Unreal Engine 5 = Game Changer

I personally think Unity's implementation of ECS and being multithreaded is a lot easier to get into than C++, so that's a plus. It honestly isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Just how easy unity's C# made it to get into scripting, i think Unity's ECS will make it similarly easy to get into scripting with performance in mind. And at the same time, Unity is working on getting it's visual scripting up to par, and that look like it's going in the direction of making bring OOP to ECS - so if you're really OOP minded and don't want to make that mental jump, VS is gonna be great for you (hopefully)

So from the code side of making a game, Unity still seems to be the place to go and i'm confident Unity will keep it's lead there.

Hopefully one day Unity will get it's authoring side of things looking less confusing, solid, and competitive again - maybe when all this DOTS stuff is wrapped up.

 

For me personally, after two desktop games in Unity, I will be be moving to Unreal 5 without a shadow of a doubt.

Unity is amazing at mobile, but I'm not interested in mobile.

I'm frankly sick to death of every new tool that comes out using a completely different UI. I'm sick of a lack of consistency in the API's. I'm sick of what seems like everything being preview forever - and then disappearing to be replaced by something else in preview.

Why can I not switch between URP and HDRP and Unity only at the max have to reboot and compile shaders for me? It is literally insane that there are 3 renderers in Unity right now. All this should be hidden from me as the user and be handled behind the scenes.

Where is the HLOD? Why is the lightmapping from 1862 and still not finished?

Where is the GI?

These things are MANDATORY to make a game, not a nice to have bonus.

Unity has hired lots of amazing guys, so really the finger points straight to the top, bad management, no clear direction.

If Unity had shipped big games it would know full well where the holes are and get working on those first.

Honestly, Unity does some great things but is as messed up as Windows with lots of API's that are inconsistent, UI all over the place.

To top this, Visual scripting which should be in the engine as standard...I have to PAY for? Are you kidding me?


This is honest and sorry if it is offensive, but it should make you think:

People PAY to have the Unity logo removed from their game.
Unreal Engine games don't have to put the logo there, they chose too.

Interesting isn't it.


I have know interest in DOTS, the tech sounds good but it should be invisible to the user, there is no way I want to code like that thank you.

All of us chose to use a game engine, because we want to MAKE GAMES. That is it. I expect the engine to handle the boring bits I know longer want to do (spent many years doing it, not interested in doing it now).

UE5 release made me stop and question why I used unity - and honestly, I did not have a good response to it.

Unity is in need of a rewrite from the ground up, with a professional approach to design, consistant API's a consistant GUI (Shader Graph, FC Graph, Mechanim and Visual scripting should look THE SAME, not all completely different).

Hopefully this came across as passionate rather than aggressive. I don't usually post, but for once wanted to speak up.

When an engines' own examples use a wacky scene system and run like absolute crap, why doesn't that raise an enormous red flag to Unity?

 

Pretty much a red flag for Unity right there TBH, when usually silent yet productive devs speak up.

 

https://twitter.com/martinnebelong/status/1261066609155768320?s=21

Forget Unity or Unreal, lets move to Dreams!

 

Dreams does a lot of things well, I mean for people who want to make games it is letting them make games.

 

I'm maybe about to say a bunch of nonsense, so feel free to boo me as much as you like, but:

I'd actually like to see Unity bought by Microsoft. If that happened, a number of things could follow:

- It could become a first class citizen of the .NET ecosystem (.NET 5 yay!)
- It could become part of the Xbox strategy (More love for high-end features!)
- It could get pushed internally to the Xbox game studios family (Dog-fooding yay!)
- It could get an overhauled Package manager & Collaborate (They have nuGet, and own Github and NPM now)
- Havok could become a core part of the engine
- It would have the backing to focus on a strategic set of markets (games, AR) and stop chasing revenue from every possible place
- A lot of online infrastructure be consolidated under the umbrella of Azure.
- It could lead to secondary companies bought by unity to become part of the base offering or even fuse with similarly-focused companies bought by Microsoft.
- Maybe, and only maybe, there could be a change in the licensing model an or/source access

If I go even further, maybe one day the whole DOTS thing can give back to the .NET stack. Maybe some new construct in C# to better support the so-called HPC# ? Maybe Burst becomes part of Roslyn (or whatever that part of the toolchain is called)?



