can actually see your changes in a version control system like Git. See More

Top Pro

Creating editor tools is a breeze

Godot Engine is itself a Godot game. By adding the "tool" keyword to the top of a script, you can design extensions for the editor itself INSIDE the editor. Integrating these editor scripts into a bundled plugin for sharing is extremely easy to do. See More

Top Pro

Integrated animation editor

Every property can be animated. See More

Top Pro

Simple and readable codebase

The engine's source code is easy to read and understand with a self-documenting approach to code design. You don't have to wait months or years for other people to fix an engine bug that is important to your game. Often times, you can spend an hour or two of your own time to fix whatever problems you encounter yourself. See More

Top Pro

Scene Based editing

Godot gives you the ability to create scenes to make your life easier, with reusable objects and things you want to incorporate in your games. This makes the game making processvery streamlined and organized. See More

Top Pro

The list of supported languages is growing

Officially, our supported languages for now will be GDScript, C#(Mono), VisualScript and C++. See More

Top Pro

User friendly UI for all your team

Non-programmers (musicians, artists, etc) can join the development easily. See More

Top Pro

Unified game editor interface

All the game developing work is done inside one program: the engine editor. This feature is something only high end engines have. Even the scripting is done in the same program. No need for Eclipse or other front end editors. See More

Top Pro

Easily expanded scripting system

With 3.0's addition of NativeScript and PluginScript via GDNative, developers can easily define bindings for new scripting languages. In addition to the primarily supported C++, GDScript, VisualScript, and C# languages, the community has contributed D, Nim, and Python as well with more on the way. See More

Top Pro

Internationalization of the editor

You can change the language shown in menus. Godot translations. See More

Top Pro

Built-in documentation linked to the internal ScriptEditor

The editor has a fully searchable index of class API documentation for everything the engine offers (NOT just a web interface). You can easily open the documentation for any class by Ctrl-clicking the class's name in the in-engine text editor for scripts. See More

Top Pro

Instancing and node concept makes sense

The node and the instancing concept work very well and helps developers to structure content efficiently. See More

Panda3D

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Top Pro

Supports browser deployment

Panda3D offers web plug-ins that allow deployment of an application to all major browsers. A WebGL port is in the works as well. See More

Top Con

Rather small community

Richard Blake's Experience

No RAD with this, no integrated editor, render pipeline is mediocre. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux; FreeBSD

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

License:BSD-3-Clause

Mobile targets:-

Top Pro

Free, open-source, and permissive license

The liberal license allows use of the engine for any purpose without restrictions or royalties. See More

Top Con

Lacking docs

Top Pro

Flexible scene and object hierarchy system

Creating weird world constructs is generally a breeze. The node system the engine runs with allows to build self-looping worlds and, on large scale, non-Euclidean scenes without having to introduce a huge amount of custom code. See More

Top Con

No unified editing program

Unlike Unity and Unreal, Panda3D doesn't currently offer a single, unified editing program in which objects can simply be dragged in and assigned properties (although third-party solutions are available). Developers are expected to design their scenes in a modelling program like Maya or Blender instead, and bring it into Panda3D using Python code. See More

Top Pro

Supports most popular physics engines

Panda3D has in-depth integration with industry standard physics engines such as Bullet, NVIDIA PhysX and ODE, but also offers a simpler built-in physics engines that will cover more basic needs. See More

Top Con

Direct3D support is behind

Direct3D support not up to par with OpenGL support, only version 9 is supported See More

Top Pro

Powerful profiling and debugging tools

Panda3D has a suite of powerful tools to help track down performance bottlenecks, memory leaks and examine internal state See More

Top Pro

Web plug-in for browser deployment

Panda3D offers web plug-ins that allow deployment of an application to all major browsers. A WebGL port is in the works as well. See More

Top Pro

Powerful Python scripting environment

Although it's possible to use only C++ to program in Panda3D, all its power is available to the Python scripting language, while not trading in performance since the performance-critical parts are implemented in C++. It has a powerful binding layer that exposes the vast majority of the API via Pythonic interfaces. See More

