Unity and not UE4

[Deleted User]

Hey guys,

I have noticed that alot, if not most of you preffer to use Unity over UE4.

Unity does have a much more appealing pricing, so I get that indie devs favor it for that reason
but UE4 has vastly superior features.

I would really like to hear your motives

Zaphire

Started with Unity then wanted to move to UE4 because of its graphics but I wasn't a fan of the visual programming and there wasn't enough documentation for the coding section or tutorials anywhere.

Prefer Unity because its much easier and quicker to develop in and I will probably only feel that its lacking once I get to that level of skill but for now doesn't matter which engine I use my skills will make the game good or bad and not the engine.

Also Unity is much easier to build on all types of platforms imo.

quintond

@Cyboerg: Not going to start a flame war but you do realise Unreal Engine 4 is FREE and includes Source Code access for a measly 5% royalty on all sales over $3 000 per anum.

This royalty does not include things like merchandise and is purely the game itself.

However as @Zaphire pointed out ... the C++ tutorials are a little limited and it is something that Epic is currently working on ... I know this because I am a moderator for the forums and we chat to the Epic guys all the time.

Ultimately however, you should choose the best product that suits your need and will work for you ... @Zaphire went to UE4 and went back to Unity ... I went from Torque 3D to Unity and eventually on to UE4 ... what works for me might not work for you.

Good luck with your projects. 8-}

clive

I'm going to chime in here too, engines in my opinion, are down to a matter of taste and what suites *you* best. I don't think there's a one-shoe-fits-all (this is the best, that is the best) otherwise we'd not have so many engines out there ;)

For me, Unity works, but then again it's the first "engine" I used, games prior to the current new ones I'm working on were all hand crafted engines in c/c++ without using any external engine at all. If I'm honest with myself, Unity is probably "best for me" purely because it's the first one that seemed right and now I know it well enough that I can do pretty much anything I like and I honestly don't feel like going through more years of learning curve to get at that same level with any other engine.

The biggest bad side with Unity, for me, is the frequent problems I have with bugs in the actual engine. In fact, in my Bunny Bash game, we used Unity 5.1.4 for the majority of the later end of 2015 I tried near the end to upgrade to 5.2 series but it broke so much that the game pretty much didn't work at all. The majority was fixed (finally) in 5.3.0 series but not enough that made the game playable, I'm currently on 5.3.1p1 (patched 5.3.1) that fixes the last thing broken since 5.1.4 and patiently awaiting 5.3.2 (scheduled 18 Jan) so that I can have a final (hopefully) stable Unity Engine that my game will work on again and that I can deploy to my build cluster.

I'm pretty sure all engines have their quirks, I only really know Unity's though.

[Deleted User]

@quitond Im actually for UE4 here, paying 5% royalty on all sales over $3 000 per anum for a state of the art engine seems more than fair to me, but I probably wont be getting to the point of shipping a title anytime soon so im more interested in the engines features and capabilities to will
my creations into being and Unity well, for me at least, falls a little short.

Im just worried about the coding side, I can do the basics of C# and C++ is really hard from what I hear. Also how practical is UE4's visual coding? Would one be able to get by using only that?

@quitond I have a obsessive compulsive urge to get all tutorials on everything and the lack thereof compared to U5's did worry me, so thanks for letting me know ;)

dislekcia

quintond said:

@Cyboerg: Not going to start a flame war but you do realise Unreal Engine 4 is FREE and includes Source Code access for a measly 5% royalty on all sales over $3 000 per anum.

That "measly" royalty would have cost Desktop Dungeons 20 times what we spent on Unity licenses (we could literally have paid for Unity licenses for every dev in SA at that cost). I'm sure that number would be much higher for something like Broforce. So there are very definitely business reasons that enter into engine considerations. In fact, if you don't have business considerations about the game engine you're focusing on for a project, I'd hazard that you're leaving out a significant set of concerns.

The major reason we chose Unity was porting and multiple platform support. Had we known that Game Maker would have been as cross platform as it is now, maybe we'd have stayed in GM... Although talking to Rami about GM's issues makes me glad I'm not working in it right now. Also, the reason to stay with GM was fast shipping and cross platform stuff only started working a couple of years ago anyway. AND our killer application of Unity was the webplayer for our beta, which paid for development, so without that who knows if we'd have been able to finish the game?

