Thoughts from the ground up: Unity, Unreal Engine, Unreal Tournament...

Background:

I'm in beginner stages of learning full solo game development. That's all aspects: game programming, networking, design, modeling, rigging, 2D/3D, audio. My focus aside from this, and always ongoing, is web and system development using Go. Prior to this, it's been a mix of some C#/.NET, C++, and PHP unfortunately. I don't have much money. This means persisting as a struggling game maker till success or failure ensues.

Choosing a heavyweight engine will be my priority soon. I've been biding time ever since Unreal decided to 'get real.' I'm waiting till after Unity's 2014 conference in late August. Countless game developers are facing this choice, surely. Honest sentiments from potential customers are the only way to improve, right? Unity Tech. seems willing to adapt to grow.


Unity:

• Unity is good. Lots of things to appreciate relatively. Easy to see how it's been so successful.
• Unity supports Linux, despite the lack of a client. That originally made me consider choosing it, while previously not giving Unreal a second thought.
• Unity suffers from that Mono IDE with sometimes frustrating autocomplete/intellisense. Still tolerable.
• A capable free version is/was brilliant strategy. It paved the path for Unity.
• However, increasingly, the prospect of using a stripped down version -- free or not -- is hard to justify. It significantly impacts my learning and doesn't necessarily compel the upgrade. Instead it gives me doubt to the whole prospect/tactic.
• Unity is not open source. There's a basic ethos to me. This includes (when I can help it) not blindly trusting yet more closed/secretive software to produce native programs, which forces me to hope for the best and feel complacent and negligent in my duty to users. It's the case no matter how noble, mainstream, or friendly a company like Unity is. Closed software is increasingly an inconsiderate approach. It's Microsoft-era mentality. I definitely understand that most people just want to get their games into the most hands. I've got that desire too. Though I will note, Unity is one of the few platforms I've ever actually considered devoting a lot of time to, despite its closed nature. It goes to show Unity has a powerful draw. Still, with the Unreal announcement, it currently sits me right on the edge of not considering it.
• Supporting basic platforms on Unity Pro: $225/month.

Unreal:

• Unreal didn't/doesn't support Linux. They're working on this and on a native client too. So that gets me interested.
• Unreal Tournament 2014: Free. It isn't mentioned much in the Unity vs. Unreal threads. This will have a profound impact in how it pulls subscribers into Unreal. The game will pull in millions of users at least by virtue of being a blockbuster and free. There will be countless mods, new games emerging based off UT2014, just as there was with UT '99. Of that base, arguably tens to hundreds of thousands of people considering moding UT (the usual game devs and artists), that will create an instant hook into being familiar with UE and becoming Unreal subscribers in due course. That sort of community suction is not to be underestimated over a couple years.
• Open source.
• Negative: no Linux currently. How long? Not sure.
• Negative: C++ isn't as friendly. Not necessarily negative though, as it's a valuable skill to learn.
• Supporting basic platforms on Unreal: $19/month.

Strategy:

Obviously, I can't speak for Unity's strategy and considerations as a company. Revenue keeps employees fed and development emerging, and all. But so does taking a long-term view before tides shift. Some things that I think would make Unity take the world by storm:

