New UDK features [Video]

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Cool!

 

The only good things (among other features) that i can see in UDK is their real-time Unified editor (no need to re-import assets), which is pretty awesome. And the fact that you can switch between PC mode and mobile (emulation) is also a plus!
Unity 3.5 where are you? ^^

 

Wow i didnt know that all those Dx11 features will be implemented so soon.

 

If I wasnt so intent on android stuff i'd be all over it but I am so hey!

 

Alright guys, lets discuss!

How many of these new UDK features can be done in Unity pro?

 

Damn... I have to admit that little terrain copying-pasting clip was neat.

 

The main problem is, you have to buy Unity Pro, to use Unity Pro, and therein lies the rub

I can think of a million and one things I could do with GL, render-to-texture and occlusion culling alone, not even starting on the rest so..

 

FXAA actually is already done (see showcase - FXAA3 thread)

And yeah you have to get Pro, but question is to what degree thats a drawback, cause its one time $1500 for all eternity. UDK sounds great but $50k free? come on with that you don't even get a stunning iOS game payed that would even require the use of UDK, even less one that justifies UDK on the desktop. You need to take much more into your hands to fund that and at that point it becomes more a matter of "what you are more used to" than its price as UDK will be the more expensive solution and if you can't make full use of it, it will just remain that, more expensive.

Also UDK lacks and potentially always (as long as you can build on windows) will lack plugin support on mobile, a major thing out of my view as being up to date and unique is a must have on mobile, not an option.

 

I think from my perspective is that I know how to use the fancy stuff on Unity Pro like I know how to use the fancy stuff in UDK but i literally cannot afford, may never be able to afford (Before actually selling enough games, could be months/years down the line), Unity Pro, and people in my circumstances would naturally be drawn to UDK

You work on paid 'real' projects, i've gathered, so its a bit easier to talk of Pro as a sound investment, which it IS, its a great investment, if you have the money to choose your tools, and having been very interested in photography for a few years of my life I know how this can be..

 

I think with the upcoming 3.5 UT is equal to UDK.

me like the new decimation tool from this vid.

 

Lets be honest there are some really cool workflows. In particular you can clone chunks of your terrain. That is genius. Also robust terrain painting tools are a lot better than unity.

There's no two ways about it: their desktop engine is better than unity's now - if you are targetting DX11. But I am sure the guys at unity will be all over that. They are competitive creatures and won't take a challenge lying down.

As you can see they have upped the ante with their mobile platform and unity has to keep on its toes with the mobile end too. So thats a lot of work for unity, but its doable.

 

with version 5.x they might be equal (however UDK is growing in features meanwhile too, so UT needs to speed up development if they want to be able to close the gap)

I know you love Unity, but credit is where credit is due, even if it's the competition. (fair player)

Again, Unity is good for what it does, don't get me wrong.. but... it's nowhere near UDK quality yet.
(overall)

 

I love 3D art. it's my business, we just want to be on the save side to use the right technology at the right time.
But sure, we all love Unity for its fast intuitive and fun workflow

 

I would like you to count me 10 or 20 Unity IOS games that actually made over 50k in revenue and that justifiys your statment.

 

That should be studios, not games... because the royalties kick in after you make 50k in revenue, regardless if it's $5000 from 10 games or $50,000 from 1.

You pretty much can't comfortably support a family on less than $50k in the US, so if you're making this a career and can't hit that number, you need to do something else.

 

Thats exactly part of the problem. Its not $50k per title but the first $50k for your legal entities lifetime income made from UDK.

The other part is that its $50k gross revenue, not $50k after you payed back all the investments and salary required to produce the game with your team, so you basically even pay a UDK tax for the salary of the team on top of your sales.
So simply put you are going to pay UDK 25% on the whole revenue required to pay back the multi month salary of your 5+ head team (if you have less I fail to see a game to succeed with UDK as its like Max nothing 1-2 persons can master and utilize to its real extends) to create the title, so you basically need to make 25% more to even "get even" financially in the end.

On Unity its $0 - $1500 for each dev, fixed and flat. You know upfront how much you pay for it, can budget it for the rest of your existance (or till you upgrade) and are done. You don't have to consider it for future project forcasts.


UDK or full revenue shares like this out of my view only work for modding teams that at the end decide to go commercial and if you ask me thats exactly what Epic was hunting for, getting their modding teams to spread the word about the power in a real way, cause mods with their binding to some Unreal Tournament version didn't really drag enough attention especially when compared to the blockbuster mods that went into standalone on the HalfLife engine.


