Unreal Engine 4 FREE...

They are only active because no one has anything better to do like work on their project or model or code or anything else that is productive.

 

On the other hand there are people who worked with different engines since ages and has the experience and eyes to see the upsides and downsides of some engines from their point of view.

'I just think there is too much obsession with the engines themselves, that some forget what they wanted to do in the first place. Of course it is important to evaluate your tool carefully, which you'll use for quite a time.'

Agree. Choosing the proper tool for a task was never easy as most of the people just follow trends (and puts his/her 2 cent according to this attitude) instead of real testing if which one fulfills their needs. Anytime when it comes to decision what effects your wallet, not just 'indie time' you spend with a hobby (no offense), it is basic to reduce the risks, to make experiments, to make comparisons (as pure data/facts are the keys to make a business decisions) .

'But now the choice isn't easier with so many engines offered for free. '

3 things:

1. In some manner it became easier as the full features of the engines could be tested with real tasks without limitations (time limit, etc.). You can build a full prototype pipeline and calculate.

2. Information. For now all the possible engines (bigger ones) has massive amount of tutorials, videos, real products to see the pipeline/workflow in practice. This is just awesome.

3. Nor UE4 or Unity is free. They are 'free' between limits; people should calculate this, too.

'That makes it even harder for less experienced people to opt for an engine and get really started IMO.'

Yes. But it is hard to be up to date and being experienced even for people who use engines regularly because of 2 reasons.

1. Too much tools, too much details/bugs, etc. to discover by yourself. This is why comparisons are not just logical, but are necessary, too.

2. People who are making the actual tasks are busy with their actual tasks and it is rare when they have time to be up to date with all the products on the market. It is especially true for indies where small or one-member 'teams' should pick up tools for a complete pipeline (from modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, etc. to engines).
For a bigger studio it could worth to have someone who is dedicated to choose the proper tools for any type of tasks and build/test a pipeline before any 'real' work happened.

I saw it several times when studios wanted to save money and missed this step (to build a proper pipeline); it costed tons of money at the end.

So I completely understand why people have hard times with choosing tools.
And it is unevitable to say that (example): OK, Unity fits the workflow better than any other stuff, but I really-really miss feature A. or feature B. from any other 3rd party engine. It is pushing Unity to offer feature A. and B. in the future.

 

Yep, I feel pretty bad about them, too. On the other hand they were behind the competition in features/usability for now.
But specializing could be a way for them to go/survive.
For example Quest3D was 'beaten' by Unity, but they made Lumion as a specialized engine and won for that segment for years.

 

This is a free market advocate's wet dream; companies one-up each other in pricing and quality until a paradoxical situation occurs where it's no longer profitable for either of them to continue charging for their service.

 

Aside from the few UE4 words in latest posts this thread has surely derailed in the last pages far from UE4 or about it being free. Almost looks like a Discussion section inside the thread

 

Not to mention the potential backlash if the prices go back up. They're stuck now

 

Sure but there's always giving pro more value. Hypothetically speaking this would include mucho replacements for photon services and multiplayer. MP is only becoming more of a priority. And these services (don't quote me but based on the situation so far) could be paid for separately from the pro services, ie cloud.

EULA for this post:
I don't have hard facts, this is just a personal observation based on publicly available resources on this site.

But there is a lot more to making a game than just the engine, particularly if you are ambitious.

 

UE4 might be a better engine performance and graphical wise but it certainly is a lot harder to get in to. Programming in C++ really is a problem for me and the way the engine works will take me months to get used to. Then you have blueprints, but if you really want to make something special blueprints get very messy. The things I have planned i rather just code. Yes, if you can work comfortably with C++ and use these blueprints on the side then UE4 is an amazing engine.

However not much changed in the subscription of UE4, it already was just $19 one time payment and if you really wanted that update you could throw another $19 at it. The royalties where always there and this could get a lot more costly if you your game does get viral. But then again, if I earn $100k a year I would be happy to support the hard work people had put into an engine and share 5%. Hell, I would even share 30% if Google or Steam would not take that much for just having a good network.

Personally I think Unity will do great if they keep C# alive, most of you guys talk out of other holes then your mouth and come back to unity after being slapped in the face like I did with UE4 and C++.

 

Definitely not performance wise, every demo / game and own projects I've tried run like absolute crap. Funnily enough I didn't find the C++ thing too bad, the API was a little convoluted in areas and I'll agree with BP's they can look like a spirograph.

All engines have there merits, even CryEngine it's just knowing how to play to their strengths and the amount of work you need to do. Some times it's too much work and that's where you cut your losses and move on..

 

I'll have you know I made three types of fences today.!

 

Pic or it isn't true!

 

Except the performance is really bad, not better. Even the simplest games run with poor framerates considering what's happening on the screen.

 

Anyone knows UE4 is free and can use it.
It is really nothing to argue just use it or don't use it.

 

bleep

--edit
Problem resolved.

 

This is what I suggested to one of those developers a while back. Making game specific engines, such as Action FPS, RPGs, Adventure engines etc is their only chance to stand against bigger Mammoths.
Trying to compete in the general purpose game engine market is really really hard now. Unity and Unreal are dominating this space and will remain as it for the foreseeable future.

