I was really excited when I heard about this engine. On paper the feature list has everything you could want but so far all I have really seen are lists of issues and no official posts anywhere or replies to anything. Did the developers fall off the planet? Would definitely like to see that this engine is going placesbut that does not seem to be the case. Has anyone seen or heard and news or plans?
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It is rumored that a couple of weeks or less and a major update will be released…
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Ah, well that is good to hear. I thought it looked pretty good. I would definitely spend some time in it if things end up looking better, but I have too much money tied up in Unity specific assets currently to try anythnig major with it yet, if there was some sort of converter maybe, lol.
You could try using an asset decompiler.
I have the source code to most of them, its mostly the time it would take to make the Unity specific parts work with this engine instead. Some of them can be hundreds of files and thousands of lines of code, there are differences in the networking, probably the physics, etc. More than I really want to deal with.
They (Silicone Studio and their Xenko game engine developers) did not just disappear, but…it sure seems like they did, eh?
Seriously, they are there, but they have not been very communicative as of late, which has been a concern, especially after that announcement awhile back regarding licensing plan changes - which seemed to some (me anyway) to imply Silicone Studio may not be supporting this engine as much as they have in the past. Even the possibility of Xenko becoming an open source community project was raised in that announcement.
That could actually be cool, but it is hard to say at this time, as Xenko’s user community seems fairly small at this time. That could be one very obvious reason why continued development and developer support of this engine appears to have slowed.
There is a fairly important update coming out very soon, which will be interesting to check out. The developers have been pretty busy with that, and that could be why we have not been hearing very much from them lately.
The entire engine’s future apparently being up in the air has caused a bit of a stir. I have actually had to stop trying to learn it for now (which wasn’t easy anyway, as tutorials are very limited in number and subject matter covered right now) just because of this lack of certainty regarding the engine’s future. Will Silicone Studio continue to develop and support the engine? I certainly hope so, but their lack of communicating well with the rest of us has caused doubts in the community.
I hope when this long awaited update comes out soon (in about a week?), that a more firm announcement is made regarding Xenko’s future - one way or another. That way current users can better decide for themselves if they will stick with the engine or not. My current project, that was going to use Xenko as its game engine, is now somewhat on hold because of this uncertainty. I can work on other aspects of the game for now, but only for so long. And, if Xenko is actually pretty much dying, and not moving much further forward, I need to know, so I can start searching for another game engine to use instead.
For now, because I’ve been studying programing in C#, my current choices were Xenko and Unity. Unity is not bad, and is more fully developed in many respects, but it is also not as modern in its use of C#, though it is slowly trying to catch up. UE4 is also another option, which has its own positive and negative aspects, including the fact that I’d have to start studying up on using C++ instead of C#, which I do not really want to do. UE4 does have blueprints (a visual scripting system) that is available and very well developed for that type of programing tool - much more so than any such option available in Unity. I’d like to use something like that, but for my project I’m sure I’d need to do some real programing as well. Visual scripting can get you far, but not across the finish line when developing something relatively complex.
As you can see, I would rather just continue sticking with Xenko to keep my life a little simpler. But, if it is maybe going to fall by the wayside soon, what the heck am I going to do? This is particularly annoying because, from what I’ve seen of the engine so far, I really do like Xenko, as do quite a few others who are using it now as well - including previous users of Unity and UE4.
For now we will all just have to wait and see what will happen, but I can’t wait for too long. I think a lot of other Xenko users are pretty much in the same boat. Of course, you can use Xenko as it stands now to complete a game project, but why bother if I’ve only just started and Xenko won’t continue to grow and develop in usability? I may as well learn to use a different engine instead. One with a better long term track record.
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They have been a week or two out for like a month. Original announcement was 3 months ago. Roadmap hasn’t been updated in about a year as far as I can tell.
If they can’t even tell us the direction they are intending to take at this point that is extremely concerning.
I am still hoping but it’s getting harder to hope.
It’s been two weeks, heard anything else?
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We just have to wait… Rumor is another week or so.
When all the users have to go on is “rumors”, that is a problem.
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As far as we know, now the final approval of contracts.
These delays have been going on way too long, and Silicone Studio is still not saying anything. Even the development team members that used to give us a hint or two once awhile are now not really saying anything.
Sadly, I just don’t think this is going to end well.
In the meantime, I’ve had to move onto using a game engine with much better documentation, substantially more tutorials - and a much larger, much more active community. I just couldn’t take Silicone Studio’s apparent attitude regarding Xenko’s further support and development anymore.
I wouldn’t spread rumors as long as no facts have been released. As I have read in the developer chat, nobody is giving up on Xenko. Just all the legal stuff of the current changes take a lot of time.
Wait is over… Xenko is now completely opensource under permissive MIT license (editor+runtime).
It will be managed as a community project.
Please see full announcement there: https://xenko.com/blog/xenko-opensource-mit/
Sorry for the long wait!
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Yeah, I just saw. That is pretty neat. Will be nice to see what comes of it.