Unreal Engine 4

I hope this post makes any sense (in wording that is):


I think a dual licensing option is the only way out for Unity, to be able to generate a solid financial growth, but also keep attracting beginners, small studios and everything in between.

So, in essence you get a royalty free license and a royalty bearing license. One unity version (the full blown that is).


simply put:


Proposed EULA:

- Royalty bearing license is available as a 15 to 25USD monthly subscription.

- Royalty bearing licensee can cancel subscription penalty free at any time. But looses right on updates/grades.

- Upon Canceling subscription, Royalty bearing licensee looses right to upgrades and updates. Assetstrore remains accessible.

- Royalty bearing Licensee can reactivate subscription at any time, and regains access to updates/grades.

- Royalty bearing license has a 5% royalty on gross revenue (based on quarter year intervals), with a total gross revenue limit of 25K USD on a end product. (this also includes advertising income)

- Royalty free licensees still pay regular prices (1500USD) or discounted upgrade price.

- The current Unity free product is no longer maintained, but available if required.

- Royalty is based on a per end product made with Unity.

- All Licensees are required to report their quartly revenue report per end product made with Unity to UT. No later than 45 days after that quarter is over. Unity will provide an royalty invoice, Licensee have to pay.

- UT can invoke a late fee of 2% of the quarter year revenue reported.

- UT can revoke license remotely if licensees abuses it's licensee or neglect to pay royalties (and optional fee) due.

- UT may use lawful means to prosecute licensee willingly abusing license terms (and not paying royalties and or fees).

- If the licensee changes license from royalty bearing to royalty free after several months of gone commercial, the licensee has to pay 1500USD.

- Since the Free version is skipped, it would mean that everyone has access to the full blown engine, for a license that suits best for him/her/them.

- Additional platform export is free in both licenses, so no more additional cost for the licensee to have e.g. IOS export abilities.

- There will be a free trial version of Unity if user desired so, which can export but has a huge splash screen (not waveable) at startup of the end product and watermarking during using the end product and a runtime of 15 minutes per execute.
The trial user can experience the full thing for testing purpose, trail license is prohibited for end product publishing purposes (commerical or non commercial).
User will need to become a licensee if user want's to be able to publish end product, by choosing either a royalty free or royalty bearing license.

additional rules for businesses
- mix and match of licenses is allowed. (royalty free and royalty bearing).

- in case of the business want to change to completely royalty free: at least ONE license registered to business name must be upraded to royalty free.

- There is a revenue threshold for the mix and match in relation to royalty free:
After a total gross revenue of 50K, ALL licenses registered to business name must be upgraded to royalty free.

- Failing to upgrade all licenses when above 50K gross revenue, results in a penalty.
This penalty is revoking of royalty free license terms. (business becomes royalty bearing)
Once business has upgraded all it's licenses, the royalty free license is actived again

For all licensees:
- login is required to use the tools (that is at least once every 48 hours, or the next time you start unity, if that more than 48 hours since last use). It will be used to track license of the instance, and in case of need revoke the ability to start unity.


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Something along these lines, is what i think an ideal solution to the current situation happening in the industry. And one quite a few points Unity will benefit financially. E.g. Royalty income, Subscription icome, vs the current free version = gain in come. To name one aspect.

Note on the subscription price, is say 15 to 25, because i have no idea what would be accepted by the community in large and what UT can do price wise. But higher than 25 might be a dealbreaker, looking at the options besides of unity.

Sorry if this post is gone long... my english is not all that great and i want to express a lot

Thanks for reading though

my humble 2 cents.

 

That's fine, but you have to remember what's in it for them? Again, Unity ain't a charity and with all that middleware how can they keep a float if they only charge $30.00 a month? I honestly believe people's expectations are a little unrealistic and before any jumps on this post. Again, Epic earn from games AAA licensing etc. and Unity don't.

Please nobody take this as an offence, but the chances of people striking it rich enough going by past history it's really not worth it for Unity.

 

Yeah screw Scaleform to be honest, if you want a good GUI right away UE4 is not a good choice right now. People keep forgetting this product is new and Epic has said give us 6 months for it to be more fully baked. That's when UT5 will probably be close(r) to release and people can really do a comparison.

