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Unity or UDK or CryEngine or...?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Not_Sure, Dec 14, 2011.

  1. macos

    macos

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    Let's get real :
    1)shiva makes you pay 2000$ for pro version and you can export to all the platform you want (Android/ios/webos/wii....),and some of you may say that shiva is for just mobile ,but really who is using unity for Xbox 360 or ps3 like any one can afford that ,and every one in unity is looking after ios and Android.
    2)UDK vs unity ,unity still great engine but why you need to buy the pro version first then buy ios pro or android pro ,what if i don't want to make game for pc and who is making for pc,every one is looking for app store and Google play.

    I think if unity want to make people see how great engine they have they should make unity pro free ,then buy ios pro and Android pro.
     
  2. taumel

    taumel

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    Wot i think is that...

    a) this would kill Unity.
    b) it could be nice to see less viral marketing and more people buying Pro but for a lower price.
    c) well, a couple of other things i better keep to myself.
     
  3. Aguy

    Aguy

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    If you want to make a PC game then make a PC game and don't pay for Android and iOS.
    That's how I see it.

    And not everyone is in this for mobile things you know...

    And PSN and XBLA and XBLIG still count as PS3 and XBox
     
  4. SevenBits

    SevenBits

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    Correction: We are talking about engines that are not even humanely possible to use.
     
  5. macos

    macos

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    can any one please tell unity to stop charging people for pro version when they only want ios pro version.
     
  6. SevenBits

    SevenBits

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    It has been voiced on these forums before. But Unity is a company, not a charity, and while I feel your pain there is little we can do.
     
  7. Artificial

    Artificial

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    A very rare troll indeed.. don't disturb it. It will get angry.
     
  8. janpec

    janpec

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    Lol. All i am going to say is, it takes three times longer to make good terrain in Cryengine than in Unity, but the end point is that it looks three times better. Its that simple. If you need that good looking terrain you are going to spend that much time on Cryengine, otherwise you will use Unity. No need for further discussion.
     
  9. Jingle-Fett

    Jingle-Fett

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    They jump on UDK because for someone trying to make an art portfolio, UDK is the more practical choice. If you're only using UDK to showcase your art, UDK is a no-brainer because you get all the "pro" features for free right off the bat. And since you're just using it for portfolio, it also mean you don't have to worry about the royalty fees.
    But the artists on Polycount aren't game developers, they're artists. They're not concerned with making a completed game, they're concerned about their art.

    You can take the same art assets and put them in Unity Pro and UDK. Fiddle around with the settings and you can get them to look near identical in both. The difference is that when it comes to showing off your art assets, Unity Pro costs money and UDK does not. So if you're thinking strictly as an artist, UDK is more practical choice...
    If however, you're looking at things not just as an artist but as a game developer, and trying to actually complete a game you can call your own...well that's a completely different scenario.
     
  10. janpec

    janpec

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    Agree.

    Disagree.

    Lighting, detailed material editor and better rendering overall is what makes models in UDK looking better than in Unity. You have pretty much said that artists pick UDK showcase their portfolio, why would almost 99% pick UDK then instead of Unity to showcase, if you can pick engine that has almost 5 times less pipeline problems or time consumption than the other engine? Becouse of what you said in first place.
     
  11. Jingle-Fett

    Jingle-Fett

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    Because again, you need Unity Pro and Unity Pro costs $1500 while UDK is free. For the starving artist, free is usually better.

    There's also the fact that when it comes to graphics, Unity simply isn't taken seriously compared to Unreal or Cryengine, which is most likely due to the fact that nobody has yet released a game made in Unity with those kinds of graphics. It's not that it can't be done, it's just that nobody's really done it yet.
    Also, the artists using Unreal might want to stick with Unreal simply because it's familiar to them and they already know it well enough, as opposed to having to learn a whole new engine.


    The other factor is that a lot of what makes UDK scenes look so good is all the stuff that's pre-built for you. There are a bunch of post-processing shaders in UDK that are just turned on by default with settings determined by Epic which they use in their commercial games. That's why you can often tell when a game was made in Unreal. Throw a 3d model into a UDK scene as is and it will automatically look relatively better because it has SSAO, motion blur, glow/bloom, AA, etc. all turned on by default. Making lightmaps is also really easy; if I remember correctly there's a button for it right next to the play button (I haven't used Beast yet so I have no idea how it compares to UDK's lightmapping). The rest is just good art assets with good textures and materials.

