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My take on this whole Unreal vs Unity.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by intruder77, Jul 18, 2014.

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  1. intruder77

    intruder77

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    First post.

    Just created this account to express my views on this whole Unreal 4 vs Unity issue. I am about to decide on Unity or Unreal for my next project too so this info could be useful to others.

    Quick intro:
    I have worked on many AAA games and some of the biggest franchises in gaming for the past 15 years. I have used all kind of engines from propietary to open source since the 90s.

    These are my general views:

    UNITY
    The Good:
    Overall it's a clean engine with good design. Great workflow. It has a Mac feel to it which I like.

    The Bad:
    It lacks many, many features that are standard in AAA games. The lack of features is enormous. I come from propietary engines with horrendous workflows but with amazing features. Unity seems to be the opposite. A nice little engine with a good heart but no power.

    UNREAL
    The Good:
    Unreal 4 is much, much better than Unreal 3. I hated UE3 and used to make fun of it with my colleagues. UE4 is making me change my oppinion. It has all the AAA features you would expect and the ones that are not there seem to be coming at an insanely fast speed.

    The Bad:
    It's ugly, clunky, big and dirty and "American".

    On a side note.
    I see a lot of complaints from the community everytime Epic releases a demo. They complain about Unity not having all these features. One thing. Even if you had all those features, do you think you could make something similar? It would open your eyes to work at a big studio and see how much time and talent is needed to make the simplest demo.

    Regarding the price.
    It is worrying to read interviews with Unity's management where they say things like "Unreal 4 is the most expensive engine, do the math". Unity's community seems to be based mostly of people with little money trying to hit it big. 19 dollars is all they see. If someone makes a million dollars they will be more than happy to pay Epic 50.000 dollars. Believe me! They would even send them a ton of beer and pizza. 19 is more attractive.

    Didn't Unity used to have a catchphrase that went like this: "The best engine this side of a million dollars". It is funny how now everybody is complaining about Unity's price.

    My main fear with Unity is that investing my time in it could be a waste of my time. I don't want to switch engines mid-project. I have played with it since it came out in 2005 but never felt it was ready for primetime. Maybe now it is but I still have some doubts. I know Unreal has most of the things I will need but I want to give Unity a chance.

    Does Unity have what I need?
    Shader editor? No.
    Cinematics tool? No.
    AI Tools? No.
    Physically based lighting. Wait for 5!
    UI. Wait for 4.6. Are you kidding me?
    Asset Store. Yes. But full of hacky and not integrated stuff.

    Am I on the right boat if I choose Unity? I am not sure. These things come to my mind:
    - Scalability, lack of key basic features, price, uncertainty about commitment to AAA and so on.
    I will wait and see until August for any announcements. But guess what. I am already paying 19 a month for Unreal because it's nothing. Will I buy Unity? We will see.
     
  2. Taschenschieber

    Taschenschieber

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    I'm pretty sure Unity already has an UI. Well, it's not the best UI toolkit ever invented, but it's definitely there and it's definitely

    I would love an immediate step between Unity Free and Unity Pro, maybe something like an Indie version where you get the features of Pro with the turnover limit of Free, for an indie-friendly price (something lower than, say, $100). But I'm not a business guy, so I can't judge if that would work for Unity Technologies.
     
  3. Teremo

    Teremo

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    I'm very new to game design, hell, I can't even get a ball to roll properly on a 2D game I'm trying to create. Heck, I don't even know how to properly program my game. I know my opinion won't count much but here it goes:

    I've realized Unity works for people like me, I'm broke, I work full time, go to school full time, and I have a family I need to take care of; I can't find it in my budget to use an engine I have to shell out $19.00 a month just to use when I'm only a beginner.

    So yes, you can say Unity is for poor people wanting to make it big. Even if you don't make it big, Unity still will not charge you until your game makes atleast $100,000.
     
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  4. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    It's arguably one of the worse UI toolkits if you're trying to make an interface for your game and not an editor extension.
     
  5. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Isn't it wonderful then that you don't have to stay subscribed? The primary benefit to staying subscribed is getting access to updates as they are released. You could just as easily subscribe for a single month every so often (ie every six months).