 

Because of the lack of many important features in the Unity version, that's why people compare Unity Pro to Unreal Engine 4.
Here is my short take on all this:
Few years back small and indie developers couldn't afford costly development tools, that was when Unity came into play. Back in that time there was only UnityPro (only 1x1500$). The Indie developer market started to explode, Unity started to get success and then add more platforms at the cost of 1500$ each. It clearly seems that Unity still believe they are targeting that same market niche (the one that make Unity successful), the only problem is that we have now iOS, Android, Windows, WebGL, you name it, countless platforms and paying 1500 for each platform (where most of the time are only to deploy to those platforms) is quite costly for small/indie market. Epic was quite clever and saw that move so they introduced an even lower entry point for developers. We are not anymore in 2009, market has changed quite a lot since and you have to adapt to new trends (otherwise someone else will do).

 

Exactly, I completely agree. Many opinions in this thread keep on stating the 1500 or 75/month price tag. If that were it, I think Unity would be quite competitive, well perhaps adjust the subscription price tag to resemble the 1500 more, rather than 1800 over two years. But either way, that's not too bad. However, 4500 or 225/month, which is what any inclined mobile developer has to pay just goes too far. And it is not really understandable why someone who develops for PC, Mac and Linux pays three times less than someone developing for iOS and Android.

 

Well there's that Slate gui framework but there is no documenation and noone seems to know how to use it for more than creating a canvas and basic buttons.

 

Too much complexity. And still won't cut it probably. I am examining UE4 a while(since the day of surprise). At the very end of blueprint now. Up next, programming. Only after then I will comment of how good UE4 is, comparing to unity. And also a suggestion to concerned people.

Cheers.

 

Prepare for disappointment

 

I really think that will lead to the death of Unity. The idea of UT magically creating "a superior engine that the others can't compete with" is far-fetched at best, and chasing after it will distract focus from their real strengths.

Hobbyists are going to go for the "best", "cheapest" option. UE4 is pretty user-friendly, has an excellent brand name, has the guarantee of being AAA-ready (which practically means little to hobbyists but will still be a huge perceived benefit) and can be yours for a one-off payment of $19. And if you want updates? Occasionally pay another $19. That's not a lot of money, and a whole lot of people are going to decide the concrete benefits of UE4 (over Unity's free version) are well worth it.

That said - ease of use is indeed, in my opinion, Unity's greatest strength. So they need to redouble their focus on small indies, make the engine solid rather than adding half-baked new features, and think seriously about pricing and licensing.

 

What?? Tim Sweeney said it himself it can support much more than that. There isn't any limit

 

As mentioned above this post.. UE4 has no multiplayer players limitation build in. UDK has a limitation of 64Players at once. UE4 doesn't.
And even if it did, you could relatively easily remove the limitation in the engine sourcecode, recompile and be done with it.

 

Well, maybe not "magically". I don't see why it can't be done. But superior also includes having superior productivity / ease of use. I guess it's about finding the right balance.

 

Check out some of the costs involved:

http://angryant.com/2014/03/25/The-Engine-Wars-Numbers/

This doesn't include the huge cost of the partner program should you want to integrate fmod, enlighten or speedtree however.

 

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/Slate/index.html is the docs for it. Also the code is there in C++. It's not like Unity where we are all screwed if there's no docs. ue4 is open source so you can look at the code and see how it is used

Granted, I haven't looked at Slate myself. I thought they built the editor with it though which means there is examples in the code

 

Is not about using every single little feature each engine have to offer right away (no ones does) but about present/future scalability/features which won't cripple/stuck (or even preventing) your work at some point.

 

In no way do I know enough c++ to figure out how to use a UI framework by looking at it's code.

But last time I checked there was no useful docs about Slate. They are making progress fast

 

I think it's fairly reasonable to compare the two when looking at a feature comparison and with both offering a subscription for access.

Yeah I could have done the same working as a KP but when i was 16 I didn't really have anything to pay for like car insurance, food(even bigger an issue right now for me due to being forced to eat fresh and healthy S*** which is way more expensive), mobile yadda yadda. Its a completely different story now.

 

You earn more money as you get older , well you should do anyway.. 7 - $800.00 a month wouldn't even cover the cost of the rent in a 2 bed flat over here. So if $100.00 a month was a big issue, you'd have more worries than game development.

