Comments on Unity3d difficulty and VS Unreal Engine

Currently I am using both Unity and the new Unreal engine, which I purchased because the great price of 19$ per month. But, I want to tell some users some information in case they are curious. First, those who think that Unity 3d is hard, know that pretty much all the other engines that can do quality as good as Unity are much more difficult. For example, right now I am studying using Unreal's blueprint part of its engine, and it still much more difficult than Unity. So basically appreciate what you have in Unity 3d, as in my opinion it is far more easier than Unreal to get started. The price is the only part that hurts with unity 3d. The other thing is the community support. I sometimes post questions here and also see others posts, where nobody answers the questions, and this bothers me quite a bit. The forums for the Unreal engine are great, I always had my question answered, and almost always within a few hours. So in sum, Unity 3d is much easier to use, but costs a lot more if you are using it like a casual user like me, who may or may not publish anything. Unreal has a great price model, but is much harder to use, but has better community support. I hope this information answers any person's question, or if it is obvious information, than I apologize for wasting your time. Thanks!

 

Indeed, $0.00 is obviously way too expensive.

--Eric

 

I was referring to the pro version, obviously.

 

A casual user who may or may not publish anything is precisely the market for the free Unity license, however.

--Eric

 

19$/month + 5% royalty is kinda expensive when you put the time to do the math too.
1500$ is nothing for a software of that magnitude.

As Eric said, you don't need a pro version if you're going casual. For 0$, you have anything you need to make your dream game alive (more like a pseudo-prototype that you'll drop after 2 weeks, but still)

 

In some cases you do need Pro to achieve what you want to design, my game simply couldn't run without Pro features, but in most instances the FREE version of Unity offered by Unity Technologies will get you very far. I still think the 30 day trial for Pro is counter-productive for developers, but if you can get by using Unity Free, then you can still make a very good product.

I personally prefer the before publishing route that Unreal Engine offers in terms of having everything availible when developing, the 5% is also very reasonable compared to what most will ever see in return when doing a multi person project using Unity Pro(especially the 1500$ per seat mobile add ons).

In terms of development difficulty, just go with whatever is the best for you to work with, worry less about the actual financial costs if they don't hinder the product you are developing. Unity is a great tool that severly lacks core feature implementations like timeline based event scripting and easy shader/material creation without purchasing assets (uSequencer and Shader Forge does make up for this).

Unreal Engine employs the easiest and hardest coding features of these two engines as they have the great visual scripting system Blueprint in place and allow for manipulating the program core through C++, while Unity has a great C#/bastardized Javascript implementation that allows for a very fast itteration process.

In the end, these are two VERY good products that each fit different needs at very good prices(i may knock Unity's current pricing model, but the license is very affordable if you need it), test both and make up your own mind to what you prefer to work with most.

 

I'd rather pay $19/month for a Pro featured solution instead of using the Free version. The Free version is fine for some things, but even us hobbyists need Pro features.

 

Just think about that sentence for a minute...

 

Yes, you have to compare it to the proversion, because when you pay the 19$/month with Unreal, you get all the features, and all the platforms. And those features include things only found in the paid version of unity. And then multiply the costs of every platform you support on unity and it gets real expensive. So unreal's 19$ covers the pro features that would be found in unity AND all the export formats like ios devices, consoles, etc. So thats why it would only be fair to compare to Unity's pro version.

 

Don't you think that's a bit of a weird thing to say? There are absolutely core functionality locked by the Pro paywall that can severely impact what a hobbyist can effectively make, especially with things hugely popular amongst hobbyists like the Oculus Rift being completely unsupported by Unity Free.

 

Unless you actually intend to make money off of a pro feature, chances are you really don't need it. I kind of think UT set a good dividing line making pro features that you really shouldn't need until you're serious.

 

I think both engines are awesome. The fact the Unreal is so cheap is 1000% because of Unity. Unreal knows that within the next 5 years most people are going to be familiar with Unity and is basically going to make Unreal obsolete. Now with the price of Unreal being as cheap as it is, Unity needs to pivot their pricing model($75 a month is a bit to much imo).

As far as community goes Unreal is new and since it is new most of the senior level people are posting on their forms to make sure newer people get their questions answered. If you look online most of the answers for Unity date back to 2011 when Unity 3 was out. They knew the only way to keep people using their product was to answer the forms quick and with what a user wanted, now they allow almost just the community to help, but since the community is so big now a lot of questions go unanswered because of the sheer volume.

 

That statement might have made some sense prior to the UE4 announcement in March. The current "dividing line" between Free and Pro just sends hobbyists to UE4 in droves.

 

I spent since its release time evaluating Unreal to see If I plan on using it in the future. And then I realized.. Hey my last 3 years using Unity really have made a big difference! I'll have to spend another 3 years to be just as proficient with Unreal.

