Full Unreal Engine 4 Developer Kit $19/MO + 5% / Why can't Unity Offer the same!

Is that what we are supposed to be doing? Thought it was who can make the best plea to get people to use another engine.

 

Not very many things annoy me in forums, but one thing that does is when people say that a thread is off topic. Who cares? It is a forum, its meant to be off topic, its meant to be for random thoughts and conversations about anything. The thread title does not dictate rules for what people are allowed to discuss, it was just the start of a conversation.

 

It might annoy you but it's actually my role to keep things on topic for those who are annoyed by topic drift. Personally, I don't really care much, but in a thread like this, which can be hotly debated, it's probably better to keep on topic.

Another example of where offtopic really harms things are the Unity official threads where Unity explicitly ask for feedback and requests and people go off on tangent arguing among each other over what is better: lemons or oranges. This post is also off topic Generally I find it better to nudge people back on topic.

A forum isn't "meant to be off topic" otherwise it would only have one forum and a single reddit like megafeed about everything, and nobody would get the information they wanted.

In general I ignore topic drift, but try to steer people on track for busy, informative or hotly debated subjects. Using a common sense rule

 

I know for what I do Unreal is a better engine, but it still doesn't mean I'd prefer to use it.
I really understand that point of view. As having some project idea going on with UT Free and another needing more appealing graphics and effects. I recognize that the fun side and easy coding remains with UT and C# for now.

The title about "Why can't Unity Offer the same!"
No one can answer in fact, could you speculate on what is best or not, what you would like, what other people would want, it's Unity decision only, and we'll have to wait to see what will be proposed.

 

Just like when someone complains they're offended everyone should...wait for it...cater to that person.

So the OP sent you a report asking you to put his thread back on topic? Otherwise, I'm not sure how that relates to an OP of another thread wanting to keep his thread on topic.

 

It's not the OP's responsibility or judgement to keep it on topic or not (he doesn't 'own' the topic), that's the task of moderators and the community in general. The OP is generally another community member and doesn't have the ability, which is why there are moderators. It's about keeping things sane. In any case we're not discussing moderators in this thread, and that's the end of it.

 

And vice versa.

 

It's not really of topic here's why:

The question is $19 and 5% why can't Unity do the same? Then we have to factor in what you get for that $19.00 and 5%.

Unreal 4: It's been out for a little while, has better rendering / post / tools / support to the point where they have engine developers strolling through forums and answerhub. It evolves far quicker, compare one month of upgrades with UE4 and look at how long people have been waiting for a GUI. Enough said!. If you want to compete using Unity, you'll have to break your back whilst the UE4 lot are concentrating on making games.

BUT WAIT! This is new, Epic are the exception not the norm. Also there is a downside to all of this, they seem to break stuff a lot with all these upgrades (if that bothers you?).

Lets get to the money, how much would it cost you in man hours to get Unity running like Unreal? Or would you risk waiting for Unity to try and catch up? That 5% starts to balance out when you weigh up EVERYTHING.

OK Unity:

Dumbed down, straight forward engineering equals quick prototyping / concepts. Great set of tools for mobile and 2D games and a huge platform reach, asset store fills in quite a few of the gaps (whether that's a good thing or not). Relatively slow to develop and some long lasting bugs you don't really have much control over, unless you add cost for an additional contract.

Major benefit, your game flukes and it makes a fortune. Then it's only the likes of steam laughing to the bank with a big royalty share. Downsides is the initial cost or sub cost not factoring in that EVERYTHING seems to be going monthly based it adds up a little $75.00 a month here for Unity a little $19.00 a month there for speed tree etc.

$19 and 5% why can't Unity do the same? Well in my mind, even if they did I'd still recommend UE4 to other people doing 3D games.

I'd much rather Unity pro (for desktop) cost double, tear UE4 a new one and use Unity 4 Pro as a replacement for Unity free.

As for mobile pro due to the cost, I'd use UE4 out of principle.

 

Really? Who's said anything like that?

Remember you're on the Unity forum here. You'll predominantly find people here who are using Unity. If you want to find people who took a "pick the right tool for the job" approach to engine choice and ended up with another engine (there's more than two around) try checking that engine's community, or more general game dev sites.

 

Plus, it's not about controlling what people are talking about, it's about facilitating it. Hence your suggestion of merging and/or renaming threads, amongst other potential solutions.

