Is this move going to sink Unity? No, not likely. Unity's license still has significant advantages, and it's structure is still optimized for rapid prototyping. There is enough to set it apart, as well as the large user-base that it already enjoys. A community like that doesn't vanish overnight.
Is this going to make Unreal Engine 4 more competitive for the indie scene? Absolutely! Financial barriers to entry have always been one of the major roadblocks to reaching small and hobbyist developers. Epic's own progress over the past year is evidence enough of that. When they switched over to their much more reasonable $19/month subscription model, their Unreal Engine 4 user-base swelled to ten times it's previous level inside of twelve months. That is a huge bump up in active users, and it will only grow larger with this move to a free-to-develop system. This is definitely going to help Unreal Engine 4 stack up favorably to Unity for developers on a budget, or with no budget.
Kudos to Epic for this ballsy move. I've been sticking to Unity for the past year. But with this, I may just look at porting my current lip-sync plug-in over to Unreal 4 as well. Since I don't have to pay to download and start developing, there's no financial risk, no matter how long it takes me to get it running.
When it was for $19, if you used it for anything other than games (arch viz, movies) you didn't have to pay %5 later on. I wonder how it will be now?
5% When You Ship
The 5% royalty starts after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. Pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization.
What would they do if after all the taxes and expenses I would have my net income bellow zero and I would have no money to pay them? Imo very typical for startups
UDK was free, but you didn't get this kind of access. For example, complete source code.
Oh I didn't know you opened up the source code to all. I assumed it was just like UDK. That is even more awesome! Hope it brings out a ton of creative possibility.
Probably the same thing that would happen if you have no money to pay your credit card bill. The 5% royalty to Epic is just another business expense and would need to be treated as such.
So the Cost of Unity Pro vs UE4 intersect once you have made revenue of $23000-?
edit---need to read more gud thread
I think it's $30,000. I'm pretty sure you would still need to pay 5% on the first $3,000. The $3,000 limit is just a cut-off for when you have to start paying the 5% royalty. I don't think it's exempt. (could be wrong about that, I'm not a lawyer)
Not that it really matters. You would still have to earn $30,000+ in order to match the base license fee for Unity Pro. But this is how Epic can make money off their engine. If anyone makes it big developing a game with their engine, they get a little slice. With the boost to their user-base, they are counting on getting quite a few of those little slices. Also, the more successful games made with their engine become, the more money they make. This gives them an incentive to keep the engine polished, up-to-date, and user-friendly.
It can work out well for a lot of people. 5% is a small enough royalty that a lot of developers won't mind swallowing it.
The intersect isn't very simple because depends on how many seats you have to pay for with Unity Pro, and how much per quarter you are making with UE4, it seems like there's a big overlap where they both could be viable. And if you are a bigger studio or an indie studio with a lot of success, you can always do a custom license with UE4.
don't forget - Epic still sells non-royalty licenses to large developers..those to whom 5% becomes a very...very significant amount.
Hearsay says it's running around 1 million per title. dunno if that's true or not.
and that's where Unity will probably continue to shine - because if you're a medium to large developer that intends to make several millions of dollars on a large project, and don't have a proprietary engine, i'm pretty sure Unity is significantly cheaper.
I'm wondering about modding now, can a developer ship a game, and include some of the UE4 scene files to allow people to download UE4 and start modding or making custom levels?
Edit: However, you can see where they are coming from with that move. They probably intend to attract as much people as possible with this so more devs can get used to it.
Unreal 5 will be subscribtion-based again and people will stick to it.
don't forget - Epic still sells non-royalty licenses to large developers..those to whom 5% becomes a very...very significant amount.
Hearsay says it's running around 1 million per title. dunno if that's true or not.
and that's where Unity will probably continue to shine - because if you're a medium to large developer that intends to make several millions of dollars on a large project, and don't have a proprietary engine, i'm pretty sure Unity is significantly cheaper.
that being said...I love you Epic.
Lol when I see Activision or Ea spend hundreds of million on marketing for a title, one million doesnt seem that much, one million is the annual salary of one big guy in the industry.
