Unreal Engine 4

Or they will upgrade their computers to meet a standard introduced, what 4 years ago?

 

Its up to them to decide whether its better to get $25 - $30/month or $0/month.

Some money is better than none .... and trust me, now with multiple eager suitors courting customers to switch over, they will pull out all the big guns and make it irresistible not to switch over. They have already started. So it's Unity that must decide what they will offer to keep the people.

Thinking nothing has to change is completely living in fantasy, and if they adopt that same thinking pattern it will definitely sink them.

I dont have to do anything. Neither do any of the other Unity users. We dont have to beg, or plead, or bargain with Unity. They have to come to us. We hold the money. They must entice us to buy, and not the reverse.

Epic has enticed me to give them $19.99 just to take a peek at what UE4 was all about. Unity has not received a penny from me since the 3.x days (excluding Asset Store purchases). So, thus far, they are dropping the ball and missing out on a potential sale.

 

Who cares who "rips off" who anyway, as long as all customers get a better working editor? As someone famous once said, good artists copy, great artists steal. No one should patent an editor window anyway, there's nothing original about that.

 

Yep, HD3000 are not supported.
This week I'll upgrade to SLI 2x GTX 780s to begin doing serious S*** with it.

 

$0.00 = quick death, $30.00 = slow death.. Pick your poison, the less money they have the less money they spend on staff / R&D and bugfixing. Which then halt's progress, all middleware will be removed due to license costs. People will complain more and more until the engine becomes eventually abandoned, just because some people can't afford even $50.00 a month it doesn't mean there aren't plenty out there that can.. Remember (No royalties) and you want to know how much enlighten cost's? If were squabbling over dollars per month, more than people can afford so don't you think it's nice they put that in the engine?

Anyway, I think you've chosen your engine. Best of luck!.

 

Good stuff. Lets wait to see what people do, such as actually getting their own stuff moving around as opposed to playing tech demos I think that will be rather telling...

 

This is actually a good point which I haven't seen mentioned very much on this thread. If you are primarily interested in 2D the Unity tools/workflow seem much better, and is likely to remain so as it is doubtful Epic has much interest there beyond some "it can be done" demos.

 

Actually appears to be working now. I downloaded a patch off their forum page.

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/14856/ue4editor-cmdexe-crashed-after-launch-1.html

Woop!

I think the patch lets it work if your PC is under spec.


Apparently the patch will be included in next week's update.

 

Again, no offense, its not my problem. I'm just a customer, not a owner or shareholder, so what they do or dont do internally or costs or profits are I dont care because its not on my plate for responsibilities, nor is it the problem or responsibilities of any customer.

Customers can survive without Unity because there's "plenty of other fish in the sea" they can choose from, but Unity cannot survive without customers. So the customers hold the leverage, and Unity must please them, and not the reverse.

And nope, no where did I say what engine I have chosen or not chosen, but nice attempt in trying to categorize me.

 

Well, I sure hope there are enough customers out there who do care and do consider it their problem (as I do). Because I'd hate to be forced to switch to Unreal when I didn't wish to...

As engine companies die out, the choices become more limited. And limited isn't good.

 

- I can't say.

- I firmly believe for the most part, have an overall gut feeling for the other; and actually know for a fact about a few assets already going from Asset Store to the Marketplace, which is only a beginning.

As far as I know, nowhere does it say that the Asset Store has exclusive right to the assets posted there, and that asset developers can't sell or post their content elsewhere. Nobody would agree to that kind of a license, no matter the profit, because they would be denying themselves from more profit elsewhere.

- Until last week's announcement from Epic, I have been an Unity "apologist". Then I realized that for all this time I was on the wrong side of the river. And if crossing the river will cost me $19/month and save me precious time from coding that I can spend on art and other things, well I think it's worth the fare.

Here's an example how stupefying easy is doing a simple pickup in UE4 with Blueprint. After seeing this video I feel angry that I have to waste *any* time with Mono to accomplish the same task in Unity.

Couple of clicks and it's done, move on to other things. C# is sooooo much better and powerful...NOT!

 

...and that took whole 4 (FOUR) days to fix and it was actually done by a user. OMG, what witchcraft is that!

Let's look at UT's record on how long it takes to fix *a* bug, any bug. Oh wait, nobody but them can do it, so I guess it depends on their timelines, if at all.

