Full version (premium account) costs 15 euro, but imho it’s worth to pay this, because “basic” account doesn’t have export/game testing functionality. Also when program will go into beta stage it will costs two times more.
Program itself shows what would happen if you would merge Minecraft and Game Maker. Maps are build in similar way to maps in Minecraft, but here you can choose which blocks do you use and you can texture them as you want. Also there are some block renderers that aren’t available in MC without usage of specialized mods such as slopes and vertical slabs.
Let’s go to modeling. Currently every model is constructed from boxes. However, even thought it may seem not enough for more complicated models, in reality, thanks to ability to freely rotate and rescale those boxes (they can even overlap each other), there is possible to even construct sphere. Additionally author of CraftStudio announced that in future he will add support for more traditional way of modeling, or even import of OBJ files, so you could make models for example in Blender.
CraftStudio doesn’t force to make one genre of games. Similarly to tools like GM or The Games Factory you can make any game (racing, rpg, platformers - you name it). For now it doesn’t have physic engine, but Bullet integration is planned. There is no lighting also, scene is lighted like in Minecraft Classic - one ambient light source for whole scene, without shadows, but there is planned addition for dynamic lighting.
The only noticeable fault of CraftStudio is that it is currently only available for Windows, because of used technology (.NET and XNA), but author assured that Linux and MacOS ports are planned “once MonoGame matures”, because according to him (never used MonoGame, only standard Mono) 3D game support in MG is lacking yet.
Scripting is done using Lua programming language, but there are plans to integrate Construct-like event system, so you can basically click-out your very own 3D game…
Summary:
Advantages:
- Easy modelling and map mapping system
- Easy scripting in Lua
- Low price for software like this (even after setting fullprice, €30 it still will be lower from programs made for 2D games like MultiMedia Fusion or Game Maker)
- Big base of ready to use models and scenes (even now it is about few thousands of them)
Disadvantages:
- Still in production, so you should expect crashes and other bugs
- No sound support (author is working on it very hard though)
- No physics or collision detection which means you need to write your own (which isn’t very hard - even I managed to do that, though I’ve never managed to write 2D collision detection)
- No way to control lighting of the scene, though you can use tricks like changing tileset of map or model texture.
You should however remember that most if not all of those disadvantages have root in young age of this project and not actual limitations.