The fact that Unity uses C# as one of it's scripting engines doesn't mean that C# is taking over the game world (I'll assume that's where the C# reference is from - since Unity is incredibly popular for iOS devs). The vast majority of games are still C++, often scripted in Lua, Python, Javascript and C#.

I wouldn't describe Unity's relationship with C# as 'scripting'.

I realise that there are no doubt a number of custom C++ engines out there with embedded scripting languages but push for multi-platform mobile games has caused an huge shift towards Unity.

Maybe I'm moving in the wrong circled here — but anecdotally all the people I know making iOS & Android games are developing in Unity.

From the horse's mouth: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/9675/is-unity-engine-wr...

And I don't doubt that alot of devs use Unity, it's most likely the most popular game engine. But it's still a C++ project, despite the languages used to script game events...

Xamarin

> "C# is taking over the game world. Most iOS games are, for instance, written in C# these days."

When the engine underneath is done in C# as well I will take that argument. So far, it would be the same that saying that most console games are done in UnrealScript.

Most iOS games aren't C# now a days. Unity likes to trot out the 70% number for mobile games but it's mostly bs. That isn't counting games that are actually published that based on there registered numbers, a lot of of never actually make it into the store. I'm willing to bet the most of iOS games are still Obj-C

I'd take that bet.

I know many iOS game developers and none of them use Objective-C any more.

(in fact I only ever knew one)

> state-of-the-art 3D PC gaming engine in C#.

How does it compare to Cry Engine, Unreal Engine, Frostbite, ...?

Because these are the state of the art gaming engines these days.

It compared surprisingly favourably. The C# engine was comparable (and regularly compared) to the Unreal Engine being used elsewhere in the company.

It was C# from the ground up. Scripting was provided via other .Net languages (Python in the case of the UI team).

Those are state of the art graphics gaming engines. It's quite hard to make e.g. an RTS using any of those. They are too FPS specific.

Command & Conquer is being built on Frostbite. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_(2013_video...

Are you referring to Unity? If so, while the game code is run via Mono, it is C++ internally.

Which is just some machine code eventually. It's just electric signals people!

Are you SURE about that?

Well, for shitty games maybe it is true, shovelware aplenty on iOS anyway.

But for the part of the market that actually has a profit (not just revenue) C# is not that dominant.

In terms of profit, the most profitable games probably still rely on C++.

Also most engines (including Unity) are made in C or C++, they sorta abstract the memory management for the game author, but they still do a lot of manual fiddling themselves, XNA for example (that allow you to write C# games directly to the hardware without a C++ engine) is notorious for bigger games having memory issues.

Also 2D "retina" games use so much absurd amounts of memory, that they are almost impossible to do purely in high-level languages, you need some C or C++ somewhere to handle them, at least texture loading, otherwise you end with loading times so big that people want to suicide.

Loading times don't have anything to do with the language.

Loading times have been an issue since game consoles moved away from cartridges.

I'm interested in knowing more about that engine. Can you say who/what it is?

Realtime Worlds

Ah, yes. Out of Boulder?

Which game's engine was in C#? Project MyWorld?

Yes. But out of Dundee, Scotland.