Ooops.

Sorry if I sound a bit bitter but the Kool-Aid wore off last week.

 

I'm not offended , if you're not giving them money anyway you're not the type of customer they want. People will pay $50.00 a month + for Unity Pro, I will for example.. I'm not saying Unity shouldn't improve, I'm not saying Unity shouldn't adjust their pricing, what I am saying is let's not be silly with it. There's not a chance in hell Unity will sub for $25 - $30 a month and if you expect them to you might as well go and get accustomed to your new home.

 

True, limited selection is bad for customers. But you know how many indie game engines (that had great potential and good product) that went bust over the past 10+ years due to just plain stubbornness of owners and refusal to adapt the landscape. Unity themselves caused a few to go bust when they began offering Unity Free.

So what Unity did is being done to them now. And now they have to adapt and make the right move .... or they too will go bust.

 

This please, not another manchild bickering contest

I know for a plain fact Unity can kick out amazing graphics just how it is, i don't feel I need to say again that it's up to the artists to make great art when the tools are there in front of them, and they are, U4 looks very pretty too. Like amigo said, you folks are comparing an unfinished engine to one that only exists to Unity themselves, it's completely bizarre, and it must be frustrating for Unity to see people rail on graphics AGAIN because thats what it tends to boil down to, when unity 4 can look spectacular yet doesnt get that recognition because some of the best artists making publically visible art inside Unity are the asset store guys, i hardly ever see great Unity art elsewhere because it seems you cant be arsed, or you have no artists, or you're just full of hot air and can argue the S*** out of indirect illumination etc without ever, personally, having had a hand in it.

The engine is a tool, you use the right tools for the job, the fact that all these engines survive and improve reflects an obvious interest in all of them and that sensible people with money AND talent/vision can get the most out of what they fully understand to be the most logical tool for the job and amaze folk. The amounts of money you're squabbling over are absoultely ridiculous, most employed people could cough up the sub for pro if they just drank less on a night out, with that kind of vision how are you seeing the asset store? And how do these sums of money get brought up by people i assume to be adults seriously talking about making a videogame, one of the most taxing, time consuming and maddening commitments i can consider making.

How is a couple of grand anything to argue over? How are features youre not sure exist or have analogues anything to argue over? And why do graphics keep getting brought up as the lead basis over which to judge an engine? It's not just childish its IRRELEVANT. All the discussed engines can knock out beautiful graphics if you/your team are up to it and it's odd seeing folk who clearly work in games for a living saying some of the things they do, i would have thought they'd be completely educated as to why they chose their software and it wouldnt need that much bickering on forums. And if you don't GENUINELY think you're going to make a game, that will use all the features you get upset about, that will have any sort of substance to it right up to the end then there's no point even entering the pointless bickering arena because you're not a contender for any kind of attitude, even saying something irrelevant

I like facts and figures and things to be empirically measured, then I can weigh things up myself, thats how i'd think most developers should think? Get the right tool for the job then make your game and shut up about it

 

Mind you. It works on my laptop. But not very smoothly. The interface looks all nice and shiny but it seems at the expense of speed. Hopefully there's some settings that speed things up a bit.

Reminds me of Microsoft's XAML builder Expression Blend. Same problem there.

If UE4 wants to appeal to indies like me, they really need something faster and more lightweight IMO. Such as reducing the 8GB download and making it faster on laptops. That's just my opinion. But it's a good start. Seeing as it's only out 6 days!

 

I'm absolutely the customer they want, I've got money to give to them, now if its not enough for them, thats their problem, then it will eventually go to their competitors pockets and not theirs. But that is up to them to decide. I'm sure their investors and shareholders will not be too pleased with the outcome of a decreased customer base. And if you think customers are loud, demanding, and make noise .... ompf ... investors and shareholders are much worse.

 

Yes. Pray tell? What is this..."patch" you speak of?

 

@ Lazygunn, there's no doubt in my mind that UE4 whips Unity in terms of graphical capability at the moment. From what I've seen of UT5 is a massive step up from Unity 4 and looks amazing. Purely due to Enlighten and other tech like PBR, if it wasn't needed it wouldn't be in there..

That said, none of us have touched it yet and agree mainly with what you're saying. I just want to play with it NOOOW!.