 

Looks like GameBryo is developing a newer version of the engine as well:

http://gamingbolt.com/gamebryo-inte...gine-with-high-quality-graphics-and-stability

I thought they were gone for a while...

 

If they can achieve similar capabilities to their past engines it would have good potential. Gamebryo is basically what enables The Elder Scrolls 3/4/5 and Fallout 3/NV to achieve the insane degree of modding support they have.

 

Yep, I did the same for Quest3d, before I came to Unity. They didn't agree that time; it needed a few years while they came up with Lumion as the way to go. As Quest3D was a really powerful engine (but not user firendly at all in some manner), Lumion got all the speed and quality and an "engine made for dumbs' GUI, what made it extremely succesfull between architects. They made a very good job.

 

Look at all of those engines I've never heard of! This topic is gradually branching into interesting places.

Quest3D has some nice looking demo projects, given that the name sounds more like it would be an RPGMaker-esque engine.

 

)) I made some huge projects in the past with engines are simple 'nonexistent' for today
Quest3d still has some edges over Unity in some fields, but its pipeline was a hell.

 

It was only really for architectural visualisation type projects, and it's really old. No reason to use it for a game.

Here's some modern HTML5'y ones:
http://www.goocreate.com (Background character is actually interactive 3D)
http://www.godotengine.org/wp/features

 

It is also really expensive.

http://quest3d.com/comparison/

 

I'm actually aware of godot, I'm glad other people are xD

Maybe in the distant future, all games engines go open source and the best features of each get smushed into 1 project. Yes, even Blender's modeling inside the editor!

 

It was used for simulation, training, etc., too. It had CAVE support, etc.

 

They had a different pricing structure many years ago.

 

Anyone remembers SuperScape VRT, 3D Webmaster?

 

Unreal has a dark theme by default, and is free.

 

And is waiting for you!

 

I use UDK and Unreal since many years ago.

 

A cave tool? That does seem to be lacking in engines lately. Unless you also consider unreal subtractive geometry as caving tools lol. It'd be interesting for Unity to introduce some kind of realtime feature to subtract 1 mesh from another.

 

In this case CAVE means, projecting on all walls and ceiling of a box to make a surround virtual reality environment

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment

 

I like that the C in CAVE also stands for cave lol

Now that you mention it, I did see the CAVE before. That guy was also testing the sixense STEM recently.

I thought it was emphasis on making caves xD

 

Recursive acronyms are fun. That one is even mentioned on Wikipedia as an example.

 

oh yeah !!!
... and dark splash screens that would blend in nicely (the dark void)

 

Interesting choice of first post and thread.

 

When it's time to speak, it's time.

 

He's like those Linux users who register an account solely to request that which is not happening.

 

I like a lot UE4 editor, it is soft for the eyes to work hours with a dark style.You don't feel tired visually compared to bright interfaces. Microsoft Visual Studio i use with Unity proposes black theme by default because it's beter for the eyes.
When Unity will bring black theme to personnal edition and make it good for the eyes ?

 

Are your eyes not worth $1,500? I know I've paid more than that on my teeth. I could live without my teeth, but I cannot imagine being blind.

 

Yeah, but i don't have 1500$ to make games that i'm not sure will sell or will success.
While UE4 for free gives me the balck theme, that is very soft for my eyes, so i can prototype with visual comfort without needing to spend 1500$ only for that.

 

I completely agree, $1,500 (£1000 here in the UK) is not a lot of money, and if you are only interested in it for the Black theme, then you are not a serious developer.

 

Talking about 'Skin' and 'Splash'. You guys try to closing this thread?!. Fine, this is the good way.
That said, the entire world is aware of the new Unreal Engine situation, so...

 

So what do you want to talk about ? We already know what UE4 offers, perhaps this thread is outdated.

 

Yes

 

And once we have cybernetic eyeballs, you won't be able to imagine what it's like to live without being able to see all of those additional frequencies. We'll also better understand what mantis shrimp go through (visually) on a day to day basis.

I suppose this thread could use a good derailing to give people time to think of more related topics. I mentioned shrimp & mantis shrimp at that, so....

Mantis Shrimp vs Pistol Shrimp. Who's your favorite? Who would win in a fair fight? Existing data shows them to hold their own pretty well, but the mantis shrimp always tends to come back at night for a sneak attack. How anyone could think that thing is more interesting than a pistol shrimp? It's colorful and can punch you with it's little glove-like appendages, but the pistol shrimp can do...

"compression of the seawater causes an instantaneous release of atomic energy in which temperatures above 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit and enormous pressure is generated, creating a visible plasma arc, which in turn, causes another compression."

...that! An organic shockwave pistol that causes a release of atomic energy, reaching a temperature of 8,000 degrees F, and generating visible light / an arc of plasma. The description alone just gives you a science-nature-gasm.

I spend a lot of time ranting about guns IRL and occasionally on these forums, but damn. Would you all be for or against better gun control & more regulation if we were as well *armed as a pistol shrimp?

*armed - pun not intended

 

Sorry for the shameless self promotion, but this thread inspired me writing what my team went through when choosing engines (first post):
https://www.facebook.com/armyofpixels
Unity vs Unreal: our story.

 

Are we going to do this again? *hovers over close button*