All that being said I like UDK and the power it theoretically offers, even though I'm aware it will never master it as its just too large.
If they somewhen realize that scripting is nothing for monkeys on a typewriter and get a real IDE in place officially bundled, we can talk about it being targeted at the users it tries to sell itself to expensively.

 

So you will drop app store sales aswell? since they take a royalty aswel. (30% on revenue, which is even higher than 25% for UDK and has no threshold of 50K usd)

With UDK, It's not so much money you are paying on royalties:
If you have e.g. 60000 USD revenue you keep 57500 for yourself and 2500 to Epic Games.
The initial price is just 99 USD, instead of 1500 USD.. You need to get to the 50K first, which is quite hard for a small indie (team), especially for the first year. And this 50K is fully yours to keep btw. no royalties due. Just after that, it's paying 25% on what gone OVER the 50K, calculated quaterly.

The chances you are paying this 2500 USD soon is smaller than the initial money you have to pay for Unity license. Many won't even get to 50K USD revenue at all.
Let's be realistic here, most indies don't.
Sure we can dream, hope and whatnot. but most just simply don't

 

The only thing I am really jealous of, is the motion blur. The one provided with unity is not really usable and the technique it uses is outdated.

 

Thats not related out of my view. On the asset store or any platform you pay the ongoing costs for ongoing services, namely maintenance, payment processing, refund handling, technical and sales support costs oh and free advertisement within the related ecosystem which saves you lot of advertisement and free passerbuy sales in case of something as focused as the Unity Asset store

To my knowledge on UDK you pay some 5 figure fee for any form of "beyond board" support and have none of the others so you pay an ongoing fee for no ongoing services.
The engine updates are nice but projects normally don't switch engines midway through a projects development for reasons of regression (you don't even do it on unity unless it added a feature that crucial to make your app happen at all but in that case your project shouldn't have been started yet as unity roadmaps are "an idea of what happens", there is no guarantee it happens or happens anytime soon)

but to tell the truth: I stopped doing middleware years ago, its a business that so far for me only cost money and has generated more lose than anything else as the support efforts were beyond any reasonable amount for the fees that could be asked to still sell the products. Thats why I have no library etc on sales on the asset store or even my page. Not even with the much higher exposure of the AS I see it as reasoanbly working, given that the top seller in Q1 made only $15k with income curves normally being of exponential nature, not yielding much hope that even "rank 5" was able to pay his life even halfway if he did it fulltime.
The only thing nowadays still available (the other things all were ceased years ago) is a technology I developed / co-developed half a decade ago back then focused at RC Standard.

 

So you will drop app store sales aswell? since they take a royalty aswel. (30% on revenue, which is even higher than 25% for UDK and has no threshold of 50K usd)

With UDK, It's not so much money you are paying on royalties:
If you have e.g. 60000 USD revenue you keep 57500 for yourself and 2500 to Epic Games.
The initial price is just 99 USD, instead of 1500 USD.. You need to get to the 50K first, which is quite hard for a small indie (team), especially for the first year. And this 50K is fully yours to keep btw. no royalties due. Just after that, it's paying 25% on what gone OVER the 50K, calculated quaterly.

The chances you are paying this 2500 USD soon is smaller than the initial money you have to pay for Unity license. Many won't even get to 50K USD revenue anytime soon.
Let's be realistic here, you can hope and whatnot. but most indies simply don't get that revenue in the first few years.

UDK is an AAA based/influenced toolset, Unity is an indie influenced toolset.
Both are very good in their own areas. End of story.
Choose what you need (e.g. platform support, audience), everything has it's price somehere, it's just what you are willing/able to pay in relation to what you get.

 

However, its 100% clear epic is marketing that video at indies. Look at their claims of pricing and simplicity. They are trying to encourage indies to adopt to it. The moment unity does that is probably the moment I check out unreal properly. Because right now, unity has the edge with free / paid split. I hate royalties, they can leech so much from your sales it's not even funny.

 

Are you living in india, china or afrika?
In any western or first / second world country, you are out of business after 2-3 months if you make that little.
Also your posting implies that you missbelieve that the $50k is the quarterly limit not the lifetime UDK usage limit of your company.