Now I know some people still wrinkle their faces when they hear the MICRO$OFT name, but come on, it's not a bad company at all these days. I concede there could be some possible drawbacks, such as relegating OpenGL/Vulkan/Apple ecosystem, but I doubt that would be the case. What I mentioned before is more than enough for Unity to become part of the Microsoft ecosystem and "lure" devs into the rest of their offerings. I don't think they'd risk angering people by cutting cords with "the competition".

At the end of the day i think it could be a turn for the best.

 

hey! good catch! The techniques of dreams is sdf, I can now point to another talk to understand the tech of u5, so people can piece thing for themselves!

Spoiler: talk about dreams sdf

put in that here for archive

 

Oh ok
If someone knows the size of this demo, that would be interesting (if already said earlier then my bad )

 

Not yet

 

(mobile dev here and just wanted to clarify: That's not true. Last time it was true it was years ago, and then Unity kept neglecting mobile. Agreed with everything else in your post)

 

but does it not worry people that there are hardly no finished game in unreal forums? Only finished games are by big studio. Look how many game we have here in unity there is new ones coming everyday.

 

Better than unreal tho? I’d be interested to know

 

No. Anything beyond a very small development team will typically be a waste of time to advertise on a forum populated with people developing games rather than playing them. I wouldn't pay any attention to the release games on their forums any more than I would pay attention to the ones on ours.

 

Ah i see, in that case no one on here has any business jumping to unreal because they not fall into that category.

 

Keep in mind the number of games you see mentioned on this forum is less than one percent of the actual games being released every single day. Google's Play Store averages six thousand apps per day with the majority of them being games.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276703/android-app-releases-worldwide/

 

Wow that is crazy but I can believe.

 

I haven't made a serious evaluation of Unreal for mobile recently, but Unity's probably still more suited than Unreal for mobile. Just be ready to navigate a ton of needless bullcrap, because Unity's dragging their feet in fulfilling certain requirements for mobile, plus they really love their data collection and it's becoming a problem.

 

I was looking on steam the other day some indie stuff made by a single person, and a lot of the stuff I found out were made in UE.
Bright memory, freud's gate were the latest examples I can think of.
Unity is slowly bleeding newcomers to UE, mostly due to UE just giving out free stuff.
One of the "indie genres" that Unity lost are walking sims, no one starting would choose Unity for a walking sim these days.
Unity is amazing for prototyping, you can throw around a bunch of scripts and it will work, it let's you iterate really fast.
If a game like Gone Home would be made today it would have 0 incentive to be made in unity, and that is probably on the "pantheon" of unity games.
Same with FPS (and not only multiplayer), there's nothing to gain about choosing unity.
It's not 2010 anymore and Unity is the only 3d engine for indies anymore.

 

yes the thing i like about unity is you cannot beat it for prototyping.

 

Unity's 2D is another thing you can't beat. Unreal's 3D might be fantastic but it's 2D is very minimal. Ori and the Blind Forest is a great showcase for it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/387290/Ori_and_the_Blind_Forest_Definitive_Edition/

 

wow that looks fantastic, my favourite game so far is something called 'gris.'

I am very satisfied with unity to date, i hope to be learning ai and dots soon, and my friend seems content with something called raytracing and hdrp, but we understanding it is not robust solution.

 

We've given Unity a break for over a decade and given them a chance to court AAA studios and it just simply isn't happening. During those 10 years everyone including me fought the good fight, had the faith in Unity etc. But Unity is worth billions and does not have any presence on console to speak of vs pretty much wall to wall unreal engine.

Look to mobile and there's almost no unreal. So therefore we can can clearly all agree that Unity is designed currently for mobile, and kind of always was. It can go further but it gets harder every step you make from mobile upward. So Unity's bread and butter is mobile + AEC.

epic's bread and butter is anything not-mobile. But unreal also dominates Oculus Quest because Unity's just been far too slow responding there. It's that simple. Because frankly it does not make Unity much money to do that.

Each engine has it's specialised design but lets not kid ourselves about Unity and pretend it's good at the high end. HDRP is beautiful at rendering the high end but the rest is missing.