 

It is not off-topic, when you ask a product A to match the price of product B, of course the discussion will also be about the features of product A and product B. If I say "Why can't the nvidia titan match the price of an amd 270x?" won't the discussion mostly be about the features/performance of the titan and the lack of features/performance of the 270x that justify the price difference?

 

I agree completely. The discussion about why Unity should offer another subscription option to match Epic's UE4 price and terms needs to talk about more than just price. It needs to also be a discussion about whether or not UE4 is a viable alternative to Unity, and also debate weaknesses and strengths of both solutions. These issues are not off topic. In fact, these issues are central to the debate about matching Epic's price.

 

Sure, but that's offtopic, we should be discussing that, not discussing discussing that *takes a deep breath*

 

Got to admit there Hippo old buddy, that is one hell of a confusing statement.

 

It needs to also be a discussion about whether or not UE4 is a viable alternative to Unity, and also debate weaknesses and strengths of both solutions
It's simple test them yourself instead of relying on what people are telling about that one is better than the other.
You'll have a precise personnal opinion on what what you like and dislike in each engine and what suits your needs for each case.

The thread is more about if UT could take same pricing system as UDK not what is the best tool.

 

Well it's not quite that clear cut, as I said even if they could match it with what's going on in UE4 would you still choose it? Also it takes a little more than a 30 day trial to REALLY know an engine.

 

You guys probable don't understand how much will like @hippocoder to close this thread Any reason will be welcome for him.


For @hippocoder:
You said you work for Unity, what exactly you develop at Unity? Pure curiosity. So far you are very active on forum.

You realize that simple fact that such a thread exist, like many others a few weeks ago, is a signal for Unity that something happen right? Trying to minimize this will not help Unity at all.

You also realize that we do not want someone from Unity to tell us how great is Unity, since we asked exact questions and we do not received any direct answer?

You realize that Unity may be good for the moment financially, but the lack of many things what you guys ignored for years and even now will probable cost a lot? So far since the release of UE4, there is no move from Unity to be a viable competition at all.

Do you know when Unity made free version available, any company who gone bankrupt just because they could not match the competition? Do you have any feeling that history repeats?


-on topic

This is my last post on this thread. There is no point to insist getting any answers since nobody seems to care to respond. I've moved to UE4 a few months ago and I regret nothing. I may return to Unity? Maybe. Who knows, but so far I have no reason to do it, other that making updates to released projects.

 

@Teo :
I would not go down on people like Hippocoder, that at least he respond to the thread and says it's personnal view ( he could have closed it before) .

Don't be so harsh, any 3D engine or software can take any decision it's their buziness not ours, bad or good decisions no one can say. No one could say that Crysis would have financial problems as they have top graphics engine nd made some games, what was the problems ? structure, management ? engine orientations ? games problem ?
Engines changes are not new, could it be not having what you need, dev too slow, not listening to what people want or decisions that don't suits you this happens a lot anywhere. Photoshop moving to monthly payment, many people don't like that, or Esenthel engine took same payment way etc ...
I learned as simple customer to move on, take something that's suits me better and let down when the porduct go in ways i don't like. This thread is useless as UT is perhaps actually not totally decided on final proposition, not something easy to choose as there is many factors , their choice won't be made on some 10 people asking something or exposing their point of view indeed.

 

I don't get that.
You use Unreal for months and you're pretty happy with it. So I wonder why you've been keep coming here for months and write lengthy posts where you criticize Unity.

Honestly, I criticize UT too for several things and UE4 is indeed a strong competitor with a lot advantages over Unity. But I do that because I hope they change stuff in the next coming months and I still see some disadvantages in UE4 for my projects.

But if I would be like you and I already made my mind up in favor for UE4, I would give a fly $hit what is going on with UT and would be busy making my UE4 game.

 

I gave up and subbed to Unreal, rather excited already.. am i being ignorant or have Unity and U4 got very similar workflow now anyways? I find the correct use of tools more significant than ever now.. to my U4 noob mind i don't see a great jump to moving small projects between both engines.. why not learn both if you have the time? Lots of my little things i'm doing now are resolutely no-profit, theyre aimed at widespread knowledge of VR, via Cardboard, and my own and my partners 'virtual storefront', maybe create these for others, none of this makes money, but for decent implementation they rely on what have been pro features in Unity, but sub price for U4 - no brainer, U4's regard for webgl/html5, and mobile publishing, under the same umbrella sub means for a choice of U4 unquestionably, frankly. However I find Unity's community and prototyping Bam making Unity a no brainer at least for getting down ideas prior to implementation in larger scale work. If you have the time and are at the point i'm at, knowledge and appropriate application of either seems easily the most logical decision.

