Unreal Engine 4

Yes it is. Which is a big plus for me

 

Bleeding heck! Unreal and Cryengine as well - I can't help but wonder if anyone in Unity knew this was coming? The cynic in me would say that Epic and Crytek have just ganged up to try and kill Unity. Of course, that doesn't make a huge amount of sense: if you're trying to destroy the competition with very attractive short-term ventures, then the customers you win are clearly likely to jump ship if anything else attractive comes along. So maybe this really is a real shift in the games industry.

However, when it comes to engines, the most important thing is not "graphics" - it's time. It doesn't matter if UE4 can make your scene look twice as good as Unity (not saying that it does mind) but if making the assets to make it look that good takes 10 times longer, then it's a bad choice. Games engines need to focus on speed and ease of creation - things like terrain engines, level editing/generating tools, flexible automation of as much stuff as possible. So not necessarily improving the maximum graphics possible, but improving the ability to get to those graphical levels. Blueprint looks great in that respect.

Exciting stuff: but to be honest, I'm most excited to see how unity will respond.

 

Big deal for me too - I'm all Mac these days when it comes to work. Very, VERY interesting.

 

I'm not sure either UE4 or Cry may put up quickly with the ecosystem behind Unity though. Still top-dogs war for the game-market smart money imho, which is going to be substantial in the short term but *marginal* in the long term. I'm saying that because Unity, not-too-secretly-from-their-moves, aims at pwning much more than the game engine segment... they seem wanting to become the one-input-all-outputs media engine (TVs, satellites, etc.). Our popped-collar commander will be the James Kirk of 21st Century global media, momentum is all behind him, he built it in 5 years and counting.

 

Big question is, would you ever want to make your own engine now?

 

I'm standing on the table blowing a vuvuzela.

 

can someone who tried it say, how does the 'Physics Asset editing tool (PhAT)' work together with 'Persona animation toolset' (to edit skeletons, skeletal meshes and sockets, animation Blueprints). can be ragdoll physics applied to animation? (limbs?)

and is there something like Mecanim in place?

 

Well, I'm going to go outside for a smoke and think things over.

 

Strangely enough many AAA companies and publishers appear to have moved in directly that direction recently. Pretty sure I read that Ubisoft developed its own engine and of course there are many studio's with their own too. I wonder if Epic have seen some falls in usage of the engine for AAA so they are diversifying even further into other markets?

I get a feeling over-all it goes in cycles. Studios and publishers see how attractive buying the engine tech in can be, some time later they feel its too expensive so develop an in-house solution, but over time that gets out-dated and expensive to maintain and licensing an engine looks attractive again, etc.

 

Blueprint certainly does look that way! have been looking the videos and its like playmaker + context sensitivity. Being part of the engine as one of the coding options takes visual scripting to an all new level.
I always wonder why unity ad not made any effort to integrate visual scripting in the engine. It seems a perfet match for unity take on application development democratization.

 

lol, but no apology to me?

 

In what way? It seems mostly the same. Timelines seem interesting.

 

I can't seem to find info on UE4 support for Windows RT or Windows Mobile apps.

Anyone know about this?

 

There isn't any support for Windows Phone. That license covers iOS + Droid + Mac + Win. https://www.unrealengine.com/faq

Unity still has the edge for multiple platforms. If those platforms make any financial sense or not, I can't comment.

 

Windows Phone? I've literally hardly ever seen a person with one. I think it needs more time.

 

Unity has no edge, webgl works on mobile, and Unreal isn't going to charge so much to use it(free).

 

Wait are you saying WebGL can be played in a mobile browser? Like actually played with touch controls? Cool.

 

I started writing my engine and while it was fun and led me learn a bunch of things I ended it leaving uncompletted uterlitty S***tysh unfinished and most of all not a single game came out of it. Making a game engine, no matter how basic it is, takes lot of effort and lot of time that I don't have.
I'll probably would keep extending existing (libraries or Engines) with custom needed tools than creating something from scratch...

Not in my sane mind. ^^

 

Same here. While I haven't completely abandoned my engine, it most likely won't ever leave my HDD. It's an amazing experience learning about the internals of an engine. I recommend it to anyone with some time(a lot) who is looking for more knowledge.

