Unreal Engine 4

Spring was a typo and it was actually summer, and they just said that it would be "confusing" to release 4.6 after or at the same time as 5.0, iirc.

 

I wonder what will this sort of open sourcesness will bring to UE.. will there be serious developers who completely reconfigure it, making it more lightweight for example.. implementing scipting languages (I don't wana doodle with c++), extend blueprints capabilities far beyond it's current stage..etc

 

Well Tim Sweeney had some interesting things to say about the open source type model they have adopted in a gamasutra interview:

"Improvements to Unreal Engine made by licensees have often found their way back into the software -- and this time, Sweeney expects to see those efforts expand to a bigger audience, now that all subscribers can download the engine's source code from GitHub.

It's already been happening with early licensees of the engine, he says.

Microsoft's Lionhead studio "has been a big contributor" to Unreal Engine 4, says Sweeney. "They built the new system for realtime global illumination with light propagation values, and contributed that to Epic -- and we merged it. And now you're seeing it in this version of the engine that we released."

"We're really looking forward to opening that up to the wider community, with thousands or hundreds of thousands of programmers, to use it and contribute."

Not every developer can contribute such a huge piece of technology, but even "a one line bug fix can be incredibly valuable to the community at large," says Sweeney. "It will be really exciting.""

Now THAT is democratizing game development. Just think of how many bugs could have been fixed and improvements made if we had access to Unity source. I personally fail to see the benefit to anyone in keeping the source code behind locked doors.

 

Sure enough someone found the source for those LPV's and figured out how to turn them on so you can use real time global illumination in UE4 right now if you want. It's beta, but it's there, with the source code.

 

Wow, wish that UE supported multiplayer for more than 16 players. Blueprint looks really good.

 

I think that's unfair to Unity to cast them in a negative light, especially in regards to the work they have done for the small developer. I do agree with what was mentioned earlier regarding the fact that these AAA game engines did not give a hoot about the indie or hobbyist before Unity came along. If Unity had not built a great engine and offered it to the masses it is entirely possible we would still be stuck with low quality or very expensive choices for those interested in gamedev. Unity showed the market that there is a lot of money to be made on the small guys and took those initial risks, to disparage them is not respectful(just speaking in general).

For a really cheesy analogy: I never had a girlfriend before then this nice girl went out with me and it was great! However over time she started taking me for granted and then all of a sudden this smart hot chick asked me out. You feel kind of bad, and it is a hard decision for some, but not for others

 

There are still 2 more releases before Unity 5 comes out, and Unity 5 will be in beta well before it's released, a year is a conservative estimate....

 

Unity has done some very good things for small developers, but you'er not doing Unity or the users any favors by emotionally reacting to any perceived slight to Unity. My post was about what Epic is doing to democratize game development NOTHING negative was said about Unity. It is a big and, in my opinion, hugely beneficial move for Epic to open up the source code to anyone who who uses their engine and welcome not only bug fixes but enhancements. Talking about the good things Unity has done in the past is irrelevant. I want Unity to see the future not dwell on the past.

 

Perhaps my tone came off wrong, I was not attacking you specifically. I just see on the scale of democratizing game development, right now Unity is 500 and Epic is 1. I'm pretty darn pro-UE4 at this point and will most likely switch to it. Also I am a huge open source fan so that people smarter than me can improve the project so no argument there.

 

Sure, ancient Mono is a problem and needs immediate attention.

However, I'm finding it slightly comical when someone actually complains about having to write code in order to get functionality. Hello!? This is how things are done. This is programming at the end of the day. Despite nice and flashy tools such as Unity this is still software development and behaviour needs to be coded. Really don't get what there is to be upset about. I'd be upset if there was no coding option to favour some funny flow-chart clickedy-click.

I'm not sure whether you're a designer or not. But seriously, visual scripting is designed for those kinds of people mostly and it is and always will be limited in functionality. Code is where the magic happens and all visual scripting can do is always defined by code someone has written. As much as it can be convenient to hook something up quickly, it does not replace writing your game code, except for simple things. In fact, many things are much more complicated to hook up. Don't even underestimate how quickly a good programmer writes a few lines of code vs. having to find and place the appropriate bubbles somewhere on the screen.

Edit: I'm sure some people playing with Unity and UE4 are not coders, or just learned what was necessary in order to get their functionality working. Those tools are certainly great for them. Personally, I have absolutely no desire for visual scripting. I'm actually finding it annoying.