 

While I'm at it, I decided to cruise UE4 AnswerHub.

There are lots of bugs which is to be expected, but many have a "RESOLVED" next to them.

Upon closer inspection I find that some of these are actually fixes that UE4 users have made in their engine forks and posted as pulls.

THAT is really depressing me from a standpoint of a Unity user.

EDIT: Oh yeah and this looks nice: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132819

 

Yeah that's why it's not worth replying to those who think it is impossible for people to contribute useful stuff to open source repositories. This project has a huge number of very talented developers playing with it, and c++ is not dark magic that no one but epic understands.

 

This one: http://cdn.unrealengine.com/qfe/QFE-FromCL-2027741-Shelve-2031721.exe

 

I see a lot of questions on why we are comparing unknown products in U5 vs UE4. It's not. For people who have used Unity long enough (me), we are comparing against how Unity has done in the past few years, which is not encouraging. The new features in U4 are not production ready, and we need to upgrade to get bug fixes. Why would we think U5 will be different if Unity does not improve? You will probably get Enlighten useable only in U6.

I don't need Enlighten, Mecanim, NavMesh. Perhaps those should be made addons instead of forcing it down our Pro licenses. All I want is to get those bug fixes since 2009.

 

So, has anyone actually got an exe or video of their own work moving around, or is all this nerd fappery based on demos they might lack the power to reproduce? The graphics are lovely, but so is Unigine Valley. Until work is produced, it's noise, not information. I would consider an opinion backed up with tangible results worth reading, as arrogant as that sounds.

Possibly because I'm seeing a lot of opinion stated as fact at the moment. One of the core reasons I enjoy Unity is the workflow. A lot of work went into Unity to dumb it down yet still give useful control to the developer. That isn't cheap, and contributes IMHO to the worth of the product.

 

For those of you who said "UE4 ripping off Unity editor design" i say you're idiot.

CRYENGINE, Unreal Engine 4, Frostbite 3, S2 Engine, Unigine, 3Ds Max, Maya, Blender... have the same "editor" design.

watch it at 1:02 << did Frostbite copy Unity? who will copy Unity...

 

You should be rejoicing that the community is able to accomplish this feat. I'm not trying to Jab at Unity. I still like it a lot

But you gotta realize the community consists of thousands of talented folks. You gotta realize the community outnumbers Epic greatly

 

UE4 definitely has more precooked options, and you'd naturally expect them to be able t mingle without bother (fat chance of that in Unitys asset store namespace wars or something), and if pushed i'd have to say that its looking great, but i just find it frustrating because i see an effect in Unreal 4, think 'Unity could do that', spend a few minutes thinking how it'd be best done with what I own, so no stealing assets, nawty, come to a satisfying conclusion then remember i dont have a small team (very small) of people i need to do a 'it can be done' thing Unreal style and most people go ahead and assume Unity cant do it - Lots of this comes down to ignorance of the scope of the asset store too, im DEFINITELY not talking about vanilla unity, there's plenty of asset store augmentation going on. I'd just love some top of their form artists and programmers to come together and do a samaritan or something just so i can feel justice was done when honestly i hardly ever see anything done by Unity users that even nearly comes to getting the best out of it, while Epic have their staff of artists and direct line to asian photosweat shops to get all this lovely stuff they can use for promotion.

There's also the fact that it all seems to cater for a very homogeonous group of people, both gamers and devs, who seem convinced that THAT should be how a good game looks, it needs to have that and that and that, when artistic direction, particularly in such a 'free' medium could/should have feck all to do with a variety of tickbox features.. that Unity tends have already, just in the asset store. Have a good root around in there and there's gems, im im now stuck with too much ambition cause i wanna get it all in there for people to see and there arent enough hours in the day

In the end Unity lacks big money art guys, or really talented for-some-reason-dont-have-a-job-but-can-maintain-standard-of-living guys to knock out 5 minutes of gameplayish eye candy and then it got represented. It's hard to say Unreal S***s on it because its not being represented. And there's too much focus for me on absolute realism being a good art direction, when thats no direction at all, i'll post two games upcoming, no idea what they're made with, couple both easily be done in Unity given the manpower, and i think they're absolutely beautiful