 

Haha I do have more worries than that but there isn't really anyway to change them at the moment. That still doesn't mean I don't have a little flexibility with what I have but the £60 a month is just a little too much for me.

Entirely depends on where you live though if I wanted more flexibility I could move to the arse end of scotland and have more breathing space. When I worked up in Wick for a little bit there was a house being sold there for £30k that would cost up wards of a million around loch lomond.

 

Honestly, I'm looking at this, and I keep doing the math, and... I'm still thinking that UE4 is a great deal for me and a lot of other peeps. I really doubt that JOSTLE BOTS is going to make more than $30k in sales. Maybe that in conjunction with the next project? Sure, but... as somebody whose games will likely only bring in minimum wage levels of sales... this is still appealing.

 

Reply cause the edit button is broken?

Despite those worries games and development is my escape from that S***.

 

It also doesn't include the cost of getting nasty engine bugs fixed in a timely manner (days, not weeks/months).

 

License terms between Unity and his third party middleware providers won't let that happen. Unless you want Unity sources without any third party middleware? It would be a half baked Unity. At that point you'll be fixing/adding stuff to a different customized branch of Unity and no one will benefit from.

 

This thread has gotten to page 60. I would like to hear more comments from Unity staff regarding all of this discussion.

 

I live darn sarth from you mate, jobs are a little scarce in the north of england as well. If it wasn't for a long and painful IT and AAA daily spanking career + a long and painful couple of companies I sold off.. There wouldn't be a cat's chance in hell I could of afforded to do this.

I kind of believe this industry is a fools errand, but it's an errand I love. Compared to the cost of everything else, I've completely lost track of what's expensive anymore.. If you want to remain competitive in 3D you can try your hardest with Blender or go Z-Brush / Modo route or if you want to skint yourself go for 3DSmax, the cost of PC's to even dev this sort of stuff before you get chance to lightmap it is ridiculous.. One staff would cost you far more than any tool ever.

Even if you don't have a business and a hobbyist, to remain somewhat competitive and successful then a bit of marketing here and money drains again.. Out of the whole process, Unity's cost isn't the one that scares me.

 

Aye lad. But a cuppa tetley never cost much.

 

Speaking of Tea, I recon it's about time for a cuppa char matey>!

 

I have no doubts Unity 5 will kick anyone's arses explosively, the question is more about Unity licenses and prices which seems a bit steppy for the majority of people's here.

 

I think it's about time you started wearing underpants..

Code (csharp):

1. [SIZE=1]Because Unity will blow them away, you can thank me later.[/SIZE]

 

Doesn't he work for Unity?
Again, that's a number most people would be glad to make. But how many % of game developers actually make that much? I'm using "much" loosely here, cause its not that much. At least he put in his post that Unity is an upfront cost. And again...thats what makes UE4 seem like such a good deal to hobbyist, and new users. The upfront cost is smaller.
I think we're all beating a dead horse here. I'm regurgitating what others have already posted which are inline with my own thoughts.
I'm not gonna post anymore on this matter until more news becomes available. We got 59 pages of ideas and wishful thinking. As others have said, "The ball is in Unity's court!"

To Unity:
In the words of Chris Rock, "Whatever you do, prepare to do it!"

 

He does not work for Unity AFAIK, ended a while back. But run the maths yourself. Are they broken? no. In fact far from broken, they're kind to UE as they omit things like how much VS 2012 costs, and how much the Partner Program costs.

It's clear not many people realise that VS 2012 isn't optional if you want to make builds and so forth...

 

I never said they were broken. Read what I posted. Again we are going in circles.

 

The chosen default numbers for that calculator are surely in favor of Unity. While those may fit to some customers it surely does not reflect the masses. Also it shows WebGL as free (an update on that one?)...

 

And they also state you can use UE with VS 2012 Express so no upfront cost for vs

 

Isn't there a free express version which also good to build?

 

The only issue I have with the monthly subscription is you never get to own... you are only allowed to rent even if over a 24 month period you would end up paying more for a perpetual license which I feel is wrong and makes the subscription model unattractive.

