Unreal Engine 4

All good points. But UE4 has the strong advantage (whether perceived or real) of having BP built in.

Recent posts show that Epic consider BP to be around 10x slower than engine-level code. Not sure how that compares to PM.

 

I read though the source code and it seems that BP is just calling c++ functions, so I think it should be roughly as fast as pure c++.

But I wouldn't even be concerned if it were 20x times slower.

 

@511, You just reminded me about what I LOVED about working with Unreal (pre-UE4, talking around Unreal tournament 3 Era). All the networking, movement, etc is just there already. Making a 3rd/1st person game was always pretty quick work.

 

It's compiled down to byte code so my impression is that it's running on a VM (ala like Unrealscript was). There may be ways to improve performance. I know with unrealscript you could get better performance by not using Tick(s) and stick to Events. I see this concept in ue4 at least on the C++ side. Actors have to set a var to get Tick(s)

 

My guess is that it would be faster than Playmaker I do not think PM is using a byte code VM. But I could be wrong; PM isn't open source completely like Blueprint is. some code is not revealed to us. Only use PM a tiny bit. I'm a programmer by trade myself. Mostly only got PM for designers

 

Yeah, I think an important consideration here is knowing where and when extra speed is important.

Great example? Last night, after playing around in BP for a while, I made a simple and clean lockpicking system akin to the one in Skyrim. It took maybe 15 minutes to get the whole thing working. In script, this would have taken a lot longer, but with BP it was just a matter of shifting how control inputs were handled and doing some really simple calculations, all of which were built right in. Is it as fast as if I wrote it in C++ in UE4 or C#/US in Unity? Absolutely not, but it's not a sort of situation where execution speed is a huge deal.

 

Solution?

Unity keep their existing 'up front' payment model 'as is' and also add UE4's $20.00 per mo with 5% royalty for Pro.

Running the numbers we see that things are more or lest on the same level, we've established that its a question of upfront vs deferred payments.
Adding this new model keeps the Unity brand value and caters to everyone's monetary situation.

Thoughts? Comments?

 

People would buy the current one if they plan on actually making lots of money (or are well established in the industry already), and the 5% royalty one if they're brand new, or indies not expecting to make too much money.

I don't see Unity really getting much out of that 5% unless it's one of those very rare lucky situations where the game wasn't expected to make much at all, but made huge money.

 

5% (off potential income) + 20$/mo it's still way more than 0$, they get now from hobbyists and starting indie devs that can't/won't pay 1500$

 

After chatting with one of their networking devs on IRC I feel much better about their builtin networking, before I was pretty skeptical it might only be for FPS type games or whatnot.

Basically they support reliable udp out of the box, and the client/server is very open ended to customize what information you send and what you don't.

The server running in headless mode can be a simple message passing device, it can have complex logic(whatever you hook into it anyways like databases etc.), and can do authoritative physics for whatever objects you might want to check(similar to uLink), RPC's, etc. Also they support postprocessing directives so you can store your client/server logic in same classes and have it stripped out at build time depending what build target you choose(client or server). Client network code has fancy interpolation and client prediction stuff out of the box for movement.

No master server or matchmaking or any of that stuff, so if you want a lobby and all that you need to code it yourself, the functionality is just plug a server IP in and you connect to it.

All in all, it is pretty much exactly what I wanted and I don't need a third party networking lib it seems like.

 

Hippo, i normally agree with many of your posts. Lot's of wise elements thoughts etc. And you are a good sport.
But this post of yours, i find overly biased toward Unity. The style of writing exposes this even more.
(and that is logical even more as being a moderator for Unity, no offense, but it's a logical consequence).
So i took a bit of time to point you on this, as you could see in my comments on your post.

again no offense ment on personal grounds

Btw i'm equally biased towards Unity AND UE4 (using both currently to find out which to use for my next project).
But if people (who i respect, like you) are spreading incomplete or even not true statements about the competition, i feel i have to react (defending the product being hit with these statements). Being it Unity or UE4, doesn't matter.

 

Of course its going to be biased. He's a moderator on the Unity forum. He's going to downplay UE4 as much as possible and up play Unity as much as possible, without making it appear overly obvious. Its called "swaying public opinion". I'm sure they'll reward him with early access or special things.

Thats why you cant listen to anyone on the forum regarding engine vs. engine if they have a title under their username.

 

It seems Unity aren't the only ones who are working with Mozilla for a webgl port. Epic are now working with Mozilla too. As far as I can tell it's the same news with a different company, both using Mozi's asm.js

If anyone has more details on this please shed some light.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/firefox-gaming-platform,news-18507.html

 

That's a point, yes, but how much money would they lose from people that will do a 75/month subscription or pay 1500 that would instead choose the 20/month plan because they feel they wouldn't make much anyway? Not sure at all...