There were a few deal breakers for me right off the bat. It's so new that many features are not implemented yet.

Blender support is just... Static meshes import ok but anything else... It's my main work tool and If I have to jump through hoops just to import a custom rig..... Is it possible to use Blender with Unreal? yes. But with extra work. We'll see if they focus on this in the future. I know I won't be the one to troubleshoot it for them.

Blueprints and the shader/material editor are really it's strongest points. They are insane tools pre-built into Unreal. Does Unity have similar? Yes. For a price. Unity caters to different needs in different ways.
On the other side the new Unity GUI in 4.6 is just to awesome for me. I can't resist it. Every time I see the video for the new GUI I get all giddy.

Most hobbyists can't afford Unity PRO so I can understand why many who want top-of-the-line graphics for cheap would rather use Unreal. What bothers me is the constant : Unity! why don't you do like Epic and charge $20 a month with 5% royalty!! UNITY!! UUUUNNNIITYYY!!!!!

If Unity ever offers a better monthly plan to devs, well good for those who were patient, but there's NO WAY I want this instead of my current deal ( I pay perpetual aka full $1500 license deal with a great discount on next version ). Royalties are a headache I don't need and can afford to not have with UT's current offerings. Again, you want Unreal's deal so Badly!? Use Unreal.


For the community; @DexRobinson said it perfect:

Another good point by @GMM:

They are both different in their own way and both can cater to your needs in different ways. They are both amazing engines.

Unreal's a great engine and blueprints are really great too. All in all I like both engines. But they are different. They are very different to use. And again they cater to different needs. Obviously I'm already back here after even a short evaluation. For my needs Unity is better.

They shouldn't service us the same ways because then one will become irrelevant. Competition is good. All this did is let us the developers win for once since we now have choice. This will limit stagnation forcing both companies to innovate. This will benefit all three sides: The devs, UT and Epic.

 

You rang?

 

Discussing the price has been done I think so lets stick with difficulty.... in my case I do find that Unity is a lot easier an API to swallow than UE4's. And any missing features, well for me, someone who knows Unity, I can cobble together absolutely anything I want. I have endless level editors here, I can organically grow with next to zero compile times. I like that, makes using Unity easier for me personally.

 

Agreed @hippocoder , It just keeps going and going and going and going....

Unity compiles shaders so quickly especially since 4.5. I was able to import all of Lux shaders in one go in around a min.

 

So let me make this clear. People buy Unreal Engine due to its sheer brute power and it's amazing workflow. But it is extremely difficult to understand and getting into its workings is, admittedly, quite a pain. Whenever people choose UE4, you know that they plan on making it big and brining the real bucks. Unity on the other hand offers a free version which is just as proficient as the pro but still lacks some key features. From the point of view of an indie solo game developer, UE4's pricing might be a dream come true. But let's do the math shall we?
Let's say a solo developer created an amazing game on the UDK (after spilling a lot of blood, sweat and tears) and another indie developer has created a high quality game with the Unity engine( with much less difficulty, of course). Now of both the games earn over $100,000 and the Dev using Unity engine will have to purchase the 3 licenses and they will approximately cost $4800(Inclusive of taxes) and he doesn't have to pay anything more. He can now keep the rest of his earnings to himself and live a wonderful, happy life.
Whereas the dev using the UE has to continuously pay 5% in the form of royalties. This means he has to pay $5000 for every 100,000 he earns. This means he ends up paying quite a hefty amount to Epic. He even has to pay 5% royalties on funds that he may have received from, say, Indiegogo or kickstarter.
So in the long run, Unity stands out as the clear winner for "Indie" developers who may be pursuing it as a hobby or are planning on going full time.
Just my 2 cents.

 

The discussion about UE4 forums piqued my interest

Legacy :
As for some background, I have worked with Unreal 3 source for many years. Most developers on UDN (Unreal Developer Network) were/ are used to working with raw source and very little "currently relevant" documentation from Epic. You infer what code does by reading it not some indepth documents. Developers (studios) used to pay a huge sum - hundred of thousands of dollars for a source code license for Unreal 3 . Epic provided support - but the best support came from UDN . The culture for "crowd - bug fixing" evolved. Code drops from Unreal's perforce servers were merged to developer's code branches and the merge / fix/ test cycle ensued. The quickest way to get past common issues was to check with the forum - Epic used to take code fixes from the community to their main line at times. Unreal 4 caries on this legacy further. Hence you may find the response times are faster there. It is the culture.