And then there's an intention for creating content for developers on BOTH marketplace things, and releasing on both (eventually) concurrently

Just as a noob, i'm seeing making flashy stuff almost effortless in U4, and for non or low profit making stuff aimed at an end user, U4 makes a lot of sense, however i see neither as mutually exclusive, and unless you're deep into the mill of development for one engine, seeing either as options seems sensible. Both worth investing time into seems the most exciting option of all. I say this just as new to U4 but very impressed at things made easy on U4 that Unity makes a ballache, but Unity, via the Asset Store and community offers much greater, quickly accessible flexibility than U4 currently, unfortunately for a bit of barrier to entry premium, esp to the hobbyist.

In the end I think this discussion is a little redundant again, as you don't stop using a wrench because you got a new hammer, it will be nice for Unity 5 to offer some parity with what U4 offers in shiny and target platform options (as in, free vs pro) but it shouldn't stop playing to its strengths. The strengths are unmistakeably the community support and currently the easy flexibility. That people maintain the discussion shows there's a conflict within themselves over which to settle with - theyre both obviously convincing, but i personally don't see maintaining a relationship with both as a bad thing, in fact covering the costs of BOTH as a matter of course, were i to run a studio and decided U4 was my chosen core technology, i'd still have a corner of the floor or a small room full of Unity Pro (And maybe others too) equipped machines for brainiac concept-programmers to fire off ideas quickly having been given all the tools needed for them best to achieve their ends. So I suggest not getting bogged down in team choosing and get stuck into both as options, this discussion at best at least motivating UT to make Unity as much bang for buck as possible.

If you're so far into development you cant feasibly switch or benefit from strong knowledge of both, then why get all het up, a well argued feature request thread would surely be more constructive to you than this

I'm also truly expecting the new iteration of Valve's Source to bring exactly this kind of debate again, and I hope it fits neatly into a similar workflow to U4 and Unity, in which case there's nothing to lose from broadening horizons and knowing what's in your toolbox

 

Hi, this is offtopic, and filled with various accusations that do not make sense. I do not work for Unity, nor have I said so. Please keep on topic.

 

Unity should unlock all its PRO features and drop the 30day trial. When you are about to release your game commercially, you would need to buy the PRO commercial license. (1500$ for all platforms) . This seems the fairest thing to do.
For noncommercial use, you could release your game with PRO features, without paying 1500$.
For commercial use without paying money, uncheck pro features af export and all of them get turned off.

A thing that Unreal has and Unity should offer is support for non-programmers. Yeah...I'm refering on Blueprints. If Unity could offer official visual scripting tools and the license mentioned above....it would knock down all the competition....

 

I have been using both Unity and UE4. After comparing them side by side for months, there are things I definitely prefer about each solution. UE4's price and rendering features are very compelling. UE4 PBR materials editor is awesome. As a programmer, I love the way Unity lets me code, but not specifically because it is C#. While C# generally allows for cleaner looking code, I actually don't mind C++. I have more experience in C and in C++ than in C#, simply because I have been programming for decades. I still use ANSI C for projects where memory is very limited, like in 8bit microcontrollers in embedded applications. To say the least, I can easily use C++ or C#. The debate about C++ vs C# is not relevant to me.

What I love about Unity's workflow is that I can make changes to my C# code, hit save, and then run the project in the editor. This allows for very rapid iterations. To iterate that quickly in UE4, you must use BluePrint instead of C++. When I use C++, I save my changes, compile my changes, restart the UE4 editor, and then run the project. Cycling the editor seems to be needed to get it to pick up the code changes. That wastes time, even on a fast system.

I have messed around with BluePrint, and it does work as expected. I'm sure non-programmers deeply love BluePrint. It seems to be fantastic for certain things. Personally, I would prefer to code instead of using BluePrint, but iterations are less rapid in UE4 when going the coding route.