Someone convince me that this isn't the beginning of UE demonstratively taking over the engine market?
What would motivate a developer to use any other commercial engine, or even make their own in-house engine going forward? I mean I'm sure there are going to be developers who continue using whatever they're currently using for the next year or maybe two:
Mid production, can't change
Die hard fan of another engine (Unity zealots come to mind)
But if Unity looses enough users to the point where Unity R&D funding dries up, then even the zealots are going to be forced to switch if they want access to the latest tech.
I'm sure i'm wrong, I just want to know why I'm wrong.
Engine should be chosen based on the needs of one's project. If I want to make a project now and my current engine does everything I need it to, then chances are I'll stick to what I'm familiar with rather than dive headfirst into a new set of tools.
Unreal Engine 4 looks great, but that doesn't mean it automatically becomes the best tool (since that will vary from project to project).
Some things Unity still has over Unreal:
-C#/UnityScript/Boo are all considerably more user friendly than C++
C++ is objectively faster and better for game development than any of these but it would be easier to finish a game using C#, especially if you are new to game development or haven't coded many games before.
-Unity is much less taxing on hardware which opens up development to a lot more people
-Unity can run on more platforms
-The Unity Asset Store has existed longer than the UE marketplace and therefore is more stable if I need to use it at this very moment
-Unity itself is more stable (from my experiences anyway)
-Unity has more documentation
While it's great that UE4 is free now, I don't see this as a huge issue for other engine developers. I have zero statistics on this but it makes me wonder just how much money Epic is pulling in from the engine. I would imagine a large majority of the people who couldn't pay $19 before (which was basically nothing) are beginners and probably could not finish developing an entire game that brings in over $3000 since most professionals would probably have no issue paying the entry fee.
If that is the case, then making the engine free would simply eliminate the income gained from the professionals while not doing much to bring money to Epic.
This could be a more long term strategy however, if you attract people with your tools then help them learn how to use the tools, then in a few years they will become experts as well and can finally start bringing money in. Also, I'm sure Epic will make plenty of money from their Marketplace and so many people will likely be diving in to get their assets up before the market gets completely saturated. Plus, the people I see working at Epic are some of the most passionate developers in this industry, this could just be a "let's improve the games industry as a whole" type of movement with no intention of taking over the engine market, or not, I don't know.
I'm curious to see if Unity has some big announcements in the near future, competition is usually a great thing for the end user.
Lol when I see Activision or Ea spend hundreds of million on marketing for a title, one million doesnt seem that much, one million is the annual salary of one big guy in the industry.
i'm not knocking it. just pointing it out. to a large developer UE4 looks significantly less appealing than other options.
if you're an online game that pulls down 3 million a month...a year of 5% to epic becomes a pretty big deal - I very much hope that Epic can offer desireable licensing to this market as well - because i want to see it being used for large projects as well as small.
-Blueprints and C++ is better for those new to game development (or artists) than learning C#/UnityScript/Boo.
-Unity isn't really less taxing, UE4 just has it's defaults set to high, and Unity is set to the bare minimums, you can get similar performance out of both if you make an effort. I do agree, out of the box if you want to make a low end PC game, Unity is out of the boxy setup for that, but that doesn't mean you'll get better performance in the end with Unity if you are using the same features and graphics settings.
-UE4 supports a ton of platforms already, and expanding, so it depends on your platform needs, and it doesn't seem like UE4 has any large disadvantage here, unless you have very specific needs.
-UE4 has some great documentation and they are constantly adding more
i'm not knocking it. just pointing it out. to a large developer UE4 looks significantly less appealing than other options.
if you're an online game that pulls down 3 million a month...a year of 5% to epic becomes a pretty big deal - I very much hope that Epic can offer desireable licensing to this market as well - because i want to see it being used for large projects as well as small.
You're aware that big developers don't have to take this deal and you can negotiate right? Custom licensing deals have always been an option...
Also mad props to Epic Games, such a good thing to wake up to.
I truly believe they are at the forefront of changing the way software developers sell their products.
THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME! God I've been waiting for something like this, money troubles and goddamn years of illness has put me completely out of game dev shit but goddamn, things are looking up now and I just downloaded this and played around in paper 2D, trying to make the test project control like super meatboy through blueprint.. It's like christmas morning, bless you Epic, bless your heart
whaaat the fuck. I fucking LOVE YOU EPIC!!! Can I carry your weapon?! Shine your boots!?! Backrub, perhaps?!?!
As a side note I hope the change/less short term income doesn't slow down the epic updates, you guys have been blowing me away with how fast you've been implementing major monthly additions and optimizations, which was totally worth every penny.
Is UE4 really that big for mobile? Tappy Chicken is only 86MB (25MB download), I have a similar game called Hoppy Frog which is 54MB.
In my opinion, those filesizes are insane for what the games are achieving. Jetpack Joyride's ~41mb on an iDevice's disk, as I understand it.
UE4's a really powerful toolset, with a fully featured player. But its output's correspondingly large, and at times somewhat bloated for smaller projects.
Someone convince me that this isn't the beginning of UE demonstratively taking over the engine market?
NegevPro articulates it best.
If I were going to choose an engine for a small product that's being developed by a really small team (not considering license price), then I'd jump on Unity. It lacks UE's graphical punch, but it more than makes up for it with its fluid workflow. I can prototype anything I like in Unity obscenely quickly, without having to use the veritable cudgel that is the visual scripting language, or the fine-toothed comb of C++.
Unity provides much more immediate feedback in that sense, and it feels very lightweight, which helps me focus on the task at hand, rather than the potential of the engine (this is a psychological trick I pull on myself, not an actual feature of Unity).
UE4's also a very large beast, and there's much more to learn at first, before you can do anything impressive with it.
I do love what the engine offers artists, larger teams, and more ambitious projects though, and my favorite language will always be C++. And UE4's license's hard to beat.
booted the editor up and holy shit does it feel a lot different than I remember UE3. It almost seems like a toy now. I'm sure it's mostly the same with some UI tweaks but it feels like a completely different program. Hope it doesn't take too long to re-learn everything haha. I'm enjoying the built in tutorials and all the documentation written about it
It's hard to decide what to get. I was leaning towards some generic sound effects since I know next to nothing about sound creation, but there are also some nice looking materials and models I'd love to break apart to learn from.
It's hard to decide what to get. I was leaning towards some generic sound effects since I know next to nothing about sound creation, but there are also some nice looking materials and models I'd love to break apart to learn from.
I was thinking some characters because I always feel like my environments are empty without em. But yeah I think I'll hold off til there's more on there.
Someone convince me that this isn't the beginning of UE demonstratively taking over the engine market?
What would motivate a developer to use any other commercial engine, or even make their own in-house engine going forward? I mean I'm sure there are going to be developers who continue using whatever they're currently using for the next year or maybe two:
Mid production, can't change
Die hard fan of another engine (Unity zealots come to mind)
But if Unity looses enough users to the point where Unity R&D funding dries up, then even the zealots are going to be forced to switch if they want access to the latest tech.
I'm sure i'm wrong, I just want to know why I'm wrong. My concern is that this could lead to a less competition and less innovation in the game engine market. That's not good for anyone. And how could anyone hope to enter that market going forward if they can't afford to offer their product for free?
Ironically, with the way UE4 works, I don't think there'd be any issue even if they were the only engine on the market.
Not only do they use the engine on their own games, which gives them a personal incentive to keep it as good as possible. But it also pays out by royalties, which means they want people to be churning out as successful of games from it as possible.
To me the real competitor to Unreal is CryEngine and I'd guess that there will be some response. They're both AAA engines moving into indie space as opposed to Unity which is Indie from the get-go.
Nice move by Epic. Even though this will open the flood gates a bit for noobie questions I think even if they get an attachment rate of a few percent they'll be happy.