I think 3 license options should be offered:

1) Perpetual License
2) Monthly Subscription (at a reduced rate to the current rate)
3) Monthly Payment Method (the cost of the license spread over a defined period of time but once the agreement is fulfilled it is converted into a perpetual license).

I would also like to see an ultimate license that included mobile platforms too that gave a small discount to seats that required both IOS and Android (say $4000 giving a $500 discount).

 

You can enter your own numbers into the form at http://angryant.com/2014/03/25/The-Engine-Wars-Numbers/ if you have a different situation than the default numbers. Most hobbyists are going to enter 1 seat, a 12-24 month duration, and then enter something like $1000 into the Gross Sales box. For that group, UE4 wins by a mile based on the current pricing strategies. Once you get to $25000 in Gross Sales, then Unity gets competitive again, but you cannot really expect hobbyists and indies to absorb the risk up to that point.

 

I like Unity's licencing model and that it is possible to have perpetual licences as well. I think Unity is worth the money in general, however in comparision it feels pretty expensive now. Also I'm not happy with the 4.x release and that a lot of stuff got postponed to 5.x but that's a different topic.

Still, going the route of UE4 would have several drawbacks:
1. The possibility to choose between royalty based licencing or non-royalty probably doesn't work that well: Successful users would choose non-royalty, the others who make less money would choose royalty. The one left behind is UT themself as they make much less money.
2. Switching to a royalty based model only would not work so easily as there are already so many non-royalty based licences.
3. Epic's pricing is very aggressive now and clearly aims for market share. It is not clear if it is sustainable for long term. Epic can bear it thanks to their market position in games and AAA sector. This move will probably even increase there AAA relevance. All that does not apply to UT...

 

$25,000 should be the goal for any indie though. It for sure cost much more than that in development hours. And also what if you are selling the product on multiple devices? What about the cost of working out how much gross with varying discounts every 3 months? failure to submit this data to epic will get your product pulled.

Who develops a game for months for $1000? what kind of insanity is that?

For productive indies doing a lot of little titles, that's 5% per little title per platform + excessive book keeping every 3 months, as opposed to a fixed cost.

 

Well at least those ventures have given you the opportunity to pursue the indie stuff. You think it was worth it or been worth it so far?

Yeah everything really can mount up in the end. Why I'm also using blender and gimp(or just started to learn to use them). Took a look at 3ds max and damn thats expensive £225 a month?

Engine cost might not be the big one but its still something I need to factor in. I wasn't even thinking about marketing either will be a total failure there

 

Also need to add the costs of assets. The cost of using Unity doesn't end with the pro and add-on licensing.

 

The same applies to UE4 though. This is still stuff you need to budget time and money for

 

Unity 5 Versus Unreal Engine 4!

Although the urge to switch was tempting, I've decided to ultimately stick with Unity, and for some people still doubting if they want to stick with Unity here are some good reasons.

Let me preface that Unreal Engine 4 is pretty awesome, especially with myself being an artist. I paid the monthly and checked out all their demos, and was definitely impressed. I am working with a programmer on a new project and we both gave some thought into developing with Unreal Engine 4. We've ultimately decided against it and thought that Unity would be a better long term decision. Here's why...

Why Unity is better!

The pricing is better! Madness, you say? Not really. Although the hard 1.5k might be difficult to drop at first, if you are making a PC / Console game, this is all you have to pay. With Unreal, you pay 15$ a month, which is practically nothing. To reach Unity's 1.5k, you need to be using Unreal for 100 months, which by then several new versions of Unity would have already been released.

However, the real crux to this argument is the 5% payment you give to Epic. This sounds like hardly anything, especially in comparison to UDK's 15%. In practice, this is actually hugely significant. If you plan on actually being successful (making more than 30,000$), then Unreal Engine is more expensive. This only goes up the more successful your game is. If you make 200k, you have to pay them 10,000. If you make a million (yikes!) you have to pay them 50,000! No matter how much you make with Unity, you only pay that initial payment.

You might be thinking: even making 30,000$ seems like a stretch for most people. This is true, but naturally the question arises: What are you doing with a AAA game engine if you don't plan on making some bank? If you are a hobbyist or a casual developer, then maybe Unreal Engine will suit your needs, but if you are actually serious about making quality games that will be successful, Unity is simply the better business choice.