The big question for me is whether Unity can match UE4's price and rendering features before UE4 manages to match Unity's coding workflow. The coding workflow is something Unity got very right. UE4 will probably match the coding workflow at some point. Epic's BluePrint workflow already beats Unity for the design-centric (non-programmers) developers.

 

I have messed around with BluePrint, and it does work as expected. I'm sure non-programmers deeply love BluePrint. It seems to be fantastic for certain things
Blueprints hanldes almost every aspect of the engine (animations, physics, navigation ...)
What is really good is that UE put lot of efforts on demos proposed also, they are already great new one and coming others to learn from.

 

Changing and compiling any kind of code without restarting the editor is planed, and so is compilation speed, UE4 is still beta. The first non-beta will rock for sure...

 

I bet it is going to rock. I guess it is a race to see if Unity can match Epic's price and release Unity 5 before Epic hits the non-beta point with UE4.

 

@shiloh,

Well Unity still has to compile C# code changes in which it does when you return to the Editor which takes a few seconds (varies with project size, etc). In ue4, you are just compiling a C++ Game DLL. So that takes about 20 seconds (unless it's the first compile of the day, which might take 2 mins or so). Restarting the Editor took only takes a few seconds too (due to the exe being cached and default scene). This is really fast compile times either way although the nod will go to Unity (unless you are mostly working in ue4 blueprints then its dead even)

Now if you are trying to compile C++ changes within the Editor that did seem slow too me. I found it faster to just restart the editor

 

Many templates of each style on project creation to start from.

 

Well I think the wait is long enough, evaluating Unreal 4.3.. Still not a massive fan of how it works, but a metric ton of improvements and it's really hitting the spot. We start migration on Monday, just sorting out speedtree licences..

Unity community still rocks, looking forward to see what people do with Unity 5.0. I'll still mess around with it, I can't resist .

Still I think as everyone has said in this thread, no matter the fiscals. It's the right tool for the right job and even if Unity can't match Unreal, all that matters is getting your game released.

 

UE 4.3 went from early release to official release today. I see a few welcome Lightmass improvements, a subject discussed earlier in the thread. There are also a few extra goodies that weren't advertised in the preview:

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-43-release

I guess I would just reiterate my hope that UT can reach a point where updates come as frequently and comprehensively.

 

@Daydreamer66

Beat you to it .

 

I pretty quickly became a fan of how U4.3 worked insofar as I saw all the tools opened to me, and the level of raw grunt available without having to tread near Visual Studio, and that was very satisfying, especially with community stuff accelerating quickly and all manner of templates and suchlike opening up. I could feasibly only extremely rarely have to look a code at all! (Not counting shaders) So yes I found that convincing while acknowledging this bang for buck did tend to have me thinking in less flexible ways than Unity would and this would be something i'd have to be careful to pre-unlearn (Disabling a bunch of features from the editor for a start). Still not seeing a 'better than' argument though, esp with Unity not played its hand yet and v.5 looking great, even mentioning in the forum about midi support which is there in U4 and not covering that kind of angle be a major killjoy for a whole market/s

I'm looking forwards to a very surprising situation where tools are really that appealing to use that a somewhat allrounder not-too-intense-on-any-aspect guy such as myself feels taking one up just as enjoyable as another - and this being no longer a case of picking my intended assets from the store, I now have the freedom to choose my pretty amazing engine to use on a per project basis, projects in my case often swinging between being ridiculously primitive and silly, experimental, or extremely time consuming, and covering a lot of bases. Good times!

 

I told ya..

 

Based on asset authors' outlook I do find the constant preoccupation with dx9 a little annoying

 

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-43-release
> 500 updates for 1 sub-version ?! CRAZY!

 

Still spending so long in front of Unity everyday, it takes a lot of guts just to get up and move. I really do hope Unity gets up to speed in the 3D arena.

@lazygunn

As a self professed connoisseur of graphical goodness, I bet you're having a whale of a time.

 

I've just touched the surface! I've been trying to get a handle on the entire thing while moved to get back to some serious game art by this and wanting to give a few asset guys something to demo their scripts/shaders off so i'm getting back into the groove off this momentum. 4.3's shinies look to offer a S***ton of fun but several Unity asset initiatives, esp Lux, which is pro-bono, remind me why there's no replacing it ultimately, and the (getting cheesy now) expanding tool chest only be a good thing.

