Unity or UDK or CryEngine or...?

Hello everyone. I'm currently weighing my options between Unity or UDK for game development and I would love some input from the Unity community on the issue.

Here's my list of pros and cons, please correct me if any of this is inaccurate.

Unity:

PROS:

-Friendlier community
-Runs on any PC
-Very lite footprint and very stable
-Simpler interface
-Can do marching cubes
-Royalties are 5% cheaper (20% vs 25%)?
-Union? Not sure if that is a pro, yet...

CONS:

-Less capable than UDK
-Less serious community
-Has yet to have a commercial release on a console, other than Wii
-Pricing has a large buy in for different platforms

UDK

PROS:

-Speed tree
-Can release on any platform or console
-Established brand name that may help distribution
-Only $99 to start selling and no royalties until I make $50,000 off of a title

CONS:

-Crashes often
-Waxy textures and fish eye cameras synonymous with Unreal
-Need a whole new PC just to run
-Impossible to do any meaningful destruction to terrain (in a way that would affect gameplay)


Am I leaving out any considerations?
Is there a specific reason why you chose Unity over UDK?

-Thanks.

 

Unity has no royalties of any kind. (Unless you're talking about Union, but that's a separate thing, and isn't necessary unless you're targeting platforms that don't have publicly-available Unity licenses.)

Rochard.

--Eric

 

Because this is the Unity forum. We LOVE Unity

Also, I think there's a bunch of comparison threads to read through already. Have a look around/search and you should be able to find the info you're after.

 

NO INTEGRATED IDE IN UDK

Word says you have to restart the UDK editor if you want to compile, maybe not true, or there has got to be some sort of workaround... it just can't be true, still I could never get to the bottom of the matter; in unity I simply Ctrl+S Alt+Tab, wait 0.2 seconds and new code is compiled and ready to go.

 

I would imagine that UDK probably has more power under the hood. But most average game maker probably doesnt need all that additional power and instead struggles with its worse usability.

so all in all I would say that unity is the better choice simply due to the fact that it makes it easier for you to manage to complete the project. and thats where projects fail i think. not due to technical limitations. (im talking about hobby people here)

 

Most of the reasons have already been stated. That you pay to Unity, but if you use Union there will be. Union is mainly for getting your game on markets you wouldn't normally be able to reach, so unless you were planning something like that there would be no royalties paid (unless of course your game is released on Steam, the Mac app store, or the iOS app store, which all collect 30% of your profits).

 

I actually worked for a bit with UDK. Now I wasnt very experienced with it at all but yes it is 100% true. You need to restart UDK every time you edit a script, and then you need to open up another program and click compile. wait for that, close it, and open up UDK again.

 

That is wrong. With UDK you can only build for PC or iOS. If you want to make a game for Consoles you need to buy UE3 which costs several hundred thousands dollars.

In my humble opinion UDK has only one advantage over Unity. You get awesome graphics out of the box. For Unity, you need more effort to make it look "next gen". But that may change with 3.5. And UDK isn't that flexible if you plan to make a game other than a shooter.

 

It is orders of magnitude easier to make a game in Unity than in UDK.

 

Unity is free to try. Spend the $99 on UDK (a small investment) and put a few days of time into working with each game engine. No doubt you will choose Unity in the end

 

You should 100% go with the Darkbasic engine.

This is a rare troll post by me. You're welcome to bookmark it in glee, because one day I will rise back on my soap box and rant about how I never troll, I'm just insightful or helpful or whatever. Then you can troll the troll with this troll.

 

Most large scale UE3 games use the Unreal Script for prototyping then port most if not all of it to C++ for performance reasons. Since you do not have access to C++ with UDK you can only get halfway there. When I was working with Unreal iteration was extremely slow, I don't know if they have done anything to improve that.

Neither engine is perfect for everyone, Unity is targetted at smaller projects and so it is better suited for that. UE3 is designed for AAA first/third person shooters, so if that is what you're doing then it would be a better fit. With sufficient time and effort either engine can operate outside these bounds.

I would suggest you try out both and decide for yourself.

 

Udk has steeper learning curve but is more powerful in terms of graphics wise. Tries a little unreal scripting but still thinks unity's scripting is easier though. And i have heard animation in udk is a mess.

For rapid prototyping i would say use Unity. Faster assets pipeline and rapid scripting compared to udk. And better documentation imo. If you really want something good (graphics or whatsoever) should try out cryengine. Seen people said it's better than udk and/or unity. But i will say if you are learning. Unity is good.