Top Pro

Will be very easy for developers already familiar with Python

Although it's possible to use only C++ to program in Panda3D, all its power is available to the Python scripting language, while not trading in performance since the performance-critical parts are implemented in C++. It has a powerful binding layer that exposes the vast majority of the API via Python-based interfaces. See More

Urho3D

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Top Con

May be a bit hard to get started

To install Urho3D you need to get the archive from GitHub (be careful to download the master branch) and extract it. After that, you need to compile the engine with CMake. If all the dependencies are installed, then it should be a straightforward process, otherwise you will need to track down and install all the missing dependencies. For people who don't have much experience with CMake this whole process may seem a bit like magic. For people who do have experience with CMake, the whole installation will be relatively easy. See More

Top Pro

Good docs

Documentation covers the main components of the engine in a clear, easy to understand manner. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

Mobile targets:iOS; Android

Top Con

The UI can be hard on the eyes

Urho3D's UI lacks polish and and could cause eye strain. See More

Top Pro

Very good multiplayer support

Urho3D has the best multiplayer support at least among free engines. Most importantly, Urho guys do understand importance of authoritative servers for any serious development. In particular, Urho supports such features as Interest Management and hooks for Client-Side Prediction. See More

Top Con

Little documentation and small community

There are some high-level design docs and a bunch of examples, but code is poorly commented and nothing much more can be found. See More

Top Pro

Includes a lot of samples

A selection of samples in AngelScript, Lua and C++ are included with the engine. See More

Top Pro

Free and fully open source

The entire engine is open source and makes use of other open source libraries. Source code is licensed under MIT and available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Fat-free codebase

Only use what you need. See More

Top Pro

Unofficial Oculus Rift support

Information on enabling OR support can be found here. See More

Top Pro

In constant active development.

Bugs are usually fixed that same day. Core devs are very active on forums. New features are always being worked on. HTML5, DirectX11, and OpenGL3.1 support have recently been added. See More

Top Pro

Good 3D level editor

Top Pro

Very high code quality

Torque3D

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Top Pro

Oculus Rift support

T3D has proper support for the Oculus Rift with a barrel distorted stereoscopic image and headtracking working without lag. There's also a demo game, Rift Valley, bundled with the engine that can be used to test the implementation. See More

Top Con

Importing art assets is difficult and frustrating

Skins and character models can be difficult to import. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

Supported languages:C++;TorqueScript

Top Pro

Excellent networking code

Torque's approach to networking makes this one of the best performing and easiest to implement multiplayer game engines available. See More

Top Pro

Razer Hydra support

Top Pro

Leap Motion support

Top Pro

Redistributable tools

Top Pro

Continually updated by a dedicated and skilled community

Top Pro

Many stock features for an FPS

Top Pro

Free and open source

Torque3D is a free game engine licensed under MIT with source code available on GitHub. See More

Esenthel

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Top Pro

Integrated code editor

Editor has a built-in code editor which drastically simplifies the programming process. Programming with Esenthel is based on C++ language, however, when using the code editor there's no need to make separate .cpp or .h. Code can be written once and the editor will separating definitions and declarations automatically in the background allowing for quicker development. See More

Top Con

Lack of in-depth tutorials

There are plenty of beginner coding tutorials which serve as a basic introduction for a new user to get up to speed, but once having passed that stage there is a real lack of free more advanced tutorials/examples/code snippets demonstrating the finer details of the vast and varied API functions. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

Mobile targets:iOS; Android

Supported languages:C++

Top Pro

Good support for Android and iOS

Android and iOS support is pretty stable and easy to develop on. It's possible to, for example, develop the entire game on Windows or Mac and then easily compile for Android and iOS. See More

Top Con

Web support practically non-existing

Web support exists only on paper. The way it works is that Emscripten is used to convert an entire project to unreadable Javascript. That practically only works for very simple demos, no real-world projects. See More

