Is Unity any easier than UDK?

No idea who came up with the high requirement myth because its actually significantly wrong.

The Unreal Tech was developped to first reach the point of "pushing through 300k triangles in realtime on lower end hardware" (Unreal Tech 2) before they even looked into higher end shader features.

That many Unreal games have so high requirements has something to do with the "visual slutiness" of gamers that require such high end visuals to sell the games. At least thats what the game devs think and how they justify their insane prices and budgets.

 

Actually, UDK does seem to have rather high system requirements even without pushing the polycount.

Their simple 2D game runs at <10FPS in anything but wireframe mode on my laptop (Nv 8400M). Granted, it's not a high-end gaming machine, but the effects they're using seem to be disproportionately heavy.

 

Well, for those not interested in "visual slutiness", some of UDK's advantages are moot. As are a few big chunks of Unity.

In my view making a game visually realistic is a key part of making it immersive, which is key to many game styles.

On the other hand, making a game that most people can access and play is also quite handy.

 

I don't think that is true at all. A game can be immersive without looking realistic. Take World of Warcraft for instance. That game does not look realistic at all (and it does not try to) but a lot of people really get into that game and that is because of the gameplay and the store line behind it. For me, I think these are what makes a game immersive in this order:

Gameplay
Story line
Graphics

Of course each gamer is different and I am sure some gamers value graphics at the top of the list when they buy a game but I hope that is a minority.

 

For immersive I think he has a more specific definition; the one where you feel that you're actually there, where you trick the brain into believing that you're actually inside the world. That's different from being lost in the gameplay.

For immersion, IIRC what affects perception the most, in order, are:

1) How much of the user's field of view is filled by the screen
2) Framerate
3) Graphical realism

 

Right, Wii tennis is more immersive in it's way than games with far more graphical realism in my opinion, for obvious reasons. But it would be more immersive still with realistic graphics. Not necessarily more fun, mind you.

Worlds of Warcraft may pull people in, they are appropriate to that game. Put it's graphics in Mount&Blade, and even though you've got an innovative combat system you just completely ruined the immersion.

Some games aim for realistic, and some don't. For those that do graphics are by no means the only component of an immersive experience, but they're a really big one.

Edit - strayed off topic a bit! My point (opinion) is that lots of game styles which don't aim for realistic immersive graphics, don't need some of the big features of Unreal engine. But the subset that does go for realism will really benefit, while paying the price in system requirements. And I think it's kinda funny that the Unreal engine is the realistic one. Small things, as they say

 

Id wager a bet that only bigger teams/companies will be able to really benefit from UDKs graphical power. For everyone else, Unity is a more appropriate tool.

Small teams and individuals just dont have the manpower to churn out all the assets while at the same time learning the toolkit. Heck, even with Unity, you get these 'How good Unity's graphics are?' questions on a regular basis, simply because people who use Unity dont have the resources to push an AAA game.

Actually, all this talk about graphical power made me realize something - Unity isnt really that far behind UE3 as far as graphics are concerned. Because what really makes UE powered games look good is not the engine, but the assets - models, textures, shaders. Take a look at, say, UT3 - i myself dont see any engine-specific features in there that could not be achieved in Unity. Ultimately it all depends on how much time and resources you are willing to spend on preparing your gameart, not how advanced the rendering engine is.

On the other hand, there is the toolset and ready-made solutions, which is a completely different matter.

 

This is my old post to open UDK feasibility talk, after fruitfal discussion with lots of Unreal mods fanboys, after 2 days, was thread erased - Censured!

Its real situation, we looking for technologies for making rpg with maximal 20 teams members. Its possible do good rpg with such small team look at Gothic,Risen etc. 100+ team members game is artistic murder, money dictate, best visual quality and?... lack of inovations.

Engin choice. Gamebryo price grown (30k indie only, 150k for source) - proven, Renderware is EA only, Dunia Ubi only, Source very bad Quakelike (but with steam), Monolith(Fear) in house only, Crysis for biggest projects (early 2 licence per year limit). Unigine and Trinigy unproved and price around 10k for binaries and 30k full source. About Torque engin i know only -> is worse than Unity.. Render is game, so we dont want Irlich, Ogre, Nebula, G3C etc.
Our chance is maybe Unity.
Prices are Whispers quality only, i hate price on request.

Doesnt exist big games in Unity, are you sure? Unity have 13 000 customers, if you working on big games isnt good for you, everywhere speaking, so game is based on engine for 2k, this isnt good for managers.

Question: How strong is Unity Pro plugins API? Most important for bigger project.

Sorry for my simple english.

 

I do not know my artists are very capable of turning out very high quality work. Just not a huge quantity of it.