 

I think instead of saying "he's a moderator for Unity, therefore the posts will be biased" is a fallacy.

Instead, one should read the posts and point out wrong or biased information about them specifically so that any errors can be addressed.

Edit: sorry for double post!

 

Prove its a fallacy! Can you prove with 100% certainty that they wont get special treatment/kickbacks of some sort/payolas/etc.? I assume you cant, therefore that will all translate into bias. There's nothing wrong with it, its just human nature.

 

I guess I should have worded it better. Biases are rather unavoidable, but I was aiming more at the idea of the post being 'incorrect' due to biases. I mean, if the information is absolutely correct, then does it matter if there's a bias involved? I haven't used Playmaker, so I can't say if the information is correct or not. I just don't like to see "the post is all wrong because he's a moderator and has bias". I'd rather see: this is what was said, and this is why what was said is wrong [specifically].

You know, posts with more content rather than just attacking someone for being biased. These things affect decisions of people when it comes to deciding if they should use Unreal or Unity, for example.

 

Have you actually looked at the job market recently and what some people are getting paid?

Just because some people have next to F*** all money doesn't they don't have the talent to produce anything. There's plenty of people out there that struggle to find work and live literally month to month. You can say that they should be worrying about far more than game dev but it isn't always that simple and some use games/development to get away from that for a few hours.

Saying you aren't Mr Moneybags but I bet you have more than a whole £70 a month for all the fun things. That includes a night out, games, asset store purchases, engine licenses etc etc.

Dear Esther was utter S*** and barely even straddles what a game is. I hold W down. Woopdeedoo.

Yeah I do enjoy killing other people and why doesn't it need to look as good as it can whether it be Battlefield or TF2. Jump to 40s cause youtubes timer is S***.

[video=youtube_share;u7VBaCEHJrU]http://youtu.be/u7VBaCEHJrU?t=40s

Well if you're going to lump everything in there including story then yeah I guess games are an art experience.

When I buy a game though I buy it for its mechanics and gameplay. The pretty graphics are going to get me to take a look but if its lacking in gameplay or story then I'm not going to pick it up. At the same time though why can't it look good while also being fun.

Oh and Dwarf Fortress also says hi and I also bought portal for it gameplay not its graphics.

 

I haven't, but I'd be glad if someone showed the fundamental differences between the two system (just with this one example. what is the logic behind one and the other)

 

I think Hippocoder made a lot of good points. For example:

The point here was about "all the little things." You can dispute whether those qualify as "visual programming," but that just underlines his point -- that PlayMaker lets non-programmers do a lot of things that aren't core gameplay, but which are desirable in a finished game.

And comments like this:

simply make no sense whatsoever. Typically WIP means "not yet ready for release," not "will never ever be improved or expanded upon."

I'd recommend dropping any accusations of bias and focus on better arguments.

 

Not really overly biased. Just had time to play with Blueprint and it's not all that. Plus doesn't PM generate native code? Best check that one out... As you can simply drop C sharp in anywhere as an action. Just a thought. Which means any perceived limitations about PM are grotesque...

I *was* in favour of Blueprint big time - check out my earlier posts, but now I've sat down on the artist side of things and well, smelled some coffee.

Horses for courses though - lets remember that BP has had less development than PM.

 

All this discussion about functionality is irrelevant. Obviously each engine has its merits. Add to the fact that like a lot of people said already, UE4 is work in progress and Unity 5 isn't even available yet.

What we DO know is the pricing. And I don't think anyone can deny the Startup Price for UE4 is way better than Unity's.

I define Startup Price as the price it cost for people to start out from the beginning. I acknowledge that if you have a hit game, 5% is A Lot. But I'm talking in terms of starting out from the beginning when you (and/or your team) has nothing. When all you can hope is your game is even finished for selling. So 5% only matters IF you even make it that far AND sell well enough to matter.

UT needs an answer to this.

 

Well I'd rather pay 75 for something that's going to work a lot better for me than 20 for something that won't work as well for me.

 

On their FPS orientated API documentation. O God! I need to resurrect the thousand page "C++ The Complete Reference" book

Anyway, just a quick feedback. Blueprint is awesome for quick prototyping. Mind you, if you are unfamiliar with any language in past, it should be a living hell.