 

Almost all of your cons for Unity are false.

 

That always craks me up. I've lurked both quite extensively and if anything, it's the other way around.

Rochard is out and about and there's bound to be more.

That's relative. Even from a second-world perspective 500 usd is not that much to start working on ios (another 500 for android) and etc. Free entry for PC, Mac and probably Linux in the near future.

Either way, beeing bound to one particular piece of middleware is the worst thing you can do. The main question to ask yourself is: "Are my specific goals easier to acomplish on this or that ?" and repeat for your next game and so on. And even if it's easier to do on Unity, still check out UDK, the Cryengine, Shiva, etc and at least try to get a basic grey-on-grey prototype done on a couple of them before choosing.

 

Has there ever been a udk console release (not UE3)?

 

It's not a release yet exactly, but Hawken is being built in UDK, without the engine source code.

http://www.hawkengame.com/blog/media
http://www.udk.com/showcase-hawken

 

Nah, blitz3d, way better...^^

 

I'll be interested to see the OP's revised list.

 

Thats incorrect. Its $50'000 lifetime with UDK, future titles don't have a 50k free aspect anymore.


Also, the 'can release to any platform' ended on the wrong engine. Unity has this benefit, UDK does not have it, its win - osx - iOS and at some point flash and android only, while unity supports every platform udk and even ue3 offers + more

 

I think that Unity is easier to use than UDK and CryEngine. You can create any kind of games with Unity. UDK and CryEngine are best for FPS games.

 

Not sure if this helps, but if (like me) you come from an art background, C# is much easier to learn, with many more tutorials and resources, than uScript. I have always had a giant crush on the Unreal Engine. I've purchased every Unreal/Unreal Tournament game at release, and I've played with all of their editors. UDK was like someone climbed into my head and had crazy awesome sex with my brain. But it was just far beyond my capabilities to figure out how to script in it, how to set up new game types, how to make the most simple game objects. There were too few training resources last I checked.

By contrast, I had playable 'demo' stuff (i.e. nothing much better than Pong) working in Unity the day I installed it.

 

You can try, but for something bigger without source code licence good luck.

 

You need no luck, the game just has to be designed for it and you need to do your homework.

Unity has limitations like not having any streaming, but if you have a game for which the engine itself is suited it will work, independent of the size. Many large projects done without source but 10GB++ of data easily proof that.
And to be on topic: UDK has no streaming either

 

I can never understand why this isn't the first thing everyone talks about!

Does everyone make their scripts for hours before ever checking if the code is working at all? You gotta save your script and compile, at least every couple of minutes! You can't do that in UDK, not without restarting every time! I can't get my head around that, what am I missing here?

When I'm on unity I compile the script like every 10 seconds. If I had to restart the editor every time I want to check if the code's ok, I'd want game developing to burn in hell!

I'm sure those people who actually make games (no FPS setups) in UDK have some sort of workaround...

 

And Air Band

So that's Wii, PS3 and XBox 360 covered.

 

What are you expecting us to say? UDK is great and the best engine of all-time?
No. You won't get that. You're on a unity forum. We're all a bit prejudice towards unity. I personally like both, UDK more geared towards FPS. But both are good as eachother in my opinion.

 

This boggles my mind as well. I hated Java because it tooks minutes to compile even relatively small projects. The idea of having to actually close what I'm working on, load another program, compile, close it, open the original and then test...

It's horrifying. I can't imagine how anyone ever tolerated it long enough to make a full game?

 

you will never hear that for any engine as such an engine does not exist, otherwise all others would have vanished
Engines are often developed as byproduct of a game (cry, UDK, Valve) or done by people that unhappily don't use it inhouse enough (Unity, Torque, Shiva and different other genre independent engines) to see the usage problems and priorize them appropriately (usage and feature completeness on what they have over hype bloat that sounds cool in PR blub) so even if hell freezes with pigs flying over it, there is and never will be a 'best engine', anyone saying something different is simply biased

 

Well I'm pretty sure that whoever is using it just.. knows what they are doing. I still can't wrap my head around it either. I guess they just sit there and code and code and code and then compile it and see what happens.

It's actually not HORRIBLE because the program you need to open to compile the scripts just tells you the problems there, so I suppose you could just code with that window open and compile it when you see fit. But then if you wanted to test it you would have to start up the engine again.

 

Why do we stumble on to this matter every other week? Its like comparing brands of cars, personal preference. both have there pros and cons

Thats why we shouldn't compare at all.