Unity's amazing at 2D for example.

So look at the game you are making and open your eyes. I have and I'm happier knowing at least, what things I would choose Unity to develop on and what not.

 

My experience is small and anecdotal, but I spent several months doing a lot of hard work to do something in unity that i can do out of the box with unreal (run a realistic forest in open world.)

I chose unity because i am already familiar with it and it generally has more support for tiny guy like me, but probably i should have gone with unreal for a game like that. Too many things just take too much work to do in unity, especially when it comes to realistic graphics. I know people tend to say, "you can get the same graphics in unity if you know what you are doing." I don't think thats true at all. And even if it is, so what? One makes it fast and easy, the other is pulling teeth.

Anyway, unity is awesome and all and got me started but for most the games i want to make, it's probably not the right engine.

 

I'm not sure I will be switching to UE anytime soon....but my subscription year with Unity is coming to an end in a month or two. I feel like not so much because of the demo itself(which is extremely sexy), but because I'm seeing more and more evidence that UE/Epic is making more decisions to benefit smaller teams, etc... that Unity is currently. I get that they are different business models, so I get why Unity can't afford to let the free version be used as freely as Epic can. But regardless of the situation, you have to weigh the options and decide what is best for you. I've been messing with Unity mainly because I like the system and in general how easy it is to use. But then I see that HDRP is "verified" and yet I still can't paint grass onto terrain?!(Just one example of course).

So, now Epic is letting UE4 be free, no royalties up to $1,000,000 in profit. They have tons of crap they are just giving out for free consistently. As stated here plenty of times, their ecosystem is in general on the rise, while Unity's is in general bleeding. I'm not interested in making games for mobile. I'm also not going to have the resources to make AAA games either. But I'm starting to question if Unity's ease of use is going to be enough value to me to make me sacrifice all the good stuff that UE4 could provide, and at a better price(until that massive earnings cap anyway).

Final verdict, I'm going to be downloading UE 4.25 today. I recently started a project in Unity. I'm going to do a similar thing in UE4. The idea will be to see just how much harder UE4 ends up being, and just how valuable the Unity ease-of-use really is in my specific case. If I find the benefits of UE4 outweigh the ease-of-use with Unity, I will be jumping ship. If not, I'll be staying around and continuing to subscribe to Unity(I actually don't have to, but I like some of the Plus version benefits). I used to work in C++ and should be able to pick it back up easily enough

Point is, I think this is as good a time as any to seriously consider the alternatives. The pretty demo isn't the real reason though, but the new pricing scheme combined with both the fact that I just started a project and the fact that my year subscription contract is almost up make it really good timing for me.

 

so true, my friend adored using something called 'brushify.io' when she tried. But we conclude getting movement and AI involved big investment, not for noobs, maybe for someone serious with big budget.

 

Come to think of it, Unity's awesome tech demos have never translated to released games that look as good while Unreal's tech demos translate to games that look even better as time goes on. That's something to think about.

 

i think you will be back sooner than you expect, we tried and was too complex, they use something called 'actor' and 'pawn' everything is blueprint based, good luck understanding api from scripting pov, projects are many GBs, still need to get custom assets for trees etc, lightmapping even Lushangs GPU is still tedious to set up. Everything needs to compile for every change, not problem on small project, but big problem with large project. Writing optimized c++ is very technical and requires lot of effort. But for sure, you can check it out, i be surprised if you stay.

 

This is true and I agree with all you said there. A fair and honest view.

It is worth noting that Epic are going after mobile now, they have Fortnite running on crappy android phones - and although it doesn't look pretty, Unreals' ability to scale is just amazing. Imagine writing a game in HDRP and then trying to get it onto an android phone...aint gonna happen.

So, Unity may have mobile in the bag now (certainly without question in the 2D and 2.5D games) but it may not hold onto that with Unreal turning their gaze on mobile also.

 

The problem with Microsoft is the long rich history of rapidly buying of products and then effectively killing them or simply not integrating products very well. I doubt Microsoft would improve the overall situation for Unity. It would just be a way for equity owners to cash out.

