25 ms·
Welcome to Unreal Engine 4
- seivan 13y agoStill no source on https://github.com/EpicGames https://github.com/EpicGames as of now though.
- dimillian 13y agoYou need to pay the subscription, then they add you to their private repository.
- brokenparser 13y agoDo they accept pull requests?
- Jare 13y agoI would imagine that is the plan in some way. From their legal FAQ: "Through GitHub you can access UE4 C++ source code from Epic and also see code contributions from other developers across the community. We have lots in store for this channel, and we're looking for feedback on what you'd like to see here as well."
- jontas 13y agoFrom the main FAQ[1]: How do I submit Unreal Engine 4 changes back to Epic? GitHub is our channel through which the community can fork and modify Epic's code alongside our own engineering team. Source code changes you check in at GitHub will be viewed by the community, and if the vetting process goes well, we'll incorporate your code into UE4. This means you'll help lots of people! 1: https://www.unrealengine.com/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/faq
- seivan 13y agoThanks! Didn't quite notice that.
- pdeva1 13y agothe $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19
- bobx11 13y ago$20 is just the tire kicker filter... all those people who would never actually ship a game (most devs) are not going to waste the time of the unreal engine team with their beginner requests.
- odonnellryan 13y agoThen again, just promoting the community would inevitably help many companies involved by generating programmers and other enthusiasts.
- Jare 13y agoTo target passionate enthusiasts while retaining control, they could have waved the initial $19 fee to anyone who signs up only during GDC week. IIRC Unity did something similar a couple of years ago with their 3.5 non-Pro mobile plugins, shortly before releasing Unity 4, and the experiment eventually convinced them to provide free non-Pro licenses across the board (consoles excluded of course).
- mattzito 13y agoIf I had to guess, it's designed as a threshold barrier so they don't have to deal with trying to track down thousands of "projects" where the developer is someone who had big plans to build a game but got bored a week in. At least now, presumably the $19 at least covers the operating costs of tracking all the people you might need to be collecting license revenue from.
- pdeva1 13y agowell thats the whole point of opening it to the community. that 'failed project' developer will himself gain a lot of experience that he can freely share. I dont think they care about hunting down extremely tiny devs and even $19 doesnt cover that cost.
- Tloewald 13y agoThe 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get). This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit). Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (or $750 per upgrade cycle) but no revenue share at all.
- Xeroday 13y agoI believe they are willing to make exceptions for certain titles: https://www.unrealengine.com/custom-licensing https://www.unrealengine.com/custom-licensing
- Tloewald 13y agoIndeed, if you're writing a AAA title you'll probably go for a one-off six figure licensing fee instead of 5% of back end, but that's hardly going to be more attractive than these terms. I imagine Rovio or the Candy Crush guys might similarly prefer a one-off license deal (were they to use Unreal).
- brokenparser 13y agoThanks for pointing this out, I thought they could only serve 20 customers with this scheme.
- wernercd 13y agoWonder where DLC comes in? 5% of that as well? Or advertising? Game was free... DLC packs are $10 per. Sorry Unreal... no monies for you.
- infogulch 13y agoFrom the new user faq: What about downloadable content, in-app purchases, microtransactions, virtual currency redemption, and subscription fees, as well as in-app advertising and affiliate program revenue? Revenue from these sources is included in the gross revenue calculation above. Are any revenue sources royalty-free? No royalties are due on the following: Ancillary products, including t-shirts, CDs, plushies, action figures and books. The exception is items with embedded data or information, such as QR codes, that affect the operation of the product. Consulting and work-for-hire services using the engine. This applies to architects using the engine to create visualizations as well as consultants receiving a development fee. Linear media, including movies, animated films and cartoons distributed as video. Cabinet-based arcade games and amusement park rides. Truly free games and apps (with no associated revenue).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 13y agoIt says "paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users" not "5% of profit". I'd be rather surprised if they asked for 5% of profits due to Hollywood Accounting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
- seivan 13y agoSorry my bad. Fixed. Thanks for catching that.