 

I can say that Unity staff have gathered information from all these threads and will soon be presenting it to Unity HQ for a proper talk about things. Unity does take all concerns seriously of course, it's not a tiny company able to rapidly knee-jerk react to things. These things need to be thought through - and I would be frankly shocked if an answer was available in less than a week from now.

With so many posts, naturally this can take some time - but rest assured it's being digested. I do know what our current and next game will be using. Will it always be Unity? not sure - I am unbelievably still unbiased because my number one concern is my business. That is obvious, and it means that personal feeling gets put to one side. If I need UE4, I shall hire for it - I have already got a great C++ programmer who can handle that for us. If we are using Unity for a job then that is nothing I cannot handle.

In any event, Unity should be most concerned about people with no money, and must not fall into the trap of thinking Free is enough. Because if you say to a hobbyist - oh you can have a family vehicle for free ... OR pay $19 for a ferrari, he is going to go with the ferrari - even if it's entirely impractical and hard to drive. So they should be careful of the hobbyists most of all. Business users understand that Unity probably represents better value but would still like it cheaper.

Long term, Epic's plan is your money from their asset store. They might even waive the $19, and in fact I think its probably likely as a response to whatever Unity does.

What then, Unity should give you Unity Pro for FREE without royalties as well? That means the company would die. Try to understand where the developer tax comes in: with Unity it's pretty much up front, with Epic, it's later, when you're selling. So Epic can have an infinitely small barrier to entry, but anyone selling would do well to go to the FAQ page there and dig deep into the terms of your game release.

I for one prefer no royalties. Actually I can't stand the book keeping behind royalty maintenance.

 

No PM for sure doesn't generate native code-binaries. I was wondering if under the hood if it was generating byte code. But even so the VM would be written in C#.

So I'm pretty much positively sure no way is it as fast as Blueprint. I do like to back up my claims with actual profiled numbers though

 

They need to also worry about people who value software as a service more than software as a product. Some people prefer constant bug fixes and open dialog with the developers over middleware integrations and point release driven feature updates. Unity got a lot of business from people who basically had no real choice, now there is a choice, it's up to Unity to decide how much of the market they want to fight to keep.

 

The open dialogue and regular fixes are just marketing at the moment - it's to help launch. This will settle down a fair bit as time goes on and the forums help each other. Do not depend on the open dialogue - Unity had this for months after launch too. It does end.

 

Your right, it's something they will have to keep up, however they have structured their business around this community interaction and openness. It's really not an option for them to fail at it.

If Epic starts closing up and becoming more opaque they will have a real problem on their hands.

 

I don't think they'll have a problem - at that point the community takes over. It's just worth understanding that it's not really a selling point.

 

Personally I disagree, I think it's a HUGE selling point. Unity's community is also a selling point! The difference is Epic is giving their community more access to the technology and the people who wrote it.

 

Epic Games are known for taking care of their game communities. And for providing great ongoing support for their games. I somehow expect a similar attitude towards this new engine community.

 

It's not just the job market at all, different countries have insanely different wages, in switzerland they are (were?) trying to approve a minimum wage of nearly 25$ an hour, that's more than 4000$ a month as minimum wage, with wages like that, even considering high rent and cost of food, it would still only take a month or two of "sacrifice" to buy a license.
In other countries of Europe the minimum wage can go significantly bellow 1000$, for example Portugal has a minimum wage of 600 something $, and if you manage to save 25% of that (which would not be easy at all) it would take someone close to a year just to save enough to buy a unity pro license, at which point they would have 1 year left until a paid upgrade came along, and given unity history the old version would more than likely be left with unfinished features and significant bugs (among other problems).

Now we can OFC say that Portugal is somewhat of a irrelevant country, with it's population of 10 million people, the userbase isn't all that significant, however this is a country of Europe, a first world country, and like it there are others in the EU, and if this is the case with some countries in the EU, one can expected the situation to be much worst in other countries, and it very much is.

Brazil one of the worlds largest countries, and a emerging great power, has a minimum wage of half of Portugal, which likely makes unity pro license unavailable to a really really big portion of the country.
Adding to that Brazil is not only significant in its population size, but they have such a thriving programming community that stackoverflow has created a stackoverflow for their language (not a mere translation, but an actual community for Portuguese speaking people).

To Brazil we can add Mexico, which to the best of my knowledge also doesn't have amazing wadges, but is also of considerable size.
We can add India, yet another emerging great power with a very significant population size, and likely not the best financial conditions to pay for unity pro licenses.
Russia a country that was for a very long timed deemed insignificant to the gaming market, and seen as a bunch of pirates that would never buy anything, until OFC valve started pricing games in a way that they wouldn't have to forgo half their minimum wage to buy one, now they are one of the biggest markets in PC gaming.
Finally we can't forget China http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37563/Unity_Piracy_Driving_Huge_Growth_In_Asian_Regions.php (not a comment on piracy btw, just merely showing that there is a huge market there waiting to be tapped).