If I were going to choose an engine for a small product that's being developed by a really small team (not considering license price), then I'd jump on Unity. It lacks UE's graphical punch, but it more than makes up for it with its fluid workflow. I can prototype anything I like in Unity obscenely quickly, without having to use the veritable cudgel that is the visual scripting language, or the fine-toothed comb of C++.
Unity provides much more immediate feedback in that sense, and it feels very lightweight, which helps me focus on the task at hand, rather than the potential of the engine (this is a psychological trick I pull on myself, not an actual feature of Unity).
UE4's also a very large beast, and there's much more to learn at first, before you can do anything impressive with it.
I do love what the engine offers artists, larger teams, and more ambitious projects though, and my favorite language will always be C++. And UE4's license's hard to beat.
I have to disagree (somewhat). Aside from languages preferences, which really shouldn't matter, if you know how to program, you should be able to program, in any language that is somewhat similar in syntax. Jumping from Delphi to C++ could be problematic though and day of two of learning might be needed.
But, as far as I remember Unity on start is pretty bare bone. You have to create lot's of things from scratch. Networking support is nearly non existent, and is nowhere near level of Unreal (and in this case it help they have 14+ years of experience creating multiplayer games, not just engine).
Unreal have also loads of build in functionality, for supporting, character (movement, damage), projectiles etc.
You can make prototype of more or less generic game (which have vehicles and characters), obscenely fast with Unreal, since most of functionality is already done for you, and all you need to do is to connect it together.
The issues might start when you need something more specific, but then.. It's like anywhere else. You sit and have to figure it out.
I actually tried Unity, and I have never been convinced to it.I just couldn't get into this fast prototyping in Unity. To much things, to take care on start, to even thing about starting prototyping gameplay functionality.
For small project I would choose Unreal. I feel it's faster to get things done. But it might be also the fact, that I'm just used to it.
The big issue in Unreal, would be if you target Android. not that many devices are supported, and regardless of how much you tune it down, it's still very demanding engine, on common people hardware. Not everyone is using high end Nexus devices or HTC.
Now totally unrelated thing. I like Epic approach better. When you ask Epic to add some feature of fix something the usual reaction is "well we don't know yet, but will surely figure it out!", or explanation why the won't do this, or do this they way it was requested.
-Blueprints and C++ is better for those new to game development (or artists) than learning C#/UnityScript/Boo.
I would disagree here. As much as I love UE4, I find Blueprints to be much more difficult than C#/Unity Script. I'm not anywhere close to being a decent programmer and so I love the idea of a visual system. However, whenever I try to do something in Blueprints, I find myself wishing I had access to high level text scripting instead.
I think the main cons of learning Blueprints is that it is a very proprietary system and it is not very well documented yet.
On the other hand, I was able to dive into C# very quickly. Unity's documentation has great code examples and if I ever had any problems I could search for generic programming solutions (or non-unity specific C# problems) and find an answer very quickly.
With Blueprints, I find it very hard to find good answers outside of Epic's video materials. And converting pseudocode or existing solutions into Blueprints makes my head spin, since they do not resemble regular code all that much.
Another of my issues is that complex blueprints networks get extremely confusing. I've been looking at examples provided with UE4 and more often than not, I have no idea what's going on there.
Don't get me wrong, I still really love the idea of a visual scripting system, but I feel like Blueprints need a lot of polish. Personally I feel that something resembling Scratch/Stencyl way of doing things would have been a lot better. I used to mess with Stencyl in the past and its system was not only very easy to pick up, it also helped me understand actual coding aspect better and made it easier for me to adapt to C#.
I work in a games hub where there are lots of Indies and freelance developers. The news of Unreal going free has really perked a lot of their interests (of course I was already aware of how awesome the engine is).
Not only is this extremely generous of epic to the industry as a whole, it's also a fantastic marketing move. And the timing is genius!
I'm all about Unreal Engine 4 now (unfortunately it's all still about Unity in work). Unity is still a great engine. But they need to drop the price, have a lower flexible subscription and not restrict the free version so much for me to keep the faith.
Well Idk how the typical programmer likes to do things but I got used to c#(-script) pretty fast (knowing c and c++ prior)..