You have to realize, even a small indie team has to pay bills, families ie pay salary to the team members and even if we assume something on the lower end thats still $40k+ per team member and year.
The topic has been beaten to death on how badly your business must run for UDK to work out better than Unity, but lets dissect it again:

Lets assume you really are a small indie team of 4 persons with $40k / year, that means you need to make $160k each year.
To be able to pay the share for Epic, you need to make an extra 25% on top of that (or 133%)

Year 1:
You have $50k free, so you need to get the extra for $110k -> 36300 USD or in total 196300 USD

Year 2:
You have $0 free, so you need to get the extra for $160k -> 51800 USD or in total 212800 USD

Year 3:
You have $0 free, so you need to get the extra for $160k -> 51800 USD or in total 212800 USD

Stats after 3 years: UDK cost $139900 USD



And thats without even including costs for hardware, maintenance, office space, electricity, internet, accountant, etc etc etc etc etc etc



so now lets compare that to a full set of licenses of Unity for all platforms that UDK also supports (so skipping Android which Unity gives you as additional edge, as it does with plugins on mobile for native OS usage), then thats $3000 per user for iOS Pro + Unity Pro

Year 1:
4 * $3000 USD = $12000 USD

Year 2:
$0

Year 3:
$0

Stats after 3 years: Unity cost $12000 USD


Means that Unity gave you 127900 USD more cash to grow your business during that 3 years.


I've explicitely used the max costs for Unity here to be fair, not what you could start out and grow on top which would be $1600 until you hit the $100'000 yearly (not lifetime as with UDK) turnaround as it would have skewed it too much due to the deltas. We also explicitely ignore growth potential like Android / the Asset Store / User Addons / Native Platform Integration and Unity Union.

 

All the features look nice, but the real question is can YOU, the indie developer, make something out of this, ship it, and make a profit. If so, use UDK, but if you can do that so easily, why bother with these total conversions and code your own engine?

 

@Dreamora, nice post (they usually are )

 

The majority of the indie companies held ONE or at max TWO employees. (including the founder)
The majority of the indie companies are not FULL time occupations, but part time.
50K USD = 34.642,8 EUR, that's good income for a ONE person company. (above modal income)

I do not believe it's the quartely limit at all

True, however, if you are sizing up a team, you are also scaling up the revenues (sales), otherwise the team is doing bad.
In the end it's doable, but your business model should fit it.
And there lies the problem in most cases, too little financial assets to play with, for a fulltime team to exist on the long term.
If they would do it parttime, it's perfectly doable. With UDK your aiming at a big break in the industry, being picked up by a major publisher etc... (it's an AAA founded tech, afterall). So the royalty is planned to be temporarily.

Unity is more Indie friendly pricewise, sure, no doubt about that...
but UDK has a tech under it's belt that is in most areas more polished/redefined to it's users needs.
It's a choice to make.. It depends on the workhours, the teamsize, the investment abilities.
All i'm saying, is UDK is doable in general terms, as a commercial tech.

 

Please link me to a shipped, retail game made in UDK by a 1-2 person indie team.

 

I don't want to sound negative to you saymoo, but you are talking like you do not have any idea how business or running a business works, whatsoever. I'm pretty sure you've never worked for yourself, or run your own business so I'll just say that I think you should not embarass yourself. I don't mean this in an offensive manner but you really don't know what is involved. I suspect you are imagining you would have the security of living with parents or doing it sneaky on the side of your day job. The tax man won't like that. And he will find out.

I have for years, worked for myself and have one business partner. So here's how it works for my small outfit:

1. on top of shared revenue split, I need to keep cash in reserve in case I get hit by legal issues, need to invest or a tornado hits. Whatever.

2. on top of any income, you are taxed - or you are fined. Tax is *huge*. It is *collossal*. Tax will take your 50k and give you 30k back worst case.

3. The market. You could earn 50k for one game, 10k for another game and 15k for the other. This is why 50k is a really S***ty amount of money to make. You need to be earning around 100k per title to survive on your own as an indie, at the minimum. This is income over time, but you need to make big money because you need that buffer.

So in my case that 50k becomes 15k roughly after everything in life has chewed on it including expenses. It would make just no sense at all for me to be with UDK - under any circumstances. In fact, it doesn't make sense for ANY indie to use UDK if that is their business. Not at their pricing model. It doesn't actually make sense for large companies either. Purchasing a license outright is always better unless you are a hobbyist after a quick buck.

 

Let's turn it the other way around, link me to a shipped, retail game made with Unity by a 1-2 person indie team.
Mind the word: retail (means boxed, in stores on shelves)
Pretty hard to anwer eh?