Ease:
Unreal was never "easy"! The barrier of entry for Unreal was a lot more. Training fresh people was a pain cause of the time they took to be production ready was months. Unity changed all that! I could help train a fresh team in a couple of weeks!! The best part of Unity is the ease of use of the tools. Also Unity3D is way more forgiving . Do not forget the scripting side of things ! The biggest time saver is Mono and C# combination - the people in Unity Tech need to be commended for their foresight. Anyone who has worked with UE3 and done the UnrealScript change ->C++ Header generation ->C++ compile- > Build -> launch cycle knows the pain.If you were developing a multi-player title and you made some replication changes etc - you needed even more time to set up the server(s) and clients for test. Typically for my project it took atleast 7-10 minutes to start testing code changes in-game if not more. And I do not have enough bile to loath Unrealscript but lets just say Unity & Mono VM is way more workable. That being said - Unreal 3 with its source code access was way more powerful - especially when it came to change things on the rendering or System side of things. Eg: For a long time Unity3D shipped WWW without HTTP Response header support .I had to roll my own version of WWW as plugin to get Restful services working in Unity. I had no way of adding header retrieval support to WWW .

Please note , however, that in UE4 C++ workflow is still disruptive. For new units of code you'll need to restart the engine. Eg: If you introduce a new Actor class , UE4 Editor will need to be rebooted for it to recognise it and use it in-editor. Unlike in Unity3D where a unit of code ( monobehaviour) can be attached as soon as it can be compiled within the editor. This compositional workflow is beautiful! Unreal has components too - but they aren't the same thing. The workflow is not as iteration friendly. The basic difference of code and script.


Price point:
The revenue model from Epic is aggressive to compete with Unity's meteoric rise in the last 3-4 years, This has everything to do with the democratization of engine availability that Unity3D Free provides.Coupled with the rise of the Indie developer and shrinking concept of "burn rate". UDK- introduced years ago to cater the needs of hobbyists and Indie developers was never really a great competitor for Unity like engines .For a couple of reasons - the major being the constraints from Epic (no access to C++ source) . UDK users had to work with UnrealScript with all it's laughable debugging options. UDK Editor Tools were still not as easy to work with as Unity3D. Epic hopes to change that in Unreal4. Things are a lot more shinier. A new build tool chain, new editor, visual scripting (with debug support - mind) . Unreal 4 brings source code to the masses - at its $20(per seat) +5% gross cut- cutting into the business. Is it right for you - you'll need to do the financial planning yourself. 5% of $0 is still $0 .

 

"5% of $0 is still $0" is very relevant because most people who use Unity will not publish or make money off of it. I am pretty much just a hobbyist and use Unity for my own pleasure, so its easier for me to pay 19 per month versus 75. But Unreal is just so much harder that I have to go for the 75 whether I like it or not. I would love if Unity came out with a pro-feature version that you could not publish with and charged less for it. I think that would get Unity alot more revenue and business.

 

@Dev.D1

Very awesome breakdown.

 

@malosal I agree with you on this . The lower barrier of Unity3D is enough reason why I would still recommend it for people starting out. I've recommended Unity3D over UDK and UE4 to educational institutions for that very reason. Hell, I know of studios that do their prototype development in Unity as they can iterate a hell of a lot faster than their own uber expensive engines with harder, less usable workflows. These studios can't even use Unity3D Free as they earn >US$100,000/yr.

It would be interesting to get UT's take on a creating an additional "full feature, but no publishing" Unity3D. But here in lies the problem-Unity3D has ALWAYS shipped with a publishing feature! They just turned off "pro level" functionality at the editor level so you never get to work with those features. Unless you paid for them. You could always create games with the Free version. Turning off publishing would be met with a lot of criticism, I believe.

The important point here for them is - just how many hobbyists feel deprived of a "full feature" Unity3D and how many of them would go elsewhere just cause of the $55/mo difference. I think they will just wait and watch. Oh! Epic is baiting everyone , how many will bite ?

@hippocoder cheers!

 

I thought the licensing thing was only required if they end up publishing (not that most studios wouldn't anti up for pro anyway), or at the very least require everyone to get a seat. Seems odd to think that any company that looked at unity instantly had to fork over pro licenses for every person.

@malosal what do you use pro for that you don't make money on? Unless your jam is just dicking around in the rendering pipeline, I really don't see how most people feel the need to pay for features they won't make their money back on.

 

If I remember correctly the said team had to all get Pro licenses after 30 day trial because their legal team advised them to do so. AFAIK the term offered in the Unity Software License Agreement (EULA) is "use". where "use" is intentionally kept generic and not restricted to "publishing". I don't remember the version of Unity3D but I think it was 3.x . Excerpt from EULA for Unity3D 4.x:

Unity Free, which include the free platform add-on products, may not be licensed or used by a commercial entity with annual gross revenues (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000, or by an educational, academic, non-profit or government entity with a total annual budget for the entire entity (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000

http://unity3d.com/company/legal/eula


​

There are also restrictions regarding use of Unity Free and Pro together in the same project, but I digress.

p.s: I am not a lawyer

 

Unreal Engine isn't $19 a month. It's just $19.

