General feedback & other software.

Let's try this out for a bit and see what happens.

We want your feedback, sometimes that means starting comparison threads, these always lead to fights and closing which is a shame. So, this thread is to give us feedback even straight up comparing our features or lack thereof to our competitors.

A few notes before posting; Stay civil, we all have our preferences and views but accept that others have their own. Anyone starting or participating in fights will be removed from posting in the thread. If it really gets out of hand this thread will be closed and experiment failed, and you'll be the reason you can't have nice things.

 

This is a thread that to compare Unity to other Features?

Okay here I go, this is why I PERSONALLY just adore Unity.

1. I dont have to learn complicated as hell C++ to make a block go from right to left. (Yes I can learn Blueprints but really, it's not even simplified C++ it's just visualized.)
2. It's simple to start a project and get a prototype going in under a day. Unlike CryEngine, Unreal, etc.
3. I can choose to switch between C# and JS without have conflicting file types. (If I'm not trying to access one another)
4. I'm not restricted to file formats! I can PSDs on certain textures, fbx, or 3ds over here, etc. Unreal is only fbx (shame), and I dont even want to try importing models and meshes into CryEngine.
5. I can choose what my game looks like. If I decide to use Unreal, and it's a 3D project, I'm expected to make the game look like a god tier game because of all Epic's built in shader's etc. This is great for some companies who can do this! Dont get me wrong, but for an indie dev, their professional basic shader's make my S*** look like garbage.
6. Overall, the UI for Unity is straight forward: place Cube here. Make text appear here. I dont have to search under, Materials > Import Materials > Make sure Textures are configured, etc.

That's all I can think of right now. The only thing, that would make Unity GOD TEIR, would be to have better Shader creating tools built straight into Unity, yeah, I can go buy something like ShaderForge, but not everyone has $100 that they would drop down to create more shaders. Also, I havent even checked but how is the documentation for making Shader's?

Other than that, I love you guys. Please dont ever leave me bb.

 

Aurore
please change the name to something that implies it is about stingray and unity comparison

 

No, because it's not JUST about stingray.

 

it is about unity and stingray not unreal and cryengine we already know why we prefer unity
this name makes the thread uncontrollable

 

It is about everything else as well though, that's the point. As I mentioned, it's been requested quite a bit to have something like this.

 

One feature I'd really like to see in Unity is multi user scene editing. I know that has been hinted at before, but that was a long time ago.
Right now we are using the Asset Server (I know, it's legacy), and it just doesn't quite cut it. The only thing it needs is the ability for more than one person to work on a scene together. Live or not, it wouldn't matter to us, live editing would be incredibly cool though.
Right now using unity in a large team is cumbersome because of that.

 

I'd like to see some form of visual scripting. I mean, it's not that really hard to go and write some code in C#, but I think it would help with prototyping and new users.

 

You should look into uScript, the asset on the Asset Store. I haven't delved into it, but it looks like what you're asking for.

 

In the interest of being constructive, there are a few things that keep me checking out ue4 for my next big project but one clearly stands out above all of them:

1) Visual shader editor - Unity really needs this builtin, I simply don't feel good about depending on something like ShaderForge for a major project when it is 3rd party and deals with a core critical component of all games. With PBR and standard shader it sort of feels like we've been given a Ferrari with no keys, so we have to g hack on it to get it to start.

 

The thing that keeps me with Unity is its [better] support for procedural generation. I find that Unreal Engine is very much biased toward static content created in its editor. While it's certainly possible to generate procedurally, I feel like it's unnecessarily difficult and painful especially compared to Unity. And I feel like I'm fighting the engine. They did recently add a procedural mesh component, but I couldn't even figure out how to use it without blueprints. I do not want to use blueprints for this type of thing.

And this issue seems rather common with game engines. They're all about static content with amazing graphics created in editors. I like procedural, and my focus tends not to be on graphics.