I know the guys actually making games and their income being based on that can't enjoy my attitude as fully, but from here, to graphics afficionados from whatever side of the fence exists, folks have plenty of really neat stuff to get stuck into, just coming up too, Unity included! Have a look at (again) Lux, and Jove 2.0 (work in progress forum) impresses with its ambition - you can't get stuff like that from engine alone and Unity's community and support are a very tangible asset of the engine, definitely hope that's respected even now when it's being adopted on a rather large scale by Nintendo and various other big boys

 

now.. I love Unity.. the problem is future.. Unreal' development speed is amazing

Look at the updates made one month(4.2 was released a month ago)

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-43-release


Unreal team is working like crazy .. Unreal moved ahead of customer

 

The last update brings big features and lot of added things , it's not only bug fixes. If they bringing such stuff each update , it's impossible to match with them.
A good attention to community ,is contributors to the engine got their names on the credits.
You can't compare the situation as UE is open source and Epic developpers are lot closer to community people as helping on bugs, or working together on new features. Very different from engines making their stuff alone as their dev speed capacity.

 

This is just way too cool. http://pzurita.wordpress.com/2014/0...u-particle-system-micro-optimizations-part-3/

Basically, a guy micro optimized the GPU particles to use 50% less CPU time. His modifications got accepted into the engine, will probably be on the 4.4 branch.

Just goes to show, even if you do not use the source yourself, you can still benefit from it.

 

I'm not going to point fingers, I simply find it amusing.

I realise who I'm talking to, I'm not trying to convince people of anything, simply stating my opinion.
I don't only hang around on the Unity forums, same as anyone serious about development, I'm well aware of other communities and developers and I'm active in those too.
I'm not searching for anything, just trying to add to the conversation with my point of view.

 

Basically, a guy micro optimized the GPU particles to use 50% less CPU time. His modifications got accepted into the engine, will probably be on the 4.4 branch.
UT could take some semi open source way, exposing some systems parts and it could benefit from some people strengh, it's win-win for all and the engine grows lot more faster and better. UE really understood that.

 

I love the Unity and want to continue using it, and I think most of Unity users will stay with it. But it's crucial for those jsut starting. For them a competitive monthly price can be a top advantage and I think Unity should offer something if not hte same, than alike to attract new developers

 

There will come a point with UE4 that all of their base functionality will be in and adding of new features will slow down.
They are still getting it up to speed since they keep saying Beta.
But as with any engine, you have to always improve and keep moving forward. UE4 biggest thing is that they cleaned the slate and started fresh removing things that they don't need to support and building what they need to move forward.
Unity is still supporting systems/functions/hardware from years ago. They are cleaning up old code and working on new features. This takes it toll though on what can/can't be done without effecting other systems (old or new). They are working on it and the changes that Unity is showing is a big improvement and with the new team working on bugs, we are getting updates almost weekly.

 

I'm fully invested in Unity for the next few years as I have Unity Pro / iOS / Android pre-ordered for Unity 5. For me, it was just too much effort to switch engines in the middle of my projects. However, if I were starting out now, I'd probably go the Unreal Engine route. I think that's what Unity needs to be concerned about. They need to be competitive in features and pricing so that they can continue to attract the new game developers. I don't think their business can rely on just those with existing projects or who have already invested heavily in Unity.

I don't mind though ... competition is fantastic. Even if Unity don't match Unreal's price, they will have to compete one way or another and I'm looking forward to seeing how they do that.

 

How do you get this information? Is it reliable? Or are you just guessing?

Users still have to change codes for each major upgrade. That explains why asset store tools always break down for each major upgrade.

Unity is lagging behind during the competition. A high-prize contest will not change much.

Others are running at max. speed while you are still walking.
Please wake up.

 

Well it's common sense, they'll eventually run out of major things to do. Thing is where does that leave Unity when Epic are finished playing about?

 

There is always room for editor and features improments as particles, physics and making engines faster or adding new tools.

 

@ShadowK For example, please? You read unreal 4.2 release note? and unreal 4.3 release note? it's just six week!! I have never seen.. The update is amazing Unreal has a faster speed since March They went crazy.. They are like soldiers on the battlefield

 

To be fair, they slowed down on the UDK updates only because of the UE4 stuff. Looking back, slow down started around 2012, which was the same timeframe they started licensing UE4. At that point, UE3 was already 6 years old.