Unity is graphically superior! Alright, I must be completely off my rocker, right? There is no way in hell Unity is graphically superior to Unreal Engine, right? Surely I'm just a fanboy at this point, right?

I'll give Epic credit, they are amazing at giving off the appearance that they have the best graphics. With all the tech demos they have that are all of insane quality, it really does seem like they have an edge. But, if you are an artist, you understand that execution is 95% of the battle. Well crafted models, textures and animations on a lesser engine will 100% of the time look better than less well executed graphics on a superior engine. The Unreal Engine tech demos are impressive but ultimately irrelevant. Your team is not Epic, and you aren't going to make games or demos that look like theirs (even if your artists are as good, it's still going to look different with different direction etc.). What you really want to look for in an engine is what it empowers your team to be able to do.

The fact is, all of the cool features Unreal has, Unity also has. Unreal's post processing effects? Unity has 95% of them plus a few of their own. Unreal's shaders? Unity will have PBR and light probes with Unity 5. Unreal's animation? Unity has a better animation system. Unreal's lighting? Well, guess what? Unity actually has a better lighting system than Unreal. Unity has real time global illumination built in with no extra cost for developers using Unity 5. With Unreal, you have to licences that technology. How much does that cost? You have to email Enlighten. The fact that they don't even list a price pretty much guarantees it's not cheap. Real time global illumination isn't just some small thing, it's huge. For a game with real time day/night cycles or lots of dynamic lights, you need it to create good results.

Unity is easier to use! I don't even think I need to elaborate on this very much, the evidence is quite clear. Unreal Engine is playing catch up with Unity's extremely intuitive UI. Although it's definitely better than it was, the way you do things in Unreal is still unnecessarily convoluted and lacking a lot of features that Unity has. Too many things are still tucked away inside hard to find menus. Why can't I use Maya's camera controls in Unreal? How come snap to vertex in Unreal sucks in comparison to Unity's, limiting the ways I can design modular levels? Why do I need a very specific version of Visual Studio to do any scripting in Unreal? Of course, I'm more used to Unity, but some of this stuff is just objectively bad. I could go on, but you get the point. If you think I'm skimming over this too much, then present an argument that Unreal has better usability. I don't really think such an argument exists, however.

Unity is more extendable (for now)! Unreal came out of the gate with source code access and an equivalent to the asset store. Although this was definitely a smart move that will ultimately allow them to have a more extendable engine than Unity, right now Unity has a several year's head start on Unreal's store and it shows. How long will it take for the Unreal community to catch up? Two years, at the least? How long do you intend the dev cycle for your game to be if you start now?

Although people were unsure about it when it first came out, the evidence is clear: the asset store was one of the smartest moves Unity has ever made (second only to releasing a free version, in my opinion). The community can (and has) added functionality to the editor, added special case frameworks for specific games and add a large assortment of assets to the editor which at least double the power of Unity. Developers for Unity can chose which of these fits their project, and leave the rest behind. Unreal is trying to emulate this, but once again Unity has a huge head start with this.

Unity has better audio! This is less of a big deal than the other categories, but still worth mentioning. Unity's way of handling audio is better than Unreal's, or really any other engine. With the new audio mixing features, plus the already existing audio effects, audio streaming and FMOD support, Unity's audio is unrivaled.

Switching is too hard! Ah, I saved the best for last! This one was actually the main reason my team decided to stay with Unity, and I think is universally the best reason to stay with Unity.

Of course, this point only applies if you have already been using Unity, but since you are all on the Unity Forums, that's a fair assumption to make. Especially if you have been using Unity for a long time, you become familiar with it. You know all it's nooks and crannies. You know how to use it and how to abuse it to do what you want. This level of familiarity doesn't happen with a few tutorials. It takes months if not years to start to become an "expert" at Unity, and even then there is still probably gaps in your knowledge. Getting to that level of familiarity gives you an advantage, and starting all over from scratch, especially for an ambitious project, is not an option. Do you really want to spend months learning a completely new tool? Why? Because it's slightly cheaper in the short term? After all, for the other reasons I've outlined above, Unity is actually superior anyway. What's the point of switching?


Unreal is better!

