5 ms·

Unreal is really winning a lot of points in my book. First with the engine pricing and now this. If I ever step up my mobile game making to 3D I'd definitely us

by fnayr 12y ago

Unreal is really winning a lot of points in my book. First with the engine pricing and now this. If I ever step up my mobile game making to 3D I'd definitely use them over Unity.

binarycrusader 12y ago
Nevermind that their offering is superior in terms of long-term product maintenance and potential platform offerings since you get complete source access. Unity's advantage remains in the asset area with its pipeline and arguably easier to approach editor, but source code access is a huge win for any developer that has the skills needed to maintain a product long-term.
- laeus 12y ago
  Having worked in games for 13 years, at studios large and small and projects of the same variety, source code access has almost never blipped on the radar. The few times when we had issues with various engines for which we didn't have source, our support contracts gave us the changes we needed to ship on time. On occasion we modified the engine, only to be hit by tricky merges with subsequent releases. In general, I've found that modifying an engine should be done by engine programmers (and if a game company does enough engine development to have such specialists, it's probably not licensing any of these options). The latest Unreal is a wonderful piece of engine software. Their blueprint system as well as their material editor and best-in-class renderer really are something to talk about. They also have a gigantic learning community. And I think their licensing terms are a good approach. However, Unity has blazing fast compilation time on the order of seconds, a properly built play-in-editor mode, large asset and plugin ecosystem, seamless asset pipeline, and support for a modern programming language in C#. Each of these could arguably be considered a game changer in isolation, but in aggregate they are an efficiency avalanche. Nothing makes a better game, faster, than being able to go from idea to prototype in five minutes rather than two hours. It's possible to try more things, to discard ten or even fifty bad ideas for every good one, and still come out ahead. This is what it all comes down to, in my experience. And when you're done, you can port your game to over a dozen platforms (in some edge cases by simply changing a dropdown value). That said, I'm happy that both engines are so good, because it means neither will rest on its laurels. Unreal's marketplace and Unity 5's renderer are no accidents.
  - binarycrusader 12y ago
    I understand what you're saying, but as someone that has followed various game developers closely, especially those that do porting work, source access is a huge win in many cases. Imagine your game shipped on a version of Unity that's no longer supported but you want to continue using it for projects or bring back an old game to a new OS platform. Without the source, your only option is to port the game to a new version of Unity. That's not so great. But again, I'll readily admit that all of this is only a win if you have the right team with the right skillset. There are definitely tradeoffs involved.
    - archagon 12y ago
      I think at scale, that's true. But what if you're a small team, or a solo developer? Let's face it: there's no way you'll be able to port Unity or Unreal to a new platform by yourself, so that might as well not even factor into it.
      - binarycrusader 12y ago
        I think Ryan Gordon (aka 'icculus') is proof that the right solo person can do such a port :-) Nevermind Casey Muratori or others I could name... There are many small, talented indie developers that definitely have the right set of skills to bring an engine to a new platform, or to one that's just slightly different. For example, porting an engine from Linux to FreeBSD or some other UNIX should be trivial, but impossible without source code access. Now I doubt many games are going to be ported to those platforms, but imagine a 3D walkthrough program for an architectural client or manufacturing facilities where UNIX is still found.
  - jblow 12y ago
    I am not sure I believe this. What studios have you worked for that found lack of source okay? Basically anyone making interesting games needs source, because at some point you want to do things that the engine didn't exactly anticipate. Also, if Unity really were "an efficiency avalanche", we'd be seeing a lot of high-polish games in Unity. To date we haven't really.
- cma 12y ago
  Unity also has zero royalties.

by fnayr 12y ago

Unreal is really winning a lot of points in my book. First with the engine pricing and now this. If I ever step up my mobile game making to 3D I'd definitely use them over Unity.

binarycrusader 12y ago

Nevermind that their offering is superior in terms of long-term product maintenance and potential platform offerings since you get complete source access. Unity's advantage remains in the asset area with its pipeline and arguably easier to approach editor, but source code access is a huge win for any developer that has the skills needed to maintain a product long-term.

laeus 12y ago
Having worked in games for 13 years, at studios large and small and projects of the same variety, source code access has almost never blipped on the radar. The few times when we had issues with various engines for which we didn't have source, our support contracts gave us the changes we needed to ship on time. On occasion we modified the engine, only to be hit by tricky merges with subsequent releases. In general, I've found that modifying an engine should be done by engine programmers (and if a game company does enough engine development to have such specialists, it's probably not licensing any of these options). The latest Unreal is a wonderful piece of engine software. Their blueprint system as well as their material editor and best-in-class renderer really are something to talk about. They also have a gigantic learning community. And I think their licensing terms are a good approach. However, Unity has blazing fast compilation time on the order of seconds, a properly built play-in-editor mode, large asset and plugin ecosystem, seamless asset pipeline, and support for a modern programming language in C#. Each of these could arguably be considered a game changer in isolation, but in aggregate they are an efficiency avalanche. Nothing makes a better game, faster, than being able to go from idea to prototype in five minutes rather than two hours. It's possible to try more things, to discard ten or even fifty bad ideas for every good one, and still come out ahead. This is what it all comes down to, in my experience. And when you're done, you can port your game to over a dozen platforms (in some edge cases by simply changing a dropdown value). That said, I'm happy that both engines are so good, because it means neither will rest on its laurels. Unreal's marketplace and Unity 5's renderer are no accidents.
- binarycrusader 12y ago
  I understand what you're saying, but as someone that has followed various game developers closely, especially those that do porting work, source access is a huge win in many cases. Imagine your game shipped on a version of Unity that's no longer supported but you want to continue using it for projects or bring back an old game to a new OS platform. Without the source, your only option is to port the game to a new version of Unity. That's not so great. But again, I'll readily admit that all of this is only a win if you have the right team with the right skillset. There are definitely tradeoffs involved.
  - archagon 12y ago
    I think at scale, that's true. But what if you're a small team, or a solo developer? Let's face it: there's no way you'll be able to port Unity or Unreal to a new platform by yourself, so that might as well not even factor into it.
    - binarycrusader 12y ago
      I think Ryan Gordon (aka 'icculus') is proof that the right solo person can do such a port :-) Nevermind Casey Muratori or others I could name... There are many small, talented indie developers that definitely have the right set of skills to bring an engine to a new platform, or to one that's just slightly different. For example, porting an engine from Linux to FreeBSD or some other UNIX should be trivial, but impossible without source code access. Now I doubt many games are going to be ported to those platforms, but imagine a 3D walkthrough program for an architectural client or manufacturing facilities where UNIX is still found.
- jblow 12y ago
  I am not sure I believe this. What studios have you worked for that found lack of source okay? Basically anyone making interesting games needs source, because at some point you want to do things that the engine didn't exactly anticipate. Also, if Unity really were "an efficiency avalanche", we'd be seeing a lot of high-polish games in Unity. To date we haven't really.
cma 12y ago
Unity also has zero royalties.