Unreal Engine 4

I think it's important to consider that when you pay is, sometimes, as important as how much you pay.

As it is now, UE4 require an initial investment of $20. Unity, if you want the full program, require an initial investment of at least $1500. More if you want the platform add-ons, and most do.

From the point of view of, well me, I'd go for the $20 because I don't expect to make a penny on game making. I think I share that point of view of starting teams who have to turn every penny. No, Unity Free is simply not comparable. When people can pay $20 to get access to everything for a trivial cost, the limitations of Unity Free is non-trivial.

If one can get a very good editor either through paying a full subscription or an outright license, which will amount to hundreds or thousands of pounds in contrast to getting an editor which initially will have a trivial cost but which later may be more expensive, I think most starting teams will defer the cost to later.

That is, of course, also a way to lock-in those starting teams. Once you commit to this initially cheaper platform, it's going to take a lot to shift the team from it once it becomes successful.

 

If we're going to use that logic, initial investment for Unity is $0...it's free .

You can't just ignore the 5% with a small statement that doesn't make much sense and then go on to say how good of a deal UE4 is like the 5% doesn't exist.

 

I thought of that after I posted, and added it in.

 

Oh right, then that makes a little more sense xD.

 

I'm not sure how you compare a AAA next generation engine to Unity 4 free? It's going to be square up a brawl between UE4 and UT5 Pro..

 

I agree. But we were not comparing features, we were comparing initial investment.

Do car companies advertise the price of their car or the price of their car with all the bells and whistles added on?
Bad analogy, but the point gets across.

 

I wanted to add more xD

I kind of look at it like financing a car. You have two choices in paying for a car; you can pay full price right away, or you can divide the payment into parts. The latter may make your car thirty per cent more expensive, or more. A lot of people go for that route despite it being a bad deal because they'll only have to pay 1/48th of the car's financing price right away.

Whole industries and services exist based on this kind of S***ty deal, and I guess it has now come to independent game development. I expect that the people who have a lot of money would accept that Unity Pro is, in the long term, more economical than UE4. However, there's value in deferring cost which the car financing corporations and banks have found. Lots of people don't have money, right away, and make these kinds of deals.

It benefits them, because they get access to the engine, a fully triple-A engine and a very good editor, right away.

 

Much better , I agree with you that it can be a better deal. Sadly, the deal doesn't work for me but I know people that it could work for.

 

Not sure if people have pointed this out but the bigger your team, the more you save with UE4. For indie teams, the barrier to entry is really nice if you are trying to ship a game using the latest bells whistles. A lot of artists are willing to invest $19 a month (after all they do this for photoshop, etc anyway). So I think indies will find it much easier to get assistance with their projects on that engine

I hope Unity may address this or perhaps they are willing to take a minor hit in that area. Most of the Unity community appear to be one-man armies too me

 

current generation*

It's out already.

 

Alright mr. semantics, you had to be that guy didn't ya ? Anyway, the version most are using is still in Beta and Unity 5 isn't even released yet.!

Compared to Unity 4 it's next gen.!

 

pssst: both U5 en UE4 are next gen when they are both available (and if wanting also current gen)

 

... Especially if you imagine a newbie, trying out Unity Free, versus Mono's Garbage Collector, in the absence of the Profiler ^_^ .

"OMG Unity is soooo slllloooowww!"

 

I am just a newbie and just started to see game development a few weeks ago so I got some noob questions is UDK more powerful than unity and it still does not support windows phone 8 and windows 8 tablet so should I go with it???? will it support this platform in the future because I just have a windows developer account and btw I am using the free version of unity so I can only buy the unReal4 once I get atleast some money by releasing a game in windows phone I will buy dev license for android and iOS and then may be unity pro or unReal4 so at that point going with unReal4 would be wise I suppose .... and ya is it easy to create games with unity or UDK4???

 

no

 

I am still loyal to Unity. I came to Unity from Torque 3D. Unity has easiest workflow to me. I am saving for a Pro License. I did buy the the UE4 monthly subscription and I am enjoying playing around with it. But my game will be finished with Unity. There is nothing like Mecanim in UE4 and there seems to be no GUI solution outside of hard coding yet in UE4. However UE4 has some things that Unity does not have. Because it is new and low priced it just looks shinier right now. I like game development period so I am finding it healthy to learn UE4 when I'm not hard at work on my Unity game.

I think they are both good engines but for a newbie I think Unity is easier and has much more tools to help a lone developer get the job done.

I guess I believe in dancing with the one that brought me this far(-:

 

I've give UE4 a try. But i love and stay with Unity. Why?
Because i can work on some stuff like animations in a Bus, Hotel, Train, Plane, Metro with an old 10.1" Netbook (Atom in-side) computer (and the FREE vesion of Unity). This one :

 

Actually, UE4 has animation state machines and retargeting too. Though not quite as easy to work with as mecanim.

 

UE4 is beta software, a lot is missing. Unity 5 is also not launched. The real contest has yet to begin. It is easy to compare a PS3 with an xbox one, but not so easy once PS4 enters the picture and xbox one gets DX12.