So far, Unity has done the best for me in this area and has made my life the easiest. I would prefer better support for it though:

-Better procedural lighting support (too much focus on lightmapping, though I understand that it's a challenging problem to create procedural lighting that performs properly).

-Navigation support for procedurally generated worlds (no navmesh baking).

-Option to specify 32-bit vertex indices. Sure, I can break my terrain meshes into even smaller pieces but that's at the cost of many draw calls.

-Support for larger worlds. Allow double precision option for world coordinates. Procedural worlds can be very, very large.

 

If you ever give us the ability to code in Swift using Xcode, I'll be blown away. That would even be worth sub money to me, that is how much I would like that feature

 

Autodesk Vision Series - Virtual Production

Go to 17:50 or skip to 22:17 to see it in action

 

Speaking on the other software, I kind of like Microsoft Edge.

 

wiseguy

 

Go to 9:17

 

What I'm personally missing:
Built-in visual shader editor.
Built-in visual scripting.
More shaders.
Even I'm a pro user, let people pay a smaller fee than pro to be able to get rid of unity "personal edition" splash screen in their builds.
For asset store, let people have the ability to create coupon code or have some personal sales without having to go over each individual asset to change the price (this might be the toughest cookie).
That's all what I can think of right now.

 

If someone walked up to me tomorrow and said, for a 3D game would you recommend Unreal / CE / Unity or (potentially stingray).. My first reply would be Unreal, without a question. But why?

I've been prototyping in Unity, not used it for a while before so please correct me if I'm wrong in any instance.

• Enlighten was a good move, but it's having the opposite effect to what was desired. The realtime bit was the winner, but Beast gave more accurate results, took less time and on the whole did the job. My experience with Enlighten so far has been slow, inconsistent results that didn't add much to the equation. In terms of look it's nowhere near on the same playing field as Lightmass or VXGI.

• The post is well out of date, some of it I've had hacky success at getting around. Did some TAA and managed to hit a performance bottleneck with DC's. I've asked some other people like Hippo and Aieth who does Jove, were all at a loss with it.. I'd at this point be embarrassed to release a game with how Unity looks, it's still 5 to 10 years out of date, things like the terrain system and general lighting just exacerbate the issue. I've seen on threads the guys from Alloy etc. noting how the rendering / lighting pipeline has been set up. The one thing I know is UE4 looks gorgeous with the correct artwork, you guys need to follow suit..

• Still a lack of tools in all areas, in Unreal you can pretty much have anything.. You want a material editor? World creation and auto streaming solution (with support for AI and Navmesh)? Want an advanced terrain system? Want Deffered decal support? Want a boat load of game tutorials to learn from? Mesh Vertex Painting? Scaleform like UI? Apex? Hairworks? VXGI? Advanced particle systems? Cinematic tools? DFAO, DFGI, LPV, BSP I could keep going for a long time here.. Is it all necessary? NO! Does it show the sheer difference between the two.. Ohhh yess!.

• Iteration speed, Unreal moves fast and you can move fast with Unreal.. I've taken a sidestep from an original opinion, UE is far faster to get professional results. Let's say you're creating a simple material, want to add some depth then you just slap in a bump offset node, want POM? Slap in a node, want to add a camera distance roll off for textures or noise variations? Dynamic skies, character controllers, camera controls, trigger information, input for UI.. You name it, you can create it in a handful of nodes with UE.. It is FAR simpler to use, even on the coding side (not using Visual scripting, which I am actually becoming accustomed to) It's far less verbose and in terms of actual difficulty a lot of it is self contained so you don't give yourself enough rope. Also the community is churning things out at such a pace (generally free too), whatever you need is at your finger tips. Last point is of course not Unity's fault entirely, but opening things up helps..