Microsoft does not have a real Xbox strategy. Sony's PS5 has a better name and better tech than Microsoft ill named next gen device. If Microsoft took over Unity, I could imagine Microsoft pushing for more Xbox related stuff, but it would all be poorly designed ideas like UWP. Basically just garbage. And Microsoft would end up doing that instead of continuing to work on mobile, because everybody at Microsoft is all thumbs about mobile markets.

If Microsoft did buy Unity, I suspect a lot of Unity game developers would immediately switch to UE.

 

I stand corrected, epic are killing it with fortnite on mobile to be honest and I do not see evidence of 100 player Unity mobile titles the same calibre so I concede.

 

I honestly agree with you and I think I'll end up sticking with Unity for a while. I just haven't looked at UE4 since back when it first came out and I really didn't give all that serious of a look even then. Its free to try, so I think it deserves that much at least. I'm generally open minded about this type of thing though so I 100% realize I may indeed stick to Unity.

 

don't forget a lot of people here are excited, the same excitement was seen when unreal launch a partnering with something call quixel. i do not know for certain but i would not think many unity users switched.

the real proof is if they move in large masses to unreal after ue5 launches. problem is, it is completely new toolchain. biggest problem is ease of prototyping which we love unity for is not there in unreal. if you can remedy these and apply same toolchain to unreal i say good luck. but sadly unless u have big team and budget to accnt for this i cannot see.

 

Remember, PUBG is also available on mobile and it is also made with UE4. In addition to Fortnite, that makes two wildly successful 100 player mobile titles made with UE4.

 

After that UE5 demo video, I suspect every game developer that is interested in creating photo realistic games will at least consider UE5 for their next project.

This is very different from when UE4 was launched, because UE4.0 did not feel like a mature product. For example, when developing using C++ and UE4.0, I had to restart the UE4 editor each time I recompiled my code. I could not just hit Play and test my changes like I could with Unity. That led to terrible iteration times with UE4.0. The situation improved with each release of UE4.x. Now with UE5.0, we all assume it will start at least as mature as the most recent release of UE4. (UE4.25)

 

I know the idea behind splitting hdrp and urp was to keep the pipelines less complicated...but man, losing that lateral mobility really sucks.

Hdrp seems to have the ability to disable so many high end features that bring it down to low end mobile quality but, for reason beyond my scope of knowledge, it just won’t work on those platforms? Unreal somehow gets it to work, but Unity can’t/won’t?

Also, the split between URP and HD creates this rift where one pipeline gets a feature/workflow improvement that probably both should have, but the other probably wont see that feature for another couple versions, if ever. It creates this unnecessary rift and seemingly even more work for Unity - definitely creates envy and fomo amongst the users that are literally stuck on a RP.

 

Well, if you are making a 2D game in Unity, URP is easily always the right path. The confusion is only for 3D games. Choosing between URP and HDRP creates a weird situation for 3D projects, and each path has its own set of pros and cons.

 

very true, pubg on mobile looks like unity 4 lol

And if they have a medium to large team behind them to handle asset creation pipeline and coding. I feel a lot of people are missing this. realistic Art does not make 'a game.'

 

Those are valid points...which is why I'm testing for myself. As mentioned above, when UE4 first came out, it wasn't mature enough, and that made me not take it serious. But things have supposedly gotten better with the pipeline, etc... so I think that now is a good time to test. I've just finished modelling a really crappy ship and I'm about to make a quicky basic PBR material in Painter for it, and then see how it feels importing it. Then I'll make something, anything, that is animated, and import that.

 

i believe the split was necessary because they were new concept. it may have been easier to separate this for low end devices and high end device. all in essence experiments. i feel it would be harder to have a pipeline that automatically just 'worked' by detecting type of device game is running on, like i suppose what ue5 is taunting.

Someone called 'brackeys' has helped me understand the pipelines

 

yes only way to do is to try. don't forget my friend said, mixer now support custom 3d mesh imports as long as u have already unwrapped it, you can also do something called vertex paint by setting up shader in unreal, but we have this facility too in unity.

 

And the animation system is completely different, something called mecanim, like root motion, does not work as you would expect in unity. different tools of course for different way of thinking.

 

Observations just from the non-animated ship. UE4 imports the FBX as exported from Blender just fine(did I mention I use Blender?!). I was able to directly import the textures as exported from Painter as well. It automatically picked up which one was a normal map and gave me a nice little message saying it was imported as such.