    Those same effects aren't turned on by default in Unity Pro. Unity is fully capable of most of those exact same effects but you have to manually assign them and adjust the settings, which means you can't just throw in a model and expect it to automatically look as good in UDK. It most certainly has the ability look as good as in UDK (or close enough anyways), but you need to take the time to set it up right in Unity. Taking the time to set it up right might involve making external lightmaps in Mental Ray, writing custom shaders, etc. things which the aspiring character artist might not be as familiar with or interested in.

    If all you want is just a portfolio, the logical thing is to take the choice that requires less effort or is easier. UDK also has the built-in material editor as you mentioned and those kinds of tools make life easier in general. UDK's real-time shadows are also better from what I've seen.
     
  12. janpec

    janpec

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    Yep thats right, it is very easy to track down UE much easier than any other engine.

    Unity and UDK are not in pair when it comes to posteffects. When it comes to shaders, Unity is capable of producing same good looking shaders as long as there is some good shader programmer on board, but post processing effects are not in same quallity. SSAO in Unity has huge artifacts when it is combined with depth-of-field, sunshafts or some other effects. Also it is not as smooth and nice looking as UDK, dont know why but it just doesnt no matter the settings you apply. Sunshafts in UDK are also looking way better, much warmer, again no artifacts on their edges when they fade with blur, cant say the same for Unity sun shafts. Color correction in UDK is way ahead, much more complex and thoughtful color picking. And yes as you said UDK has all those effects turned by default, but artists also pick it for showcase becouse everything is working as it should. I wouldnt think twice which engine should be chosen for art showcase, its obvious for now.
     
  13. tatoforever

    tatoforever

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    I do agree that Unity build-in shaders and post effects are crap and when you try to combine them all, you get a messy color fest. But you know, Unity isn't about rendering, its about workflow and iteration. If you don't care too much about out of the box eye candy features, Unity is the path to heaven. Like i said earlier, Unity still have a lot to catch up, hopefully it will get there before competition overtakes in the workflow department (aka UDK4, CE4). I can smell right now the pressure they start to feel about competition.
     
  14. ImogenPoot

    ImogenPoot

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    This is definitely an exaggeration... CryEngine has a much better usability than UDK in EVERY aspect.
    The main issue with CryEngine is that you can't use custom shaders, which is about the only limitation of the free SDK, but a totally disrupting one. Don't know who of these marketing geniuses at CryTek thought of that. Additionally, it is lacking DOCs, and this is also a showstopper. A monster like that without docs is simply useless. A monster like that with only an undocumented C++ is simply useless, even though this API looks great, it is super complex and comes without ANY documentation (the include files alone measure over 100k lines). There is CryMono but I see its developed by an independent contributor, so that's nothing you can build your game on. At least not in this early stage.
     
  15. eskimojoe

    eskimojoe

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    Anyone tried MonoGaming?


    It uses C# on iOS and Android. Since Unity and MonoGaming share the same language, you can port your game to MonoGaming in iOS and setup equivalent shaders and renderers there.
     
  16. janpec

    janpec

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    Hey i know that :D, i was speaking only for artist portfolio use, when it comes to game development those crappy posteffects are actually not that much of a problem.

    Indeed, Cryengine is more flexible than UDK and more powerfull, shaders are not problem. Cryengine has default shader with few material options which are enough to create any material from grass to skin to metal. You can check Cryengine material tutorial on Eat3d there are some very interesting materials created only with default shader provided. No Docs for C++ is like the biggest misstake Crytek has made with this SDK, its complete show stopper for most programmers, thats why even after months only level designers or veteran modders are using this SDK. CryMono is looking promising but its moving really slow, it should be backed financially from Crytek otherwise it will take very long for stable release.
     
  17. ImogenPoot

    ImogenPoot

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    Yeah right. Look I got my 20k lines Unity source code... Since NET and Unity share the same language I can easily port it to a plain C# version. Hum what was I saying?
     