- demoncore 13y agoOr just regular accounting. Profit is taxed, so every company will always try at the end of financial year to sink profit into something that'll deliver future revenue to defer tax and fuel growth. Unless you have shareholders who expect/demand a dividend like MSFT has, this is usually the best approach. Several very large businesses even thumb their noses at their shareholders demands and reinvest profit for revenue growth, like AMZN, and get very little credit from shareholders for how tax efficient their decision is.
- krallja 13y agoAmazon trades at a P/E ratio >600. Seems like shareholders are giving them plenty of credit.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago"5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users." As others have pointed out, that is a huge amount, that is probably 25 - 30% of your "profit". The accounting is pretty easy though. Units * SRP * 0.05 == royalty. That said, it is a lot simpler than investing $25 - $30K up front while building the game, only to have it go poof because the market or your designer flaked out. Figure 3 year development at $20/month that is less than $1,000 at risk. This gets people using their engine early and often perhaps hoping they can negotiate a different royalty later on. It would also be interesting to see if it had a cap, like $1M or something. Kudos to the Epic folks for coming up with a pretty creative strategy in todays market.
- adventured 13y agoAccess to Unreal Engine 3's underlying source code cost hundreds of thousands of dollars previously (the CryEngine will run you over a million). You could also license v3, with no access to native code, for $99 and they took a % of sales after $50,000 if I recall. So this is a massive upfront savings in the use case where you need access to the engine code itself.
- jamie_ca 13y agoPrevious licensing was along the lines of 25% of net profit after $50k. Plus $100 for access to the dev kit. I call it a wash, but the lower numbers (5 vs 25, 19 vs 100) make for some good marketing. And full access to the source is new and welcome. Also I'm not sure if this change to their royalty scheme will make any difference to their flat $400k-per-game license that the big studios probably use.
- sixothree 13y agoI wonder if you can choose a different model if your game becomes more successful.
- TheCraiggers 13y agoI doubt it. You've already "bought in" and agreed to their terms. They have you by the contractual balls at that point. The fact that your game is exceedingly popular and raking in cash makes the contract you've already agreed to worth more, not less. You'd have to find something that they would think was a better deal. Like "I pay you lump sum $X in exchange for no more royalty payments. At which point, it becomes a gamble for both sides. You have a much better chance of negotiating something like that before your game even begins development. Expect to spend a metric ton of cash on that license deal, however.
- callesgg 13y agoWhat happens when one stops selling the game? Can one then say it is free? Would one still be required to pay them 19 USD per month, one cant actually take the software back, it is already out there using the engine and all.
- sjg007 13y agoI would think you stop paying when you stop distributing it.
- ctdonath 13y agoFAQ: When you cancel your subscription ... your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA. $19/mo is for code updates. What they really want is 5% of your revenue, which ends when you stop making money from it.
- cLeEOGPw 13y agoI think you can even use the engine for free as long as the game itself is free.
- TomGullen 13y agoWe develop and sell a game making tool as well, we've thought about this sort of option but decided not to go down this route as it appears impossible to police. Anyone know how Unity intends to police 5% profits?
- Fuxy 13y agoThat seems a bit ambitious either gt with 5% or 19$ but both?
- RussianCow 13y agoAs others have pointed out, $19/month is just the friction fee to keep it from being completely free/public. The actual monthly cost is negligible; the real cost is the 5% royalty.
- drx 13y agoThis is huge. Unreal Engine 3 was used in a lot of AAA games, including the Arkham games, Borderlands etc. And this is the new version. Basically, the state of the art 3d game engine for 5% gross royalties. Also, this gives you access to the engine source code, which for Unreal Engine 3 meant paying a fee on the upper scale of six figures (some engines are even more expensive, CryEngine costs over a million bucks). 5% (even considering it's gross) is really really competitive, considering what you're getting in return.
- theandrewbailey 13y agoComplete (or at least huge) list of Unreal Engine games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Un... If it's an FPS or "action" game released in the past 5-ish years, chances are good it uses UE3.
- callesgg 13y agoReally missing linux support... But i think the pricing is fair and i like it otherwise :)
- fotcorn 13y agoFrom the FAQ (https://www.unrealengine.com/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/faq): What platforms can I access under the subscription plan? If you access the source code, you'll see that there is early work on other platforms, including Oculus VR, HTML5 and Linux. You are welcome to extend and modify this code, and also build and ship games for these platforms.