    You do not need a subscription to sell your product, but you still have to deal with royalties (first $3,000 per quarter per game does not count towards royalties).
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2014
  6. OutSpoken_Gaming

    OutSpoken_Gaming

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    Can you explain the "American" part?
     
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  7. Daydreamer66

    Daydreamer66

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    Haha, I noticed that, but was wondering more about the "ugly, clunky, big and dirty" part. Compared to what? The interface has been getting pretty rave reviews overall, and it's completely customizable.

    Perhaps he meant some of the additional editors integrating better into the primary editor (like Cascade?). I know this is on their to do list.
     
  8. CodeMonke234

    CodeMonke234

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    Ue4 is prettier...but a lot of things aren't quite there yet
    Like 2d
    Ui
    Mac platform support
    iOS and android is not nearly as mature as unity
    No asset store
    Don't get me wrong - give it time and they will give unity a run for the money.
    4.3 is crazy filled with new stuff....and their pace of development is crazy.

    My advice - learn both.
    If you want to deliver in the next few months, use unity.

    The competition between them is the best thing to happen for indie development ever.
     
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  9. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Unity didn't even have native 2D support until 8 months ago. People kinda seem to forget that.
     
  10. nipoco

    nipoco

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    Yes but now it has.
    So what's your point?

    Umm, I gotta wonder, if you actually tried UE4. Because it's certainly not "clunky", nor is it "dirty", or "ugly"
     
  11. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    My point is that people hold Unity's 2D implementation (which is honestly not even that good) as some amazing thing that only Unity has. Even UE4's basic 2D implementation already comes close to Unity's.
     
  12. Teo

    Teo

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    I think if Unity do not wake up will be game over for them soon. Are about 5 months since UE4, and Unity did not moved a finger in any direction, except asking us how to improve the product. Hilarious...
     
  13. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    They asked us how they could improve Unity, disappeared, and honestly it all feels like a play to keep us placated. ESPECIALLY when almost everything that was said in those threads has been covered in the feedback section multiple times by now.
     
  14. Teo

    Teo

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    Totally agree with you here, right now, nothing beats 19+5% if you make less that 3k per quarter.

    And I would like to add something that some peoples seems to miss. Full Unity is 5000 USD right? Well, for EU is 5000 Euro + 25VAT and thats 8125 USD. So for Eurozone UE4 is even much more attractive to start with.
     
  15. TheRaider

    TheRaider

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    The UI in UE4 makes unity current UI look totally awesome as!

    I am surprised there wasn't better out of the box UI for blueprints.
     
  16. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    That's not how it works. It's 1,140 € or 1,425 € with VAT.
     
  17. DallonF

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    (emphasis mine)

    Ummm... you realize development takes time, right? The disappearance isn't a conspiracy, it's them getting to work.
     
  18. SinovenatoR

    SinovenatoR

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    I think that Unity complicates the easiest tasks to become the hardest tasks. It needs easier ways to do the easier things.
     
  19. Deleted User

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    Firstly I'm sure they appreciate the thread on this OP, but we have quite a few "Freds" on ths already. (*Cough, excuse me).

    Secondly, I was holding out for the world composition functionality in UE4. They said they were working on it and they'd aim for 4.3 to be released in X amount of time, two months later it's in. It needs some work but I'm having fun with it and all the new features.

    I couldn't expect any more of them, that's great communication!. Simple and effective, so exactly what is the difference here?
     
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  20. sandboxgod

    sandboxgod

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    Yeah if I were a brand new indie startup choosing between the two would be a tough choice. Granted, you could get plugins to fill in those holes by catching them on sale. Like ShaderForge, FULL Ik, Daikon Forge (UI) or NGUI, etc. But yeah choosing between Unity Pro and UE4 on an indie budget, ouch!