 

My team get diffs from customers who have purchased source code. In fact just last month I hired a Release Manager to help my support team get dot-dot releases out the door. The job ad has disappeared now we have hired someone else I'd link to it. And at GDC we were talking to customers about access to our mercurial depot so they can contribute fixes directly. We love it when our customers send us fixes. Just we charge money for source code access.

 

The same way Unity changed game industry perception (by democratizing game development), Epic is responding to today's demand which is low budget Indie/Independent projects (and by Indie I'm also including broken hobbyists and bedroom developers). Clearly Epic don't want to do any sort of revenge on Unity, they simply want a huge chunk of the pie too.

 

I guess the real problem opening Unity source access to public is middleware licenses right? UE4 took away all their middlewares from their public source and left them in the partner program integration for that reason.

 

Epic's business model is nigh on perfect for them:


Developer is responsible for engine. If developer pays 5% of the sale price of $40, but only gets $10 from the publisher, that's $8 per copy. 20% all of a sudden, and very good reason to negotiate a fixed license cost - which they'll probably continue to do. This is extreme but possible.


Indies however do purely digital distribution, usually self-published, and end up paying 5% of the total there too: so if a game is sold at $20, steam will take 6 and epic will take 1, leaving 13 in the developer's pocket.


So epic do not lose any money by catering to both indie and AAA customers, it is just a bunch of absolutely free business they didn't have before. It's carefully worked out in this respect by targeting gross for the percentage and this is the key to ensure larger developers negotiate a traditional license.
(you do not pay 5% on your income, you pay 5% on the sales price - which is an accounting nightmare, frankly)


So epic doesn't actually lose anything doing this. Unity, From a business POV - I don't see Unity needing to respond. From a hobbyist POV I can see why it appears to overnight be suddenly too expensive to some people. It remains to be seen how Asset Store revenue is hit by this (if at all).

 

@Graham Dunnett,
To be honest I don't mind having Unity source code access, the main reason is time. First I'll never have the time to learn the internal architecture of Unity and even if I am lucky enough to know how it works I won't have the time do dig in and try to found root problem causes. Heck, I don't even have enough time to report bugs!
On top of that, Unity already have a well designed QA Infrastructure system and while is not perfect it evolves constantly. There's tons of testers (inside and outside Unity company, I'm one of those) contributing to Unity development/improvement every day. The majority of showstoppers bugs are urgently fixed.
However I do agree that there have been lot of issues lurking in Unity for several years , eg lightmapper unwrapper bug between different OS that I reported in march 2009 got fixed in v4! Seriously, I'm fine with half baked features (as long as what you initially provide work fine) but such bugs taking years to fix is inexcusable. Plus it wasn't because the lack of bug reports or repro-projects, anyone here working on multiplatform games encountered this one and got reported multiple times on the forum. :\
Now back to the license dilemma, do any Unity folk have something to say about it?

 

Exactly and some of this middleware like Enlighten is too good to pass up, although I'd love to constantly play with tech and discuss the advantages of both I do have a game to make.

I have to admit though some of us are hurting without Unity 5 for the 64-bit editor alone and I'm constantly on the fence of do I or don't I go UE4 as I've just finished hiring all the staff to go at the project 100%, we all officially start a week today and we have evaluated all options deeply, for all the complaining we do (quite a lot of the times well justified). It's still the simplest engine for small teams to work with and rapidly develop..

All I ask from Unity is help us to help you, give us what we need to remain competitive and I'll throw money at my screen until it magimorphically enters your bank account.

 

Unity FTW!!

 

After seeing the link to your project (which looks nice btw) I wonder if Unity is also the best choice for graphical intensive RPGs, with a vast world and lot's of terrain. It's not known as Unity's strength.

 

Thanks for your constructive contribution to this thread...

 

Same here, I want Unity to remain competitive technologically but also financially ahem* (recent price dilemma). If both of those doesn't fit our criteria then for sure we'll look elsewhere (UE4 or something else).
Lastly, I don't know if we'll upgrade to Unity5. We have a bunch developers here with licenses, it will cost us arms and legs (even with upgrade discount, still very steepy). :\

 

I buy UE4, I very happy. I will never return to unity. EU4 is amazing. Sorry for my english

 

Dude, you registered like 5 days ago. I don't think you're even a real person.

