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Unreal Engine 4

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by alt.tszyu, Mar 19, 2014.

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  1. lmbarns

    lmbarns

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    Their blueprint system is awesome, the editor is similar to unity and very intuitive. Can't wait till I get off work and can really dig into it.
     
  2. SSnowman

    SSnowman

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    The majority of indie devs are going to take advantage of just a small number of the rendering capabilities in Unity or UE4 but also don't forget that UE4 is providing full engine source so technically there's nothing stopping anybody from adding any feature they might want.
     
  3. UndeadButterKnife

    UndeadButterKnife

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    Keep in mind, Unity doesn't have Enlighten yet also. Unity 5 is still, what, 6-9 months away. That is at least 6 major versions from Unreal, and that is assuming that they do not surpass the UDK3 in terms of updates.

    Unity really, really needs to offer competitive prices, and they need to do it fast. Pre-orders just opened yesterday, I'd imagine the news cut down the sales significantly.
     
  4. BuildABurgerBurg

    BuildABurgerBurg

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    any idea of how much that's going to cost?
     
  5. UndeadButterKnife

    UndeadButterKnife

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    How many kidneys you have?
     
  6. lmbarns

    lmbarns

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    In 4 years of using Unity the only money they've made off me is from asset store purchases.

    Day 1 of unreal engine being openly available they've already got $19/mo from me and how many thousands of other people....
     
  7. chingwa

    chingwa

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    This is a very interesting development. I'm confidant that Unity will still be a viable solution for many reasons that UE4 will not. Unity don't prove me wrong! :)
     
  8. nighteyes13

    nighteyes13

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    Now were going to see just how agile Unity is as a Company.
    Can they respond to this before they start haemorrhaging users?

    I hope so, I think Unity really created a lot of opportunity for Indie's. They just need to solve some basics issues. - Garbage management, multi-threaded physics ( is the physX version for unity 5 multithreaded?), actually release the new GUI!!!, to name but a few.
     
  9. Ocid

    Ocid

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    Awesome to see Epic doing this. Totally places the ball in Unitys court.

    Will definitely be giving UE4 a serious try now. Rumours and S*** suggested it was going to be good but not like this. Downloading it tomorrow to give a quick whirl. Kinda interesting this happened a month before I plan on starting a big project. Inclusion of the asset store is great. Was going around on twitter that earlier that it wasn't there and thought it was a huge oversight.

    Unity you're going to have to drop that price of the sub and allow a rolling month to month contract or even 3 month spurts.
     
  10. BuildABurgerBurg

    BuildABurgerBurg

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    lol only two kidneys :(

    well I guess that is one of the catch(s)
     
  11. BrUnO-XaVIeR

    BrUnO-XaVIeR

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    UE4 requires only a “Made on Unreal Engine 4” on the credits screen line, no splash screen enforcement.
    The eula says is prohibited to use UE4 for gambling of any kind, that is some market Unity has advantage then.
     
  12. Deon-Cadme

    Deon-Cadme

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    Just heard about the news, really exciting but a lot of people are evangelizing the Unreal engine without experience from working with it.

    Both are good engines, both got benefits and drawbacks. Epic has always strived for dominance on the game engine market and I cannot see this license change as anything else but an answer to the recent interest among professional developers for the Unity engine.

    Unreal might be more powerful and got more mature tools but Unity is more flexible and got a lower entry barrier. I have seen professional developers scratch their head over a month before they got anything done in Unreal Engine 3. On the other hand, I have seen newbies start from scratch and get a decent game out through the door in a pair of months with Unity.

    They got licenses that are differently structured, Unity got a free commercial license, Unreal is cheap, Unity's only drawback is their Pro license. On the other hand, Epic wants a 5% cut from your earnings while Unity asks us to pay and then do what we want with the engine...

    The biggest difference to me is community and documentation, I remember struggling with UE3 while I simply have to make a quick google search for Unity to find discussions or answers that are miles better then anything I found while working on UE3.