    Try buying the equivalents of these plugins on UE4 side. For now, for UI there is only Coherent UI til UMG is completed (knowing Epic probably in the master branch I'd bet its usable by now I havent checked). Anyway Coherent costs like $19 a month? Then there is that IK plugin on UE4 side that would cost ya another $19 a month or whatever they charge. But Epic does have built in IK and FABRIK now so in time (if not now) you could forego those options

    My only guess he means the C++ architecture. Such as, how it uses 'unity' .cpp files to merge a bunch of Classes together. At least in UE3, I know some programmers have gotten 'dirty' and declared Classes in the cpp and relied on the unity-merger to combine the changes. Sometimes adding other files to the unity cpp could break some other hackery. [edit] Note, without the unity cpp method compiles would take way longer forcing users to look into Incredibuild. Also, last I checked, namespaces did not work. I have read putting your ue4 gameplay code in your Game DLL can mangle things. Havent tried it myself

    But that would be my main guess.

    Not sure why they made "fun" of UE3 at their office. Yeah, UnrealScript was probably something to be made fun of sure. But besides that it was really good. Granted, the version of UE3 we used at my office was heavily modified by a different studio. None of us actually bothered to look at a 'stock' UE3 (actually some of us did but not sure how it compared to the modified version I actually used). So no idea how bad that was. In the title we did with it UnrealScript was barely used beyond the bare bones required by Epic's architecture at the time. This is all gone in UE4 of course

    [edit] Added some extra detail to my post
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2014
  21. sandboxgod

    sandboxgod

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    Yeah but you could probably afford to pay $19 right now for UE4, turn off the sub, and start making a game with it. Then in a few months you re-sub to UE4 once its further along to grab any updates you want. Realistically my guess would be bout $19-60 bucks but that is just a wild guess for an indie. Granted, there is Unity Free but you will have to probably buy some stuff from Asset Store. The 'startup' costs to get your game out the door is probably pretty close eh?

    Good luck with your game. I am enjoying my Unity project
     
  22. ZJP

    ZJP

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    This...
     
  23. BelfegnarInc

    BelfegnarInc

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    Can we see it? And what was your role in it? Something like placing objects in the scene? Programming? Other?
    I see it differently. When you install unity - it is only the beginning. 80% of engine is in Assetstore (in my case - in my own code). Unity interested me with its extensibility. You do not have to write the renderer, the core part, it's all there. All you lacking, you can (and should) write by yourself. Otherwise, you can hardly go far away from the standard demo scenes. It might be a problem for the designer-style development (perhaps even for AAA, I do not know it). But for me it's good. And all that with the ability to build for many platforms 'out of the box'. And it works very fast on them, if you know what you're doing.. Which platforms are you going to be released on?
    So it's actually: Unreal vs Unity+AssetStore
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2014
  24. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    You do realise that addressing the concerns presented in a reasonable way is an important part of community interaction, right?
     
  25. SememeS

    SememeS

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    Shader editor? No. < Yes, but you have to pay * or code it yourself
    Cinematics tool? No. < Yes, but you have to pay * or code it yourself
    AI Tools? No. <Yes, but you have to pay * or code it yourself
    Physically based lighting. Wait for 5! <Err.. no. Lux (free), Skyshop, Alloy, Jove, Antonov Suit (free) * or code it yourself
    UI. Wait for 4.6. Are you kidding me? Lol, patience young padawan. p.s: I'm freaking out waiting too!
    Asset Store. Yes. But full of hacky and not integrated stuff. < ... There is lots of high quality assets/scripts/tools/fameworks/etc that are very well supported. I agree though it could use a good cleanup to remove most unsupported/hacky messes that are rotting on the asset store.

     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2014
  26. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Okay, let's play this game. The only products I've listed here are ones that I've used myself and will 100% stand behind, are Unity Free compatible, and will allow you to commercially release a game.


    Shader Forge - $80


    Aperture - $40


    RAIN is actually a very good AI kit that you can get for free.


    Daikon Forge GUI Library - $75
    I'm making a game now, not "at some point in the future." I need a functional and well documented GUI system, which Unity doesn't have and probably won't have until at least one major update after the uGUI release, if Mechanim, Shuriken, and the 2D tools are any indication.

    Playmaker - $95
    One of UE4's major selling points is having a visual scripting editor, so let's not leave that out.

