Do most game engines use a form of Unreal's Blueprints?

AGoodFella

Hey guys,

So I'm messing around with Unreal and I've come across the blueprint stuff. Its pretty cool as an alternative to programming. You can hook up anims and other stuff pretty quickly and intuitively.

Do game studios that use their own proprietary engine have some kind of blueprint method or is it all based on code? Just wondering if its worth learning the intricacies of blueprint if most engine's don't use it or have their won version of it.

Thanks.

oglu

a lot of inhouse engines does have something like blueprints... and they work more or less the same.... visual programming... you cant go wrong with learning unreal blueprints...

Chimp

Learn it for sure. I wouldn't say that _most_ engines do it (a lot of places still have people learn scripting) but the industry is definitely moving toward nodular systems whether its blueprints, substance, animation blends etc. Unity afaik is going to ship a nodular programming system at some point soon.

Equanim

Visual programming will definitely carry over to other applications.  Even if it's not a proprietary engine, Substance Designer, Houdini, various parts of Maya all use the same concept.  If you're a really visual learner, it can also help you learn basic programming concepts.  (When you break it down, it's not THAT different from text.)

Maybe someone here can back me up on this, but I've heard from a talk given by one of the devs at Epic that a lot of their games now are basically 50% blueprint, 50% C++ now.

Aabel

Just learn to script. In the long view it's far less tedious and annoying than all the visual scripting methods, gives you more power and makes your skills more marketable. You will also be in a better position to change fields if you ever decide too.

ExcessiveZero

Aabel said:

Just learn to script. In the long view it's far less tedious and annoying than all the visual scripting methods, gives you more power and makes your skills more marketable. You will also be in a better position to change fields if you ever decide too.

I have to agree, visual scripting is an amazing stepping stone though it really helped me understand the basic concepts and flow of game engines and coding in general, that alongside some MIT lectures on youtube I really stepped up my knowledge and ability in this arena.

but ultimately once you have all the concepts in your head its mostly just learning the syntax, which is not nearly as scary as you first think.

Kevin Albers

Visual scripting is a good skill, but I think most in-house engines rely much more on typed code. I've use both, and even though I'm more of an artist than programmer, I greatly prefer code to Blueprints etc.  Code doesn't look as sexy as blueprints, but code generally is easier to understand (when things get complicated), and can be much easier to work with. I really enjoy using C# in the Unity engine. I would hate to have to make a full game using mostly Blueprints, and without naming names, I've seen major projects get seriously screwed up when the game relies on lots of Blueprints 'created easily by non-programmers'. Any large project needs code that performs very well. Blueprints are probably best suited to very small projects such as Indie games of limited scope.

AGoodFella

Thanks for the responses!