Time will tell. Right now, I view Unity as the more complete/stable product. Yes UE4 has bells and whistles, but even their CEO has said check back in 6 months due to it being beta. It shows as well with lack of documentation (it is lacking, a google search throws up very little vs unity) and needs time to mature.

Therefore 6 months is the deadline for me.

 

I've haven't posted in this thread yet and I doubt my opinion is unique but at least it provides data for unity.

I am on the fence currently. I have a fairly large project that is running into issues with unity. I am doing yet another Marching cubes based voxel engine (I know there are plenty) and I have some issues regarding memory (directly related to when GC fires) and issues when I instantiate a chunk in terms of both Collision and mesh creation. I would love to do those last two tasks multithreaded, or at least most of the effort of Collision submission to the Octree (I am assuming this how they do Collision but we don't have source) and what ever needs to be done for mesh creation. I don't think I need to be closer to the metal (so c++ source) to optimise my rendering pipeline but I do think I need some better access to the rendering pipeline.

When I look over at UE4 it is attractive and given enough time and effort in that engine I could solve my issues, a full blown implementation would likely be faster but only because I have greater access to the inards. I don't think I will get a tremendous benefit from going c++ or using their engine as opposed to Unitys. The ability for both engines to put tris to screen is probably very near equal.

The show stoppers for me in terms of UE4 is the overhead of the engine and its requirements from a hardware perspective and a slower workflow in the areas I need it (procedural mesh generation). The latter will most definitely improve over time but the former may simply be written off as a product of next-generation architecture (what ever that means).

Speed of development and ease of use matter a great deal to me. A half baked full of bugs but beautiful game that only runs on top end hardware is worthless when compared to a ugly but functionally complete full game that runs everywhere. Unity still seems to win in this area (and the games coming out of unity aren't ugly).

The problem I am having is the community. Where are they going to go in the long term? Community matters, it means better asset store assests and feedback in the forums. It means larger pools of expert contract resources and tutorial blogs on every corner of the internet. It means someone has likely had your issue before and already documented an answer. It means an army of testers refining the product workflow and therefore a stronger, more stable end product.

In the end I fear ease of use won't matter. If using UE4 vs Unity means that your 3 times as likely not to finish I am not sure that will make a difference to the masses. Some teams are going to be good enough and throw enough resources at a project to finish in UE4. There will be plenty of examples to point to in terms of success. It won't matter that odds of doing that in UE4 might be significantly lower than Unity. The vast majority still aren't finishing in either platform. The masses might clamour to the prettier pictures ignoring an intangible like workflow not fully understanding that Unity should be the better choice even though it doesn't provide a better terrain system, or shinier shaders in some instances.

 

I wouldn't even try using Unity if it had no documentation and that's with a degree and background in programming. The days of running nm / ar / ranlib to figure out what's available are over.

 

Hmm turns out the new batman Arkham Knight game was made in Unreal 3, (*With a lot of tweaks to lighting and rendering*).

Ok back on with it .

 

Definately. Luckily, although the UDK documentation was truly awful, it already seems like Epic has put more effort into documenting the API for UE4. It's still nothing on Unity's (from what I can see, there are no examples of usage), but they seem to have written human descriptions for some important things.

 

1)Is UDK4 just now supporting for android and iOS ?
2)Is it as easy to build simultaneously for android and iOS once a game is created as in unity by just clicking the build target?

 

UE4 comes with Persona, it's an editor that lets you set changes in your character, hierarchies, add sockets (the equivalent to bones transform in Unity) to mount cameras/weapons, etc. Plus you also have a HSM editor to set animations states, blending and transitions.
Still, Unity is simpler to use.

 

I'm liking the action trees. I really like the action trees. Though it's "experimental" so you have to turn it on.

 

Good point. I will certainly give UE4 a try myself at some point, but as long as my old MBP (not Core 2) is working Unity will stay with me.

 

UE4 can package small enough for over the air.

It seems that you can get the size down to OTA by changing the build target.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?1084-About-iOS-packaged-IPA-sizes

Still big for a simple game but possible.

Cheers

 

Tried UE4. Don't like it.

Tried to make a Blueprint to do the equivalent of:

Start(){
int x=Random.Range(0,10);
int y=Random.Range(0,10);
Debug.Log( x+" + "+y+" = "+(x+y));
}

It took a whole screen filled with boxes and wires.

Boxes and wires are all very well for events but you should also be able to write equations in equation notation. I think that is what's missing from current visual programming systems.

 

You're doing it wrong. A BluePrint in UE4 is a class.
You can log to the screen in a few lines of code. Not sure why you needed to connect various classes together.

 

IIRC there was some talk that WebGl hasn't been confirmed pricing I was looking on studica, and I'd assume this is some kind of confirmation:

http://www.studica.com/unity

 

I find it laughable that your all still banging on about Unity.

It's dead in the water compared to UE4.

This is from a features and pricing standpoint.

 

I find your trolling amusing from a business standpoint.

 

I find it laughable that this is a utterly uninformed response.

 

Granted, if you make assumptions on comments yet still find them laughable.