So in the end it isn't just a question of not spending your months wage in nights out or what ever, it is a question of how affordable those 1500$ are in today global market.

This is a problem that I had already brought up a few years ago, when the upgrade to unity 4 came along (with much controversy I might add), and sadly I don't consider unity ever did anything to address the license issue, so I got to say I'm glad someone has brought a license that is far more pleasing to hobbyists, and unfunded/unstarted (not an actual word) developers (normal license is pretty good if you're already a successful studio).
It's just a shame unity won't be able to compete with it anytime soon, since this was clearly planed ahead by epic, and unity can't just pass to a subscription model that comes even close to matching it, since there are too many features tied to middleware, and taking that middleware out would severely impact an engine that one could argue is already having a hard time with feature parity (an argument which can go both ways). Hopefully I'm wrong, and unity will come up with something which will benefit both the users and unity, since despite some serious flaws (which UE 4 also has at the moment) it is still a very nice engine.

P.S. I know there is unity free, but for me it's very much a non competition, unity free just can't compete with 19$ for UE 4.

 

From my side , the only thing I need to stay with unity is that the entry barrier was lower.
the 1500 dollars for Pro version at no extra addon, in my country ( Argentina ) with the politc -economic contect (35 % extra on credit card purchases with Foreign Currency ) and this being the only way payment which I can access Unity from this country, It is simply too high. Let's say I can pay rent 8 months or maybe more, so 1500 * 1.35 is too much here.

The 75 dollars / month could be a possibility, but would end being way too expensive for not having access to the tool permanently.

UE allows me to access this low entry barrier I need. I do not want to migrate to another tool , or relearn another engine , being that im comfortable with Unity .

Like I said, for me , and perhaps many in my situation , to stay with unity just need easier / convenient to access this start barrier, although the final price ends up being the same .

Sorry for my English

 

Unity has Free. And it's not as bad as everyone is making it look. If your team has problems even finishing the game, I doubt you'll be using the advanced features that come in Pro.
Yes you can say that UE4 has better graphics and doesn't have all the limitations the Free version has.
But UE4 is $19 a month + 5%, and Unity Free is Free.
And Unity is a noob-friendlier environment to learn, I don't think anyone will argue with that.

 

I am sorry, but the above really is purely conjecture on your part. Epic Engine License Support is all over the UE4 answers system constantly, coupled with the UE4 development team, plus the gigantic licensee base that has access to the code. I have been doing this a long time hippo and I have never seen the sheer number of honest answers Epic has given to a variety of support questions and inquiries anywhere else in any software company.

Just today a question was posed on the timeline for a WP8 release of the engine and the response wasn't, "When we get to it. If we get to it." a core engine developer on the team actually answered with his honest opinion about being surprised at the interest for WP8 devices and that it has been bumped up the time chain.

The engine has been forked as of present 1,599 times. Developers such as myself who are wading through the code are empowered to help the rest of the community in a way UT will never be able to do without opening the source up. Many extremely talented developers are pushing code fixes and features back into Epic's branch for the benefit of the entire UE4 community. The community effort growing around what is the most favorable licensing paradigm this industry has ever seen is unprecedented.

Crytek had their, "Oh S***!" moment following the licensing announcement for UE4 and has now backed themselves into a corner. Those of us who know about CryEngine on a business level have watched for a long, long time how indies were treated like dirt, from in my opinion, the most pretentious self serving company the games industry has ever seen. It is the same fate for them as it will be for UT - If they do not open up they will fade into obscurity when it comes to engine licensing. Even if Crytek went the source licensing root (I don't believe they will) with as favorable terms as Epic; I would never in my life entrust my company into relying on their technology.

Unity, as I have stated before, is not too expensive for what it offers, but it will have to open up or it will be a gradual attrition of the user-base to other directions.

It has nothing to do with the rendering capabilities of Unity, and it certainly has nothing to do with UE4's BP vs. an asset store purchase of PM, it is the licensing UT offers.

You underestimate community empowerment a great deal. Right now Epic is growing an army of code jockeys that makes the size of UT's development team look like a tiny militia.

 

If I take a noob and I show them UE4 video tutorials and Blueprint in particular, then I show them Unity and their tutorials I am pretty sure they are going to say UE4 is easier. So I would argue exactly that.