• Fully open source
• No separation of platforms
• Breakthrough pricing:
  • If Unity were ~ $5/month, all access, for indies, how many users do you think currently using free would sign up in a heartbeat? It would be a huge number, I have to imagine. Hell, I would've subscribed over year+ ago despite only toying around with Unity. Would my measly $60 in that year have mattered to Unity? Well, making a subscriber out of me could've lead to my being a lifetime subscriber with time further invested, which could open doors in those other revenue streams and assets. At $5/month, how many people would choose Unity over Unreal -- and likely now choose Unity and Unreal (where they might've otherwise only done Unreal)? A lot...
• Breakthrough strategy:
  • Unity should drop the "3D" branding, which it's starting to do, good...
  • Cross platform GUI and gaming. Evolve Unity into the ultimate cross-platform, multifaceted engine for all types of software, not just games. There's only a trivial focus on non-games in one of your pages. And that's focused on heavy 3D tasks for obvious reasons. Branching out this way means having as much dev & branding focus on becoming an engine for cross-platform GUI desktop software as there is for gaming right now. It's 2014 and there are still no great multi-GUI solutions for linux/mac/win/ios/android/etc. that offer choice of both same-controls or native controls. Qt is a cumbersome. Gtk? ha, no. Xamarin? Costs too much, not open source (only mono is...).
  • Did I mention Unity being fully open source? The dynamics/attitudes of Microsoft vs. Google come to mind as some platforms resist it.
  • Better integration of payment gateways, ad networks, software building blocks/templates (once it's also focused on GUI)...
  • Speed, speed, speed. It's one thing to be unified and another to have the overhead of a 3D engine where it isn't needed for normal apps/software. This process would be seamless with a cult-like devotion to giving us speed and concurrency.

...said with respect. Thanks for listening.

 

Unreal is not open source. Open source means that it's available under a completely free license, not "the commercial product I licensed comes with source code." Few solo developers are going to have time to customize a complex game engine at that level (it's time-consuming enough getting a game done with a vanilla engine under the best of circumstances).

As far as the MonoDevelop IDE being a negative, if you're on Windows you can use Visual Studio Express, which is free:
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-express-vs.aspx

Unity has already done the max market share thing with their $0/month product. Having a $5/month product that gives away everything probably doesn't make sense from a profitability standpoint.

The one word missing from your post is productivity. You mention C++ as not necessarily a negative, since it's a valuable skill to learn. That may be true, though if you're able to be just as productive in C++ as with C#, you would be in the minority it would seem.

You seem to be really concerned about using commercial software of any kind. If that's your priority, find non-commercial software and see how it goes. As far as Unity and Unreal go, make a simple game in each and see how you like each one.

 

Not so. Open source is where source code can be read and therefore compiled by a user. Naturally, this falls across many types of licenses. Open source can be both legally restrictive and open source nonetheless. You may be confusing commercial software as if it's antithetical to open source.

Personally, I'm concerned with all software I'd use or distribute to others. Commercial or not -- that's not important to me. My valuing open source is far less about personally needing to re-work the original code. It's predominantly about 1. being able to further safeguard against a chain of blackbox-trust in software that (to me and many others) plagues the software world's mentality; 2. increasing community that forms around it; 3. merely having the option if I needed to alter something is quite freeing, or the fact alone that I could potentially spot a bug and freely contribute back to Unity and everyone else.

We'll have to disagree. I think that underestimates potential revenue channels that Unity could take a cut from: channels that become more apparent when the user base grows from such a 'wow, no-hesitation, sign-me-up' pricing strategy. Compelling X-times the users into subscribing and supporting a platform can open doors.

 

I think $5 is too low for sure... but if it was $20/month or less I think there would be a ton of free users who would subscribe.

 

Yeah, as I was considering numbers, I first thought about the comparative $19/month. What landed me on $5 is this: it's startling. It's a number that doesn't make people pause for doubt. They just pull out their wallets and sign up. People who wouldn't take notice before begin to take notice. (This assumes a competitive feature set too, which Unity 5 appears aligned for.) In my perspective, at least, there's a deep psychological significance to a $5 spot versus $19.99, $12.99, $9.99, $7.50, and other numbers, in contrast to how UE is now marketed.

Pricing so low is a long haul strategy. It's a strategy where the number of users itself with credit cards on hand becomes far more valuable in the long run than any short term gains that would be higher at a higher price. It's where increasing subscriber numbers means increasing adoption to increase the total revenue that includes tangential percentages that can be made (such as from integrated services/payments/ad networks/asset sales/etc.) versus potential losses in the long run in lieu of users drifting away or not signing up.

Hypothetical: Service ABC has this immediate fate:

A) make $10k/month from 100 users ($100/month/user)
B) make $7k/month from 1400 users ($5/month/user)

On face value, it's understandable that a lot of ABCs would opt for option A. Yet, there's a great deal of prospect in going with option B and making less revenue in the short term. Having 1400 paying people vs. 100 paying people, depending on the industry and future plans, can be smarter, especially if it's causing more people to coalesce around it and not drift away to other options. Just some thoughts.