Top Pro

Supports in-app purchases

IAP support for both mobile and desktop devices. See More

Top Con

One-man developer

Although the complete engine is maintained by a single, highly-skilled individual, he can be limited to what he is able to see or perceive, and sometimes he doesn't recognize broken or incomplete features until he sees it firsthand and sometimes doesn't recognize valid reports from his users. But when he does recognize the gap in the engine's feature-set, he is quick to make adjustments and updates. See More

Top Pro

Collaborative development

Engine comes with tools allowing for multiple developers to work on one project at the same time in collaborative mode. Every change made is instantly visible by other team members. See More

Top Con

One-man developer

Bugs are fixed promptly, but the developer maintains a growing 'roadmap' of features with no indication to users of time frame and priority of feature implementation. See More

Top Pro

Oculus Rift native support

Oculus Rift API integrated into the engine platform. See More

Top Con

Slow roadmap implementation

Bugs are fixed promptly, but the developer maintains a growing 'roadmap' of features with no indication to users of time frame and priority of feature implementation. See More

Top Pro

Supports multiple compression libraries

LZMA, LZHAM, LZ4, ZLIB, Snappy, RLE See More

Top Pro

Constant development and progress

New features or update to features are provided monthly. See More

Top Pro

Can import a wide variety of formats

3D - FBX, DAE, OBJ, 3DS, B3D, MS3D, BVH, ASE, PSK/PSA 2D - BMP, PNG, JPG, TGA, DDS, TIF, WEBP, PSD, ICO Videos - VP9, Theora Sounds - OGG, WAV, MP3 (once decoding patents expire) See More

Top Pro

Supports modern graphics and sound APIs

Graphics - DirectX 9/10/11, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, WebGL Sound - DirectSound, OpenAL, OpenSL See More

Top Pro

Helpful and responsive forum

Top Pro

Engine issues are resolved quickly

The author is very device minded and able to handle any problem quickly and effectively and he has a good track record of listening to requests. See More

Top Pro

Incredibly stable

The engine is rock solid and stable which, considering its extensive feature set, is a huge plus for game developers See More

Top Pro

Access to full source code

Having easy access to the full source makes it possible for any skilled developer to add features that a project requires. See More

Top Pro

Attractive licensing

Free to try, with license as cheap as 9.50$/month (with yearly subscription), 11.40$/month (monthly subscription) or full source code license 228$/year. See More

Top Pro

Powerful and flexible

Built in pure C++ so it is easy to use and extend however needed. No slow scripting languages. See More

Top Pro

Available on Steam

Esenthel is available on Steam. It was Greenlit. See More

C4

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Top Pro

Complete access to high quality C++ source code

C4 gives full access to the clean and professional C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

Top Con

No longer available for purchase

Eric is starting to push the tombstone engine, which is to be the replacement for C4. See More

Richard Blake's Experience

No lifetime engine update and the new engine Tombstone is a little over the top of pricing, when you can have now the AAA engines for "free" See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Top Pro

Lifetime engine updates

Top Con

Small community

While C4 has been around for a long time, it has never substantially grown the size of its community. It's worth noting thought, that while the community is small it's also tight-nit, helpful and generally very professional. See More

Top Pro

Proven to be a capable engine

Top Con

Lacks D3D support

Top Pro

Supportive community

C4 has a small, tight-nit community that's well educated and professional. Eric Lengyel, main C4 developer, can often be found giving thorough advice to users on the forums. See More

Top Pro

Lots of learning resources

Including extensive documentation both in code as well as online along with a wiki, tutorials and a demo game. See More

Top Pro

No royalties

Top Pro

Extending engine's functionality is straightforward

Due to the well-organized, highly modular design of the engine adding custom functionality is easy. See More

Top Pro

Full-featured and modern

Comes integrated with support for physics, audio, networking, input devices, resource management as well as modern features such as real-time shadows, horizontal mapping, voxel-based terrain, dynamic lighting, post-processing effects and much, much more. See More

nCine

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, macOS, Linux, HTML5

Mobile targets:Android

Source Code Pro

Kigs framework

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