You can cancel your subscription any time you like and carry on using it to produce a commercial or hobbyist project. The unreal devs have confirmed this.

The $19 a month lets you carry on receiving updates to the engine. If you want you can, once a year, subscribe for a month and get all the updates then cancel your sub again. Given that updating your engine mid-way through a project is a really bad idea unless you need a critical fix anyway, that's the model most quality focused developers will be using.

The cost difference between unity pro and unreal is enormous.

The cost difference between unity free and unreal is tiny.

 

If I have to reboot the engine when adding a new actor and wait five to seven minutes for the engine to recompile when adding new code then the cost to me is enormous. At 30 bucks an hour it costs 4 to 5 dollars each time I add a script or asset. Add five assets or scripts and I have eaten up the subscription price. At the end of the month this eats big time into the ability to make that 30 bucks an hour remain that versus output. It starts to get to 20 bucks and hour and then 10. The costs?? Just in the rapid compile time for Unity it shows out to be the better bargain for the time=money crowd. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to work out one of those rotational trig algorithms where I iterate through twenty or fifty combos to get exact behaviour. I can do this in Unity rapidly, see what happens and wash, rinse. repeat. At 30 iterations to get correct behaviour in UE4 that is close to 2.5 hours wait time and even more as I am bound to lose those necessary flashes of inspiration as I get bogged down counting the milliseconds go by as I wait to try the latest insight..

 

Hehehe... certainly for the hobbyist ! Infact, that a great way to have a look at the working source for educating yourself at the price of seeing the latest superhero movie in IMAX. But that is not something you want to do if your doing anything productive

IMO this is not very practical (atleast for the next couple of years) for production. If one merges / updates after 1 year one will probably end up in tears. profusely so ! Please do understand UE4 is by no means ready - engine sources are forever a WIP especially this early after first release. You will have to freeze at some engine version for sure during production but this is almost never done to accommodate engine costs.

edit:
As an example the Mobile Temple example project seems to be pretty broken. After a scratch build from source UE4 4.2 to apk, the built apk failed to load on my device. It's most certainly a plethora of bugs , possible memory leaks what have you. Do you propose that professional game developers save pennies and pay the pound in peering through already solved engine bugs? Even going by frugal Unity Coder base line rate of $10- isn't two hours pay peanuts compared to grappling with unfixed bugs?

 

That should be whenever you add a new actor class . Just being clear here. Instancing in level is (almost) free

Yes iteration times are a big issue with Unreal/C++ development. And that is because you are lumping everything as C++ code . Do note that there is another way to do Gameplay programming , like the 30 iteration example you quoted. In UE4 you use Blueprints!

While Blueprints is perhaps the best Visual Scripting I have seen - it is a gamble. It is their attempt to lower the barrier for gameplay programming. Vis-a -vis visual p-graph style visual programming - Epic have a fairly decent track record with the Material Editor.

You know a full engine UE4 rebuild (building all engine and game code from scratch) takes a phenomenal amount of time - best guess is ~30- 40 mins depending on your machine. But you do that infrequently. To avoid long build times the entire solution is broken up into several projects - and you usually work with one or two of these at a time.

I'm sure the guys who have access to Unity engine C++ sources can tell you exactly how long Unity takes to rebuild. But it would be long by any guess

 

while the ediot reboot is true when a new class is added (this takes no more than 20 seconds on my old pc), it is not true that takes 5-7 minutes to compile. Not Even the initial compilation takes so long. Once initially compiled, the compilation does not take more than 10 seconds. If you are using UE4 and your compilations times are so long, I think you have a problem on your pc or work environment

Greetings!
(sorry for my English)

 

I'm sorryI'm not sure where the 5-7 minute figure come from. I had mentioned a 7-10 minute time to start testing the multiplayer game based on Unreal3 (as a part of my experience with UE3 ... not UE4). Please note that starting up a multiplayer session is more than just pressing simulate or play in editor as you would for a SP game. Also just as a side note (again talking about Unreal3 not UE4) Play in Editor was pretty much broken for all but simple cases for us .

If you are stating that a full UE4 engine build takes less than 5 minutes on your old PC then I think you might have a pretty awesome old PC. I am not sure we are on the same page on this. Did you download the full source from Epic's github repository and built that ? Or are you actually working with prebuilt DLLs and headers in the sample projects? Both options are possible.

 

before coming to unity i was doing stuff using unreal engine for couple years and i can vouch that its harder with unreal engine at time, not always, i really the way they do things like materials and i even like kismet at times. but to be honest when it works it works and sometimes it just plain unstable, worse is importing stuff which could easily result in it crashing. also very quickly you find that your having to do things in unreal script and c/c++. so with unity we have it for the most part very easy and we get to use nice programming language like c# and not have to play with c++ which while very powerful for creating software can be a pain... also the cost for someone just playing around is just $0 for unity indie! so its great deal, you get to play and pay for assets in asset store, not for the engine... oh yeah and the asset store is worth it very much cause you get very good deals and saves you lot of time, money and effort. and things like unreal materials you can get stuff dirt cheap for itin the unity asset store. so overall im very happy i made the switch and i didnt take them up on the $19/m deal, dont forget the 5% royalties that goes with that. im sticking with unity and waiting for 5 instead.