 

Maybe it is Tim Sweeney trolling this forum

 

Nah, It can't be! Tim Sweeney is older than that!

 

Pkid asked about the benefit of locking it away. The benefit to customers is zero (negative really). The benefit to Unity is a questionable balance between more money and more customer-provided fixes.

It would be interesting to know what UT thinks it's doing different to Epic that makes withholding source anything but antiquated.

 

It doesn't have a max player limit?

 

No,
But if you try to replicate all your objects properties and function you'll be the one putting the limits.

 

If that is indeed how it works then yeah, that's a nightmare. But due to the huge complexities that adds I'd be surprised if that's how it's actually intended to work. Surely it would at least be based on RRP or MSRP rather than actual sale price, for starters.

 

I can't help but think that releasing the source code so openly is an abysmally bad move on Epic's part from a business perspective. Think about it: I can almost guarantee that Unity's engineers are taking a long, hard look at that source code in their free time, if such a decision was not a company mandate. Unity can still keep their cards close to their hand while Epic has all their secrets in the open now.

Although a lot of people think this is a smart move from Epic, and in a lot of ways it is, the whole releasing the source code thing seems like a move out of desperation more then anything from my estimation.

 

Maybe Unity should start moving toward a business model financed primarily by their app store. The free version of Unity has probably lead to a lot of sales of assets within the asset store, and Unity gets 30% of each of those asset sales.

Epic did a fantastic move when they announced their $19/month subscriptions. Unity is awesome, but the cost gap and feature gap between Free and Pro is too big for hobbyists. For full time, professional game designers, Unity's pricing model is a fine value. For hobbyists, Unity is great only if you build something that only needs the features in the free version. There are a lot of games, even in the hobby sector of the market, that need the Pro features. For example, the Pro water, NavMesh, and Occlusion Culling are Pro features

Additionally, there are assets in the asset store that either don't work at all with the free version or don't look nearly as good in the free version. This problem has suppressed or delayed some purchases by free version users. Unity should enable all of the Pro technical features in the Free version, and then simply enforce the max revenue (currently $100k) for Free version users. Doing this would blunt the momentum for UE4, and it would boost sales in the Unity asset store.

Unity has to do something sooner rather than later. Right now, bunches of Unity Free users are playing with UE4, and Unity asset store sellers are working to make their assets available in the UE4 marketplace. Each day Unity waits before making an announcement is going to cost them market share. Once the UE4 marketplace hits a certain volume, Unity will no longer have the asset store advantage.

 

Epic sold a 40% stake a year or 2 ago for 330 million dollars, valuing the company at about 825 million. They also have the moated licensed AAA engine. They are not desperate.

 

Wasn't that a 49% stake sold to the Chinese, valuing Epic at a bit less than 700 mil, whereas birdies told us Unity declined a buyout offer of about a billion?

Either way, it doesn't matter. However, I wouldn't discard the desperation argument as easily. Unity was pushing hard in recent years and Epic was losing whole markets to them (indie, mobile) while at the same time charging insane amounts for their engine license, making it extremely unattractive.

 

Yes. Unity observed for several years. The success of the Poles, my countrymen is playing Gloria Victis. This encouraged me to start working in Unity. I started to do a project in Unity. http://youtu.be/k0PUSLw2hrU Unity somehow never encouraged me to work in it. If no new offer from Epic, have stayed at Unity. Sorry for my english

 

Actually the man makes a good point, UE might not be desperate but with 160 engineers Unity aren't either.. Giving your competition ample opportunity to review the AA and rendering code alone is enough to step up the competition which might not go in UE's favor. Anyway it was always going to be a double edged sword, with easy integration Epic will make more money from asset store sales as they will attract a lot of middleware.

 

Well then, wouldn't you love it more if more customers sent more fixes? I guess it comes down to if this would bring more value for Unity than what you are currently getting from source code licenses.

Another point for source code access, is the documentation it provides. Some areas of Unity are scarcely documented, with source access I could just check the source to see what stuff does instead of guessing or pestering you with support emails, and maybe even contribute "fixes" to the documentation as well (though personally I don't think I could be bothered to do that unless I was able to post a comment directly below the online docs, another thing I think you should consider opening up for).