 

hahahahahaha

 

Keen to hear your thoughts on it. It's a shame they don't have some sort of trial (that I can see), but I'll get around to subscribing. It's worth $20 just to try it out and see what's what.

 

No kidding, I have spent that on random asset store purchase that I have never actually used.

I downloaded and can't wait to play with it tonight.

 

How big is the download?

 

Enough to really make those guys cry who moan about unity's gig.

 

7gb

 

Let me guess... 6GB?

 

Well, there is a small catch.

From the eula:

So if you subscribe for one month and unsubscribe "you will not be entitled to access or use future Versions of the Engine Code or future Assets that Epic makes available under the License".

Sounds kinda strange.

You are bound to pay subscription forever. If you discontinue it you get something like a ban from future versions ... ?

 

Pretty sure they mean "you gotta pay for updates." Like you can continue using it, but if you want the update, you have to keep subscribing.

 

That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time, and I can't help but wonder how accurate it may be especially for Cryteks rushed blog post. lol

Anyway full Source Code acess to Unreal Engine 4 for 19$ (subscription can be cancelled anytime) is simply AMAZING!

 

That's alot larger than unity. Why is this? Huge collection of example assets?

 

So actually you can pay 19$ just twice a year to get major updates.

 

I guess yes.

 

I don't think so, there are some extra resources with it but it don't justify, also, there is an extra resources download of 2gb, so it's 7gb + 2gb...

I don't know, I'm so used with the unity-way... the only thing that I used to like on UE is the graphics, but soon there will be nothing that makes UE better (IMHO) than unity, the blueprint is very cool, many will like it! About the 5% thing, if you make 30000$ with your game you will be giving them the cost of Unity engine (1500$), if you make a good game that makes a good profit will be paying for another perpetual license of Unity each 30k $, 1500$ is still a good price for a perpetual license I think.

 

I've noticed they haven't said a thing about commercial use. Their site just says that you can pay $10/month to get new features.

 

The editor for Mac was 6gb for me; Plus 2gb of extra resources and some more gigas for the free packages from their Asset Store.

 

That editor is huge... I'm wondering why. It's not like it has a load of textures like a large game or something like that.

 

I suppose I'm going on the assumption they will try to compete along with the royalty free tag. Will be interesting to see what happens..

 

Certainly seems that way at present, but I fully expect them to close that loop-hole if they have the technical capability to.

As I see it I think they are trying to reach mass numbers of subs from hobby developers and people trying their hand at it, much like gamers will happily stump up for early access games or the success that Adobe has had with its cloud venture. The 5% royalty is icing on the cake for them, unless you are dealing with a larger studio that makes successful AA/AAA titles in which case the 5% royalty becomes worth something to Epic and of course the fact that getting it for consoles requires (as far as I understand) a different license too.

In which case they are going to want to maximise the number of continuous subs they have and dissuade or prevent users doing what has been outlined.

 

I wonder. If you made a game using licensed UE4 and cancel the subscription. Can you still put your game out on the market? Or do you have to take your game from the market or keep continue paying the 5% / keep the whole subscription active.

 

This frenzy reminds me when Apple changed its developer TOS and everyone thought its the end of the world, in a week this all will be a non issue so why worry.

 

You have to pay 5% royalties regardless of whether you keep your subscription active, but it sounds like you could still release with a lapsed subscription. UE4 will make most of its money through royalties I think; the subscription fee is probably not as important to them.

 

That's what i thought. And i somehow feel that on the long run this will be more than Unity with it's current pricing will make. Especially when AAA studios come into play.
And Indies are more ore less like "oh well, just let them have some fun, too" to them.

 

A few indies always manage to strike it big and make ridiculous amounts of money. Flappy Bird was allegedly making $50,000 a day. If he had made it in UE4 he'd be paying them almost $1,000,000 a year, which is a really good deal for them.

 

Sure if you extrapolate the figures out to a year it sounds great, but lets not forget that it didn't last a year. In fact, most likely the quoted figure was a peak, if it happened at all, so even if it had lasted a year it'd be far lower than that.

