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It's not. Most of Unity games are mobile games, or indie games that don't require the GPU usage bloat Unreal has in order to achieve better graphics. If Unreal

It's not. Most of Unity games are mobile games, or indie games that don't require the GPU usage bloat Unreal has in order to achieve better graphics. If Unreal was ever an option, developers would've been using it instead of Unity in the first place.

catapart 3y ago
In case anyone cares, this commenter is absolutely incorrect; Unreal does support mobile development, and it obviously uses a more lithe package than its full GPU stack. Using only the UI objects, 2D is pretty simple and I haven't had any major package size issues. Using a 3D context to render 2D as planes in the scene, I can still get a package down around 70MB with optimizations left on the table. It's harder to work with 3D-as-2D, but that's why I use the UI system. It's robust. I certainly like Unreal, myself, but I can't say it's an easy move from Unity to Unreal. That aside, one of the very first options you see is whether to scope your game for mobile or for "desktop", so I'm not sure why this commenter thinks that Unreal would not be an option for mobile development. It sucked before UE5, so maybe that's the hang up, but so did a lot of things.
- chess_horse_L 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rajamaka 3y ago
    I highly doubt a 70mb download for a game is upsetting anyone outside of HN.
    - badRNG 3y ago
      Just a reference point, Genshin Impact is 21GB on Android, COD:Mobile is now 15GB, and even Hearthstone is 4GB,
    - catapart 3y ago
      In fairness, a lot of game devs don't have to deal with high-quality assets which are a thing that can take up most of your space. When you don't have 80 to 100 100-500kb assets (audio, textures, etc), you don't see it eat up space and you don't have to hear consumers file issue with the quality of your graphics or audio, so it's reasonable to balk at such an 'abnormal' package size. Devs get a little too focused on their own metrics sometimes, is all. All that said, yeah - 70MB is perfectly "small" in the context of a mobile game. Hell, I WISH 70MB was normal. These days, you'll eat up 300MB on a game just so it can serve you an ad network with 80% of your screen time. The mobile games market is a travesty.
  - Macha 3y ago
    A sample of apps larger than 70mb on my android device: - The built in Contacts app - Degiro (investment management) - Doubletwist (music player) - Sony Headphones Some apps above 150mb: - Element (chat) - Kindle reader - Pocket Casts (podcast player) I don't have too many games installed but layton and the curious village, a point and click DS port, is 700mb (10x larger than on its original platform of the DS). I guess a lot of that increase is replacing 200p backgrounds with 1080p and midis with audio recordings. Filesize is a weird one to complain about - that ship has long sailed.
    - chess_horse_L 3y ago
      I know. I was pointing out the app size since he said that it's 70mb, and that's absolutely not good compared to Unity (10-20mb). To be fair I don't care about the app size either (Though once you reach a threshold, you'll have to care, since extra config is involved in the stores), I just wanted to point across how much work you have to do in Unreal to reach what Unity does by default, and app size is just an easy unit to explain.
      - _jal 3y ago
        > To be fair I don't care about the app size either > Jesus christ. You say I'm absolutely incorrect, yet you're happy with a default package of 70MB?
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Yet, it is a common subject on Apple and Google conferences regarding mobile best practices. Not everyone is living in the first world with flagship devices, unless you mean only those are entitled to play games.
      - Macha 3y ago
        > Not everyone is living in the first world with flagship devices, unless you mean only those are entitled to play games. Right, but unity and unreal performance were possible to make adequate on my HTC One M7 a decade ago, a device so old that you can't publish apps compatible with it to the play store any more because of the minimum target SDK version rules.
  - catapart 3y ago
    I can thoroughly suggest that you revisit your assumptions post Unreal 5. Since it's current, I would suggest 5.3, but anything post 5 should do. There were plenty of improvements made that are well documented by Epic and many things have contributed to better runtime experiences across the board. You may still not be satisfied, but I can assure you that your current assumptions are out of date. As far as "hacky workflow", I don't know what I said to make you believe that. The Unreal UI is a vector rendering process. Same as a browser's rendering context. Or most form designers like ImGUI or WinForm or Qt. I used the Unreal UI just like I used any of those APIs - using what they've already provided where it works and rolling my own controls were it doesn't. It's no different either in conceptual development or in literal programming routines than manipulating a website's DOM or a Canvas element with javascript. It is, in short, a 2D context; same as any other 2D context.