 

As someone who just moved over to Unity from Unreal Engine 4, I don't think 'difficulty' should be the deciding factor. I've used Unity and UE3 and now UE4 quite a bit and none of them are exactly 'difficult'. I think Unity is mostly considered 'easier' because it has a consistent and logical design (one that seems to have greatly influenced UE4's editor). There's also a preconception around Unity and Unreal historically having different markets.

UE4 has a lot of different tools with different mentalities behind them, but it's not more difficult to use, there's just more to get used to. Unity on the other hand is a little more barebones but has a lot of great assets that have become pretty standard and do most of the same things. For example the UE4 editor has a fantastic material editor, a major plus in my opinion and easy to use, but there are assets for Unity that work just as well if not better. Same goes for Blueprints, which are great (although clearly a work in progress). Yet again there are options on Unity for tools that are similar if not better. At the end of the day with all comparable tools game development is pretty much the same deal for both, although Unity is a little more solid right now in my opinion (I'm a little more optimistic about Unity in general to be honest).

The reasons why I moved over to Unity, personally, is because right now UE4 has a lot of problems. Right now the static lighting and baking system is broken and a pain to use, especially for modular assets where it's completely broken in my opinion, 3rd party support for things like allegorithmic substances and the like is extremely lacking right now and is a regular issue with major changes being made monthly, lots of things become broken, the rendering systems are a bit of a mess right now with different kings of assets being rendered in different ways (the lighting on the vegetation system works illogically relative to how other assets are being lit), the performance of the editor and the engine as a whole is surprisingly bad (hopefully this too will improve in time), translucent materials are pretty much not useable right now with the deferred rendering methods they're using (they don't have reflections and the shader model working right), the pipeline for normals is not currently well synced so normal quality is a major ongoing issue. In fact a lot of the core issues you might have with UE3 that would make you want to switch over to Unity, such as lightmass and the quality of the normals, are still major factors with UE4. UE4 also has the major Achilles heel that it does not handle dynamic lighting well at all, with only the start of an LPV implementation by Lionhead. UE4 has pbr right now but Unity 5 seems like it will have a pretty solid implementation of that as well with a much more promising looking dynamic lighting system.

 

The asset store is actually a very good point. Epic openly acknowledged the idea ended up creating their own "marketplace" - which is for the lack of a better word is in it's infancy.

You also have to consider that Unreal ( and more so Unreal3) has always had a export based architecture- where it demands that the input be between very tightly constrained parameters ( eg not supporting NPOT textures). Unity from my opinion is a more 'forgiving' in a lot more tiny ways tat make life easier starting out. Hence easier to use, hence faster to train folks.

 

First up, if you're going to nitpick then you have to also consider the 5%.

Secondly, while the cost difference between Pro and UE4 can indeed be enourmous, depending on your use case it can be enormous in either direction. That is to say, UE4 can potentially be enormously more expensive.

Having said all of that... they're now both so cheap that licensing costs shouldn't be a big deal in the decision making process for any project with a significant budget. The licensing cost is likely to be dwarfed by, say, the cost of employing a team to work on the game. So my choice of tools is going to be based on what gets the project done quicker moreso than the licensing cost. (If we consider the roughly $100k income per developer point where the licensing cost is approximately equal, the licensing cost is in the ballpark of employing your team for one month.)

 

@firalt As said it's early days of a new engine. But I wouldn't hold my breath on Unity5 either . It is the order of new engines to be a lot more unstable and feature deficient. I agree as a product Unity3D is more polished and consistent and for lack of a better word "easier" from a usability point of view as a result. Unity developers do not usually have to learn the ways around idiosyncrasies of individual tools. Usually

What do you mean by static lighting and baking system for modular assets?

As far as static lighting pipeline in Unity3D - how do you find that to be better? AFAIK you can't individually address lightmaps- they get built for the levels not individual objects (unless you are scaling them to 1) , there is no real RNM support -on close up they switch to direct lighting + baked irradiance map, area lights just about made it a year or so ago. What am I missing that piqued your fancy?

I'd personally refrain from bringing Unity5's alleged promising rendering into the picture until it is released. Certainly to look forward to though

I'll have a look at the UE4 rendering system - I must confess I haven't looked it in a lot of detail.