For me the choice between Unity and Unreal comes down to what brings more value for me, which boils down to what makes me the most productive. And being able to fix a bug right now instead of creating and submitting a repro case and waiting weeks or months for a fix, or being able to look at the source right now if I'm confused about how something works instead of waiting hours or days for a reply from support which may not even give me the answer I need, well that's currently a big plus for UE4 in that regard. Not that Unity doesn't have its fair share of pluses as well of course, I'm just trying to point out what I think is the best way for you to stay competitive.

I'd gladly pay another $1500 for a Pro with source license, but not in the $10k-$100k range, at least not now with UE4s offering.

 

According to this article it was 40% for 330 million. But it doesn't matter, the point is Epic is not desperate. Yes Unity was taking the mobile market and the Indie market but those are not markets that Epic was into, so they were not taking market share form Epic. And I don't trust "birdies"

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/tencent-paid-330m-for-40-of-epic-games/

 

No. Epic has always given out the source to people evaluating it. I've had the source since last year. The industry doesn't work how you think it works. For a start, most of the source isn't something anyone can just use - it's very specific to it's purpose.

Secondly, everything has ownership. In the case of even a mild legal battle, the source codes would be compared.

And finally, what Epic do with the source and what Unity does with the source, isn't a trade secret OR black magic. Most of this stuff is boring stuff, patented stuff and Siggraph stuff. ie. You can find it on Google.

Far from being top trade secrets, what we have here is a tremendous engineering effort. Knowing what it is, is different from how reliable you can fit it all together. It's engineering and design, and that is why you can't just look at source and say "oh I can copy all that".

Odds on, Unity's engineers already know how xyz is done. Most of this stuff is in published papers. It just takes a lot of man hours to make it work in the way you feel your engine should work. Unity wants it to work with mono, and wants to use middleware. Epic want a C++ approach with slot in middleware. Both have different editors.

 

Just wanted to reply before I forget what I wanted to say, even though it's couple of pages back.

I think it's unfair to only think of games as the only use/application of Unity, UE4, etc which must be made by programming. There are other things out there, and even with games, if you are not part of half a dozen members team (or more) with a dedicated programmer, you really don't want to be primarily spending time coding.

Yes, everyone *does* spend time coding in Unity, but at the end nobody out there cares about the code once you put your creation out. On the other hand everyone sees the artwork and hears the sound/music you have done.

With Unity, I personally don't code because I like to, but because I have to and have no real choice to get things done (I am not accounting for any visual add-ons here that might exist because they are an additional cost).

As a creator, one should not have to be spending days and nights writing C# code. UT should've figured it out how to make this happen without code. That's the product they should be selling, if the gaming is to be democratized. Personally, I just want to produce art (a game, viz., installation, cinematic, etc) and Unity does not make it as easy to do that.

For those who find coding relaxing and time spent worth their while, all the power to you. But, I bet you it does not further your end result; revenue or whatever other satisfaction, by spending more time coding than creating artwork, because visuals are the only thing your end-users care about, not the code (which they can't even see).

Unless I'm totally missing a point here - aren't we using Unity to produce visuals as a final result?

 

Yeah, users don't care about the code. But they sure care about what the code does. For instance, it's code that makes your flashy visuals possible. It's code that makes a game's interactions possible. And so on and so forth.

You can change how it's presented, but at the end of the day making new functionality is making new functionality. If you make a visual editor that doesn't change that. On one end of the spectrum you have full control and all of the complexity that comes with that, and at the other end of the spectrum you have drag-and-drop tools that simplify the process at the cost of significantly reducing flexibility. Unity is intended for making a wide variety of games, so it has to sit towards the "flexible" end of that spectrum. (Though we're clearly not talking about the extreme, here.) It's intended for making games, so it also assumes that you have some level of programming skill within your team.

 

No. I'm using it to make a game.

Visuals are one part of that.

As is code.

As is design (i.e. gameplay mechanics).

IMHO of course.

QS =D

 

I'd say the end users care quite a bit about the code... otherwise they might go look at, say, some art museum with paintings if all they want to see is still artwork. Or maybe Google Images... plenty of still artwork there.

 

There is Blueprint for Unity. Overlooked because Playmaker and uScript are prettier.

Anyway, as mostly an artist, I'm saying C# is far better and faster for coding. I'm also someone who has wanted Unity to implement visual scripting and a shader editor, etc, for years.