Next step, figure out if I can easily scale the ship to a better size in editor(instead of having to do it in the modeller).

Also, I LIKE the little tutorials that pop up for each of the editors. They give you a basic walkthrough of what stuff is where.

Remember that I'm doing this just off intuition....I don't have a book or tutorial or anything. If I can get things going this way, then it should be even easier for someone actually using a tutorial.

 

So, I added a quick thing adding movement to the ship when hitting a key(using blueprints). Then I hit play. I don't like how the editor camera(that uses WASD) is the same even when testing, and it doesn't have a separate view for testing gameplay. So, I hit "Launch" instead. My CPU suage shot up to 100%(around 50% is UE4). UE4 is also currently using between 1.5 and 2GB or RAM. This is despite the fact that I only have a really basic ship, and some of the starting stuff in the scene(sky sphere, sky light, etc... I even removed the floor that it starts with). Note that I've also been waiting for about 10 mins, and it finally popped up the window with the ship.

Now, I had forgotten to note that there is no camera type of object in my scene outliner. Yet, I can still move around the world in the built project with WASD like an FPS. Also note that I had started this as an empty project, not including any of the starter stuff.

Further investigation under where the play test options are, I see a thing that says if I want to start the player where the camera is. I honestly didn't even need a "player" rather the ship is the player. Looks like I'm going to need some actual tutorials to figure this stuff out.

 

There is a large gameplay framework in unreal (gamemodes, playercontrollers, pawns, etc). You have to learn it and use it. There is nothing equivalent in unity.

 

PS I have a feeling that most developers on you/Unity (company/engine) are making mobile type games, and that is the major segment/market that you serve; as such, it is understand that you would put all your efforts and resources towards servicing the (largest) Unity-engine dev. demographics. Thus, like some here, I am in the micro-minory making a AAA style game (well..ok more like A or B-game...but with the 'feel' of AAA) and not a mobile game. So, I fully take the blame per se about choosing this engine when I cold have chosen Unreal - which are muhc more used in AAA games. That does not mean you cannot make a AAA game with Unity; you can, but it's mostly AAA companies that do that...but games like Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of Wisp, Cuphead, StarDew Valley, Shovel Knight, Celeste, Deadcells, (also Maneater, Shark Deathmatch, Subnautica) ... -are- mostly pixel like scrollers...that does not mean we can Only do that (and like Subnautica was 3d FPS game) and these indie non-mobile games were Super Popular and were some of the best indies games made in Unity/You/your engine -that's commendable; there are several games in the making now (see WIP/games released) on necessarily Just on Android/mobile (am not saying anything against mobile games, they are great too! But there are types of games too)...they unity devs (doing non-mobile game) that are aiming at PC market/Steam....or even Epic's Game Store (if only you/Unity could have a Game Store but I guess this is a competition problem; Epic competes with devs; you Unity do not wish to compete with devs - it's understandable (I am saying this publically, not to be bad/I can write personally/in private to you and not spill it on the whole public place/Not into public shaming/lynching of any company; it's just us devs that a bit worried (as always and very Grateful for all you have done - at the same time)), but I think some people think the same so I'll say it here); but as some said, if you make huge game yourselves and make a game platform; then it opens doors for indies too (just like Epic did)). (Though, I do undersand, not interested in that and don't want to compete against own cliens/devs. Think it it is something that devs aske; albeit, I think it is mostly AAA games making people that are seeking this; mobile/android games on Google are seekign this too but there is the Google platform (albeit it is so crowded with 100,000s mobile games!), but you/your/Unity Game Store platform could be something). I know you don't seem/want to compete in the A/AA/AAA/AAAA domain that UE5 is/will enter and stick around in the mobile/android games....but that is limiting. Though people who make non-mobile games are small in your developer pool; they still matter also. I could just simply say:

''It's my fault, chose the wrong engine, I'm going for Unreal 5..because (only) they make AAA or AAA'-styled' games...''...as possible?feasible?lt is feasible in Unity, as you did with the advacement of your HDRP/SRPs, so that is clearly aiming at me and other devs wishing to make non-mobile games; while you also gave URP for mobile/AR/VR developers -which are your Major demograph of indie devs using your engine. That is highly commendable because you understand that there are different developers with different goals/types of games beign made; out that 100%, I think 70-80% are making mobile, android, VR/AR and scroller games that aim more 2D (although VR/AR aims 3D), while 20-30% are making 'for PC/consoles' A/B/AA' like indie 3D games (like FPS, adventure games, RPGs, action games; which are oftenly (more) in 3D than 2D))). It's 2 different things and both highly important/valuable..to cater to I mean as a game engine company. And, I understand some said that gaming as become sort of a '2nd thing' for you/Unity..like less important vs ascquiring/expanding you/Unity to other markets (like medical field, films, etc...) and it's Fully understandable, and commendable to want so; I only wish best. The largest segment of your/Unity engine is the game makers; with that said, now you also have phys. simulation/architecture use/product advertising/Films VFX...etc etc...so this is mega multi-use tool, not just a 'game engine' anymore....

But as said, indie devs are largest users of your engine because at base, long ago, it was a game engine. But, it's More than understandable 'To expand' to other markets/use for the engine, that is (technically) democratisation of a tool;;not just game tool. To bring it wherever you can and make its (of) use (for whatever..not just games).

But, once more, I think I felt/read a sort of (slight) neglect that indies felt, like saying : ''your vision is lost, you're all over the place and no place at the same time''...as such, if gaming is not important anymore as a goal...then it is more than understandable why the gaming aspect/developing of your engine would suffer....I think need more resources put on that element; it is your/the biggest element and I believe also the one that makes the most return. Business-wise, it is wisest (to invest in it most; I know I'm know telling you anything/revealingg you anything like some 'revelation'..you know all this). But, somewhere, along the way...might have been a bit losing self...
'Lost in Translation'....

Just a 2 cents.

PPS: I realize this seems like a lot of 'nothing said'...but was just expounding some more....on the whole thing/vapor. UE5's new technology may seem vapor... but it could become something Truly (not vapor) and useful...some have said this new 'method' of working is 'game changing'...and maybe, as a mobile developer...it does not even concern you and think dont' give a s....because don't need that...but some devs do need that/would love to have something like that...maybe in HDRP 2021-22...it would be welcomes and would solidify the 'retaining' of them (for rest of 2020 and 2021; because I feart some may change tool if UE5 continues to make so many 'indie pro choices'...from their revenue model to the Nanite/Lumen techs to their epic store to the quixel scans (maybe you don't need that...so doesn't apply; for some devs using your Unity engine, they would like that..ok we are a minority but still...) to anything in between.

Plus, we are at 15 pages on this UE5 announcement post, with over 5000 views in less than 2 days; says it all.

 

I mean, that's just blatantly not true, is it?

 

Er yeah it is because I was developing on quest for unity, for URP in nov 2019, so yes, I know how bad it is and how much is missing. If you have a problem take it to PM as it's not on topic. OK?

 

What annoys me is in Unreal, I can open a project that was made back in 2015, a map filled with materials, animations, and models. Everything works just fine, and all the materials are automatically up to date.

In Unity, I upgrade my project to use URP. Then I try opening a similar project with the same map layout and materials. Now I have to upgrade all the materials to URP, because that isn't done automatically. If I want post processing, I better create a new post processing volume and adjust the settings. But all the shaders that were hand crafted using shader language are now completely obsolete, and won't even work unless I continue using the default renderer. So now I have to recreate all these shaders with shader graph. I've had a few shaders break on me when I upgraded URP to the current version (which is done by default when updating Unity). So now I can either try to fix my broken shaders, install an old version of URP, try switching to HDRP and deal with more pain, or try reverting my project back to the default and having no shader graph.

All those incredible tech demos that were made in Unity 5 are now completely obsolete, and won't work at all with the URP or HDRP render pipelines. While all the tech demos in UE4 still work to this day right out of the box.

 

You're comparing apples to oranges. Upgrading a Unity project using its built-in renderer has the same ease of use as upgrading an Unreal project using its built-in renderer.

 

I think the theme here is Unity's not managed to keep hold of the ball while refactoring an entire live engine. The right move all along was just to make a separate, new Unity. That's biting them today.