Of course, Unreal Engine does have it's plus sides as well. This post is already way too long, so I'll try to be briefer here.

Unreal has some more graphical features! Overall, real time global illumination is big enough that it overshadows these smaller things in my opinion, but if your game really needs them than you might lean more toward Unreal. The biggest thing missing in Unity right now are GPU particles. The fact that Unity hasn't addressed this is slightly baffling. Some other impressive features include dynamic shattering, built in decals (although Unity has a free framework on the AS for this), and a few more post processing effects.


Unreal is easier to program for (kind of)! Blueprint provides non-programmers access to programmer functionality. Although I would argue that learning this well would be just as hard as learning some basic scripting, a lot of people can't wrap their mind around programming and can only work with a system like this. For this reason alone, Unreal is easier to program with, but the additional argument could be made that C++ is more commonly used than Unity's languages. However, this is balanced out in my opinion with Unity offering 3 options for programming languages, so a larger variety of programmers can get the hang of Unity depending on what they already know.

Unreal is potentially more extendable! As outlined above, Unity right now is more extendable. However, this won't last forever, and when Unreal catches up it has the bonus of allow it's users source code access, giving developers more power to create more advanced extensions.

Unreal's shader editor is better This is unarguable. Unity has 3rd party extensions like Strumpy Shader Editor and Shader Forge, but these don't have the same amount of power as Unreal's, plus are either outdated or cost you an additional fee.

Unreal is better for hobbyists! This is a really weird one to say for Unreal, which used to be an inaccessible AAA engine, but it's true! A hobbyist has to pay a lot less for the simple privilege of using the editor in all it's functionality. Even if 15$ a month is too steep, you can just pay for it once and use it forever, without updates. Also, if you want to release a smaller game that probably won't make that much money, Epic's cut is still way less expensive than Unity Pro. However, for kids or very casual hobbyists, you can't beat free, which Unity (and UDK) offers.

It's already out! If you are really impatient and need things like PBR right now, then Unreal Engine is more suited for you. Be warned, however! It's in beta right now and is not exactly ready for extensive use. Also, this point is extremely short sighted. You can start making your game in Unity 4 and by the time you really need the new features, Unity 5 will be out.

Switching is too hard! Once again, this is the big one. If you are already used to developing for Unreal, than switching will probably be too complicated. That being said, Unreal Engine 4 is significantly different enough from UDK that it might be jarring as it is, so if you were on the fence now might be the time to try Unity. Of course, if you just decided you wanted to make a game without having significant experience with either, I'd say go with Unity because I think it's better, for the reasons outlined above.


The War Continues!

Overall, I actually like how there is a lot of new debate on which engine is better, and who will win the "engine wars". This not only sparks interesting discussion and heated debate, but also forces both companies to stay on their toes and not get too comfortable. That being said, what do you think of this rundown? Was there anything I missed? Let's keep the debate going!

 

I absolutely agree with you that indies should aim higher than the low numbers I gave in that example. However, when hobbyists and many indies looks at these numbers, they will look at worst case numbers when evaluating the risk. Most people know that the gaming industry is based on hits and misses, and that most people starting out will get more misses than hits.

A lot of hobbyists will be lucky to generate $1000 starting out. On the other hand, if somebody is doing contract work for a larger company or is employed full time by a gaming company, then it is easy to hit the numbers that make Unity a solid value. But hobbyists and many indies are not in that situation.

 

TLDR version of my epic post:

Why Unity is better:

1. The pricing is better! If you plan on actually being successful (making more than 30,000$), then Unreal Engine is more expensive.
   
2. Unity is graphically superior! Unity has a better animation system and Unity actually has a better lighting system than Unreal. Global Illumination is huge, and the lack of it in Unreal overshadows any of the other graphical advantages it might have.
   
3. Unity is easier to use! Unreal Engine is playing catch up with Unity's extremely intuitive UI.
   
4. Unity is more extendable (for now)! Right now Unity has a several year's head start on Unreal's store and it shows.
   
5. Unity has better audio!
   
6. Switching is too hard! Starting all over from scratch, especially for an ambitious project, is not an option.

 

Um both VS 2012 and VS 2013 are free if you use Express. UE4 compiles just fine in it.