I haven't really tried the blueprint system, apart from some smaller things, but I didn't really like it.. although normally I love node-based stuff and find it pretty intuitive for art
Now unity has it's downside too, missing a lot of pre built things and features in the free version. But most people working with it will have their workflow figured out by now ^^.
I think most people will stick to what they know best.. and I believe the step Epic took wasn't really necessary, I wonder what their goals might be.
I'd be willing to pay 20 bucks to update every once in a while.
maybe great.
it's either more money through the marketplace by increasing the userbase (not so awesome for people that want to actually make games with it) or a bigger focus on getting actual games out there that produce revenue which could translate to more focus on performance for target platforms other than pc(which would be super awesome).
we'll see...
Replies
Is this going to make Unreal Engine 4 more competitive for the indie scene? Absolutely! Financial barriers to entry have always been one of the major roadblocks to reaching small and hobbyist developers. Epic's own progress over the past year is evidence enough of that. When they switched over to their much more reasonable $19/month subscription model, their Unreal Engine 4 user-base swelled to ten times it's previous level inside of twelve months. That is a huge bump up in active users, and it will only grow larger with this move to a free-to-develop system. This is definitely going to help Unreal Engine 4 stack up favorably to Unity for developers on a budget, or with no budget.
Kudos to Epic for this ballsy move. I've been sticking to Unity for the past year. But with this, I may just look at porting my current lip-sync plug-in over to Unreal 4 as well. Since I don't have to pay to download and start developing, there's no financial risk, no matter how long it takes me to get it running.
5% When You Ship
The 5% royalty starts after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. Pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization.
edit---need to read more gud thread
You should get a prorated refund, along with your $30 credit I believe
Oh I didn't know you opened up the source code to all. I assumed it was just like UDK. That is even more awesome! Hope it brings out a ton of creative possibility.
I think it's $30,000. I'm pretty sure you would still need to pay 5% on the first $3,000. The $3,000 limit is just a cut-off for when you have to start paying the 5% royalty. I don't think it's exempt. (could be wrong about that, I'm not a lawyer)
Not that it really matters. You would still have to earn $30,000+ in order to match the base license fee for Unity Pro. But this is how Epic can make money off their engine. If anyone makes it big developing a game with their engine, they get a little slice. With the boost to their user-base, they are counting on getting quite a few of those little slices. Also, the more successful games made with their engine become, the more money they make. This gives them an incentive to keep the engine polished, up-to-date, and user-friendly.
It can work out well for a lot of people. 5% is a small enough royalty that a lot of developers won't mind swallowing it.
Hearsay says it's running around 1 million per title. dunno if that's true or not.
and that's where Unity will probably continue to shine - because if you're a medium to large developer that intends to make several millions of dollars on a large project, and don't have a proprietary engine, i'm pretty sure Unity is significantly cheaper.
that being said...I love you Epic.
Sincerely.
Edit: However, you can see where they are coming from with that move. They probably intend to attract as much people as possible with this so more devs can get used to it.
Unreal 5 will be subscribtion-based again and people will stick to it.
Lol when I see Activision or Ea spend hundreds of million on marketing for a title, one million doesnt seem that much, one million is the annual salary of one big guy in the industry.
Unreal Engine 4 looks great, but that doesn't mean it automatically becomes the best tool (since that will vary from project to project).
Some things Unity still has over Unreal:
-C#/UnityScript/Boo are all considerably more user friendly than C++
C++ is objectively faster and better for game development than any of these but it would be easier to finish a game using C#, especially if you are new to game development or haven't coded many games before.
-Unity is much less taxing on hardware which opens up development to a lot more people
-Unity can run on more platforms
-The Unity Asset Store has existed longer than the UE marketplace and therefore is more stable if I need to use it at this very moment
-Unity itself is more stable (from my experiences anyway)
-Unity has more documentation
While it's great that UE4 is free now, I don't see this as a huge issue for other engine developers. I have zero statistics on this but it makes me wonder just how much money Epic is pulling in from the engine. I would imagine a large majority of the people who couldn't pay $19 before (which was basically nothing) are beginners and probably could not finish developing an entire game that brings in over $3000 since most professionals would probably have no issue paying the entry fee.
