4 ms·

So... Unreal Engine is already open source and cross platform. I understand they want royalty for revenues > $3000 but that seems ultra reasonable to me conside

by sytelus 10y ago

So... Unreal Engine is already open source and cross platform. I understand they want royalty for revenues > $3000 but that seems ultra reasonable to me considering you get reliable large team to put out release after release. Does any of the engines mentioned in this thread come close to feature set in Unreal? What's the value here other than creating basic 2D/3D games?

anilgulecha 10y ago
A correction: UE is not open source. It's source is accessible, but does not qualify either as open source, or free software.
- grzm 10y ago
  Given a sibling comment states that UR is open source (while not free software), could you explain your take on it? Just looking for clarification—not assuming you're mistaken.
  - floatboth 10y ago
    https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
    - anilgulecha 10y ago
      Correct, open source has a strict definition in the tech community (and OSI), and UE does not meet it.
      - eriknstr 10y ago
        The OSI has their definition but that doesn't make it the one true definition.
        phaemon 10y ago
        Since they invented the term, I think it pretty much does. It's nice that "open source" is now so commonplace that people think it's a natural term to use, but if you think about it, it really isn't (something like "source available" would be more normal).
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
mikulas_florek 10y ago
You are right that UE/Unity/Lumberyard? is the way to go for 95% of users, but: * UE may have it's source code publicly available, but it's definitely not free (as freedom to do anything with it) * UE is very resource heavy * You can not use it to create gambling or military stuff * 2D possible, but not very nice * Complicated code None of the open source engines come very close to UE, but you pay the price for it. Even Unity (without any 3rd party plugins) is not close, but I argue Unity is still very useful.
- Namrog84 10y ago
  UE4 is only as resource heavy as you want it to be, just as Unity can be resource heavy if you follow certain patterns. Unity and UE4 and many others can achieve quite a bit of parity in performance nowadays. There are scenarios that either one has potential to win out in. Epic has made great strides in so many areas that if you haven't tried it in a few releases(6ish months?), there is quite a bit of stuff that is better (both in cleanliness/precision but also in performance and overhead)
  - mikulas_florek 10y ago
    I just tried to open UE 4.14.2 (no scene) - it took 140seconds, how is that not resource heavy? Opening some basic project - 15 seconds. Making a small change in my plugin and compiling it ~2minutes. Intellisense are quite slow, VisualAssist even slower. Donwloading UE - several GBs. I can recompile my whole engine in 20 seconds (and I am not using precompiled headers), editor launches in ~1 second, basic scene load ~1 second. Small change in source code - compile & link in 3 seconds. Intellisense brokes from time to time when using FBX SDK, but it's fine otherwise and without FBX SDK there is no problem. Engine size with some necessary data - a few tens of MB. When I am doing something in my game and I have to change something, turn off engine + make change + compile it + start engine + load the scene = few seconds. It's so fast I did not even bother to implement hotreload for native code. When I'm working on my UE plugin - the same cycle is several minutes.
    - Namrog84 10y ago
anc84 10y ago
Unreal Engine is open source but not free software. A perfect example why "open source" is a bad term.
- versteegen 10y ago
  People do sometimes say "open source" to mean "source available", but I think most programmers usually mean something more than that although they don't assume Open Source. It's neither "open source" nor Open Source nor Free Software.
tinco 10y ago
In my experience, what programmers don't see when they start on an engine but which they will harshly run into when they feel it is done is the asset pipeline. When your game engine is done, how do you get assets into the game? How will your artists test out things, how will you get models you bought on the internet into your game? For any game engine I'd check out I would first see how well it deals with game assets. It's more important than fancy rendering features or even clean API's and developer tools.
- mikulas_florek 10y ago
  This is very true. Two hardest things which I implemented in Lumix Engine are prefabs and asset import and I'm not still 100% with any of it. But I guess there is not an ideal solution.
angry_octet 10y ago
UE4 is 'source available' but not Free or Open Source. You certainly can't use a snippet of their code in another project. It is basically the same as the Mathworks giving almost free licences to universities to build mind share, knowing that anything serious requires big cash outlays for licencing.