catapart 3y ago

In case anyone cares, this commenter is absolutely incorrect; Unreal does support mobile development, and it obviously uses a more lithe package than its full GPU stack. Using only the UI objects, 2D is pretty simple and I haven't had any major package size issues. Using a 3D context to render 2D as planes in the scene, I can still get a package down around 70MB with optimizations left on the table. It's harder to work with 3D-as-2D, but that's why I use the UI system. It's robust. I certainly like Unreal, myself, but I can't say it's an easy move from Unity to Unreal. That aside, one of the very first options you see is whether to scope your game for mobile or for "desktop", so I'm not sure why this commenter thinks that Unreal would not be an option for mobile development. It sucked before UE5, so maybe that's the hang up, but so did a lot of things.

chess_horse_L 3y ago
[flagged]
- rajamaka 3y ago
  I highly doubt a 70mb download for a game is upsetting anyone outside of HN.
  - badRNG 3y ago
    Just a reference point, Genshin Impact is 21GB on Android, COD:Mobile is now 15GB, and even Hearthstone is 4GB,
  - catapart 3y ago
    In fairness, a lot of game devs don't have to deal with high-quality assets which are a thing that can take up most of your space. When you don't have 80 to 100 100-500kb assets (audio, textures, etc), you don't see it eat up space and you don't have to hear consumers file issue with the quality of your graphics or audio, so it's reasonable to balk at such an 'abnormal' package size. Devs get a little too focused on their own metrics sometimes, is all. All that said, yeah - 70MB is perfectly "small" in the context of a mobile game. Hell, I WISH 70MB was normal. These days, you'll eat up 300MB on a game just so it can serve you an ad network with 80% of your screen time. The mobile games market is a travesty.
- Macha 3y ago
  A sample of apps larger than 70mb on my android device: - The built in Contacts app - Degiro (investment management) - Doubletwist (music player) - Sony Headphones Some apps above 150mb: - Element (chat) - Kindle reader - Pocket Casts (podcast player) I don't have too many games installed but layton and the curious village, a point and click DS port, is 700mb (10x larger than on its original platform of the DS). I guess a lot of that increase is replacing 200p backgrounds with 1080p and midis with audio recordings. Filesize is a weird one to complain about - that ship has long sailed.
  - chess_horse_L 3y ago
    I know. I was pointing out the app size since he said that it's 70mb, and that's absolutely not good compared to Unity (10-20mb). To be fair I don't care about the app size either (Though once you reach a threshold, you'll have to care, since extra config is involved in the stores), I just wanted to point across how much work you have to do in Unreal to reach what Unity does by default, and app size is just an easy unit to explain.
    - _jal 3y ago
      > To be fair I don't care about the app size either > Jesus christ. You say I'm absolutely incorrect, yet you're happy with a default package of 70MB?
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Yet, it is a common subject on Apple and Google conferences regarding mobile best practices. Not everyone is living in the first world with flagship devices, unless you mean only those are entitled to play games.
    - Macha 3y ago
      > Not everyone is living in the first world with flagship devices, unless you mean only those are entitled to play games. Right, but unity and unreal performance were possible to make adequate on my HTC One M7 a decade ago, a device so old that you can't publish apps compatible with it to the play store any more because of the minimum target SDK version rules.
- catapart 3y ago
  I can thoroughly suggest that you revisit your assumptions post Unreal 5. Since it's current, I would suggest 5.3, but anything post 5 should do. There were plenty of improvements made that are well documented by Epic and many things have contributed to better runtime experiences across the board. You may still not be satisfied, but I can assure you that your current assumptions are out of date. As far as "hacky workflow", I don't know what I said to make you believe that. The Unreal UI is a vector rendering process. Same as a browser's rendering context. Or most form designers like ImGUI or WinForm or Qt. I used the Unreal UI just like I used any of those APIs - using what they've already provided where it works and rolling my own controls were it doesn't. It's no different either in conceptual development or in literal programming routines than manipulating a website's DOM or a Canvas element with javascript. It is, in short, a 2D context; same as any other 2D context.