If that is the case, then making the engine free would simply eliminate the income gained from the professionals while not doing much to bring money to Epic.
This could be a more long term strategy however, if you attract people with your tools then help them learn how to use the tools, then in a few years they will become experts as well and can finally start bringing money in. Also, I'm sure Epic will make plenty of money from their Marketplace and so many people will likely be diving in to get their assets up before the market gets completely saturated. Plus, the people I see working at Epic are some of the most passionate developers in this industry, this could just be a "let's improve the games industry as a whole" type of movement with no intention of taking over the engine market, or not, I don't know.
I'm curious to see if Unity has some big announcements in the near future, competition is usually a great thing for the end user.
i'm not knocking it. just pointing it out. to a large developer UE4 looks significantly less appealing than other options.
if you're an online game that pulls down 3 million a month...a year of 5% to epic becomes a pretty big deal - I very much hope that Epic can offer desireable licensing to this market as well - because i want to see it being used for large projects as well as small.
-Blueprints and C++ is better for those new to game development (or artists) than learning C#/UnityScript/Boo.
-Unity isn't really less taxing, UE4 just has it's defaults set to high, and Unity is set to the bare minimums, you can get similar performance out of both if you make an effort. I do agree, out of the box if you want to make a low end PC game, Unity is out of the boxy setup for that, but that doesn't mean you'll get better performance in the end with Unity if you are using the same features and graphics settings.
-UE4 supports a ton of platforms already, and expanding, so it depends on your platform needs, and it doesn't seem like UE4 has any large disadvantage here, unless you have very specific needs.
-UE4 has some great documentation and they are constantly adding more
-UE4 in general is much more artist friendly
c# is also a dream when compared to c++ (imo)
ue4 is very big in file size when you want to make a simple 2d minigame and deploy to mobile where size would definitely be an issue
Unreal Tournament Pre Alpha plus the editor, friends link up, tutorials and loads more!
You're aware that big developers don't have to take this deal and you can negotiate right? Custom licensing deals have always been an option...
Also mad props to Epic Games, such a good thing to wake up to.
I truly believe they are at the forefront of changing the way software developers sell their products.
As a side note I hope the change/less short term income doesn't slow down the epic updates, you guys have been blowing me away with how fast you've been implementing major monthly additions and optimizations, which was totally worth every penny.
RIP Unity locked-in subscriptions!
In my opinion, those filesizes are insane for what the games are achieving. Jetpack Joyride's ~41mb on an iDevice's disk, as I understand it.
UE4's a really powerful toolset, with a fully featured player. But its output's correspondingly large, and at times somewhat bloated for smaller projects.
NegevPro articulates it best.
If I were going to choose an engine for a small product that's being developed by a really small team (not considering license price), then I'd jump on Unity. It lacks UE's graphical punch, but it more than makes up for it with its fluid workflow. I can prototype anything I like in Unity obscenely quickly, without having to use the veritable cudgel that is the visual scripting language, or the fine-toothed comb of C++.
Unity provides much more immediate feedback in that sense, and it feels very lightweight, which helps me focus on the task at hand, rather than the potential of the engine (this is a psychological trick I pull on myself, not an actual feature of Unity).
UE4's also a very large beast, and there's much more to learn at first, before you can do anything impressive with it.
I do love what the engine offers artists, larger teams, and more ambitious projects though, and my favorite language will always be C++. And UE4's license's hard to beat.
I am sure in time they will strip down much of the export files.
don't get me wrong I love Unity but UE4 is free!
https://www.unrealengine.com/html5/
Actually they have. In a couple of hours at GDC. And I'm guessing that they will make Unity Pro free too.
Then when I saw the $30 credit...
I was thinking some characters because I always feel like my environments are empty without em. But yeah I think I'll hold off til there's more on there.
Not only do they use the engine on their own games, which gives them a personal incentive to keep it as good as possible. But it also pays out by royalties, which means they want people to be churning out as successful of games from it as possible.
