It seems to me, that both yourself and the OP would be a lot better off if you'd use fewer words to try to tear me down, and more to try to build Unity up. Since you say that is what your recommendation is. Though it seems some of you guys communicate more fluently in memes than in actual English. If that is the case, then just post a giant picture of kitten trapped inside of box that expresses to you how powerful Unity can be.
UE4 is great and Blueprints could be good enough for simpler projects with simpler problems to solve, but many problems will arise when you need to do more complicated tasks which will require programming knowledge. One would need quite a bit of experience with C++ to make a high quality game with UE4, compare that to Unity in which one would need C# knowledge (C# is a much easier language to pick up.)
I think ambershee was the first one I saw to bring up this point, but another thing to keep in mind is that a non-programmer will also have trouble making clean Blueprints on their own. The tutorials scattered across the internet for Blueprints are great, but what happens when you need to solve a complex problem without any tutorial to reference?
There's no need to fanboy software, every game engine has pros and cons, you should always assess the needs of your project and the resources at your disposal before attempting a serious project.
A Few people recommended Construct 2, but that seems like a really bad choice to me. I used it for a while a couple years back.
It's super easy to make simple 2D games with it, but it has HUGE problems.
First, everything operates through HTML5. Desktop games, mobile games, browser games. All of it. And it runs like shit because of it. The performance is really, really bad in the end product without a very high level of optimization, and the visual programming does not help in that area.
It truly is PURE 2D as well, which means you can't do any advanced animation stuff like bending/stretching a sprite, or real-time lighting. It also had no tweaning/doll type animation system.
Literally the only way you could animate in it was to use sprite frames.
And then there's the visual scripting. It is good, and in the simple games I was working on I never encountered a serious limitation with it (though some of my event chains got stupidly long and convoluted in order to replicate certain effects). But it ONLY has visual scripting. If you want to do any actual coding, it's a living hell to get working. Worst of all, because it all works through HTML5, if I remember right any coding you DO accomplish has to be done through something stupid like Java.
If you want to make a browser-based Flappy Bird clone it's great, but not so much for basically anything else.
So we just launched our apps ability to export Xcode projects.
You can create mobile games on the iPad, then export them to submit to the App Store. www.hyperpad.com (the app is still called Tappabl, but it will be renamed in the next update).
You can also take 50% off our 1 year subscription by using our coupon code GAMEPRESS50. With our subscription you can export an unlimited amount of apps, but our app is completely free so you can make games with out paying at all
Our visual behaviour system is really powerful, though I'm afraid we still run into the issues of most of these where it gets convoluted. We're working on some solutions (we'll be adding the ability for Functions soon, and have plans to allow support for coding on the desktop side).
We're also working on a desktop version, so you can create on iPad, Mac, PC, and even android soon
I highly second those crashing problems, unity is not made for something too complex or graphical intense apparently
Still i had to laugh at their comparison images from their blog.
The first unity pic has like extremely mip-mapped textures. If they
unable to change texture settings or enable anti aliasing then sure it
looks terrible. The buildings on the side are like 256x256
Cant wait getting some free time and starting with gamemaker
Replies
I think ambershee was the first one I saw to bring up this point, but another thing to keep in mind is that a non-programmer will also have trouble making clean Blueprints on their own. The tutorials scattered across the internet for Blueprints are great, but what happens when you need to solve a complex problem without any tutorial to reference?
There's no need to fanboy software, every game engine has pros and cons, you should always assess the needs of your project and the resources at your disposal before attempting a serious project.
It's super easy to make simple 2D games with it, but it has HUGE problems.
First, everything operates through HTML5. Desktop games, mobile games, browser games. All of it. And it runs like shit because of it. The performance is really, really bad in the end product without a very high level of optimization, and the visual programming does not help in that area.
It truly is PURE 2D as well, which means you can't do any advanced animation stuff like bending/stretching a sprite, or real-time lighting. It also had no tweaning/doll type animation system.
Literally the only way you could animate in it was to use sprite frames.
And then there's the visual scripting. It is good, and in the simple games I was working on I never encountered a serious limitation with it (though some of my event chains got stupidly long and convoluted in order to replicate certain effects). But it ONLY has visual scripting. If you want to do any actual coding, it's a living hell to get working. Worst of all, because it all works through HTML5, if I remember right any coding you DO accomplish has to be done through something stupid like Java.
If you want to make a browser-based Flappy Bird clone it's great, but not so much for basically anything else.
You can create mobile games on the iPad, then export them to submit to the App Store.
www.hyperpad.com (the app is still called Tappabl, but it will be renamed in the next update).
You can also take 50% off our 1 year subscription by using our coupon code GAMEPRESS50. With our subscription you can export an unlimited amount of apps, but our app is completely free so you can make games with out paying at all
Our visual behaviour system is really powerful, though I'm afraid we still run into the issues of most of these where it gets convoluted. We're working on some solutions (we'll be adding the ability for Functions soon, and have plans to allow support for coding on the desktop side).
We're also working on a desktop version, so you can create on iPad, Mac, PC, and even android soon
I highly second those crashing problems, unity is not made for something too complex or graphical intense apparently
Still i had to laugh at their comparison images from their blog.
The first unity pic has like extremely mip-mapped textures. If they
unable to change texture settings or enable anti aliasing then sure it
looks terrible. The buildings on the side are like 256x256
Cant wait getting some free time and starting with gamemaker