One other thing, Unity's consumer packages are closed source. Have fun with that.

 

I don't like Blueprint but I think artists like it.
But you don't have to use it, you can do that pretty easy using C++ btw.

 

I think they call it Unreal Engine 4, not UDK4, they are minimizing UDK, and focusing on getting users to use Unreal Engine system.
Yes, you can build for pc or mobile, web.

 

Of course its dead but remember people will still be using it for a while to finish up projects, then you'll get a few diehards who find it suits them, etc.
So dead yes, but not buried.

 

Do you not think that tech questions about Unreal and Unreal related discussion should be better served on the Unreal boards?

This includes:

- unreal code
- unreal blueprints
- unreal build stripping
- anything else from actual unreal engine users
- how to do x in Unreal

These are all technical discussions that must logically occur on Epic's board as you will get a better answer there, and it is respectful to both communities to do so.

 

This kind of trolling is going on everywhere. Some idiots even joined a user group to drop the bombshell about UE 4. Pretty dirty tactics and definitely muddies the waters. Don't really see why these spoiler threads are even allowed to go on. This stuff is not covered by free speech it is actually a bunch of agent provocateurs aiming to damage another company. Yozies a guy with 6 posts, if he's not a plant who is? This stuff should be shunted somewhere else and off these forums, instead we have to put up with this crap so these people can get the news out and keep it spinning to get Unity free users who may have missed the bombshell to jump to UE 4 and pay subscriptions for a short while until they figure out it is harder to produce a game in UE4. It's pretty cynical and not really good form.

 

Might be time to lock this one down now, Unity have enough feedback from pro and free users by now.

 

One obvious fact is that both companies have proven to be highly applicable to different markets as far as "Shipped Titles." I think we are comparing Apples and Oranges (when we care to acknowledge it lol) , though it may seem like they are the same "Fruit". (Engine!=Engine)...It's maybe not so good to directly compare them after all when looking at end results.

Fact: Unreal - Many AAA Titles
Fact: Unity - Many Mobile Titles

Are we all privy to the goals of both companies in regard to increasing their respective markets, that they do very well in vs a market their competitor may do well in??

We can continue to state that the current Unity version can make Mobile titles just fine and no one is thinking this will stop suddenly. We can make a clear assumption also that Epic is making the barrier for entry for their newest AAA engine a lot lower initially. Beyond that it's too soon to tell what may happen 6 months down the road and if Mobile shipped titles will grow percentage wise for Epic. Of course Unity doesn't want any growth for Epic mobile shipped titles to come at their expense.

That said, I think the big difference continues to be the the end results that developers (shipped titles) have achieved in fact over the course of years until it proves to not be the case. Everything else continues to be grey areas of point and counter point on both companies forums.

If I were Unity I would focus both their product delivery marketing towards what they do well for their audience that is focused on those strong points. And of course this would be not letting a competitor steal their thunder for Indies attention. (I'm thinking seeds that need periodic seasonal nurturing).

If there is a perceived high barrier for entry for Mobile, (Real or Imagined) UT needs to handle that to stop any bleeding, preferably before they can actually notice it financially. I know... welcome to Dave's world. I don't envy him and UT's leadership now for they have decisions to make.

My consultant fee is .02

[edit] I'm sure I said the same thing three times above lol.

 

+1

 

I don't get why it needs to be locked. Let it die on it's own, as it inevitably will.

 

Dropping the platform pay/ gates - whatever the commercial model might be- would help.

Its like the ARM and X86 cpu battle. One struggling to get more performance and the other to be more Efficient wile still preserving their core users. It as been great for consumers but a very difficult balance for the contenders
I hope none ever wins,

 

I doubt it! It's turning into a UE4 technical thread and it's also a nananana UE4 is better than Unity. Someone will necro it and start it all again.. Whilst I appreciate Unity allowing us to discuss it at great length, we want direct concise feedback for Unity to improve not just pages upon pages of noise. It doesn't serve any Unity users benefit.

 

The point is none of these threads serve a purpose. There are plenty of places to discuss this elsewhere. I kinda think the engines will succeed or otherwise on their own merits apparently these posters clearly think UE 4 needs a hand up and Unity an assist into the grave, a lot of this stuff is orchestrated attacks. Epic is now backed by Tencent Holdings so they have the money, if they wish to ride it through, Unity do not have a pot of cash like that. A lot of this stuff is aimed at undermining Unity and the user base. That's fine it will stand on it's own or fail, but I don't see any need to discuss this stuff here, not when infrequent posters are coming out with stuff like 'Unity is dead in the water'. These tactics are proven to have an effect, they can't help Unity or Unity users so the purpose is purely a negative one and purely to drive the user base over to UE 4 even if only for one subscription payment. Mud sticks.

 

I think that's about it then. I am locking it now, as I'm sure we can agree its turned into Epic technical support among other things and everyone's said their bit and there's other topics going around that better serve the community's questions on pricing/Unity 5 etc. Please feel free to continue the discussion about Unity 5 specifics here:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/234931-Unity-5-is-coming-and-more!?p=1576179&viewfull=1#post1576179