 

Not to side track this into a discussion about the explicit definition of FLOSS, but if the source code isn't available for free, it's not open source. Last I heard, you still pay for access to the source code so it's not open source.


As for using monodevelop, there is unityVS which is a plugin for visual studio.

 

Both Wikipedia and Google's definition disagree with your statement. Open source is defined by Google as "software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified".

UE4's source code is only available to those who are licensed. Licensing a version requires having been subscribed after or during the period the version was released.

 

Free Software isn't the same as Open Source.

 

+

That's not true.

There are several meanings that people apply to "open source." The fundamental aspects they all share is merely having the source code available for inspection and compilation. That a vast majority of open source projects are also free (either free as in beer or free as in freedom) doesn't therefore mean open source must be free. It's an important distinction. There's plenty of commercial software that is now open source and charges licensing fees. Unreal Engine is now among them. To say that UE isn't open source is semantically myopic. In short, "open" != "free."

 

Yeah, that's why I changed my post. I realized it was kinda like the definitions of "highspeed" and "broadband". One encompasses multiple aspects, while one is very specific.

I don't agree with the way "open source" is being used, but I do understand that lawyers like to push a phrase as far as they possibly can. Which is exactly why we have "free open source" now.

To go back on topic though, the biggest problem with a low price tag is going to be support. Lower price equates to more people. More people equates to less time Unity will be able to spend with any individual problem.

 

In your case why aren't you just going through the basics with Unity Free and blender? If you're a beginner, no matter how talented you are it'll still take you years to even half understand the concepts you're listing.

You'll not out of the bat be able to make AAA artwork, no matter how promising you start out.

How could you possibly leverage the source code of an engine built by hundreds of engineers with decades+ of experience. I do fail to see why at this stage any of this is important?

Get a dude walking around and basic AI, in no way would you be able to push the limits of any commercial engine (yet).

When the time comes when you find the engine restrictive that is the time to care and at that point money becomes less of a consideration. To really leverage these engines, you'll easily spend 5 - 10K per person on tools alone. The cost of an engine if you actually want to be a professional game developer is at the bottom of the barrel.

I've worked on commercial engines and tried my hand at artwork for a long time, I've yet to meet ANYONE that has gotten to a level worth consideration in the first two years of learning / experimenting.

Just enjoy the learning process and don't worry about such inane decisions yet .

 

It sounds like you have your own personal definition of the term. In the real world, the term "open source" has a very specific meaning in most contexts and it ain't that. I'd suggest calling it something else (anything else) for clarity. Why not just say "includes source code" if that's what you mean?

 

Except everyone has already shown that there's a distinct difference between FLOSS and open source.

 

So? Unreal Engine 4 is neither, correct? Sorry if I'm missing something here.

 

I learn quickly. These subjects aren't foreign to me, as I've been dabbling here and there over the years. Though I'll be in a constant state of learning for a lifetime, as is any person open to growing, I'm already developing a fair basis of these concepts.

I don't need to dive into the engine's source immediately. Nor am I interested in making games with AAA budgets (of which, as a side note, the vast majority seem to be increasingly devoid of substance and stiflingly linear) -- even if I could afford to. However, I'm interested and will be capable of making games with high-quality design one might expect of that budget, probably without spending $5-10k in asset utilities. Though my games will be on a more intimate scale, of course.

Why is it important to think about which engine now?

Because time. Part of learning quickly is also limiting wasted time in the future. This is especially the case for solo-devs and small teams with motivation set to 11 and not a lot of leisure or safety nets. Prior to Epic's announcement, I assumed Unity was what I'd fundamentally invest my future time into. Indeed, I've been using the free version. However, it was never a consideration to me to stick with free for a release. I don't want limitations, nor do I want to pay for additional outside assets for occlusion culling, sprite packing, and so forth, if I can help it. So it's always been a question of when to start being a paid user. Currently, Unity puts that future consideration at a $0 to $225 per month leap without the ability to profile resources until then. In any case, my post is just thoughts regarding how UE put a real fork in the road to consider. It seems worth sharing aloud now rather than never.