    After adding all this up, we end up with $290 to append some of the major features from UE4 to Unity. Of course, now we end up with a serious problem. See, that's actually $50 more than the cost of licensing UE4 for an entire year.

    edit: For the sake of being fair, let's not include DFGUI because UE4 doesn't have full-native UI support yet (though it's incredibly easy to make one using Blueprint) and compare that number too.

    Now you end up with $215, which will get you 11 months of continuous UE4 licensing, provided you dig around in your couch for some change.
     
  27. Deleted User

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    I'm going to add some defence to Unity here, spent the weekend with UE4. Created a 4KM terrain and set up all the shaders etc. with little fuss. Now firstly there is a couple of bugs here with terrains, one being it likes to add black marks when you paint and when you do add some paint to the terrain it fills out the whole quad. But fair enough I'm sure Epic will fix it. Also some lightbleeding going on with lightmass in places.. Hmm!

    Whilst I find Unreal easy to use and it has a mass of decent tools, I call UE4 the time succubus. I swear down if I have to bake lightmass whenever I tweak the lighting or keep compiling thousands of shader instructions with speedtree and that big wad of terrain every time I change a little thing I am going to throw my montior out of the window.

    I find UE4 workflow PAINFULLY slow compared to Unity. Also I think it's bad for your health, whenever I'm waiting for UE4 to do whatever it does I find myself making a coffee or nibbling food and at this rate I'll end up a fat caffeine junkie.
     
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  28. Daydreamer66

    Daydreamer66

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    I hear ya. Although, to be fair, you only have the wait for shaders to compile the first time you compile/bake a level after creating or editing a material. Those shaders tend to add quite a chunk of time. My preferred workflow is to get as much of a level done as possible, including material set up, before doing any serious baking and tweaking. But yeah, I would still love to see some speed improvements there.

    I'm already a pudgy caffeine junkie. :oops:
     
  29. Deleted User

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    @Daydreamer66

    Thing is Lightmass has such an impact on how things look, you'll want to mess around with the enviro color and resolutions, swap out skylights etc.. Also you swap out a texture on a material applied to the terrain and it takes ages, you need to tweak to get the best out of a scene.

    I could be enticed into using Unity 5.0 still, that's if I ever hear what's going on with it.
     
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  30. OutSpoken_Gaming

    OutSpoken_Gaming

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    I'm still wanting to know what the "American" is referring to. I'm not offended or anything, I would just like to know what that means exactly.
     
  31. sandboxgod

    sandboxgod

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    You tried turning off Lightmass and going the LPV route (full dynamic lighting)? Lionhead's Fable looks crazy good and they claim its all dynamic in the blog.

    Hopefully will be done with my unity project in another few weeks. Will hop back to ue4 then to see how its improved. I'm waiting on their "animation retargeting to any skeleton". Not terribly concerned bout the Lightmass thing- since I will just recruit some artists and let them deal with it. They should be used to all that :)

    Maybe we'll get a full blown LPV solution after Fable ships.
     
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  32. yoonitee

    yoonitee

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    I like Unity because it's incredibly easy. Once you learn: myGameObject.GetComponent<MyComponent>() (That's the bit that kept tripping me up. I mean it's not very nice. Why not myGameObject.myComponent ? ) And the nightmare of figuring out for the first time how to get a list of child gameObjects. In Flash/Actionscript you can reference a child object just with a dot. But after you learn these things its farily straight forward.

    Unreal on the other hand. I can't even figure out how to paint a cube properly. Plus it's really slow on my laptop. AND C++ is a horrible language to use. It needs a proper scripting language and NOT just blueprints.


    Apparently the latest version (4.3) is better on slow computers but I'll have to pay another $19 to try this update. Not just now. :(

    As an indie I KNOW I'm not going to make AAA games so I don't need a AAA engine.
     
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  33. Deleted User

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    I'm going to try it out tonight, I think UE4 would be near perfect without lightmass / minus a few bugs.
     