This is what fancy graphics possible in all these engines is all about and using all that technology meant for realism and giving it a slant, or actual art direction by someone who knows what they want to say and who to say it to. Seems this realism stuff (pbr etc and i wont lie i love the look too and am eagerly waiting grabbing dDo update with the megascan thingers) is super popular with Unity users atm but noone actually makes any of the art needed by the shaders (Almost an insult to the brains writing these things), probs not even entirely sure what the new thing they bought does they were just told it was good, and the their contributions to Unity slating wars amount to they dont know how to use their own software. Would definitely be nice to see people not squabbling and spending all that extra time instead fooling with sculptris and blender (yeah i'll take the 'naive' route there)

 

Well I've tried UE4 and it is just too slow on my laptop. It makes everything on my laptop run slowly. So back to Unity for now. Pity. I like the idea of the Blueprints.

 

Epic CEO posts on their forums on a daily basis...
I miss the time when David used to do the same.

 

I couldnt see where the blueprints are that revolutionary? Unity's got tonnes of visual scripter things, some of them are quite good, i couldnt see stuff in the thing amigo linked that wasnt already doable in unity, maybe take an existing system and have a lil paradigm shift and there you have it. I get the attitude that people think visual scripting is childish or weak in Unity (I'm still planning to have my own first go on it sometime this week) but a visual scripting system in Unreal 4 is big whoop? I don't get it. Maybe there's just too many options for Unity in the asset store where you dont know which one is great, which one is bad, that each has its own ways that are a time sink, but may well not be particularly weaker than any other engines system. Maybe some Unity old hacks (at 3 years im still young) should make a review site for asset store items and be particularly pragmatic about them. You might then get a view of opportunities and tools and noone should complain really, if your software gets reviewed harshly then maybe you should stop trying to make money out of people by selling crap and dragging the potential and reputation of the system down

That might have seemed tangential but just reflects my outlook on the importance of the asset store and how odd it is to compare vanilla unity to anything without some helpful items from the store

 

Agreed,
A yearly price of 500$ for desktop and 250$ for extra platforms would be quite attractive to anyone (existing Pro users and free users willing to get the pro). Though I'm fine if additional platforms (besides consoles) are included in the 500$ yearly package. ^^
Why a yearly subscription? This will simply make Unity not rush their products in a 2 years cycle, add more features in between (instead of waiting 2 years + for features and old fixes). If Unity takes 3 years for a major version, it won't be a loss for Unity as users keeps paying 500$ each year (and I'm fine with).

 

I've spent quite a lot of time playing with UE4. It's really excellent and it's really interesting. I'll definitely muck around with it some more, but there's no way it's going to replace Unity for me, mainly due to the massive learning curve required to make the switch for what I see as very little payoff. At the end of the day, that time spent learning UE4 is much more costly than this perceived difference between the engine prices.

Even if I were a new user, just getting into this stuff, Unity would still "win" my business. The bottom line is that Unity's workflow kicks serious ass; the Editor, C#, the Asset Store - it's a winning combination that let's you get on with what actually matters: MAKING GAMES.

Obviously for some people, UE4 might be the preference. I don't really think it's something that needs to be debated. It's a personal choice based on your particular needs.

If you're using Unity, you're happy with the workflow, and you're getting results, then all this UE4 talk certainly shouldn't be any reason to start thinking you should be jumping ship, or worrying that you're missing out on something "better".

Unity is awesome. UE4 is awesome. Use what's best for your particular workflow.

 

I think what's blowing a lot of folks away is that all of these things come built-in with UE4. They don't have to dish out $90 or whatever Playmaker, etc costs when it's not on sale. I have Playmaker myself which I thought was the leading vscript plugin. Does playmaker have visual debugging like Blueprint does? Did you use it? Also, Blueprint compiles down into byte code and it is naturally integrated into the engine. Meaning, when someone adds new functionality to UE4 Blueprint should be able to access it immediately.

This means all the level designers on the team should be able to access any mod/plugin that is added to UE4 without the programmers on the team lifting a finger. Because everything is exposed naturally through the macros

Additionally, Blueprint appears to be able to naturally extend a native class. It's kind of the business I must say from what I've seen in the source

 

I can only compare what exists. This is even more true for Unity, because there were times, where UT simply failed to deliver what they promised (Beast, Mecanim, Umbra)
And if you think this is shortsighted ok.Then I tell you that Epic has plans to implement their own GI system. They already worked on svo and lpv. So you will have that in UE4 too.