Thank you for your thoughts nevertheless. Why open source would be significant to me (mentioned earlier in the thread):

 

If you can't accept that software can be open source in a repository privately accessible to paid accounts (i.e. "open" not meaning "free"), no worries. It's a very small point of contention in contrast to simple facts: one engine has its source code open to subscribers*; one engine does not have its source code open to subscribers.

* https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github

 

It's good to debate these things, get it clear in your head. I find you spend more time debating with yourself than others, anyway!.

Firstly I said AAA artwork, not AAA games.. Hence another way of saying professional artwork, it'll take years to hone 3D skills as even as an artists it's a niche. If you're not new to the concept you should already know and games even on an intimate stage will use the likes of z-brush etc.? To leverage UE4 you're going to want to take advantage of PBR and this has to come from somewhere! It cost's money much more than Unity will cost. You do want your game to look good right?

Still even with your ethos, no matter if we agree or not. There is no benefit to you having access to source, they are for larger teams to build back end tools and to expand. Even then unless they submit bugs back to the engine developer for review, it removes upgrade paths if you're changing things yourself.

Assuming you have the 10+ years of engine development one needs to actually tackle these matters. Sure you might be able to fix the odd issue as an intermediate, but still I've not a clue why YOU! Personally would require source. How exactly does it benefit you as a developer? ESPECIALLY if time is an issue, it's a contradiction within itself. A beginner with time restraints tackling what an engine developer should be doing? Hence why we pay for the engine in the first place.

There are many reasons to go for UE4, I some times meddle out of the office with CE / UE4 and Unity. If you're aiming for mobile then $225.00 is the case and personally I think for that sort of money I'd go UE4 just out of principle. If it's for desktop then $75.00 is a fair price IMO.. You need to give us more information on what you're trying to achieve as opposed to just listing out perceptions and statements.

 

o·pen-source
adjective
Computing
adjective: open-source

1. denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.

From the ue4 EULA:

all of which are open source licenses

 

Ah yes, the dictionary. For all the times you just want to completely ignore things like nuance.

 

In this case yes, since the words are starting to lose meaning. Full source access and Open source are 2 different things. Just because something is on github doesn't make it open source

 

It's a private repository. Just because a large number of people can pull and potentially contribute to that repository, it's still not freely available. The very presence of any wall defies the nature of open source.

I hate to be anal, but I'm an anarchist and it's one of the few anarchistic things not associated with a molotov.

 

You did say AAA artwork. My apologies. Nothing in my post changes as a result though. It doesn't take me years to learn fundamentals of style and polish that people expect from "AAA artwork."

I'm not arguing with myself. It's odd you'd even say such a thing. The only one trying to argue my intentions is you, it seems. Rather than simply ask me anything, you're assuming a lot about my intentions, capabilities, and needs and not even taking my own statements at face value -- even as I continually state how the fundamental role of open source is important to me regardless of whether I ever have intentions to change the engine. Currently, I'm learning Mudbox in that arena for quick modeling. I'd prefer Zbrush once I can accord it. We agree on that. Zbrush is very slick.

 

Boy oh boy, nothing beats a bunch of pedantic bullshit.

 

BTW, apologies again if I misinterpreted your comment on debating oneself. Reading again, you probably meant it as the generalized "you", not me specifically .

 

Wait, you say you're a beginner and you're asking questions yet you argue with anyone giving advice to a question you asked?

So if you're not debating the pros and cons in your own mind, you're on here to do what? Just argue with everyone else!?

I'll quote a certain Hippo in a round about way, "Just pick one and crack on"!..

 

Yes, of course. Surely my entire original post is in indication of internally debating a course of action. It's also to let Unity Tech. have some feedback from someone facing the decision.

 

Why do people keep mentioning and comparing to the pro version and its price. You can make awesome games using the free version.