Xbox - Ps3
Honda - Mitsubishi
PC - Mac

Come on guys

 

I remember Darkbasic. That thing was soo cool. But I couldn't afford it so I went with gamemaker instead lol. These days I am spoiled with Unity ... That is a rare post from you.


As to which engine you should use. Try them both out for a week, and see for yourself what your prefer.

 

Wow! So I can finally use my OpenSolaris/Linux/OpenBSD?!?! Oh wow! Any console huh? I wonder what my UDK game on the Wii will look like...

MEANWHILE...

 

I prefer Unity too. Surely most people look at the features of an engine first and then UDK wins, but eventually you'll find out there are more important points such as usability, clean interface, stability etc. Unity for example is the game engine I am 100% sure I get projects done (very important) be they smaller or medium sized. UDK in comparison is annoying the moment the clunky engine starts up... (only used it for creating maps but the interface is cluttered and messy too). When I read this:

... I am glad I didn't try the coding part at all, because that sounds really awful.

 

Its actually not as easy as you explained it. I am pretty much sure that majority of car buyers before they buy car they make a LOT of comparisions between different brands. They compare design, interior, specifications and what not. It is very important, afterall good car can somethimes save your life in case of accident. Engines belong to same cathegory. Noone should just jump into engine no matter what. If it would be that way, there would be tons of unfinished projects with engines that on first sight have something to deliver, but once developers get deeper it becomes obivous .Picking correct engine can mean a thin line between succes and failure somethimes, and if that isnt important then i dont know what else to add.

 

Thanks everyone for your input. It's really helped me along, and I do think that I'm going to try out Unity over UDK now that I know about the compiling issues with UDK.

Now I just need to figure out a plan of attack to familiarize myself with Unity and then onto developing my little game.

 

I agree, which is why I said its personal preference to what you want.

 

QBasic, man. I tell you: "Gorillas" is THE S***!


(Disclaimer: Yes - that's a troll post, too. duh!)

 

God help me, but I thought Click and Play was were it was at on Windows 3.1...

I was 13.

 

EDITED:

What do you mean by "Unity does not stream"?

Terrain?

 

Yes it has (but not on iOS).

 

Oh man, GORILLAS.BAS

nice time waster when the prof wasn't around

 

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/12321/how-can-i-start-learning-unity-fast-list-of-tutori.html

And may I just shamelessly plug the tutorials made by yours truly: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/UnityLessons/index.htm

 

Those Memories... I loved Klick Play. I was around the same age like you, when I used it.
Probably the first visual game development tool for the masses.

 

I spent so many hours in Kilk Play when I was that age too. I reckon that's what inspired me to get into game dev.

 

Thanks for the links underdog.

Oh, and I forgot that it was spelled "Klik" with a "K" and no "C".

Here, have some nostalgia:

 

OMG a new interface in 3.5? When have these screenshots been leaked?!

 

LOL

But seriously. Klick Play was a lot fun. I made my first games with it.

 

I don't think Unity streams anything whereas UE3 streams textures. Streaming means partially loading only the parts of the asset which are needed.

Edit: Soren kindly pointed out that Unity does stream audio.

For example a streaming sounds only use a small amount of memory where the compressed audio is decoded and played back bit by bit. For example a 3MB MP3 song could have a 32k double buffer meaning 16KB of the song is read and decoded and while that 16KB is playing, the next 16KB is read into the "back buffer". Once the first 16KB finishes playing, it starts playing the other buffer, and the completed one becomes the 'back buffer' where more data is read. The system keeps swapping the buffers so rather than loading the 3MB sound all at once, it only ever takes 32KB of memory. In audio this is usually used for long sounds which are only once at any given time such as music and dialog.

This streaming save memory at the cost of disk access, for the case of a hard disk or flash memory this is usually quite small, in the case of a DVD (i.e. console games) this can be quite significant. Game developers will often layout the disk with according to where the assets are needed. So the level 1 sounds and the level 1 textures would be near each other on the disk, this minimizes the distance the laser has to move to seek for the data.

Since UE3 is used for AAA titles on consoles it supports streaming textures, as far as I am aware that is the only type of asset it can stream.

 

Pretty sure Arkham City was made with UDK, fairly sure there are quite a lot of games utilizing UDK. Can't think of them off the top of my head. Honestly I think being bound to one engine is rather stupid, depending on what you want to make depends on the engine you will use. I.e. 5 people in an indie group wanting to make a photorealistic game, use cryengine. Etc.