Which engine would you prefer to work on?

paco

I'm a budding game developer about to start working on a small game. I've learnt from past experiences to keep it small, simple and do-able. At the moment it's a sports game, a bit like soccer. I plan to do the coding and get the game to a playable level with placeholder assets for the graphics.

At that stage I'll be looking for someone to do the graphics for a 50% split in the profits. They would have a lot of creative control over the look and feel of the game, so I'm hoping it would be a fun project for someone looking to improve their portfolio or just work on something different. I'm leaning towards a steampunk theme but am open to other directions.

My question is, given that whoever I get will probably be looking to do something for their portfolio, what engine is the most desirable at the moment? I see a lot of people trying out UE4, and because of the low setup cost vs Unity that is the way i'm leaning. Is it too new to have many artists able to use it well?

Michael Knubben

A lot of artists will already be familiar with older iterations of the Unreal engine.
Having said that, with Unity I'd estimate there's more of a chance that the people you attract will be able to handle every aspect of the art. Unreal's generally had a AAA -and therefore specialised- slant, meaing the artists using it professionaly would only have dealt with one specific area. From what I've seen of U4 though, they've learned a lot of lessons from Unity, and artists adjust to it easily.

If I was making this decision right now, ignoring how experienced I am in either engine, I'd lean towards unreal 4.

Farfarer

It depends what you're after and what you're trying to make. If it's a small game you actually want to get out and released in a couple of months, probably Unity would be the way to go right now.

If it's a larger project, I'd be very tempted to jump on UE4.

paco

Thanks for the replies!

The game itself is small, basically designed around a two-person team, with limited assets. UE4 is probably overkill for what I need, but I hope it will be appealing for an artist to work on, at least to pad their portfolio or make some spare change.

Personally I'm quite excited to try UE4 out. Having used the nightmare that was UDK though, I'm wondering if I should make a small offering to the gods before I start. Sacrifice a goat perhaps? Anyone know any virgins?

Surfa

Unreal 4 is a lot better from a programmers point of view then the UDK. You no longer have to fanny about with unrealscript and the documentation is a massive step up from the UDK 'documentation' (if you can call it that, it was basically non existent).