 

Yes and no. Yes, "full source access" can have a restrictive license to the point where it's no longer freely redistributable as part of a final product -- and therefore not open. No, software can be "full access" and "open source" much like a square can be a rectangle. "Freely available" doesn't necessarily imply that it's monetarily "free" to first acquire the source to reuse. It's fair to say that UE4 blurs the line in what people tend to expect with typical "open source." This entire blurring is why Stallman veered into focusing on capital-f Free software at any rate.

 

Because those features you're getting on Pro for $1500 (at least) can be had, along with much more, for a single payment of $20. Also, there are a lot of games you can't make without pro. I had to scrap a project because I needed render textures and sound filters, for instance.

 

I care. Hopefully that's enough to justify an opinion. For starters, I want profiling and occlusion culling. It's cool if others don't care and they make great games. Quite happy for them! Personally, though, I'm a speed freak, always careful about making something smooth and efficient for lower-end users. On mobile, I'm extremely concerned with resources and battery life. (That's me though.)

 

So you're saying $5.00 and no royalties, which in essence would cause Unity to strip back staff and would result in a release of a rubbish product? We need more features and improvements, not less. Going in this direction causes more issues than it solves, even if one believes you're a one in a million learning ace It's not doing you a whole lot of good right now is it? There's much more to making and releasing games than the game itself.

You do also realise right that you're in an era of the Indie? With tens of thousands + of competitive devs all striving for that pot of gold? Don't you think it's a good idea to invest in the right tools to have any chance of success? You're the one here saying you're struggling. We all need every leg up we can get on the competition, your time is not infinite and you WILL have to invest to be succesful or remain as a hobbyist.

The race to the bottom is bad in terms of business for Unity and for the end user. Source code removes important middleware, that you as a single developer doesn't have a chance in hell of matching. No matter how talented you believe you are. So how does Unity remove licensing issues? Epic removed the middleware!.

Don't get me wrong, UE4 has more tools and Epic takes out the intial sting for mobile devs if you fall flat on your face. It has a reputation in a business sense which will leverage sales and having the source code is handy for us because we have a couple of experienced engineers here who can leverage that.

There are pros to UE4 but a clear sign of somebody who knows what they are talking about is they constantly think of the end goal, a way to get their project out the door and earn profits.

If you want to survive an ethos doesn't pay for food / water or shelter.

 

afaik, UE4 supports Linux since v4.1, still far from perfect, but improving every day. Probably you will see native linux editor sooner for UE4 than for Unity.

 

It's a monetary struggle. Learning is doing me a lot of good. That's regardless of a fork in the road delaying some serious choices.

Having a startlingly low price in this ["era of the Indie"], where good alternatives exist, is actually quite forward-thinking. Many people thought Google was nuts in the early days as they continued to buy companies and software only to turn around and make it free. Some Netflix investors were also frantically trying to push the rates sky high and fast after enough people seemed locked in. Naysayers lacked long term vision. Gaining massive amounts of subscribers can pay in dividends.

I disagree with the characterization that a volume strategy means less features and a rubbish product. I think it would be the opposite. I think more people would be using and supporting Unity and that would end up creating more success. Nothing stops them from having simple tiered pricing based on annual sales. Many companies do that. What would be important there is everyone still having access to all the features. (Again, $60/year as a clear-choice tactic would be a pricing tier aimed at true no-name indies. Maybe $80/year or $120/year would work enough magic too? Who knows.) We don't know the wisest path. Neither does Unity. When all is said and done, developers will come around to support good things. Many of them will eventually appreciate an ethos of open source code or paid full source code -- call it what you want -- even if they don't appreciate it at first, assuming they can afford it.

 

Of cause you are entitled to your opinion and i want those things too!

But as with all hobby's you just have to work within your budget and get the best out of it. If you are any serious about making games and want to live of it then make one that makes you 1500$ first

If you got everything from other engines then you would use those

 

So Unity has 630,000 active users. Let's say half of them pay $5.00 a month that's $1.575 Million in revenue every month. They have 400 staff that's $1.66 million per month alone (if everyone is paid the same and pretty low actually at 50K), without any other costs involved.. Which goes back to them stripping staff, loosing R&D funds and loosing support staff.