 

From another point of view:

Maybe a little over the top, but I think it demonstrates my point. I hate creating artwork, it never comes out the way I want it to. Programming on the other hand ALWAYS comes out the way I want it to - and that's something I'd much rather spend my time doing, using placeholder graphics/artwork/sound until I'm ready to focus on that - generally, if a game is enjoyable with bad artwork, you can guarantee it'll be enjoyable with good artwork.

 

I think UT should keep same options and pricing they have now (i.e. $75/month w/12 month commitment or $1500 one time payment plus options (iOS, Android, etc)) and add a subscription like UE4 has (i.e. $19/month and 5% royalty on revenue) with no commitment (can start and stop payment as you like for updates) and you own the pro license forever only no source, but there is forever the 5% royalty unless you buy the $1500 license (plus extras). UT keeps what it has now and picks up bunch of developers who would immediately jump at $19/month+5% subscription offer (like me, I have already signed up for the UE4 subscription). UT would have to structure the subscription option such that if you have 5 developer's you have to pay 5x1500 for the license, etc., but that would be easy enough.

The problem for me with the "develop using free and buy pro when the game is complete" idea, is that there are too many differences between free and pro for that to really work. There will be too much work to move the game to pro. You would have to relight every scene, tweak or totally change every material, change shaders, etc. In forward rendering you have to choose between lightmaps or normal maps, you can't have both. It's not a practical option. If I develop using the free version, I have to accept it's limitations.

I signed up for the UE4 subscription as soon as it was available and have been playing with it ever since. Even with the limitations of it being beta and not having Enlighten and whatever else, it is stunning. Real-time reflections, real-time shadows, light shafts, easy material/shader editor, bsp editor, blueprints, particles, gpu particles, etc. are just amazing. It even handles the transition from outdoor to indoor where your eyes adjust to the different light level. F***ing amazing. And there is just more I don't even know about yet.

Problems I've found with UE4 so far:

1) editor requires a pretty high end machine with medium to high-end graphics card, Mac users seem to be having major problems.
2) models that I have purchased from various vendors do not import, and in fact UE4 will crash immediately when trying to import some of them. I'm not going to name the vendors because they are very good, they use 3ds Max and their models work quite well with Unity and other packages and I have never had a problem before.
3) character models import with many errors, no skeleton and the animation is F***ed up
4) It seems to only support directx 10+ ( and really directx 11), while unity still goes back to DirectX 9 and a huge market for older machines that only support directx9.

 

According to steam, DX9 accounts for 2.47% of all hardware. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ I think steam has pretty much the best stats here, assuming you're actually targeting anything like a relevant audience for graphics. The bigger question is, does the mac version of Unity 5 suffer for not being OpenGL 4.1?

 

I do all my work on a late 2013 13" MacBook Pro with Intel Iris graphics. It's my only computer, for that matter. I can run Unity 4 on the retina screen and Maya LT on a 1080p monitor via HDMI and even then the fans don't kick in for a while. I started up UE4 alone and it was unusably slow (maybe 1-5 frames per second) and my fans kicked in immediately. Even after turning all quality settings to the lowest it could go, the framerate was usable but still low (maybe 15-20 frames per second) but the fans remained running strong.

Understandably I'm way below the specs Epic posted for the engine and their default setup uses a much more advanced rendering pipeline than the default project in Unity 4.3, but I still wanted to try. Unity is definitely a better bet for developers who aren't running high end gaming towers at least for the time being.

 

To be honest I'm more interested in minimum specs for the runtime than for the Editor. Clearly it'll vary from game to game, but it'd be interesting to know how each of the engines compares at the low end - how well they scale down to simple games on lesser hardware.

 

And all the power to you, at the end of the day that's why Unity provides so many beginner friendly features, and this is also something that's fantastic about the asset store, because it enables you to buy missing parts of your project, be those art or code.

However, I will anyway never get this whole mentality of "i want to make a game all by myself but i don't want to code". For me it just doesn't work that way. There are a few things to making a game and either you learn all those or you don't. Unity is no Click and Play. To me this sounds like saying "hey, i want to built my own custom car but i don't have an idea how to replace a wheel, nor do i want to learn it".

 

It's more like saying "I want to go on a journey, and I want to spend my time planning the trip not building a car". The game is the experience not the code.