  18. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

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    The post effects are just scripts and shaders themselves so if you had a good effects programmer on board you could make custom effects the same as you can make custom shaders. The difficulty is quite high for making these effects, but I'm just pointing out that they're equally as customizable as the shaders.

    And in fact while UDK's default post effects look good, you are stuck with what they give you as you can't write your own.
     
  19. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    Man, I would love to see better documentation for shader scripting!
     
  20. janpec

    janpec

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    Yep it always leads to that anything can be made if you know to make it, have time for it or money to pay someone. But the end point is most of us here are indies or hobbist and spending time on writting good posteffects already gets in the way of game development. And as you said its not an easy task.
     
  21. BrUnO-XaVIeR

    BrUnO-XaVIeR

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    The only thing I don't like on Unity is the poor quality if real time shadows.
     
  22. ImogenPoot

    ImogenPoot

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    I wonder what stops you from writing high quality posteffects, maybe also not implemented via the image blit roundtrip but rather directly in the pipeline to get the best results possible? Shouldn't cost too much to hire a shader expert, if you don't have one, and setup some amazing post-effects and also material shaders, like HardSurface Shaders, just much more optimized!! I think you should also concentrate on adding high quality assets to unity yourself. I don't even care if they cost an additional 500 EUR as long as they are available!!! And I guess most serious game developers who can't spend thousands of EUR on hiring specialists will agree.
     
  23. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    Convenience, probably. Check out Unity's gallery, what's stopping them from doing UDK-ish looking shaders?
     
  24. ImogenPoot

    ImogenPoot

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    Hmm convenience gets you killed these days. You always need to push the max.
     
  25. tatoforever

    tatoforever

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    Yeah well, i think janpec refers to what's come in the box (the default shaders and effects). Most of them are outdated and unoptimized. Unity shadows are ugly, no matter what quality setting you set. The biggest reason? No shadows filter at all. Post effects don't play well together, you have to re-write the whole thing in different passes (hacking here or there) and combine them or you get a messy color fest. The flare layer is unusable if you have screen-effects on that camera, have you tried? The way Unity manage shading and screen-effects is quite dis-organized and non-unified. For example, screen effects must be done in some parts through scripts, through low level graphics API and high level shading. WTH? On the other hand you have surface shaders (which is a pretty nich addition btw) that lets almost any non-shading coder to write niche lit materials, but what about screen effects? Will you guys one day update the way screen effects are done in Unity? If there's something i hate in Unity is that, some part of Unity seems like left behind, half-baked, underdeveloped, unfinished, forgotten! Others parts are nice and very advanced (editor/workflow/pipeline/programming) to name a few.
    If this post seems to insult you, please take my excuses in advance.
     
  26. SevenBits

    SevenBits

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    Me, too. The shaders I've written are messy and complicated, mainly because I had to use what I'd learned from existing shaders on the wiki, AngryBots, etc as my inspiration (and basis for testing).

    Usability. Not every game needs UDK shaders. Look at all those making puzzle games and games for mobile. Do they need high quality shaders? Certainly not (in fact, it will probably kill performance).
     
  27. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    The next generation of mobile games, yes. When you see the casual games like Natural Motion My Horse.
     
  28. ImogenPoot

    ImogenPoot

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    Usability has NOTHING to do with providing unusable post-effects LOL... At least not if you want something to be usable, it's a contradiction. Like a lot of features in Unity, unfortunately it seems as if they were just there to give the impression that Unity is best suited for non-mobile games, while in fact it isn't, but just because of lack of alternatives. But when UDK 4 comes out, from what I have seen so far, Unity can get get out it snow costume, it's going to be a tough winter!
     
  29. Variable Bone

    Variable Bone

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    UDK is a template, it is not a software like Unity. If you are a beginner, do not waste your time with UDK. Start with Unity.
     
  30. Khyrid

    Khyrid

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    Correction: We are talking about engines that are even humanely possible to use, such as Unity and UDK.
     
  31. SevenBits

    SevenBits

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    Please clarify.
     
  32. Myhijim

    Myhijim

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    Very blunt statement there.

    UDK is not just a template it is a software even though it may appear to be easily done, it seems very similar to the given assets in Unity, only so much is given to you and you must work your way from there.