Got any better ideas?

 

It depends entirely on the changes and how big they are. I remember someone posting on the UE4 forums how they had encountered an upper limit on the number of instructions Blueprint was willing to process before it flat out refused. I believe they were attempting to build a map generator of some kind.

Having source access would allow them to go in and increase the limit. It is not a major enough change that they couldn't remove it long enough to allow the engine to update, and then put it back in.

On the topic of bugs though, how often are you going to update the engine for a product you have already shipped? Doing so could easily break more than it would stand to fix. So I see no problem with manually patching in that situation.

 

Thing is it's going to take a while to ship in the first place, I said for quite a few experienced developers source code is a good thing. But there's two issues, one political in larger companies. They'd rather blame the engine and will ask Epic or Unity to fix it , secondly we pay for a product. So why are we spending time fixing their bugs?

If it's a bug in our game it's our problem, if it's a bug in their engine it's their problem.

 

Possibly for the same reason that someone in the community got it ported to Linux before Epic?

UE4 is attracting to hobbyists and some of them are bound to be capable of understanding the source well enough to release patches. I'm already seeing some assets being given away freely with plans to give more away.

 

That's great, but I'm making games here .

 

Again, I'm talking about pricing for no-name indies. Stats of their actual revenue/subscribers would be great to know. They'll probably never reveal it. One must factor in 1. the potential additional mass of users that would come to Unity as a result (above the current average active users trend); 2. the effectiveness of keeping users paying/active (relative to more users lost through attrition if there's no price change); 3. potential revenue streams from an increased user base.

 

Pricing has been discussed to death here, especially after the UE4 announcement - there are a lot of people in support of the monthly-low-cost model, and a lot of people in support of the current Free/Pro model.

It looks as though Unity isn't intending to try to compete with UE4's pricing - but who knows?
Either way, I'm pretty sure I'll stick around - even though I was pushing for UE4 style pricing a couple of months ago - and I imagine that most users are feeling the same way. I don't think there's been any significant impact to the number of active users in the forums.

Ultimately, Unity 5 will be the deciding factor for me - not the price.

I do like your ideas around speed etc though - I imagine they're working on this.

 

Who's saying you'll be forced to fix problems? No one. It's worth a price point to ensure a diligent company oversees the process by which fixes ship to the whole. It's also worth it to me and others (even though not to you) to invest in community support around a product that can be inspected (better trusted), modified, and fixed by those who want to help.

 

I'm pretty much in the same place as the OP. When epic announced I had just started playing with unity so I switched over to unreal due to price. Now im back learning unity and so far I like it way better. I'm already on par with where i was in unreal on my prototype in unity after only learning unity this past couple of weeks.

I agree if unity came up with a price model for small timers that includes pro features and then they could revenue cap it like they do with free then I would never consider unreal at all. As for me i just really like the ease of use of unity and I dont feel like i'm spending all of my time trying to figure out the api, surprisingly. So ill probably end up getting pro once unity 5 comes out no matter what but it sure would make the decision a lot easier if there was easier price points for us hobbiest etc.

 

Adding to that, we also have to factor in the loss in revenue that would happen from all the up-front Pro buyers who would switch to this cheaper subscription.

Someone buys Unity Pro right now, it's clear cut $1500, no questions asked. But one full price purchase of Unity Pro is about the equivalent of 3 subscribers at $20/month...who remain subscribed permanently for 2 years without ever unsubscribing. Or the equivalent of 6 subscribers at $20/month for one year. And that's just to break even; actually they'd be making slightly less than $1500 ($1440) so to make a profit they'd need about 7 subscribers for one year to make more money than a single up front Pro purchase.