• Performance, the latest version of UE runs better than Unity does. I was in shock when I first found out this revelation, two identical scenes.. UE was running LPV / DFAO / DFGI / RTDS and partial dynamic cascades for shadows, I was getting 60 FPS @ 4K res + all the post maxed out. With Unity, less post and semi-realtime lighting.. 30 FPS... HMMMM

• Pro Users, well as much as I think Personal edition is awesome. I feel the Pro users got the short end of the stick.. The only reason why you'd pay for Unity is the paywall, not because it gives professionals an advantage to stay competitive in the market.

In summary, at this point I've not a clue why you'd choose Unity. Sorry, might sound a little harsh but this was my viewpoint after another extended period of use.

 

Asset store clean up would be good. Maybe an auto email to creators each time there's an update & if they don't respond then the asset is taken down as being unsupported so that people don't buy it & find it doesn't work on the latest version & the creator is no longer supporting it.

Apart from that, a lot of people in class would like built in visual scripting to help them get started while they learn how to code to expand on it. Others of us at the basic stage would like better shader support.

Thanks

 

Can you elaborate? Like an actual example. I have hard time seeing how UE4 coding could be easier than Unity.

 

Never said it was easier, just less verbose.. Pretty much equates to, it's no where near as bad as some made it out to be. AKA it's not the reason to avoid UE4..

 

As far as I'm concerned, C# > C++. I'd much rather use C#. I'd like to have a language that runs at C++ speeds, but is much nicer than C++. There's Swift (very unlikely to get supported I'd think), or there's IL2CPP coming up - close enough. I don't think the speeds will be much of a problem in either case.

 

Can you elaborate how it is less verbose? Like an actual example.

 

Not that I don't prefer C# in some instances, although in UE memory management / garbage allocation is taken care of for you.. Plus the VS system is actually pretty awesome once you get used to it.

I wouldn't forsake the mass advantages of all the other features for something that's not really an issue. If you have to have C# for whatever reason, then Unity it is.

@sunnyshine

No, it'd be a waste of time.. Most people have character controllers, here's one below for UE4 in C++ you can compare with.

https://github.com/jlamarche/Explor...Source/Explorer/Private/ExplorerCharacter.cpp

Or check out a BP example:

 

I'm a unity user but for a project I tried unreal , I backed to unity again I'll tell you my reason and my experience with unreal

first of all , I think java script and c# are a piece of cake while c++ is considered as a hard programming language and this is my main reason for choosing unity
and playmaker works just fine for visual scripting

my experience with unreal:

I had a girl character with detailed hair that supposed to look at herself in the mirror

I had problem with hair in unreal , for transparent material you have 2 options , 1 is cutout that works fine with light , the other is semitransparent that doesn't work with light , I needed semitransparent because cutout material make her hair jagged and ugly , but as I mentioned semitransparent doesn't work with light , but I wanted her hair to be very shiny

by the way I needed an-isotropic specularity for her hair , regarding her hair is so detailed , I didn't want a plastic looking hair , but it turned out an-isotropic is impossible in unreal because it is just deferred rendering and has not forward rendering

the third problem , I needed a mirror but again mirror is also impossible in unreal because of deferred , while it is easy to make a mirror in unity

I left unreal and backed to unity and made all of them the best way possible

 

I don't i want any future from other software or engine in Unity, Unity is pretty perfect atm. Maybe some better way to work with bone riggs for different meshes.

 

Well, depends on what you're making...

-Sure, a material editor. I have Shader Forge already.
-Neither GI solution in Unity and Unreal works for my game.
-My game uses pixel graphics (3D voxel engine, need 32x32 pixel tiles so that I can fit a very large number without draw call/memory issues), so fancy Unreal graphics don't appeal much to me.
-Any kind of advanced terrain system doesn't really apply to me, I create it procedurally using a voxel-based system.
-Mesh vertex painting is not relevant.
-Unity's UI works fine for me.
-Unreal's engine performs terribly on my Mac, heating it up and causing the fans to run. I'd prefer not to burn my hands off while typing on the keyboard due to how inefficient the engine is. I tried just a few weeks ago and this was still true.