    (Or buy everything on the Asset Store but annyyywwaaaayyyy.)
     
  33. taumel

    taumel

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    Regarding the post effects i think that some are very nice whilst others look rather outdated and to feel more complete some are missing.
     
  34. dogzerx2

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    Maybe it's just me... but have you noticed there aren't a lot of bad quality playable games in UDK? All games with any sort of gameplay (that's not the default FPS), seem to be done by some team of skilled people.. you can tell by the top notch assets they use. I never see the sort of games, with normal/poor quality assets, made by one guy or a bunch of curious hobbyist... not without the default FPS scheme. And even on AAA quality UDK games you can still see reflected the limitations. I don't see risky gameplays, it's usually FPS or a modification of that.
    If you check out Unity's showcase or wip threads, you see reflected all sorts of skill levels, there's no gap between full skilled teams and people who can only manage to import assets into the editor. You see all sorts of gameplays and styles, different game logics, stuff regular people thought about, and did it; and full games that look great, made by a big team of skilled people. You see 2D games, strategy, race games, whacky gameplays never seen before, anything a creative mind can imagine. Unity is truly an user friendly game engine, usable by anyone. And while I admit games usually don't look as attractive as UDK games can be, they are a lot more varied, and reflect Unity capabilities.
     
  35. SevenBits

    SevenBits

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    And that I think is one major reason why I'm using Unity as opposed to UDK or CryEngine, though I may try out CryEngine at some point just to see what the fuss is about.
     
  36. janpec

    janpec

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    Yep true, but keep in mind that with UDK4 all this is going to change, unless the mentality of UDK developers is only within FPS genre.
    For now its even worse on Cryengine side, you can count on one hand non-FPS exceptions. Both of those engines share the same problem on coding side, having C++ without docs is the same (almost) as having Unreal script without source code access and not being able to wield engine properly into something else than FPS.
     
  37. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    @janpec: i'ts going to be a big battle! UDK 4 looks very promising. Lets see how much UDK 4 can look like Unity, and how much Unity 4 looks like UDK! I bet it's going to be a close call! Unity has a lot to fight with... but so does UDK!
     
  38. ImogenPoot

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    Well, in some way I hope you are right, then I don't have to rewrite my game for UDK 4 when it comes out ;). But somehow I doubt that Unity can close this huge gap. The important question is what kind of gameplay UDK 4 is targeting. Will you be able to write games as easily as with Unity, when it comes to non-FPS? C++ raises the bar pretty high, no matter how good the API is. You can disarm the cruelty of C++ a bit, with a good API but still this is nothing for causual programmers, as most of the Unity developers seem to be... Maybe there will also be UDK# someday.

    How many platforms will UDK 4 be able to target? Can it compete in the mobile segment?

    I predict that Unity will totally lose in the PC/console market when UDK comes out. The technology in UDK 4 is just too advanced and with the current pace of bringing most of the time unfinished, inefficient, half baked features to the customer, Unity will NOT catch up, never...

    So maybe it would be a wise decision for Unity to leave the PC/Console market alone and focus entirely on mobile, in which case I would stop using it. Depends on how many paying customers are actually using PC/console deploy. The fact that you can't combine mobile/desktop anyway makes it theoretically possible to just drop one of them and stick with low-spec gaming. This of course could still deploy to PC/consoles, just that Unity would give up the fight against UDK where it is weak and expand its market share where it is actually leading, that is mobile gaming!
     
  39. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    Sure, but we will see if Unity 5 or 6 will not offer at least the same bang too.

    Yes I know we don't even have Unity 4 yet but we know that Unity 4 will come, while we do not know if there even will be a UDK4 that represents the UE4 progress. At the time not even UE4 has an ETA and there was no mention that UDK will get anything of that (and assuming anything but potentially an update of the editor is unrealistic. The scripting won't go away unless UDK becomes a proper SDK which would require 1-2 years of work to replace many of the current limitations and problems UDK / UE Modding have, which would require enough income from UDK that does not yield to UE licensing which so far has happened for any successful UDK title. namely the UDK 'we build to any platform from windows' has to go which no longer works then, requiring UDK to have a OSX editor or at least output xcode projects so you can hook in your own C++ code unlike right now where no extension is possible at all)
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2012
  40. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    Console? Probably so, but does that interest us? I don't know about you, I don't have the funds for licenses and stuff, and I'm not part of the necessary team to develop a game suitable for consoles.
    And PC? I think if you have what it takes to get on steam, you've got yourself a fulltime job as indie gamedev. ok I admit I'm just playing by ear, but I've heard it's profitable, and my philosophy, if making games makes you happy, does it matter if it makes you rich?