Screen Space Reflections

No I didn't talk about Enlighten.

 

As far as i know playmaker has visual debugging? I was looking at contenders for which one I should actually try to learn and i'm pretty sure i saw that, might be wrong, but youre definitely right about the lack of integration being an issue because its an issue with most asset store things on one way or another - thing is a completely unrelated 3rd party can create actions for playmaker themselves to go with their own product and I think Unity does have this sense of 3rd partys mucking in and supporting each others' business, which I have no information on regarding Epics plans for their store.

I think my point was, however, that while what you say is impressive, it boils down to inconvenience for most users, not production breaking (How many udk and unity users actually make anything of consequence with the software?), so its something thats very nice, very well done and admirable, its not actually doing anything fundamentally that different to Unity asset store answers right?

Also I must admit whenever people talk about costs of things when it comes to these bits of software it whooshes over my head, im hardly mr moneybags but the cost of these things is completely irrelevant to me compared to issues like how much of my life am i going to spend at my computer making games, or paying the mobiles bill or spending too much on fun things, considering all those can be heavily influenced by my use of an engine, yet are far more expensive than unity's sub. I dont care about spending 90 or so on an asset if im going to spend more than 8 hours of my life with it (And with videogames, thats likely), and I dont understand how these costs would be an issue to any gainfully employed adult with any spare time interest in games dev, nevermind me

 

Yes it ultimately boils down to exactly this.

Each engine has it's strong and weak points. Unity is definitely not the engine I would use for a graphically intensive games, with lot's of FX and stuff.
While I wouldn't use UE4 for a simple handpainted top down rpg ala Oceanhorn, or something like Flappy Bird.

Personally, I still working on a Unity game. But I keep also my Unreal subscription and use it later, once it is mature enough.

 

Agree yeah,
Let me add something for those willing to jump on the UE4 bandwagon:
Yes you can create simple games with UE4, but seriously what's the point? There's better tools out there to create small/simple games faster (one of them is Unity). UE4 becomes attractive when you got a serious complex game that needs exploding screaming visuals FXs from day one. Or even a well organized game framework that supports multiplayer/online sessions natively. Yeah, I gotta admit, UE game framework is very well designed. But it's stepping learning curve is as high as learning how to write a clean version of it by yourself.
Enough said, If you are not going to take advantage of every single little feature of UE4 then you are mostly wasting your time and money. Same goes for CE3, if you don't need their complex character, AI system or their entirely "real-time all the time" workflow just go elsewhere, the learning curve and workflow doesn't weight against productivity and iteration speed. Use whatever tool fits your needs.

 

/\ Agree with both two posts above.

 

I'm pretty set on making a Unity product that looks absolutely great, thats one of my missions with what I do with it, Unity has a crappy rep for graphics because noones trying to make pretty things because they hear it has a crappy rep for graphics. A lot of things said about Unity's ability is objectionable simply because it's not based on fact, its because there's little to the contrary to claim on. Pretty sad really given Unity's workflow is very nice for an art standpoint, I kind of maintain the Unity is best suited for small teams where each person has quite a lot of responsibility, its all very homely to work with by yourself, i havent seen Unreal 4 yet, is it significantly different in approach from udk? Does it seem like an artist can sit with the editor and zone in unattended and given high responsbility/trust for delivering good work?

I think I have this attitude about Unity because i've personally seen it do great things with graphics, but often the times were fleeting or werent merged into a whole with the rest of the stuff ive seen it do that is extremely good looking, and this isnt using 'art direction' as a caveat, more a compliment that ive seen it deliver, simple as that and in ways which have taken on a specific direction and purpose, which i feel is quite nicely represented by what it's like to work with. Its not the best thing for fps though, i could agree there, but since i find most fps intellectual dogshit these days I couldn't care less what they are made on. What kind of games are people making? Why is there an fps engine and a flappy bird engine, Unity's getting sold way short in a lot of ways, i can understand some reservations but saying the graphics are crap doesnt really.. make much sense to me, and I think slower games with amazing graphics are perfect fits for it. The bluster of the modern action game will surely run dry eventually and stuff like OR will have games change in pace greatly, and it wont be any worse for it, so i'm conceding a bit that Unity probably cant handle as many skyscrapers falling down at once as other engines but could put on a good show if you're going to slow down to have a good look at things, maybe when the dust from the skyscrapers settles

 

That's correct, with some little extra efforts you can extends your classes to become also blueprint accessible nodes (or simply attach them as components to your actors). On top of that, blueprints are pure C++ code, nothing interpreted, they run natively fast.