Most of that isn't relevant. If what you're going for is super fancy, AAA graphics with all kinds of realistic visual effects, I am sure you're right to say that Unreal is the best choice.

I, however, care little for this. I am more interested in gameplay mechanics than I am in graphics. And for the type of game I'm making, Unity seems to be quite superior.

Certainly, there are some features of Unreal Engine that would be great to have in Unity (from my personal perspective). But I don't think these are worth switching engines for, especially to be forced to use C++ and have a terribly performing editor.

 

I was just looking for better graphic and I backed to unity

 

1. You kinda have to get used to certain things in Unreal, you might of needed to sharpen the texture (in the editor settings) to rub off the effects of the DXT compression for the alpha cutout.. Translucent surfaces work with light for me, but they are generally good for things like windows where you use a reflection probe to cast, errr reflections like windows do .. You need to control the opacity via a multiply, there are some examples with the engine.

2. Seems you missed this then , https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?60501-WIP-Hair-Material-with-anisotropic-reflections.

3. Use Scenecapture2D and a render target to make a mirror effect..

 

Here's a video tutorial for the method ShadowK mentioned. It's literally the first result on YouTube for "Unreal mirror", but you likely missed it because the tutorial is only two months old. Though there is one other example that appears to be similar and is a year old.

 

I missed that the hair looks good

that's not a mirror no way
I've watched 3 of them sorry but this is stupid
it is little like a mirror but that's obvious it is fake and it would be more obvious if you put that in somewhere like a room instead of landscape
it doesn't work you can't make a mirror just by a camera
you need 2d projection as well and some other things

 

You can do that in UE by using mesh instancing, plus it's pretty simple to procedurally generate them in BP's. But sure it's not for everyone..

There's two reasons I'd say go for Unity, you're using old hardware or Intel based graphics on a laptop (something along them lines) or you're doing mobile. I'm not sure how much UE has improved in the mobile area, but last time I checked it was rather heavy.

UE has a tendancy to suck below the editor min specs (GTX470), but anything around that or above it's fine.

 

does unreal have a builtin water system?

 

My Mac has great CPU/RAM/etc. The problem is likely the lack of a dedicated graphics card. Only has the builtin Intel Iris. Planning on getting a new Mac pretty soon to address that issue and then maybe Unreal will perform better.

I am targeting mobile, yes. It's my main target at the moment.

 

don't forget an empty scene will be more than 60 mg with unreal

 

I feel like any mobile device actually capable of running Unreal won't have any troubles fitting that extra 60MB.

 

the problem is the internet cost for mobils

 

I honestly wouldn't know about Internet costs for mobile devices. There are so many free WiFi hotspots near me, usually at least one or two even in rural areas, that I haven't bought a voice/data plan for my Android phone. I simply don't need it.

 

If you live where I live, that's another story

 

free wifi isn't everywhere and people usually travel , anyway 60mg maybe is not a big issue for US , but you should target Asian countries mostly for mobile

 

does unreal have a builtin water system?

 

Are most of them going to have a sufficiently powerful mobile device to actually play an Unreal game though?

 

sorry? most of your smartphones come from china and Korea

 

Most phones coming from there isn't the same thing as targeting users from there.

Not any more than Unity does.

 

well , they play mobile games more than others

but unity has a good one

 

You're trolling aren't you? Unity does not have a built-in water volume any more than Unreal does.

 

Isn't this getting off topic & threatening to have the thread shut down before we get to make constructive suggestions?

 

what?
everybody knows unity has a good water system try water 4 in unity5
and be cool

 

It's not a "water system" it's a material applied to a mesh that simulates water.. The only engine with a proper water system in it is CE..

Yes Unreal has water materials you get for free too. Let's all stay snazzy, this has been constructive so far ..

 

off topic???
General feedback & other software