 

What I mean is it is actually not functioning properly. If you were to take some planes and tile them and bake the indirect lighting you would notice that they're all lit differently.

http://i.imgur.com/y5BZfjQ.jpg?1

It's a long withstanding issue with UE4's current lightmass system that doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.
As for the foliage lighting also being incorrect here's a post on that.

answers.unrealengine.com/questions/33870/meshes-placed-with-foliage-tool-do-not-receive-env.html

I have a lot more hope for Unity 5 given that it will be using an Enlighten-based system, but I'm well aware expectations rarely meet reality. UE4's lighting system has been all around the map for so long with different things added and taken away that it's hard to have faith in it, so at the very least it seems Unity has a clearer direction. LPV is being implemented in Unreal, but again it's yet another lighting system being tacked on as an option that will be expected to work properly with the existing systems and is only a basic solution to major lighting problems. It doesn't give clean or complex results and it has a limited range that needs to be addressed. Maybe I'm being too unforgiving, but then again I think it's reasonable to have the expectation of usable, clean renders from Unreal.[/user]

 

I'll agree with this, UE4 IMO isn't any harder or easier to use. I just found it laborious in general and it's always compiling one thing or another like lightmass / shaders / code. Not to say UE4 isn't a great engine because it is, I just find Unity as a whole a damn site faster to work with and one cannot underestimate workflow.

I'll also agree with the rest I had similar issues across the board.

 

I am not using the UE4 engine. I do not have a current need to and all the projects I am working on rely heavily on rotations and trig functions and i will be damned to hell and back if I am going to rework all those trig equations to accommodate UE4's axes not being Z forward and Y up. I will be back at ground zero in many cases.. Why do that?? I would rather bang my head against a brick wall than follow a trend that does nothing for me but eat up more of my valuable time. Even waiting more than twenty seconds for a recompile when I added one line of code is NOT acceptable. Call me spoiled but Unity reacts at the speeds necessary for me to reiterate hundreds of times daily. This to me is a huge strength with the Unity engine as well as matching the axes I create my assets with so I do not have to mess with them after import. The lack of a GUI is the final stab that gives me absolutely no reason at all to try it out currently. I could care less if it on the roadmap. I work for today and what Unity gives me fit's the bill.. My clients do not want to hear that the GUI I am making is taking weeks because I have to roll my own UI controls, or knocking hard locked non-hourly contract pay down from around 30 to 10 an hour or less to deal with that severe lack of functionality.

And the current lack of mobile readiness?? There goes three of my contract clients right off the bat. So stop telling me what a shame it is I don't give a coon's arse about UE4 and the constant noise here about it. And GitHub?? Fahgettabouddit pal.. Not interested in all that finicky crap. I like to get to work, not tool around with special apps and command lines. Unity downloads a dmg to my computer with no helper apps and it installs easily and I am off to work. Did I mention I love Unity's Inspector and it is a core tool to the way I work? I need to watch and track all those vars I create in the scripts to know that my complex systems are working as planned or which direction to tweak them in the next iteration. I do alot of contract work that uses Unity for interactivity but are not games, like touchtables and interactive POP video walls, CAVES and tunnels, curved projections and such. C++..no thanks.. don't want to learn it on a clients budget. UE4 gives me no benefits. Unity has made me alot of money since i began using it. Say I make a UE4 app for a WalMart POP video wall and it is sold to them in quantities of a few thousand at 12K USD a unit. UNDER THEIR TERMS THE COMPANY WHO HIRED ME TO ENGINEER IT NOW OWES THEM 5% of the sale price.. They then have to pay UE4's parent company 1,200,000.00USD. No way.. they will not take kindly to that at all. There goes my rent money out the window.

Use what you want but my reaction was to the guy whose first post here was about the supposed benefits of the UE4 engine and a trashing of Unity. I was not impressed with his debut. It added nothing except to the neverending takeover of these Unity forums by UE4 users who don't even use Unity to begin with. Furthermore..I don't use a PC..even an old one. The ones I have been forced to use always broke down on me within days or had a blue screen of death brand new right out of the box. They don't like me and I don't like them. I use a 2013 iMac. It works and the OS stays out of my way and I have a full set of UNIX dev tools when I need them for esoterica.

 

Bottom line I would say UE4 might be more difficult to use atm. Why? Well it is plain simple. We don't have a mature store nor a GUI system. Nothing like Daikon Forge. Currently I cant just drag widgets out onto the Editor and build complete UIs. That's coming in UMG at some point but not yet. Okay there is Coherent UI but atm I think it costs bout $12 per seat or something every month. So that's probably a no-go for many. I dunno

Going back to the store. On Unity side, you can easily buy assets at the store, drop in your game, and then buy code assets and use that too. Hard to beat that. Granted, UE4 comes with a ton of stuff out of the box. But still- if you need something that's not there then you might have an easier time in Unity

I'd say it depends on the user and the type of game they are making I guess. Some types of games might just take off on UE4 because a lot of stuff is already there (nice camera, movement, networking, etc)

Oh btw, full C++ source builds take me 40 mins. So each new code release I am looking at bout an hour getting back up and running. Now- iterating on code usually only takes bout 20 secs or so to compile. But most of my changes are in Blueprints so the iteration is pretty instant.