- thinkpad20 13y agoKinda funny to have to pay someone to contribute to their code.
- nacs 13y agoYou're not really paying to contribute to their code. You're paying to get access to the source in case you need any custom engine modifications.
- Mikeb85 13y agoYes but you can't get a Linux editor (yet).
- rkalla 13y agoEveryone seems pretty focused on the pricing - I thought the inclusion of an asset-marketplace directly into the editing environment was brilliant. You could imagine Adobe following suit very shortly here withs something similar and invalidate all those graphic/template/icon/texture/animation sites. You just open the "marketplace" inside of Photoshop and browse around for the assets you might want. Same would go for video-editing. No more buying Action Essentials, just load up Final Cut and look for the perfect blood animation. You could imagine at some point your IDE having a marketplace inside of it to allow you to purchase proprietary platforms directly and integrate them into your project without much hassle. It's a really cool proposition, ripe for monopolization unfortunately, but surely convenient if executed on well.
- croddin 13y agoAdobe already tried that. It was discontinued. http://helpx.adobe.com/legacy/kb/stock-photo-service-being-discontinued.html http://helpx.adobe.com/legacy/kb/stock-photo-service-being-d...
- bduerst 13y agoWas it integrated directly into the applications, or was it a standalone?
- croddin 13y agoI think it was tied in to Adobe Bridge which is tied into the other apps.
- Keyframe 13y agoAvid tried two versions back also for video: https://www.avid.com/US/avid-tv/MC6-Marketplace https://www.avid.com/US/avid-tv/MC6-Marketplace I don't know anyone who uses it.
- maaku 13y ago> Everyone seems pretty focused on the pricing - I thought the inclusion of an asset-marketplace directly into the editing environment was brilliant. Well, they're playing catch-up with Unity here, which has had that capability for (3?) years now.
- nailer 13y agoAnyone know if the authoring work on OS X too?
- dangoor 13y agoAccording to https://www.unrealengine.com/register https://www.unrealengine.com/register, "Mac OS X support hasn't undergone serious developer testing yet". So, it's supported but may be buggy
- Zarathust 13y ago"You can cancel your subscription at any time and keep using the engine, though without monthly updates." If you are really tight on cash then I guess that you can check the change log and only pay the 20$ for the month for crucial updates. Paying for product updates is usually a big red flag for me but since it got down from several tens of thousands of dollars up front then this is not such a bad deal.
- wtracy 13y agoThe idea of cancelling until right before launch day came to mind. :-)
- pothibo 13y agoThe difference between AAA and indie games is blurring. If I was EA & Ubisoft, I'd be concerned. Consumer are/will benefit from this movement.
- teamonkey 13y agoThe difference between AAA and indie is several hundred full-time content creators and millions of dollars worth of marketing. One area Epic win here is that by making their AAA-grade engine affordable to individuals they'll end up with a lot of budding game developers self-trained in Unreal. This creates a sort of lock-in: AAA studios are more likely to chose Unreal because it's easier to hire people with Unreal experience.
- Jare 13y agoWhich is exactly what Unity has been busy doing for the past 3 years. Epic and Crytek knew that as soon as someone released a major AAA game based on Unity, it was game over for them, and the beginning of a console generation (where developers are still leaving a lot of power unused) was the perfect time for this to happen. They needed to react, and they have.
- techiemonkey 13y agoYes! Another step forward in the field of graphics.. Soon we may see graphics approaching eye level quality
- unreal37 13y agoI read a blog post recently that outlined why we may never actually see photo-realistic games even as the technology improves. Basically, it's a MASSIVE amount of work/cost to create individual blades of grass that independently react to a person walking on them, vs just pasting an static grass texture on the ground. And unless the movement of the grass is really important to the story, it will never be cost-effective to create all the art work, physics, CPU processing time, and disk space to include it. Interesting theory at least.