 

Do I think it's worth it? Lol with the cost of a house on the line the years of stress to afford it, Err nope not at all. HAHA! I'd never work for a AAA games company again if they decided to pay me.. Lovely guys, great enthusiastic people but the job was horrible..

It's like all artistic ventures, they are a time and money pit and usually have little return unless your shiz hot and know how to woo a mass audience. Or you're just damn lucky.

Engine cost is always a factor, but I value my time over money a little bit. There's always ways to earn money, there's no way you earn time..

This UE4 vs. Unity thing feel's like a moot point until it starts affecting workflow then it causes nothing but frustration. I like UE4, if I was to start from utter scratch I mean asset's / pipeline I'd go that way. But if you're planning to move from one engine to another, I'd heavily re-consider..

For example, the artwork pipeline. We have 1000's of asset's I mean 20K + some of them bought some of them not. So in Unity it's like stamping on UV maps until they fit so we can have a reasonable amount of submeshes. UE4 doesn't like that, you can't have ANY overlap or lightmass will have it's way with you. Honestly how long do you think it would take to remap 20K + assets, some may say you should of done it right in the first place.. But you try to get highly detailed objects into Unity without jumping up and down on that trash pile to make it fit, if you have too many submeshes you're going to hit another world of issues.

So moving over would be difficult, it's not impossible we can re-map everything. But why and some of these asset's are WELL known Unity store asset's as well. So it's not just us..

You can't delete your submeshes in UE4 if you want to just re-hash something slightly, for materials you need to set UV texcoords in every mat which becomes tedious. Whereas you can just do that on the fly with Unity, lighting has always been more predictable as a whole in Unity and it's all the little things. Unity is a lazy man's engine, but it's very efficient and easy due to that and it's not something I'd really give up.

It all depends on how much your time is worth to you I guess. When paying staff, a lot your time is worth a lot.. Even when you work a day job, there's only so many hours in a day so I'd like less messing around with something a bit more slick on my hands.

If you have the time and do it UE4's way, it's a pleasant well featured engine a cut above what you get now with U4 Pro. But the lack of decent middleware like GUI system for one also puts me off the idea of using it. In six months they may of sorted out most of the issues, but by then I'll be a 1000 ft. deep into dev.

 

Except the odds of success are statistically unlikely, and the odds those successes will be above $30,000 are even more unlikely.

This is a total farce. You're ignoring literally everything but GI.

I'm starting to think you haven't used UE4 at all.

Unity is actually inherently less extendable if you're looking at anything past stuff you can buy on the asset store.

Lord no. Unreal has had better audio support than Unity since the days of UDK where having more than 32 audio sources was just a matter of editing an INI file and setting up soundscapes has always been easier and more robust. The only thing we know about audio in UT5 is that it's going to have a mixer.

This is literally the case with any engine, including switching from UDK to UE4, or UE4 to Unity, or GameMaker to Unity, or Unity to GameMaker.

 

Why Unity is better:

-- Not for upfront costs it is not as discussed before. Especially for a new indie team with very little budget. You'd have to pay for multiple unity pro licenses

-- As far as I know you can turn it on in ue4. Will look into it

-- Yeah if you go straight to C++. Hell yes I agree!!! But if you just stick to Blueprint? Looking at UE4 source blueprint appears to have full access to the engine

-- A lot of those plugins are built right into UE4 (like playmaker, fracture, probuilder too probably, TCu particles, etc). But I understand your point.

-- Out of the box, yes. But indies can easily add WWise. Fmod use to have indie license too [edit- Btw didnt even have a chance to look into UE4's audio. In the old days, we use to add fmod to unreal via mods. It was really easy even without full source (this was back when Epic allowed DLLs and gave C++ source for headers)]

-- Yes! UE4 probably has a steep learning curve for new users. Seeing lots of 'how to program in C++' threads there. LOL!


[edit] Note I have never played with UE4 audio yet so really shouldn't bothered responding to his comment on that cause I dont know about that

 

You need to buy far less, unless you are buying art assets then that doesn't change. Perhaps the calculator should include getting Unity up to feature parity with UE4? Though all those bolted on features will have been developed by different people, won't be guaranteed to fully work with each other and support will vary greatly.