And that's one success getting them $1 million dollars. Assuming a cost of $100k per employee per year (I'm told this is a reasonable ballpark rule of thumb) that outstanding, outlier of a success covers just 10% of their cost.

 

this^^

LUA.. ugh..

 

Look at it from a business perspective people. Epic is being really smart about this..

Lets say every 2nd game being submitted to the app stores is made in Unity, due to Unity's massive growth and demand.
So if there are 50 new games a day, 25 of them are made with Unity.

Now Epic wants a piece of this pie. They offer a more attractive startup/subscription cost than Unity does, and starts getting mass 5% app store share over time as more and more mobile developers start using their engine.

So lets say in a few years, Epic gains huge indie market engine share, now every 3rd game submitted to the asset store is made in Unreal.
That's roughly 15-20 games a day being submitted to the store of which Epic owns a 5% GROSS OF THE INCOME.
Very clever business model.. In fact the subscription fee is more of a gimmick, and not at all the focus of their plan, so if people want tto pay a subscription and cancel, they don't care.

On the other hand, I will admit the CryTek business model of $9.99 per month, with 0% royalties is a bit of a baffler for me, which makes no business sense. Unless there are some more details they haven't let up on yet.

 

Interesting thing about modding, modders need to buy the editor in order to mod a UE4 game, kinda a bummer. But plus side is if the game developers allow it then the modders can sell their mods with the Epic 5% royalty agreement.
Source

 

Pretty cool they give full source, it's just a matter of time before more companies integrate plugins with them(that's one place unity shines). Already UE4 supports oculus rift with a built-in plugin that ships with UE4.

That alone justifies the subscription for me, meanwhile oculus rift requires unity pro for 2 reasons, the use of a plugin, and the render-texture that oculus needs.

 

I've been a long time lurker since Unity 3 and have always been put off by Unity's upgrade paths; they seem to hold back promised features for future paid upgrades. The seeming nickel-and-diming for mobile add-on licenses always rubbed me the wrong way as well. The free version of Unity never interested me due to the lack of certain features.

What did appeal to me was Unity's use of C# and the assets store. Being a C/C++/C# developer, I felt comfortable that'd I'd be able to pick up Unity's framework/API quickly and what I didn't have time to program myself I could buy. Epic's UDK never appealed to me because I didn't feel the scripting was flexible enough for what I wanted to do (custom server-side features, access to custom infrastructure/platform services, custom game data formats, etc); all of this would require a professional license which, for an amateur/part-time game developer, seemed risky. Unity seemed to offer everything I wanted, with the exception of a few things like a better terrain engine, editor, and advanced graphics, etc but the pricing and upgrade model kept me on the fence. I was also a little torn about when to order a license, since I didn't want to buy one for 3 only to have 4 come out a month later, which is what would have happened at the time. Call it a personality flaw but I like to have the latest and greatest when it comes to programming tools and features. I was extremely excited when Unity 4 became available under a subscription model and I was ready to commit as upgrades would be included in the cost. Unfortunately, work got in the way and my free time vanished so I held off.

I recently visited the forums here to see what the status was on Unity 4, in particular whether the promised UI had been released. Instead, it appears the Unity team has been more dedicated to getting v5 ready and that the new UI is potentially two more releases away. That's another thing that has bothered me about Unity - the slow release process and seeming lack of fixes for certain bugs and/or promised features, though admittedly the devs appear to be more active in the forums than when Unity 3 was released.

Today I was shocked to read on BlueNews that Epic has released UE4 with access to the source, tons of high quality tutorials, and a very reasonable $19/mo subscription plan. While the 5% royalty might deter some small game developers that need to maximize profits to pay the bills and keep the lights on, for a guy like me who has a stable job as a enterprise software developer and wants to develop games on the side, the royalty is a non-issue. Considering Epic's track record with updates for UDK, I imagine UE4 will mature quickly. Furthermore, when I do get to the point that I want to target iOS, I won't have to shell out another $1500.

I've decided to bite the bullet...and just signed up for a UE4 subscription. I've been dying to get going on my project for the past two years, so I'm pretty excited.

It will be interesting to see how Unity Tech responds to Epic's release of UE4. I suspect this will be a frustrating week for them.

 

Great thoughts, Digital.