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  34. kaiyum

    kaiyum

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    hmm, for a beginner to game development or/and total newbee to UE/unity:
    I would suggest to grab free copy of unity3d and start making games with it. When you have enough cash to lurk over newer technologies and can afford time, you can always try UE4 and Cryengine too then.

    UE4 is an excellent engine for sure, any AAA super duper graphics targeted developer should look at UE4. But making a AAA is a big big and really big task. You need money, time and experience of years, trust me.

    With some funky blueprints, you will make next angry bird or minecraft or temple run clone with next-gen graphics and consequently will make grand of $$$, Stop it. Its not going to work.
     
  35. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    There's a lot of "you can only make AAA games with UE4" attitudes here.

    I don't think a lot of people here know what game engines do.
     
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  36. kaiyum

    kaiyum

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    @Murgilod, UE4 can also do non-AAA games, but it takes time to learn another engine. New engine. new architecture. I don't feel ok with blueprint based on what I saw on their youtube channel and official documentations. You need C++. So new language change specially from C# to C++. It is huge, specially for beginner in game development. Unity is meant for beginners/Newcomer. UE4 is a massive engine. I can bring it down within a month, but "me from two years ago" dare not!
     
  37. Murgilod

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    You don't "need" C++. You can create a game entirely in Blueprint if you so desire.
     
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  38. kaiyum

    kaiyum

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    Isn't that 20 times slower as I have heard.
     
  39. yoonitee

    yoonitee

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    But it's so much easier to do things in a scripting language like C#. I can type Mathf.sqrt(x*x+y*y) in 3 seconds.
     
  40. SememeS

    SememeS

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    I have both engines(Ue4 and Unity Pro). I use Ue4 with my friends we have a perforce server going for our project. I use Unity Pro for my own projects because its just what I like.

    Blueprints aren't for everyone. I like to code in C# many others out there do too.

    You don't "need" either Unity or Unreal. Just use what you like most.
     
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  41. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    You don't always need the raw speed of C++, especially in scripting. Hell, I'm willing to bet that the execution time differences between Unityscript, C# in Unity, and Blueprint are almost nil.
     
  42. Daydreamer66

    Daydreamer66

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    There's a new BP math node which makes it as simple as that.
     
  43. kaiyum

    kaiyum

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    Are you sure of it dear? The following situation is very important to me:(AI)
    On each frame or particular conditioned moment, an master object/actor will request various properties of at least dozens objects/actor. Then a big decision script will work on each and every object on scene and pass the information to each-other. Then some checker script will check for all objects to make sure all is ok. You see heavy amount of processing. Speed is crucial for me.

    Another scenario is certain gesture detection, for inputs.
     
  44. Daydreamer66

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    Yep, that sounds like something you'd want to do in C++ (which would also be faster than C# scripting I imagine).
     
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  45. Deleted User

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    You can write decent performing engines in C# with OpenTK, it's not C# that's the issue here.
     
  46. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    There's a reason I specified C# in Unity. It's kinda a long-standing thing that it's nowhere near as performant as it should be.
     
  47. yoonitee

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    Yeah. But you still have to drag the node into place and connect up the wires etc. In a scripting language when I want to write the next "node" I just press return.

    As for speed. It is possible in C# to write "unsafe" blocks which execute very fast. Not sure if you can do that in Unity... but it could if it wanted to.
     
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  48. Daydreamer66

    Daydreamer66

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    It's certainly a different workflow, but as with all things, it depends on the task at hand and your own preference. Some tasks will be faster with Blueprints, and some with scripting. Of course, C++ also has a run time speed advantage, which is nice if you simply like to do all your work in code.
     
  49. Taschenschieber

    Taschenschieber

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    C# is not really "scripting", C# is compiled into CLR bytecode (similar to Java) which is pretty close to native code (in C++) or similar in terms of speed. Same thing for UnityScript and Boo (does anyone even use Boo, anyway?). Of course, that leaves the efficiency of the library out of the consideration, and of course, the same might be true for Blueprint (or it could even be compiled into real native code).

    If Unity's C# is too slow, it's probably not C#s fault but either that of the Unity libraries or of your code.
     
  50. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Or, you know, Unity's ancient Mono implementation.
     
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