    Regarding the huge gap between UDK and Unity... My theory is that it has something to do with Unity being DX9 and UDK DX11... and when unity is DX11, that gap will be potentially gone.
     
  41. Filto

    Filto

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    I don't really know where Unity is going anymore. To me it feels like Unity is becoming a patchwork of different tools that are more or less integrated with the main editor or workflow and even more so with the tools from third party developers at the asset store. I can't see any structure, plan or direction anymore. it seems more that Unity goes in the direction if whatever good deal they can make or what seemed convinient or fun too work with at the moment. With the Unity 4 annoucement I was like "oh a new animation system, didn't know we needed that, thought there would be more prioritized things to add but I guess it could be fun to play with, I wonder what they will add next?" I fear that eventually everything will blow up in one giant schizofrenic game development mess. With UDK or Unrealengine it atleast seems consistent in that "we aim for stunning graphics!"
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2012
  42. ImogenPoot

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    Console/PC is just the term because they are close, at least the next gen consoles and can be targeted efficiently together.

    Well that's not the point. Unity won't survive on Indy developers making a living on Steam...

    You theory is unfortunately awfully wrong. In fact, Unity going DX11 gives you practically nothing. You may utilize new shaders and tesselation, but that is pretty much it. You gain nothing but what you could do without Unity already.

    UDK 4 comes with a wealth of next-gen features that are built intrinsically on DX11 features and some took years of research to implement efficiently! Just to name some:

    1) Voxel-cone tracing realtime global illumination, which is a total killer feature of itself
    2) Realtime physx particle system with collisions, illumination, realtime force fields and stuff
    3) Full APEX like destruction (not sure if they really use APEX but I guess so) as well as realtime fractioning (without precomputed fractioning data)
    4) Deferred detail, which allows you to do things like materials getting wet in the cause of rain, but animated (you can see water distributing and even smudge it around)
    5) Realtime local reflections, the only one which can in theory also be done with Unity but is painfully slow
    6) Fully WYSIWYG editing
    7) Realtime dynamic occlusion culling without any prebaking
    8) many more that I forgot due to my biased recognition because of the game I am making

    In fact you can't even implement most of these features in Unity, when you WERE Unreal Technology ;). It just doesn't expose enough native interfaces. Additionally, DX11 is Windows only. So I doubt that Unity will focus so much on that one. Unreal will probably do OpenGL too until the final product arrives.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2012
  43. taumel

    taumel

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    Btw. is there any information about audio enhancements (hopefully) in Unity V4?
     
  44. nipoco

    nipoco

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    There will. Mark rein confirmed that in the Epic forum.
     
  45. pivotraze

    pivotraze

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    Am I the only person who doesn't think the Unreal Engine's workflow is terrible, that having to restart the UDK (which isn't that long to do) isn't that big of a problem, and that is isn't that hard to learn...
     
  46. ImogenPoot

    ImogenPoot

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    You may have noticed that we are talking about UDK 4 primarily ^^, whose workflow will be much better than Unity :)
     
  47. OmniverseProduct

    OmniverseProduct

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    How do you know the workflow will be better if you obviously haven't tried it yet?
     
  48. OmniverseProduct

    OmniverseProduct

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    Personally, I refuse to even consider UDK until they make a mac version.
     
  49. UnlimitedEdition

    UnlimitedEdition

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    In the famous words of the vultures sitting in a tree in Jungle Book, "Not that again."
     
  50. tatoforever

    tatoforever

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    So you are basically saying that if two engines support the same graphic API they will have the same rendering features? That's not how it works. Unity, UE3, CE3 they all support DirectX9 but they have different rendering capabilities/features. And by different i mean, quite different! xD