I guess what you ment, is link to a game that is available through digital sale/download, made with a 1-2 person indie team (with UDK).
There are a few.. easy to find btw... (use your resources to figure them out)

But.. then again, you are trying to proof i'm wrong apparently, but i'll bite:
Most Unity users are solo users, or with a buddy experimenting/developing a game (sort of).
That makes them an indie developer, since they are not being financial supported by a publisher.
Most of them do it in their spare time, or parttime at most.

None taken Hippocoder, But i have to correct some points here:
i've worked years selfemployed, living in my own house (paying morgage) etc, with under 50K USD (well my currency is EURO, so if you convert it to euro it's enough income to live normal) My business was webhosting related.
So i know how it works, doing business. But maybe you (and some others here) are too keen/focussed on the little words i said, and not the whole story. (at least that is what i sense from the replies)
Ofcourse there are taxes, and if generating income etc, you have to report them, but even with paying taxes, it's enough income. It's just what you need to survive, what your aims are at. etc..
If you want increasing incomes, then yes, UDK might not the ideal solution. Granted.

This is true, but there is also insurance (for legal support, damage, theft etc).
Even if you keep a reserve for these unfortunate situations, You still have enough left (i did anyway)

That depends on the business type, and income generated (relationship between the two)
It also varies between countries. E.g. Freelancers have a different taxrate, tax interval etc.. as a Corp has. And even in corps, you have different intervals and rates (here they do have it anyway)
Secondly VAT is already been deducted from the revenue where royalties are due on.

Again, that solely depends on the scale of the project and the size of the team. (and previous stated elements)

Sure a fixed fee, leads to a clearer path of the costs calculation/estimates. However, most engines (AAA) are royalty based, and are licensed out to both camps (bigger indies and AAA studios). And they manage to survive, how would that be possible? because they have set their business model in such way it meets the requirements (royalties etc).

Anyway, i'm still saying UDK is possible (in commercial use), i didn't say it's the best choice however.

 

Saymoo: Zombieville (was actually 1.5 I think from what I recall), OMG Pirates? Battlehearts was 3 or 4 now I think as they got an audio artist hooked up too

 

These are not retail games afaik. (digital sales are not concidered retail by definition)

 

Quit arguing semantics, I did not mean brick and mortar and you know it. "Retail :the sale of goods to ultimate consumers, usually in small quantities (opposed to wholesale)."

Please link me to a completed UDK game for sale at a digital distribution outlet made by a 1-2 person team. "There are a few.. easy to find btw..." is a cop-out.

I can name at least a dozen in Unity.

 

do the games you know generate enough income, let's say more than 50K USD a year. (you cannot answer this, because you don't have the fiscal data

 

Zombieville USA alone has sold over 1.5 million copies on the app store, that's not counting his other games, which are all hits. Mika Mobile is one dude.

Ravensword was a two man team, and has sold at least a half million copies as well.

 

yes, that is a succes hit. granted.
[tease mode]
Now for the other eleven, you could name
[/tease mode]

 

Boxed products on shelves? well, at least a thousand back in the 80s and 90s Nearly everyone was indie back then. Boxed these days? Depends on the qualification of what you determine is indie or not. The witcher is arguably indie to some people.

 

Like you said, that's impossible unless I had access to fiscal data... but it's probably safe to assume all 3 of Mika's games break 50k each. Maybe he'll pop in to verify. I'd probably say the same for Crescent Moon (Ravensword guys), who have 10 games out. Then there's Steam. I can't say exactly how many copies Foreign Legions or Bob Came in Pieces sold on Steam, but getting on Steam alone is a pretty big deal. Valve wont' take your game if they don't think it has the potential for success.

Regardless, where's that one $50k revenue 2-man team UDK game I asked you for? Or are you just going to keep throwing out red herrings and arguing semantics?

 

With Unity you only have to pay a bigger upfront, 1500-3000$ if you want 1 pro desktop and 1 pro mobile (compared to UDK 99$ at game release). But when you start to get some money, Unity will payback bigger/better. I don't even think this should be in a discussion. Really, 30% of Royalties is quite too much. I think if they get on the 10-15% that would provably a bit more attractive but 30%, come on that's huge. I've made a good amount of money with Dead Strike (a game that took me no more than 3 months to complete, including all assets) and less than 15K to develop it with two guys. I don't even think it will be possible to do the same on UDK. Funny, I've developed Dead Strike with Unity iPhone indie (and Unity Desktop Indie) licenses.
Also when I've emailed them to get multiple pro licenses, they offers me a discount which is ultra awesome. That's will provably be the case if you need more than one Pro license, you will get discounts.