 

Theres only two UDK released game, and an other in production, Whizzle. All of them are UT mods! Take a look at the developement diary of Whizzle:
http://www.udk.com/elements/downloads/Whizzle_Creation_Document_1_2.pdf

Everything related to scripting came from UT scripts.
Ask on the UDK forums, right now, you cannont create your own game from scratch with UDK, you have to mod the UT scripts ho cames with. Is not the same thing as the true Unreal Engine 3 with source access.

Other than than. Unity already ship lots of professional games, from indies and profesional studios. EA, FUNCOM the creator of Age of Conan is creating their next MMO game with Unity! Isn't AAA ? Cartoon Networks MMO? Its pretty amazing!

And please, stop comparing the interpreted UnrealScript, wich is 20-30x slower than unity compiled scripts! Also, C# is a pure Object Oriented programming language, kicks UnrealScript ass in all ways...

If you ask a professional studio ( ho never worked with Unreal engine or Unity ) to chose between them they will chose Unity that's for sure.
Simply because Unity give more control, more control means more power, you can follow your own code philosophy without breaking your workflow...
Again, UDK is nothing more that the lasted mod tool build-up with UE3, capable of make executable files.

My two cents!
Cheers.

 

We must give UDK sometime, look at moddb, some UT3 mods are a bit interesing.

 

I also thought of this but since I am a Unity noob, I didn't say anything. But I always got the impression that as long as you have the post-processing effects, shadows, AA, and ambient occlusion of Unity Pro, it should really come down to how good the art is. I am sure that a very good modeler/artist can make a game that comes very close to the visual appeal of UDK with Unity Pro.

I dont think we can say the same for Unity Indie, but I totally agree with you. I have always found it funny how an artist or musician always want the best and most expensive instrument for their craft. It's never the tool, it's the artist. We have a saying like that here in Puerto Rico;

"No es la flecha, es el indio" (Its not the arrow, its the indian)

That echos my sentiments exactly.

 

Can i creat my game from sketch level in UDK?means that i have my own MODEL(characters),animations,...

So thanks.

 

@myunity - You can problem is more low level, look at my problems summary above.

 

I installed the UDK last night, talk about overwhelming. And I have 12 shipped titles and over ten yrs in this industry and have worked with at least 11 different proprietary game engines from Electronic arts to Activision and Sony, and more...

First time I opened Unity,.. I could figure it out just by playing around. Ease of use and workflow is what matters to me.

 

It hurts to see that many of you has forgotten the game engine that makes the UDK look outdated, I'm talking about the id Software engine, the id Tech series.
You might not know this but they include EVERYTHING when they release their engine for FREE, much like UDK.

Unity has been my No. 1 choice in game engines but if I decided to switch, I would definetly take a look at id Tech 4(Becoming free and open-source in 2010 near the release of Rage) or 5.

UDK is a great choice for small or large development studios that has a long history of programming and they do not target indies.

Beetween me and the Unity users, I would never choose the UDK just because it has their name all over their games. I hope that anyone that got their mind set for the UDK or Torque3D really gets the hang of the engine, because the development process is long and hard compared to Unity3D.

Having a friend help you with developing games can make the difference beetween a AAA title and a unfinished project when using UDK.
But having friends to help you in Unity is just a whole lot of fun!

 

DaScorpioN,

Theres no fixed date for ID4s release to open source, and best I'm aware no list of what will or what won't be included in the OS version if it ever is released.

 

Here is list of id tech 4 (Doom 3):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_4#Games_using_or_licensing_id_Tech_4
Id Software and Raven are partners from age of Heretic (15 years), its more than about quality of engin. So we have only 1 licencer Splash damage vs. 100+ licence of Unreal. You can now look at Doom 3 SDK, relative big piece of game. Im not coder, but in my eyes was Doom 3 engin problematic, maybe good for indor small areas, but for some outdoors need lots of tweaks and licencers have fear.
Every game was shooter, game havent skripting system, only predefined function for doors, teleports, elevator etc, everything else you must code in C, or implement our scripting system. Good physic isnt integrated, Carmack dont like PhysX. Editor is old, or third party, now unsuported(i thing without sources). Engin is 5 years old, UDK new version, maybe Unities technology is now better than ID tech 4.

I worked 12 years ago with Quake source, i did mod for Hexen 2, i worked with Quake 2 code, worked on Quake 3 mod (only design), but now i think so golden ends of ID technology ends.

Back to Unity - quick analyse of Unity from my 2 weeks long researching. I dont be interesed in small iPhone games where maybe Unity utimatly leads, Webplugin is for me only good as quick showing of game.

Unity had good Editor, good Renderer and Physic and good low level scripting system, few promising extensions. But havent any AI,cutscens system, quick character modeling system as Poser,Dazstudio (Mount and Blade character tool), face animations system, you havent done FPS enemy in stardart package. Everything is lowlevel what is good for bigger teams, with can do own tools and extension, but for indie games, isnt if you what something more complex and isnt very good coder. UDK have all this systems ready for use, timesaver if you dont want everything right know. In Quake i had doors, trigger, elevators done in minute, in Unity with good Goldstone book, was doors for 30 minutes (this easy scripts must be packed with Unity, everyone need doors,water divings, keys for doors, basic AI). We definitly need some good extersions for rapid Unity development after, developers can do choice between low level or hight level, in choice is beauty and quality.