    Personally, I will let the project and intended target audience define the engine that I use. That is how the industry also does it.
    Now only if the Snowdrop engine entered the competition... that engine seems to be a beast of its own :eek:

    The best thing for us smaller developers is the fact that Epic is turning up the heat on Unity. This can be a positive thing in so many ways :)
     
  13. djweinbaum

    djweinbaum

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    5% revenue is notable. If you make a living off selling games, let's say your revenue is $40k USD per year (reasonable living here in Seattle, WA):

    240$ for subscription + 2000$ in royalties = 2240$ per year for UE4
    900$ for pro + 1800$ for two addons = 2700$ per year for Unity 5

    Unity could well be cheaper if you buy them instead of subscribe and your doing it for two years. If your making substantially less than that then certainly UE4 is cheaper. Myself, having quit my full time job to try my own thing, find both these fees to be trivial compared to quitting my job. Its an excellent time to be indie! I'd think for any full time developer it would come down to which engine they like better.

    I'll certainly give ue4 a look, but I find Unity's "everything is a component that attaches to objects in your scene" paradigm intuitive as is novel. UE4 would have to have some serious stuff up its sleeve for me to consider switching. I've yet to see a visual scripting system that compares to a well implemented scripting language, and C++ is not known for being a quick design-as-you-go type of language.
     
  14. BuildABurgerBurg

    BuildABurgerBurg

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    hmmm Deon Cadme, you do know we are talking about Unreal engine 4 and not UDK3 right?
     
  15. kaiyum

    kaiyum

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    Did you guys see it?


    OMG! Visual debugging!! We don't have to chase ghost with:
    And the apex destruction!
    Many things are so unity-like.
     
  16. SSnowman

    SSnowman

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    Do what you want (with limitations). I think people are severely underselling the fact that Epic is giving you the complete engine source. Getting complete source for an engine of Unreal's capabilities is previously unheard of. ID waited until long after Doom 3 was released before handing out the source to it.
     
  17. Ostwind

    Ostwind

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    or not, Unity 4 EULA "Gambling Restrictions: You may not distribute or publish any Licensee Content in connection with any Gambling Activities without a separate license from Unity."
     
  18. Deon-Cadme

    Deon-Cadme

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    Actually, I was talking about UE3 ;) Had the pleasure of working on that nice engine in its complete beauty
     
  19. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    Unreal Engine 4 apparently has an overhauled User interface and the documentation seems to be pretty good for the first day of release.
    It seems like they took Unity as a example of how to reach the masses instead of just the big players.

    Still his point is valid: it is a different engine with different pros and cons. Many people in this thread make it sound like they've known the Unreal Engine for ages and only kept using Unity because money/availability/something else. It is a very competitive move by Epic, no doubt about it. I am also sure Unity will react to this one way or another. Still - just because it's called "Unreal Engine" does not make it a magical tool that reads the creator's mind and produces the perfect game from it. It's not the announcement that will decide which one of the tools will gain how much of the market. It's the long run. It seems some people here are extremely quick to judge, though.
     
  20. UndeadButterKnife

    UndeadButterKnife

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    Does anyone know Unreal Engine 4 has any batching support? UDK3 didn't had it.
     
  21. Swearsoft

    Swearsoft

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    This is exactly my thinking.
     
  22. Marionette

    Marionette

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    this is otherwise known as 'pucker factor'..
     
  23. vx4

    vx4

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    This is the End
     
  24. Moonif

    Moonif

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    I decided to take a look at the Unreal forums to see if they're talking about Unity, and as expected, they're flooded with newbie members bashing on Unity.
    I believe those are the kind of people who tried making good games in Unity and ended up making garbage, threw the blame on Unity and now they switched to Unreal thinking they will make the next Assassin's Creed or something.. :p
     
  25. Ocid

    Ocid

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    Plenty of people on here did the same thing for UDK and CryEngine.
     
  26. chrome

    chrome

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    Agree, looks like no Enlighten but they are still working on their own real-time GI solution so they will have something comparable eventually, though I suspect that will take a good while to appear and won't be as awesome or multiplatform as Enlighten.

    Imo Unity obviously needs to look at it's pricing but still looks very strong for it's advanced AI capabilities, Enlighten, Able to make custom tools, Mecanim and C# scripting if C++ is not your thing.
     