On the other hands i agree, UE have nome nich features (the mobile rendering switch without re-importing stuff) but i don't really care, Unity 3.5+ will address all those things + you still have the same ultra fast and awesome editor-project workflow.

 

Its retail, cause iOS only has this release form.
And it does not care cause UDK licenses are not retail bound but income in any form including ad banners and donations.

 

Saymoo, I have one question, where do you live that you can own a house on a 50K per year income?

Where I live, and most of suburban/urban USA, this would be "nearly" impossible to do with the taxes (state, local, federal), health insurance (minimum $250 per month, and that's for the worst plan you can buy, gasoline, food, car insurance, etc. The lowest priced house I could find in the market in my area (in a 75 mile radius) is about 200 thousand dollars, I'm very confident I could not get a bank approved mortgage to cover that as a self employed person with 50K per year income, even if that income was guaranteed, and it would be difficult, at best, to make the payment monthly with that income.

The closest I could come to getting away with that income would be to move to the middle of the US where rents/mortgages and housing prices are much lower, but of course the opportunities for jobs, if need be, are far worse. This would of course mean abandoning my family and friends too, but that's a side point.
So my curiosity has gotten the best of me. Where is it in Europe that you can do "really well" on 50K per year income (let alone the 32K you said was great)?

I think this is going to point out why jobs are going overseas, not because we as Americans want to charge more, but because we HAVE TO. This would be generally true in the UK and most of the EU as well, so I'm curious where you can get by on so few Euros.

 

This is actually quite impressive. I might look into UDK a little more :X
but the fact that there is a built in mesh optimizer thats halfway decent is really cool.

 

Spain and Portugal or the non-western part of europe could do so.
Here in switzerland I would be relatively doomed at $50k /yr gross revenue and that without a family to feed already

 

All the UDK eye candy seems very nice. The engine has plenty of next gen awesomeness to offer...

...and still, no integrated way of making scripts! It's like some sort of tragicomedy!

 

Yeah, that makes sense, there are some parts of Florida and the southern states, as well as far north and the middle of the country, well outside the cities mind you, that you can get by on that and live in relative comfort (own a house and such), but the salaries in those states if you do need to get full time job are "significantly" less on average.

I think the larger point here is that UDK is not the best choice to "build" your business with, unless you truly believe that using it gives you the technological and marketing advantage that will allow you to take the leap to a much larger company on your first title.

Personally, I find this very hard to believe for a one to four man team, but I'm sure it will happen. This brings up the issue that whatever success stories people have are the exception, not the average, or the rule. It's not just that you need to make 50K to 100K, you need to be able to do it every year consistently.
I doubt very much that using UDK, cool features or not, gives you some inherent advantage that is likely to make that a reality, and if it does happen, you've indentured yourself to a product that will cost you quite a bit of cash as you build up your business.

 

You need to check those numbers again, 32k as income of a company would not work in Portugal, the taxes and expenses associated with maintaining a company would eat you alive.
First of all, by law you are required to have an accountant responsible for your company. If you can't find a friend that is a registered accountant, then get ready to pay 400 euros a month for one.
Then over the salary you will pay yourself, get ready to take 11.5% for the social security and 23.5% for the TSU., so if your salary is 2000k, take 700k for taxes alone.
Then if the company has any profits, get ready to pay again taxes over the profits.., and if the company doens't have any profits then get ready to pay again a fixed amount the state charges.
With 32k as a payment directly to one person without going trough all this crap, it was perfectly ok., going trough all this company thing, it would not.

 

I guess you are right, but in fact that are the only 2 countries were I could even think of being able to pay a something like a living with that little money per person in the western european range (okey in greece too but greece is already bancrupt unlike spain and portugal). I know for sure that it won't work out in scandinavia, france, italy and germany which are the only alternatives otherwise

 

should be sticky ! awesome

 

25% royalty works fine if you're
a) not planning on making any money off it. Many people make games or mods as a hobby
b) have little-to-no expenses. You have an income that pays the bills and you make games on the side.

So in other words, they've taken a good engine and made it into a toy.

 

Wow, you folks need a realitiy check...
Again, if you convert 50K revenue to EUR, you get more than 34600 EURO.
Take an estimate of10K off of that (costs, tax and such) and you still have enough income (plenty infact), to live. (and have a house and such)

24K a year is 2K a month mind you.. more than enough (a regular houshold one person, just is between 1K and 1,5K per month (average).
So it's doable without too much issues. (i've been there, for years...)

 

So long as you make all of your games solo, have fun!