- nawariata 13y agoRemember when 640kb was ought to be enough for anybody? Never say never in tech world. Someone might and probably will come up with tech to realistically render individual grass blades, just like they did with TreesFX, hair strand simulation technology used in most recent Tomb Raider game.
- crististm 13y agoI remember reading something about O(2^n)... That may apply to the cost of making the illusion appear real: it doesn't scale. It may be that instead of looking at rendered photo-realistic grass, one may be better of going out touching the real thing. As for the artificial realm, who cares if it isn't photo-realistic? It is artificial anyway.
- comex 13y agoI haven't read that post. But I think you could have said the same thing about things like global illumination - well, in terms of processor time - yet look at how much more advanced realtime lighting is today than a decade ago. As for artwork and disk space, grass for one can easily be procedurally generated.
- 13y ago
- fotcorn 13y agoWhat happens when you fork a private repo into a public repo on github? Is this even possible? Or how will Epic enforce the EULA?
- tensenki 13y agoThe law enforces this, not the forking mechanism. Anyone can pay $20, fork, then clone the code, then cancel the sub, and upload back to git.
- callesgg 13y agoThey will probably sue you.(or something) Publishing the code is a breach of the contract one signs to get access.
- lotyrin 13y agoYou get a new private repo which you can't make public. It works pretty well.
- BSousa 13y agoI'll say it, THANK YOU! I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch about Linux or try to do all the math you want to say Epic are being money grabbers, but seriously, unless you had access to full source code before and see what the engine can offer you, please take a moment to step back and appreciate what they are doing here. ps: not affiliated with Epic at all. Just from many years in the games industry, Unreal has been the best engine I worked with and this is a FANTASTIC offer
- sbarre 13y agoWhat's the best engine you've worked with? (just curious)
- bloodorange 13y agoUnreal is _very_ good despite its flaws. I have used a bunch of them and Unreal was the clear winner among them. I too have left the games industry but may come back in some years and this is a good sign for me. I may start with Unreal. If I were better off financially, I'd try right away with the 19$ a month thingy.
- BSousa 13y agoArchitecture wise, an in-house engine we built for the PS2/Xbox (this was over 10 years ago). But as an overall package (editor, visuals, code, etc) I do think Unreal is one of the best out there. It isn't as simple to start working with as for example Unity3D, and the content processing for consoles used to be very slow, (and personally) not a fan of UnrealScript. But still, I've worked on an FPS, hack and slash and a strategy game with it. It is quite versatile and if you have access to source code (which you do now, but before with UDK only you didn't) you can do some amazing things with it.
- darksim905 13y agoHow does one even get into game design? I have an idea in my head that I want to get out but it gets more & more complex as I think about it.
- Mikeb85 13y agoThis could be huge for indies who want to use something other than Unity. $19 per month is a very low barrier to entry. And 5% isn't much compared to every other AAA engine. And access to source code for this price? Damn. I'm still going to stick to my open source tools (for now), but this just put Unreal Engine on my radar...
- bambam12897 13y ago"And access to source code for this price? Damn" That's pretty standard. I spoke to a guy working with the Cryengine, and he said that it was so full of unfinished features and bugs that you were absolutely forced to work on the engine's codebase.
- Mikeb85 13y agoI bet he (or his company) paid more than $19/month to see the source code. A lot more...
- winslow 13y agoOut of curiosity what open source tools are you currently using?
- rnernento 13y agoThis can't be good for Unity...
- shadowmint 13y agoPeople don't just suddenly drop their prices dramatically for no reason; this move is directly as a result of how well Unity is doing; and how big name studios like Blizzard are taking it up. ...but hey, I would be 100% not surprised to see the guys from Unity pull a similar 'cheaper but with profit share' for pro licenses.
- gfodor 13y agodon't see anyone else talking about this, but this seems to be the first time ever you can get access to the source code of a state of the art game engine essentially for free.
- math0ne 13y agoLooks cool, but I don't understand the 20$ a month fee, I don't think it will make them any money and it will hurt adoption.
- ctdonath 13y agoFrom the link: Anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users. If your game makes $1,000,000, then we make $50,000. $20/mo for access to the source code. 5% of revenue to sell something using it.