  27. Deleted User

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    It's still six of one half a dozen of the other.. It just seems that it's more comparable instead of tear your hair out.. I get UT5 as part of the sub anyway, so it's always worth comparing to the too. Issue is at some point, we need to stop jumping up and down on new tech and get stuff done.

    As much fun as new tech is :D

    The killer for UT5 is not really going to be Unreal 4, but the terrain system and general performance issues. Hopefully the multithreaded job scheduling and hopefully they will have enough time to tweak Umbra to be on par with what Unreal is capable of.
     
  28. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    I think its really cool that UE4 is so open to everyone now. I hope UE4 becomes a much more user friendly and accessible engine in the future. Competition is great.

    If you're able to drop everything and switch engines on a dime, you have bigger problems than choosing which engine to use, and it probably doesnt matter which one you use anyway.
     
  29. Woodlauncher

    Woodlauncher

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    The disappointing part is that UE4 doesn't seem to have a good/easy UI solution.. It has Slate which is used for the Editor UI that can also be used for games, but apparently it's not very easy to learn.

    Persona looks like Mecanim(?). You can make custom tools for UE4 too, obviously. And it has Blueprint so you don't need to use C++ (Blueprint might be on par with the old UnrealScript in terms of performance, but I don't know for sure). And I don't know what you mean by 'advanced AI capabilities'.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2014
  30. Deleted User

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    You can use blueprint for HUD's..
     
  31. Noisecrime

    Noisecrime

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    Well this is interesting news, i'm guessing from the many replies here that few people are actually using Unity in a B2B (business to business) or freelancer context, as if you were you'd quickly realise that the Unreal 4 deal (speaking purely in terms of finance) is not that much better as its 5% of gross profits.

    For example assuming you already own Unity + Android + iOS Pro, then the upgrade cost including vat and ignoring current pre-order bonus is roughly $900 * 3 = $2,700, however that lasts for approximately two years between versions, so $1,350 p.a.

    As the Unreal4 deal is 5% of gross profit (ignoring monthly charge as its negligible in comparison), that would mean if you earn more than $27,000 ( 20 * $1,350 ) per year ( that's just £16,500) you are paying as much or more than you would for Unity.

    There will be few, if any freelancers or B2B developers earning so little per year, talking from being in the UK or USA you'd really need to be making 50-100% more than that a year, in which case the Unreal 4 deal is rather bad.

    This is not taking into account that pre-order bonus means you can get those Unity upgrades for just $2,250, so $1,125 p.a which equates to just $22,500 (£13,500) p.a. cross-over point. Obviously starting fresh with Unity is going to double your initial start up costs and if you went with renting ( which has always been a really bad deal) the break even point would also be higher.


    I can certainly see the attraction for bedroom indie developers making games looking for their big break. In financial terms its very hard to argue against Unreal 4 in those cases, but don't forget if you do make a break-out game suddenly you will be paying far in excess what you would have compared to buying Unity Pro. It might also be worth considering what happens long term too, if your games regularly make more than $27,000 p.a. then you are not only paying more than Unity Pro would be, but you are to a degree locked into Unreal as it is always a pain to switch or transfer over to another engine since you wont have the specialist in-depth knowledge of the development engine that you have been building up over the years.

    From my point of view the Unreal 4 deal looks good on paper, but when you crunch the numbers for a freelancer or B2B developer who gets regular income its likely to be costing more.

    However having said that I do feel Unity's renting options are ridiculously high, especially as you never get to own the software (don't forget its not the $75 people keep quoting but $75+vat which is about $95) and the overall cost burden for Unity plus other platforms is a little high. So maybe this move from Epic will force them into re-evaluating some of their prices.
     
  32. Swearsoft

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    A few more things to consider:
    - Unreal has a low enough price for a lot of hobbyists/students/kids to tinker with it. That's great, but price doesn't mean more games will be finished with it. It doesn't even mean it's worthwhile to switch. If it was UDK was free.

    - The tool-set seems top notch, but creating a game is more than that. UDK, CryEngine etc had and still have nice tools, awesome features etc.If you aren't aiming at making back the cost of a Unity Pro license with your game (or business), you aren't lacking tools, but something else.

    Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you are doing this on a professional level, price (this specific price, ot any) shouldn't be a deal breaker (of course cheaper is better), but switching only based on price is outrageous at this point. The features, including ease of use and third-party support will be coming into play, fast.

    I was able to knock out a game in less than a week, not because of extreme features, not because of source access or visual scripting, but because I didn't have to re-invent the wheel and certainly not because I couldn't do what I wanted with $19, I could do it for free.

    Anyway check this out: http://quixel.se/ and let's see if Unity will come up with a bundle price to make us happy.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2014
  33. Woodlauncher

    Woodlauncher

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    Yeah, but only for HUDs, not UIs. You can't interact with Blueprint HUDs.

    But there's always the option to go with a royalty-free license. Probably more expensive, though.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2014
  34. Marionette

    Marionette

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    well, to be honest..

    PROS:
    • able to define types. won't be limited to floats only
    • multi-threading. true multi-threading
    • able to remove the 65k vertice limit? 32 bit indices? haven't seen the code yet, but i'm thinking yes.
    • source code. if you have it, anything is possible..
    • price point. 5%? holy crap..
    • speedtree. because you have the source, you can implement it how you want.

    CONS:
    • C++. at least it's true C++ now, sigh.. gawd i hate C++..
    • speedtree because it'll probably require an SDK lic vs just an editor to make content, which means potentially more cost.
    • webgl, browser plugin?

    can't see a lot of other cons right now, other than folks having to port potentially, and the learning curve of not only a new editor, but C++ as well...

    i didn't think they had an asset store etc, but evidently they do..
     
  35. Swearsoft

    Swearsoft

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    Also if you think your game will be awesome just because of real-time GI brace yourself for game development reality slamming you in the face.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2014
  36. Swearsoft

    Swearsoft

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    This is what I mean by business. Doing fancy tech demos or trying to make the next hawken is cool, but a lot of people are just pumping stuff out for clients.
     
  37. Deon-Cadme

    Deon-Cadme

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    Sure, Unity Free got limitations but remember that it is free. That is a huge advantage, the limitations are also nothing that scared me much. I can make my ideas become real with what I have in Unity free and compensate through skill for the missing features. On the other hand, I was already complaining the other day that Unity3D does not ship with a node based shader editor by default, things like that are of course benefits that favors the Unreal Engine.

    I know that people want to pick camps at the moment, I am not, I love both engines for different reasons. The fact that you get the source code for Unreal Engine 4 is a huge plus, but I am not looking forward to compiling my changes... ugh... better to just get a second computer for stuff like that in the future if one of my projects are better suited for the Unreal Engine. I know that UE4 is supposed to support multiple platforms, but I am at the moment not sure how you port a project from Android to IOS as an example, have they invested in something simple as the Unity solution or do I have to make source changes?

    The Unreal editors are really strong but I also remember how long some people had to think before they could get some simple things done in UE3 (not UDK) that I could plan and make in Unity within a pair of hours. The numerous values in Unreal allows for tremendous flexibility but it also raises the learning curve a lot. On the other hand, the node based script editor with debugging that they now got looked like a great improvement from the old version and this might change a lot of things.

    My biggest headscratcher at the moment with Unreal Engine 4, is if they have made it easier to plug-in new features to the engine without touching the source code... if so... then the engine has become a real beast compared to the past.
     
  38. Noisecrime

    Noisecrime

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    For some reason I can't edit my post (forum being hammered by so many replies?).

    I wanted to add that interestingly for teams the unreal4 deal will actually be hugely better than Unity. Since for Unity you have to pay the purchase or upgrade costs per seat, but the bulk of the unreal 4 cost is just a flat 5% on gross profits. So while there will always be a cross-over point if making a financially successful game, Unreal 4 may end up being cheaper depending on how many developers you have working on a project.

    So for people just writing their first game or two, trying to break into the field or for a medium size indie team that can make relatively successful games the Unreal business model is likely to be very attractive. However for freelancers or 1 -3 developers with an existing business it can quickly exceed the cost of using Unity.