 

Now that I've talked to some users and devs and understand it better it is quite powerful and like you said, you can extend it from a c++ class, in fact "class blueprints" are just classes. The workflow that was recommended to me for what I am doing by a dev was: write your base c++ class, put your complex logic in there, then extend it to a blueprint and do your minor tweaking in there(like different types of monsters with different meshes/hit points/etc.). Maybe override a behavior or two etc.

This takes a little bit to adjust to since it is different from the Unity way. To me it is a brilliant workflow once I got that piece down.

 

I suppose we can all agree then, theyre all great, they all have things they do very well at. Unreal is a skyscraper exploding game engine and Unity is a wandering around skyscraper in no danger but interesting rooms game engine. I'll go with that and stop ranting. And one day we'll all get out our screenshot collections of work done in the engines and we can have a sensible chat about the ups and downs of actual stuff getting done, which is what this thread should be but probably needs a year first

The blueprints thing does sound more dandy now ive been informed more though

 

Blueprint sounds pretty interesting, but it seems to be the only thing in the whole Unreal Engine that seems interesting to me. I don't think it's worth switching engines just for that. There's too much I like about Unity... can always hope Unity adds something like it, I guess. Or there's an asset on the asset store that's like it (don't own Playmaker, not sure how much power that gives).

 

I think we are all kind of just shooting the **** wondering when Unity is going to make an announcement

 

I think it's amusing that everyone thinks UT need to make some sort of immediate change/announcement. What are people expecting is going to happen?

 

By far the most impressive things to me so far are Blueprint #1, Material/Shader Visual editor #2 if I had to rank them. I've never ever been able to make cool looking shaders like UE4 has enabled me to do after watching about 20 minutes of tutorials. Of course I have not used shader forge or any of those tools in Unity, not sure how close they are to it.

 

I know Unity 5 is coming out with the physically-based shader, and I have the shader forge asset. I'm not sure if UE's system is better than those, though.

But given that's coming and I have Shader Forge (which seems to be a node-based visual editor for shaders as UE apparently has), it's still pretty hard for me to justify switching.

I haven't actually used Shader Forge yet, though. I just grabbed it while it was on sale with the realization I'd need it fairly soon - once I got to that stage.

 

I bought playmaker during a random sale but was of the crowd of 'visual programmings for wimps' types even though my programming is extremely questionable at times. A more serious matter is, however, if youre working with other people, wether THEYRE ok with using playmaker, it would just be assumed workflow for Unreal, but the main guy whose code i see/ruin while I make what he programs pretty would find it an active obstruction to his work anyways, he's a very smart professional and i don't think visual programming would go down that well with him unless it was absolutely expected. He'd probably like the blueprints thing because of its structure and implementation though (cheers for the information folks).

There are several of these node based systems on the store though, really could do with a decent informed opinion as to what to sink any time into, still dont know if playmaker's a right fit, i'm just sick to death of programming ineptly when i can make pretty networks of boxes that do all that for me in a better way

Unity does admittedly have a hold on me because Unreal wont have anything like as many things automated for me soon as my bag of stuff for Unity does right now, and assuming Unity pull off the various holy artifacts, like 64bit editor, new mono, latest physx, opencl support, then theres no reason to leave

 

The same way I've predicted the Asset Store (a year before it was announced) and Unity Games, I can predict that Unity will add a new yearly subscription that will cost 500$ (+ 250$ for each additional platform).
My magic ball is telling me it's going to happen! ^^

 

I can actually give an opinion on shader forge however - its really nice, very pleasant and can do much that you can throw at it with a few wrinkles needing ironing out, but since its still in beta, hardly a problem. Just implemented a custom code node i was bitching about for ages so any functions outside your main fragment block can be put in those. I can't think of much you cant do for most specific needs - atm cant do image effects but its still early days, does genuinely make making shaders tonnes of fun and is very capable, very bright future i think for that one