Nice move by Epic. Even though this will open the flood gates a bit for noobie questions I think even if they get an attachment rate of a few percent they'll be happy.
wondering how unity will react. super cool. thx epic!
I have to disagree (somewhat). Aside from languages preferences, which really shouldn't matter, if you know how to program, you should be able to program, in any language that is somewhat similar in syntax. Jumping from Delphi to C++ could be problematic though and day of two of learning might be needed.
But, as far as I remember Unity on start is pretty bare bone. You have to create lot's of things from scratch. Networking support is nearly non existent, and is nowhere near level of Unreal (and in this case it help they have 14+ years of experience creating multiplayer games, not just engine).
Unreal have also loads of build in functionality, for supporting, character (movement, damage), projectiles etc.
You can make prototype of more or less generic game (which have vehicles and characters), obscenely fast with Unreal, since most of functionality is already done for you, and all you need to do is to connect it together.
The issues might start when you need something more specific, but then.. It's like anywhere else. You sit and have to figure it out.
I actually tried Unity, and I have never been convinced to it.I just couldn't get into this fast prototyping in Unity. To much things, to take care on start, to even thing about starting prototyping gameplay functionality.
For small project I would choose Unreal. I feel it's faster to get things done. But it might be also the fact, that I'm just used to it.
The big issue in Unreal, would be if you target Android. not that many devices are supported, and regardless of how much you tune it down, it's still very demanding engine, on common people hardware. Not everyone is using high end Nexus devices or HTC.
Now totally unrelated thing. I like Epic approach better. When you ask Epic to add some feature of fix something the usual reaction is "well we don't know yet, but will surely figure it out!", or explanation why the won't do this, or do this they way it was requested.
I'm excited!
pd: hope to find some cool noob tutorials out there.
I would disagree here. As much as I love UE4, I find Blueprints to be much more difficult than C#/Unity Script. I'm not anywhere close to being a decent programmer and so I love the idea of a visual system. However, whenever I try to do something in Blueprints, I find myself wishing I had access to high level text scripting instead.
I think the main cons of learning Blueprints is that it is a very proprietary system and it is not very well documented yet.
On the other hand, I was able to dive into C# very quickly. Unity's documentation has great code examples and if I ever had any problems I could search for generic programming solutions (or non-unity specific C# problems) and find an answer very quickly.
With Blueprints, I find it very hard to find good answers outside of Epic's video materials. And converting pseudocode or existing solutions into Blueprints makes my head spin, since they do not resemble regular code all that much.
Another of my issues is that complex blueprints networks get extremely confusing. I've been looking at examples provided with UE4 and more often than not, I have no idea what's going on there.
Don't get me wrong, I still really love the idea of a visual scripting system, but I feel like Blueprints need a lot of polish. Personally I feel that something resembling Scratch/Stencyl way of doing things would have been a lot better. I used to mess with Stencyl in the past and its system was not only very easy to pick up, it also helped me understand actual coding aspect better and made it easier for me to adapt to C#.
Not only is this extremely generous of epic to the industry as a whole, it's also a fantastic marketing move. And the timing is genius!
I'm all about Unreal Engine 4 now (unfortunately it's all still about Unity in work). Unity is still a great engine. But they need to drop the price, have a lower flexible subscription and not restrict the free version so much for me to keep the faith.
I haven't really tried the blueprint system, apart from some smaller things, but I didn't really like it.. although normally I love node-based stuff and find it pretty intuitive for art
Now unity has it's downside too, missing a lot of pre built things and features in the free version. But most people working with it will have their workflow figured out by now ^^.
I think most people will stick to what they know best.. and I believe the step Epic took wasn't really necessary, I wonder what their goals might be.
I'd be willing to pay 20 bucks to update every once in a while.
it's either more money through the marketplace by increasing the userbase (not so awesome for people that want to actually make games with it) or a bigger focus on getting actual games out there that produce revenue which could translate to more focus on performance for target platforms other than pc(which would be super awesome).
we'll see...