Anyway, I just want to add that any and every engine is going to have technical problems and costs associated with that. I've never worked in anything that hasn't broken in some spectacularly messed up way in the middle of development. Your job as a games business person is to balance those costs against each other and pick the least damaging ones - right now, going with an engine rather than spending your own programmer time to fix issues that pop up technically is way cheaper (and you simply don't have the resources to bring to bear on an issue that engine companies do).

And remember, your biggest source of problems isn't engine code, it's going to be external events: DD took ages to port to mobile in part because of Apple's 64bit switch. That was beyond our control and it cost us quite a few months. But it would have cost us way more if we'd had to rewrite whatever engine we'd hand-rolled (or we'd had to switch underlying engine tech to a different engine) to be able to handle the 64bit requirement, so that was a cost saved. Was it pleasant, no. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Besides, the biggest delay in porting is always the business side of it all: Getting paid.

quintond

@dislekcia makes a good point about the royalties.

Cyboerg said:

@quitond Im actually for UE4 here, paying 5% royalty on all sales over $3 000 per anum for a state of the art engine seems more than fair to me, but I probably wont be getting to the point of shipping a title anytime soon so im more interested in the engines features and capabilities to will
my creations into being and Unity well, for me at least, falls a little short.

Im just worried about the coding side, I can do the basics of C# and C++ is really hard from what I hear. Also how practical is UE4's visual coding? Would one be able to get by using only that?

You could build an entire game in Blueprints if you wanted to ... you could also convert them to C++ after the fact. The C++ that UE4 uses is a simplified version of C++ (although you have full access to C++ if you so desire).

If you go to the learn tab on the UE4 launcher, you will see many games made purely in Blueprints ... there are quite a few Blueprint only games out there ... Blueprint is as functional as C++ ... it wasn't always like that but it is now.

Cyboerg said:

@quitond I have a obsessive compulsive urge to get all tutorials on everything and the lack thereof compared to U5's did worry me, so thanks for letting me know ;)

Cool ... they are still a ways off but they are working hard at fixing the lack of documentation. Most of the UE4 stuff I have learnt is from my Packtlib subscription ... there are quite a few resource books on Unreal in there.

clive

an addendum and 2c after some other posts on this thread:

Yea, I too would never opt in on 5% royalties. The one game I have on steam at the moment is pure c/c++ however had it, for example, been done in Unity vs UE4 then the cost for my Unity 5 pro licence would be VASTLY less than 5% to UE4 and I would have hated myself for making that choice. And that was definitely part of the original consideration for me on which to choose. I'm pretty sure the next game going live (in a month or two), which is done in Unity would have made me cry at choosing UE4 even more since that 5% is effectively "per game" and "forever" where-as that once-off Unity purchase is done. I don't even want to try get into the admin involved down the line each month due to that 5%, I'd rather spend my time coding ;)

roguecode

Cyboerg said:

but UE4 has vastly superior features.

What made you decide this?

[Deleted User]

roguecode said:

Cyboerg said:

but UE4 has vastly superior features.

What made you decide this?

Have u not seen UE4? Compare the particle systems for example.

Zaphire

@Cyboerg Technically both systems have superior features which are different from each other.

bischonator

I don't think there is much of a debate that Unreal has a better graphics platform with far less input required to achieve awesome results. However, Unity is far superior in its usability and flexibility to do just about any game from 2D to 3D with a mobile geared footprint. UE4 has a lot of growing up to do in order to compete with the jack of all trades that Unity aims to be. UE4 also requires proficiency in C++ or you then need to fall back on blueprints etc. Each have their pros and cons, just as the Max vs Maya debate etc.

Squidcor

Have u not seen UE4? Compare the particle systems for example.

That's a very specific axis of comparison. If you pick different one (2D features for example), then Unity is clearly streaks ahead. Both engines have their strengths and weaknesses.

A lot of people here use Unity because A) the barrier to entry is much lower, and B) it's the preferred engine of most of the local studios.

The last time I tried to make something in Unreal I got really disheartened by the coding workflow. This might have changed in more recent versions, but I was restarting the editor to allow code changes to take effect way to often. Testing changes often took an order of magnitude longer than it does in Unity.

Also, now that I'm used to C#, using C++ just seems like a massive waste of my time.

dislekcia

Cyboerg said:

Have u not seen UE4? Compare the particle systems for example.