Frankly that's a risky proposition. All it would take is just one of those 7 one-year subscribers to drop out and UT is losing money. Or if people were to impulsively unsubscribe randomly (say in reaction to some new feature Unreal got or something), maybe a percentage of users unsubscribe for a couple of months. That would severely hurt UT even more. With the up front $1500, UT can afford to take its time and not make any rash decisions. They can afford to make the highly beneficial long term plans that sometimes just might not seem all that great at first.

Plus... the only way they could realistically pull that off, or at least make it as profitable as possible, would be by eliminating Free to get the Free users on the subscription (to compensate for the fewer up front purchases). This would be necessary to prevent users from developing their game in Unity Free, subscribing to Pro for a month or two to add in the Pro features they need, releasing the game, and then unsubscribing. Sure they could try to lock you into a contract...but who wants that? I'd rather keep Free.

So UT can have the sub or they can just keep things simple by keeping their current business model which has been successful so far, to the point where the only way Epic was able to compete was by offering their new subscription deal.

At $5/month it's a joke entirely. They'd need 25 subscribers remaining subscribed for a whole year for every one (1) $1500 Pro buyer that switches to subscription...just to break even. Not worth the risk.

 

That's initially how it was for me, but the more time I spend learning UE4 the less I'm inclined to believe Unity 5 will be sufficient for me. I'll probably relegate Unity usage to 2D game development.

 

I'm really confused with what's going on lately...

I'm not saying we cannot debate, discuss or argue about pricing issues(done to death), features and opinions.. but this has gone beyond.. and ONLY opinions...

We have this thing called choice people. Use it.

I don't have much money either, heck I'm pretty damn poor. I worked my butt off to pay for my Pro license, that's what I wanted. It's what I work in now and what I chose because I prefer it.

I used UDK in 2009(at launch), I also used Cryengine(the free sdk) a year later and in the end chose Unity free after using them both even though it had even less graphics at the time(no shadows) Because I felt more comfortable in it. But that's just me. Not you, me.

You have a choice. There is no My side your side.. You just choose what you prefer..

I have ue4 right now(got it at launch). I have the choice to choose what I prefer.

What you use is YOUR choice. Hell use both, use none, use godot or torque(I used this at school) if you need your engine to actually be open source. There are many, many options out there.

You need/want to work on Linux? use what works on Linux.

Graphics, features and shiny tools are the least of your worries as a developer especially as an Indie. You first have to make something.

My first ever released-to-public(not first) game was made with Unity free 3 years ago.
It was crap and buggy as hell(because I suck as a programmer and had no concept of realism and my limits) and no where near the types of games I want to make.

I'm proud as hell I finished it(it took 2months of work):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lorbs/lefdgmkoiphapkklnpefpghohgimbdmg?hl=en

The original idea for the game was waaaaay beyond breakout. It was amazing*lol and unrealistic.. Actually it had nothing to do with breakout but I sucked so bad it ended up as breakout.

It's a free game, I didn't do it for money. I did it to learn.

Learn to make games first whatever the tools you choose to use. You don't like Unity ? Use what works for you.

 

It's simple really. This topic has been discussed so much lately that pretty much everything of value has been mentioned. So we're more inclined to slide into side discussions.

I think the issue, and I believe hippocoder commented on this in another thread, is that these people want to use Unity. But they either cannot afford or are unwilling to invest given the current pricing of Unity Pro.

 

.......................


I'm just going to avoid these kinds of threads from now on.. and get back to MAKING games..
I was only hoping to equalize views..

Here's my last one on all this:

Are you more worried about your arsenal or your skills?

 

I mean no offense, and I won't take offense in turn. However, I find these types of reactions more confusing than anything else. It's as if you're suggesting that people are advocating for taking your choices away, or that people who don't have a Pro license yet aren't entitled to feedback and requests/desires, or that people voicing concerns (or dissent) are simply not recognizing that other choices exist. In case it isn't clear, I'm the last person who wants you to have less choice.

Yes, one should use what works. In my case, many things can potentially work, including Unity. That's why I gave feedback in the first place. That shouldn't bother or confuse anyone. Regardless, cheers and good regards to you and your gamedev progress!

 

Thanks! best regards in your process to you as well