by sytelus 10y ago

anilgulecha 10y ago

A correction: UE is not open source. It's source is accessible, but does not qualify either as open source, or free software.

grzm 10y ago
Given a sibling comment states that UR is open source (while not free software), could you explain your take on it? Just looking for clarification—not assuming you're mistaken.
- floatboth 10y ago
  https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
  - anilgulecha 10y ago
    Correct, open source has a strict definition in the tech community (and OSI), and UE does not meet it.
    - eriknstr 10y ago
      The OSI has their definition but that doesn't make it the one true definition.
      - phaemon 10y ago
        Since they invented the term, I think it pretty much does. It's nice that "open source" is now so commonplace that people think it's a natural term to use, but if you think about it, it really isn't (something like "source available" would be more normal).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

mikulas_florek 10y ago

You are right that UE/Unity/Lumberyard? is the way to go for 95% of users, but: * UE may have it's source code publicly available, but it's definitely not free (as freedom to do anything with it) * UE is very resource heavy * You can not use it to create gambling or military stuff * 2D possible, but not very nice * Complicated code None of the open source engines come very close to UE, but you pay the price for it. Even Unity (without any 3rd party plugins) is not close, but I argue Unity is still very useful.

Namrog84 10y ago
UE4 is only as resource heavy as you want it to be, just as Unity can be resource heavy if you follow certain patterns. Unity and UE4 and many others can achieve quite a bit of parity in performance nowadays. There are scenarios that either one has potential to win out in. Epic has made great strides in so many areas that if you haven't tried it in a few releases(6ish months?), there is quite a bit of stuff that is better (both in cleanliness/precision but also in performance and overhead)
- mikulas_florek 10y ago
  I just tried to open UE 4.14.2 (no scene) - it took 140seconds, how is that not resource heavy? Opening some basic project - 15 seconds. Making a small change in my plugin and compiling it ~2minutes. Intellisense are quite slow, VisualAssist even slower. Donwloading UE - several GBs. I can recompile my whole engine in 20 seconds (and I am not using precompiled headers), editor launches in ~1 second, basic scene load ~1 second. Small change in source code - compile & link in 3 seconds. Intellisense brokes from time to time when using FBX SDK, but it's fine otherwise and without FBX SDK there is no problem. Engine size with some necessary data - a few tens of MB. When I am doing something in my game and I have to change something, turn off engine + make change + compile it + start engine + load the scene = few seconds. It's so fast I did not even bother to implement hotreload for native code. When I'm working on my UE plugin - the same cycle is several minutes.
  - Namrog84 10y ago

anc84 10y ago

Unreal Engine is open source but not free software. A perfect example why "open source" is a bad term.

versteegen 10y ago
People do sometimes say "open source" to mean "source available", but I think most programmers usually mean something more than that although they don't assume Open Source. It's neither "open source" nor Open Source nor Free Software.

tinco 10y ago

In my experience, what programmers don't see when they start on an engine but which they will harshly run into when they feel it is done is the asset pipeline. When your game engine is done, how do you get assets into the game? How will your artists test out things, how will you get models you bought on the internet into your game? For any game engine I'd check out I would first see how well it deals with game assets. It's more important than fancy rendering features or even clean API's and developer tools.

mikulas_florek 10y ago
This is very true. Two hardest things which I implemented in Lumix Engine are prefabs and asset import and I'm not still 100% with any of it. But I guess there is not an ideal solution.

angry_octet 10y ago

UE4 is 'source available' but not Free or Open Source. You certainly can't use a snippet of their code in another project. It is basically the same as the Mathworks giving almost free licences to universities to build mind share, knowing that anything serious requires big cash outlays for licencing.