    Of course this is just financials and that's just one aspect of choosing an engine, you have to look at features, ease of development, platforms supported etc and how it best matches your needs.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2014
  39. Ocid

    Ocid

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    @Noisecrime There is still those people who don't have a Pro licence so it would be $4500 and not just the cost of an upgrade. That doesn't even cover if you are working on a team. Thats per person so even if there's just two of you that would $9000 versus the $40 a month on UE4.

    $20 a month is far more accessible to those of us who can't justify shelling out that kind of cash or the year locked sub of Unity which would be 10x times(?) what Unity is asking.

    I'll still be using Unity but when it comes time to start on the big thing UE4 will be given serious thought.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2014
  40. im

    im

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    @ Marionette

    two giant negative

    - No Asset Store

    - Unreal Script interpreter is painfully slow and is on average 20x-30x or more times slower than natively compiled or jitted languages, such as C# or even C++. I know you can write the whole this in C++, but many developers use Unreal Script and Kismet which is even slower than Unreal Script.
     
  41. Marionette

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    @noisecrime,

    there are more things that need to be balanced other than simple cost analysis. extensibility is one. feature set is another. workflow, learning curves etc all of that equates to money as well
     
  42. Woodlauncher

    Woodlauncher

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    Unreal Script is gone, so is Kismet. They are replaced by Blueprint. And it does have an Asset Store.
     
  43. UndeadButterKnife

    UndeadButterKnife

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    It has a marketplace. Unrealscript is no more. Its all C++ and blueprint now.
     
  44. Meltdown

    Meltdown

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    Linux support will be in a forthcoming update.
     
  45. Marionette

    Marionette

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    from what i understand, there is an asset store..

    and from the video i just watched about the code, it isn't unreal script anymore, it's pure C++. just attribute decorated..
     
  46. Deleted User

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    Let's just put it this way, development time is far more important to me as owner of a company than anything else. The cost of staff will always far outweigh the cost of any engine.. Whether it costs $19 or $250K, RIGHT this second Unity is failing to deliver due to very well known issues. UT5 should solve this from expressed feature sets, but even going by use of Unreal Engine 3 there were many reasons to use it over Unity and many reasons not to.

    The issue is, how long does one wait for UT5 to be released as things change all the time? 4.6 and the new GUI was supposed to be out spring originally now we are looking at Summer. Not to say we can't work on stuff until then, but how much is UT5 going to break? We have a stack of external .DLL's doing heavy modification to Unity.

    If I'd had the source code, all of this would have been a moot point. But as Unity costs near enough nothing it was still worth giving attention to, there's nothing wrong with R&D'ing UE4.. If it suits purpose than there's no reason not to use it. End of the day we are tied into Unity, so it makes no real difference.

    BTW, realtime GI can make a decent difference if you've ever worked with it!..
     
  47. sicga123

    sicga123

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    I just upgraded to 5 as well. This announcement changes nothing. UE4 is useless for the games I wish to make. It was a better deal with UDK to get the engine free and pay 25% on a profit, most people thinking they will be able to make AAA games and bend the source code to their will are likley to run into the same problem every field of dreams developer does. AA and AAA games require a lot of resources, a lot of assets and a lot of time. Finding that out before this announcement would cost nothing now it will cost $19 a month for however long they wish to rub that open wound.
     
  48. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    That is very cool! I kind of wished they were somehow able to get the entire thing to run independently from photoshop, though.
    Maaaaan .... now I have to decide whether I like Substances better or this ... or both. Unity 5 ... Unreal Engine 4 ... new Quixel Tools ... this week could potentially hurt my wallet really bad.
     
  49. Ippokratis

    Ippokratis

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    - The learning curve
    - The lack of a solid community
    - The royalties
    - The cost of acquiring "partner's solutions"
    ... aren't gonna count much.

    People and companies will flee to UE4, Unity growth will slow down.

    I hope we will see something more clever than a price drop as a response from unity.
     
  50. NoBullIntentions_P

    NoBullIntentions_P

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    True, but building to Linux had a very low priority for a long time. I guess it's worth at least doing a little digging to see what the state of bugs and reports is like.
     
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