 

Yeah if you cut my legs off I am probably going to have a hard time finishing a marathon. That is pretty much what Unity free is. If you are going to finish a game with Unity 'free' you are going to spend money at the asset store, pretty easy to hit $20, at which point you may have been better off going with UE4.

Unity 'free' reminds me of those annoying 'free to play games'.

 

Well i have friends with jobs,im a grown up, they can pay for this stuff with pocket money

I dont have 70 a month for fun stuff, in fact i have very little money at all as i'm incapable of regular work and live off disability, and have done for the last 12 years. Since the professionals who care for me also value my opinion (as i sometimes hold more experience and information on a subject) they understand ad support how i spend money for my care and needs. Those scraps left go into Unity, and i find it absolutely absurd you would jump to so many conclusions in such a childish manner, but I think the final video sealed it perfectly just there

Dear Esther was not a game, it was an experience that used an exciting new media we've found that doesn't really have a name, because mindless absolute babies continue to run this fine medium into the mud. Thanks for the post though, good luck with your exams

 

I understand you think it's conjecture on my part but for me, it's just maths. If 40,000 swamp the place, nothing epic can do will help, and it'll reduce in no time to the odd post spotted here and there. After the initial surge, you do realise these guys have jobs, right? and those jobs are making UE4, not answering noob X's ultra-important query about blueprint that's been answered 100 times before. It's just maths.

FYI the users using UDK are a drop in the ocean compared to the forum turnover at Unity. If Epic gets a significant number of users, they will not be able to answer. No company can. Eventually, like every other thing on the web, it comes down to the community supporting itself with the odd developer nudge.

I understand some of you are flushed in the face and excited, but it's not something I'd bank on or factor in as a bullet point for why UE4 will continue to be great.

 

That is pure speculation.

With UDK, Epic was always really responsive and fast with updates and bug fixes. All the time. What suggests that this will now change? Especially with the background that UE4 is now even more important to Epic.

 

I'm using Unity Free, and the only asset store purchase I'm using is NGUI.
Also, I don't think you'll choose UE4 for mobile development, seeing how it's not optimized, Android is not there yet and there's no proper 2D support.

 

You can build to Android right now...I agree as it is today Unity probably better for mobile, heck it has already been mentioned the UI is not fully baked yet.

If I was Unity I'd be worried about 6 months from now rather than today. The fallacy that UE4 is so hard to learn is wrong, anyone who has spent more than a couple hours reading their tutorials and firing it up can attest to that.

Now if you want to make the argument that doing more advanced development in it is more difficult that might hold some more weight as you get into c++ and need to learn some coding, but same can be said for c# and Unity. To a new user who has not used either platform 6 months from now I think UE4 is going to be a no-brainer assuming Unity's current pricing model.

 

This a good point. There is enormous leeway when it comes to the power of of a full fledged PC as opposed to hardware capabilities of a phone or tablet. At present it is substantially easier to use Unity with a one or two man team for mobile platforms, but this will change in the future as mobile hardware becomes more advanced and UE4 continues to evolve. When the tipping point will be reached is a guessing game.

To get the utmost out of UE4 on mobile, coupled with as much graphical fidelity as you can possibly muster, will require a bigger team. But, that is at present and UE4 will catch up rapidly with community contributions to the codebase.

 

Unity free is completely fine for making games, even pretty neat and quite pretty ones. It's crippled in pretty annoying ways that make you hunger for things like rendertextures like crazy. Doing water in free is only a go if you can get super stylised

This said, ive used free a bunch, its often held absolutely no barriers between conception and implementation of an idea, including mobile projects you could consider quite big investments of time with satsfying conclusions

All that said though, it's as clear as night and day that Unreal 4 really does piss on this thing, and thats even after my day's gallant defence of Unity as a whole

 

I'll have to add i bear no bias, i'm just strongly anti-bullshit, and Unreal 4 does actually look attractive but it'll need to plump up its own store quite dramatically before I could justify a move. Being finished is quite an issue too

 

One thing to Unity Free's defense.

Lot of successful indie games could be created in Unity free. Hotline Miami, Dust Force, OceanHorn, Flappy Bird etc. None of those would need Pro (Ok Build stripping would be useful, but isn't a must)

 

This is not an attack on you, I just love delving into BP internals right now. UE4 dev today described it as follows:

 

I think OceanHorn benefits from render textures- and I know we'd all love access to the profiler- but you're right. There is plenty that can be achieved with unity free.

 

Unity is going to keep getting better and better as well, I wouldn't forget. Unity 5 is a large step forward to closing many gaps that exist between Unreal and Unity currently, so I hear.