Zaphire said:

@Cyboerg Technically both systems have superior features which are different from each other.

Careful, both of these replies are pretty low on actual information on why either of you think that way. If you're not careful, this could just lead to a depressing argument where neither of you is actually getting anything out of it. Try to give more background as to the WHY of a particular feeling, like @bischonator and @Squidcor did :) (This isn't really a warnable thing, so think of this as a reminder to be nice to each other)

Zaphire

@dislekcia I didn't mean to come across rude or not nice to the OP and agree I should add more details.

Unity vs UE4 from what I have gathered
* It is much easier to distribute to different platforms on Unity.
* UE4 has a lot better graphics for less work. Unity requires more skills to get the same quality of graphics.
* Unity is easier to get started with for people with no experience in game design. It also has a lot more documentation than UE4 especially when it comes to programming.
* Unity is built for both 3D and 2D where UE4 is mainly for 3D.

I also work as a full time C# software developer so working in Unity was much more familiar than it was working in Unreal Engine with C++.

quintond

Squidcor said:

[quote]The last time I tried to make something in Unreal I got really disheartened by the coding workflow. This might have changed in more recent versions, but I was restarting the editor to allow code changes to take effect way to often. Testing changes often took an order of magnitude longer than it does in Unity.

@Squidcor: Not questioning your choice of Unity, merely providing an update to those that are interested ... this has been resolved in the newer version of the engine and editor. 8-}

Zaphire said:

Unity vs UE4 from what I have gathered
* It is much easier to distribute to different platforms on Unity.
* UE4 has a lot better graphics for less work. Unity requires more skills to get the same quality of graphics.
* Unity is easier to get started with for people with no experience in game design. It also has a lot more documentation than UE4 especially when it comes to programming.
* Unity is built for both 3D and 2D where UE4 is mainly for 3D.

I also work as a full time C# software developer so working in Unity was much more familiar than it was working in Unreal Engine with C++.

@Zaphire: You may be a little misinformed with regards to Unreal Engine.

Unreal Engine definitely has 2D support ... it is called Paper 2D and is quite advanced and capable (https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Paper2D/index.html).

Unreal Engine platform support and distribution to these platforms is fairly easy. For my game I basically build on Windows for Linux using the ToolChain. I have yet have a build that I did on Windows not work on Linux and I am using C++ and Blueprint and custom plugins.

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Building_Linux_cross-toolchain
https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Compiling_For_Linux

francoisvn

Can Unreal deploy to mobile and/or web? Seems like it supports Win/Mac/Linux pretty well, but I was wondering about the other platforms.

quintond

francoisvn said:

Can Unreal deploy to mobile and/or web? Seems like it supports Win/Mac/Linux pretty well, but I was wondering about the other platforms.

@francoisvn: Yes it can ... supports Android and iOS from within the editor. It also has a web-deploy for HTML.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/Android/GettingStarted/
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/iOS/QuickStart/index.html
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/HTML5/GettingStarted/

I don't have much experience with it myself and there were a few issues a while ago, but Epic has committed to providing more mobile support and extending the current support. I know "crocopede" on these forums will have more insight on the Android and iOS side of things.

There are a few problems still but they are actively working on it and there are ready quite a few games released on these platforms already.

It is also certified for PS4 and XboxONE for those that may be interested - https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/playstation-4-and-xbox-one-now-supported

electrov

From a programming perspective, I would vote Unity any day, as C# is just so much easier than C++, and has some awesome features. I used C++ to develop console games for about 8 years, but since switching to C# / Unity I've never looked back!

ryan20fun

A bit late.

dislekcia said:

quintond said:

@Cyboerg: Not going to start a flame war but you do realise Unreal Engine 4 is FREE and includes Source Code access for a measly 5% royalty on all sales over $3 000 per anum.

That "measly" royalty would have cost Desktop Dungeons 20 times what we spent on Unity licenses (we could literally have paid for Unity licenses for every dev in SA at that cost). I'm sure that number would be much higher for something like Broforce. So there are very definitely business reasons that enter into engine considerations. In fact, if you don't have business considerations about the game engine you're focusing on for a project, I'd hazard that you're leaving out a significant set of concerns.

They do state that you can contact them for custom licensing, You you could get a once off fee instead of royalty.