 

@ippdev

I'm not sure why people care what someone else is using? Also I'm unsure why people care what others say on a forum? I hope we are all smart enough to decide what we need to finish our projects. UE4 is no exception to the rest, it's great in some areas and garbage in others.

There still Isn't an engine out there that I'd recommend above all else, all one can do is pick their poison and crack on.

 

The OCULUS for one thing!!!!!

 

Wowowow! Easy! I think my last comment came off wrong on you ! Sorry, I wasn't pointing any fingers at you, sir. If you see my comment in the context of the rest of my comments on the thread you'd probably be less enraged!

Someone seems to be claiming to do a "full" UE4 engine rebuild from source in less than 5 minutes on his depreciated PC. I can't seriously believe that, hence I just sought to clarify where "my numbers" came from. I don't have an active project in UE4 to draw fix/build/test times yet. I have my UE3 times (7-10 mins for a multi player game) . Also I mentioned within restrictions one could use blueprints to work much faster within Unreal Editor for Gameplay code. I wasn't asking or egging you or anyone else to do it .That's all!!

There is no question about the iteration speed one can achieve in Unity. If you read my comments above, I attest to this myself . The single reason I would recommend it myself to people starting out . Purely cause you spent more time making a game than tending software! I am more of a core technology person who likes tinkering with engine code at the lowest level. So for me UE4 is the newest toy to play with. The one solution that I am proposing to a prospective client would replace another full source engine (not Unity). It is a serious game and the client is expected to be on a long term engagement so cost shouldn't be an issue. I need to verify with Epic if we'd be even allowed to go subscription on things like this .

And I certainly do not question your logic for picking Unity as the right tool to solve your problem.

Having said that, there are some exemptions under the Unreal4 license contract to exclude contractors developing visualisations from paying royalties. I read the EULA briefly in April that is what I remember. It is not in depth overview. Interested people may look at it on their own accord

Again I am not trying to sell UE4 to you or anyone- at all! Peace!

 

Thank you ! That is exactly what I am observing as well. Looks like my build system is not entirely broken

 

Yup! Valid point there. RenderTexture use restricted in Free !

 

I kinda agree with IPPDEV. As to why anyone would care? Well it's because most of the posts started about UE4 are done to poach unity free users (I use Unity pro anyway) but not the likes of you and I or Ippdev that know our stuff and make commercial games and have worked in AAA studios. They're aimed at a lot of the kids that come here and don't really know anything but recognise the name Unreal then go off and pester their parents to pay for a subscription even if only for a month. It's virtually scamming and the licensing deal enables those sort of one off payments, and I'm not suggesting for one moment that was the idea behind the licensing deal from Epic's POV, just that it facilitates that sort of behaviour as a possibly unseen consequence. Most parents would say ok to a $20 one off deal, the kid can't use UE4 and will be back here. Meanwhile $20 has been siphoned out of someone's wallet for no good reason. Talk of UE4 is everywhere so these kids will see it anyway but I object to the idea that they come here and see these bullshit forum topics in a Unity forum. Some developers here post the reality; Dev.D1 has done an excellent breakdown and any kid that reads this would have second thoughts but all those other rubbish threads are annoying, especially with all the crap disingenuous posts made by members with less than 10 posts to their name. I'm sure like me IppDev has no objection to honest debate about the current situation with UE4, I have no objection to anything genuine Unity users post in the forums about anything, I do object to some bullshit artist coming in and disparaging Unity with clearly false statements that are allowed to ride because it muddies the waters and some kid that reads all that stuff will end up none the wiser and will then go and waste $20 anyway. If that sort of stuff didn't work there would not be these constant threads about UE4 constantly reappearing.

 

That is great that you believe unreal engine users are full of kids who are only attracted to eye candy and aesthetics with no substance... but have you even tried Unreal Engine 4?

Now I am currently a year 11 student making a video game for an assignment at school. I have used unity for about 3 months, and Unreal Engine 4 for about 4 months as well. This isn't a heap of time but I have made a game in both engines for my assignment.

It is true that the scripting workflow for unity is quicker and much more cleaner, but IMO making games in Unreal Engine 4 is a lot easier due to the visual scripting language. The language is actually designed for people with no knowledge of programming, that's no picking up a c# book, doing a bit of practice and then applying it for a game, people are able make pretty complex games(there are a number of sources that state that blueprints can make whole games and are actually recommended to do so) directly from looking at the video's off the internet and apply it. With Unity, people have to first learn C#, get the hang of programming, and then get the hang of Unity. Blueprints, being how they are designed are much more friendly to common people than c# is. This isn't just because its visual scripting, but also because the debugging system is a lot more easier too. How can anyone say Unity3D is easier?!