- venomsnake 13y ago5% of Minecraft, LoL, Candy Crush is pretty good moneymaker. If you catch early the next indie breakout hit ... you could look at millions down the road. You also make sure that any indie is well acquainted in the engine - so if the studios get aquihired ... you have your own free sale force on the inside. Although I would really like Unity or Carmack to make an engine that is potent enough to threaten UE. The unreal homogenization is probably not that good in the long term. Healthy competition is a must.
- jere 13y agoI think some of the replies here are missing the point. 5% could be huge, sure. You would think it would absolutely dwarf the $20. So why risk missing the next Minecraft for a measly $20?
- a8000 13y agoIf there are enough teenagers like me, that dreamed of making there own game and researched game engines only to find that there weren't really any available for (almost) free, that could potentially be a nice enough additional revenue stream. I.e. amateur programmers, that want to play with an engine and probably will never release a commercial game.
- pwthornton 13y agoA lot of mobile games and apps could make use of this. So, while the price seems cheap for a Triple A studio, it's a price that individuals and small mobile devs can test out. More mobile games and apps with an incredible engine behind it is good for all of us.
- araes 13y agoNow I'm looking forward to when the ultimate code dives start coming out, like they did after ID released their source code for Quake / Doom / ect... All the interesting tricks / shortcuts that people found when they really started picking into the code base. Heck, even style, and how they've organized and managed such an enormous code-base would be neat to see a deconstruction on.
- eliang 13y agoDamn! I've been teaching myself unity3D for the last days, time to stop!
- malkia 13y agoAnd a prime example that Perforce is still better for game asset management than git :)
- arnorhs 13y agoWhy is that?
- cookiecaper 13y agoOf course it is. Binary support has always been an afterthought in git. I do hope someone eventually fixes that, but I don't know of any informed person that claims git is an ideal management utility for binaries. It merely kinda works if your binaries are small enough.
- thepumpkin1979 13y agoIf you want to see an awesome visual IDE/Debugging action, check the video "Creating a Level - 10 - Blueprint Doorway Pt2" in youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ua6ncLcVY&index=11&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaCL2XjKluO7N2Pmmw9pvhE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ua6ncLcVY&index=11&list=PLZ...
- zenbowman 13y agoWow is this ever a change! I remember when I worked in the simulation industry we had to hand out a cool $350k for a license of Unreal 2.5 (and this is when Unreal 3 was already out).
- mrschwabe 13y agoInteresting model for software distribution ($xx per month access paywall to source code, leveraging GitHub private repository). It's crossed my mind for smaller-scope projects. Not sure if this will 'break the spirit' of GitHub and open source, but the next logical feature the GH team could do to accommodate this model more effectively would be to implement a "subscription button" users can click on to instantly get access. The fee is then tacked-on to the user's GH account (some of whom will already have their credit card on file), which is then distributed back to the repo owner less a small commission.
- jhuckestein 13y agoEssentially allowing all devs to use the source code and hosting it on github is brilliant. I imagine bug fixes and other improvements will be shared much more quickly and openly amongst developers. I'm not even sure if this happened at all before. I assume the few big studios who have the source code simply maintain their own fork.
- gabriel34 13y agoSo, they are opensource non-free. It will be interesting to see this model progress. If successful it could be a turning point for openness in software, but would pull requests be accepted into main? Would they get a cut of the cake? It would be interesting to see github handling this instead of patent and secrecy.
- greggman 13y agoI haven't used Unreal but I have shipped AAA games. To those who have used Unreal 4 is this really something an indie would want to use? My impression is Unreal is designed to make giant games, not small ones. True? My impression is Unreal is not nearly as iterative as Unity which lets you change code as it's running. True? Also Unity targets more platforms? Of course it's great the Unreal is accessible. Appearently Crytek now has an even better deal. But, I just wonder is Unreal really suited to indie development and quick prototyping or is it more designed for large teams who don't care as much about iteration time and expect to spend way more time getting started Since I haven't used Unreal I have no idea. Please enlighten me
- colemorrison 13y agoI would love to see answers to this comment from people that have used it.
- amark 13y agoWhy do they use so much bloom lighting? It's excessive.