Where Unreal Engine 4 is harder is that there is a lot more work that has to be initially done to set up assets in your game, but once you know how it all works, its pretty easy.

Unity's main strong points are the initial simplicity of the workings of Unity, and also the ease of adding script-able components quickly. In my opinion, compared to Unreal Engine 4, these points aren't that great, because the simplicity of the workings of Unity become worthless once you know a system like UE4 pretty well over time. C++ isn't really the language used for Unreal Engine 4, its pretty fair to say that Blueprints are the language for Unreal Engine 4, as c++ is just for the source code, and when UE4 is run directly from the Editor.exe, this is the only option to code within the editor, anyway it can do pretty much everything c++ can do, which is just as quick to compile as unity and c# is.

I have to admit though waiting 30 seconds for a header file to compile when your assignment is due in 3 days can get a little stessful. Although you have to remember that UE4 has given you the whole source code! Which allows us to easily import 3rd party software seamlessly into the project, and even integrate it, or optimize it for some other part of the Engine which totally isn't possible in any other Engine. Its good to know that there will be always a solution in UE4 compared to Unity, whether thats creating new or esoteric hardware, to integrating some new library (computer vision? speech recognition? why not), to implementing completely new engine mechanisms. Just think if Unity gave you the full source code, do you think the building process would be any quicker?

The other stressful thing is as another comment stated is the instability of the Engine. My game crashed with an access violation error just a day before the assignment was due, where a break point was called somewhere in the UE4 source which was very stressful. It was because I didn't add an interface in one of my blueprints... Errors like these were massive time wasters and this is probably the biggest and only deciding factor for me to change back to Unity. Then again if an error like that happened in Unity, I wouldn't have the code to help me fix the problem.

Oh yeah did I mention that UE4 has way better graphics, better sound cues and integration, has timeline for particle effects, way better material editor, and much better(or probably moreso) easier animation and rigging matinee features?

Maybe these kids are on to something!

 

You couldn't put it more succinctly.
I think this is why UT is going to lose.
The ease of use of Unity may trump over UE at this moment, but for $1500 (or $4500 for all mobile platforms) it is an enormous cost for indie developers. This is the same reason why more and more 3D artists are turning to Blender as viable option - Blender is known to be difficult and unfriendly to learn - compare to the more established commercial offerings such as Maya, XSI or MAX. But for most indies who have no real money - to shell out $5000+ for these commercial 3D softwares (Maya is around $5000, same goes with MAX or XSI) - Blender is the only real alternative. Now schools are teaching Blender instead of MAX, XSI or Maya.


As for the argument that "hobbyist" don't need Pro feature, I disagree.
If you want to publish any game, I honestly don't know how you FREE People do it without Profiler. Seriously.

 

I agree with this. I have an oculus rift dk2 coming and I cant make a unity game with it, since I dont have pro. I also have a logitech g27 steering wheel...guess what? I cant use the built in features of the g27 with unity free either. This is just for 1 game/demo! As a hobby project, I def need pro. No ways around it.

Also, I'm not sure why everyone says unity3d is so easy. I had a tough time using it when I first started out (I came from a c++ make everything yourself background) but Im really skilled with it now. I dont see how the same process is all of a sudden a bad thing for a ue4 or any other engine? I mean hell, as a professional, we have to learn new tools, tech, and languages all the time, why is this any different?

 

It's a case of money spent for money earned. If I intend to make money off of it, then there is no reason for me not to spend money on it. At this point, I don't need the profiler (although I would love to have it) because I am nowhere close to worrying about performance.


Am I alone in thinking it's weird that there are a ton of hobbyists with oculus devkits. Either that is a good thing and it shows a lot of support for it (although why would they be cutting in line before actual devs), or it basically means there is no interest in it for serious projects. I just don't get the mentality of people buying a 'serious' devkit, and then turning around to say they aren't actually serious about it.

 

I will be honest here. Epic is getting my money monthly. I have been subscribed to the Unreal Engine 4 for about 5 months now. So lets do some math here 5 * 19 USD = 95 USD and that is just from me. Add that to the How many Unreal engine subscribers have subbed per month.

Unity is not getting money from me - Not even the asset store.

Further more - With Epic Games making their tools available for such a ridiculously low price per month. They make money even if a game is released for free (Got to keep up to date!) or for the 5% gross revenue model that is specified on the unreal engine site. On top of that they are making their tools available for mass market adoption.

For those who say that the 5% gross revenue model is expensive. Here is the break down of it.

Also your first 3,000 USD are exempt from this rule. I personally think that is pretty nice of Epic to do.

If you do not want to take my word for it you can read about it here - LINK.
I would also encourage people to try the Unreal Engine 4.
Evaluate all your options.