 

Hopefully with more people using Unity, people can get the Unity wiki full and organized with great scripts to use.

 

Just FYI idTech 4 is nowhere near the level of UE3 (or Unity for that matter) in anything... base engine, rendering, tools, etc. So I'm not sure why you would say it makes UDK look outdated.

You might want to know that it is free under GPL and you are not allowed to use it in commercial applications unless you fully release the source under the GPL. So firstly even though it is "free" it is less free than UDK because you have to release all your code whereas if you build a free product with UDK you do not. Secondly UDK has a commercial license based on royalties, yet you still have to pay a large sum to license idTech 3.

 

FYI, I was talking about the series, not just id Tech 4.
I just got hyped about it. I have been working on id Tech 3 in a very long time, I still haven't deleted it from my computer.

Thank you for pointing that out for me.

I have started my own project in UDK to give it a shot and the engine itself looks promising, but I need to be sure that I'm not trying it just because it's used by 100+ games. Who knows?
IMO It might be a crappy engine for indies or studios to use. id Tech 4 might be the worst engine of them all. But I don't know that because haven't tried it yet!!!

Give it a try before you start to talk bad about it.
Don't judge a book by it's cover!
Have an open mind!

I said that id Tech was better than UDK because their games had very good quality, Unreal tournament was not a good game, except for the multiplayer.

BTW, id Tech 4 was announced to have it's release after the release of Rage.

 

DaScorpioN - UDK is newest version of Unreal, toolset for Gears of War, Bioshock etc, but with problems(limitations) which i wrote above.

 

Unity's strength is in its ease of use, drag and drop OO scripting that even a artist like me can use to prototype things, largely thanks to a wealth of sample scripts that can be tweaked/adapted to fit most needs.

I'd say Unity's weakness is in shader material creation, it doesn't have any standard formats that will allow you to use external artist friendly editors. Having said that the materials privided cover a lot of ground and cover a lot of ground.

 

Tyseo - in true, UDK is more artistic than Unity, for UnrealScript can be used visual programming.

Work with shaders is strange, on read Unity essentials book, where i only used existed shader, bigger games of game shader only creators, work with shader realy isnt easy for some artist.

 

Unity = Freedom.

UDK = Lots of tools, but much less freedom.

UDK costs more in the long run (royalties)

Unity does not.

 

With UDK, you don't have any less freedom than with Unity. Sure some things are easier to achieve in Unity than in UDK, and vice versa, but basically, unity and UDK are the same, only UDK has more and better tools. But this comes with the cost of also being more complex than unity.
For the rest I agree. One thing that's maybe important for beginners is also that for UDK, there are lots and lots of tutorials and even some books. But to be fair, Unity has quite decent docs as well.
In the end everyone has to go with what he thinks suits him (and the project) best.

 

@Mangopork -

Man, try some calculation, if you project isnt realy small (for example iPhone project, where isnt Unity alternative). One programmer in here in czech republic cost around 6 000 $ per month, per year 70 000. I dont know you country price, but in most countries are coder more expensive.
For such tools and visuals quality as have Unreal (i count with non universal engin only for you project, no super universal middleware as Unreal) you need minimaly 15 very good coders for 2 years - in money - 15 x 2 x 70 = 2.1 Milion of dolars.
Conclusion: If your game isnt megahit (income more than 4x 2,1 = 8,5 M), 25 percent for Epic is good trade (if you dont meet with problems which i wrote above in this thread).

Yes i know visual quality, time save isnt everything, but are very important.

Share knowledge is very good for mankind, full source of Unreal is too expesinve, but here is middlewares as Gamebryo, Unigine for price cca around 30 000$. Purchase of these middlewares is good idea, because else you lost time as next wheel researcher, in this world isnt coder which could catch up hunders manyears projects in 6 months.

If you want to do something bigger than very small game, you have to be team player and searching other peaple with similar ideas and prove them your skills.

 

Unity can be quite expensive since artists also have to buy it if they want to get their media in the engine. Normally with engines a coder can just send a buid with an exe and the artist just exports and tests in the engine.

With unity this isn't really possible and artists are forced to buy the engine too, especially with no support for version control and media sharing. Small remote teams of part time artists really isn't practical with unity because of some of the unique problems that come with the vast ammounts of data thats created at runtime requiring you to own the engine to have the full engine to get your artwork in the game and test it.

 

Tysoe, I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Most engines only require programmers to have a license of the engine, and artists can create and test new assets from a release build of the project.

I'm saying an artist needs to buy unity to get their work into the game since there is no standalone runtime version of a game you can simply drop media in. You are always tied to the editor and therefore forced own a unity license.

So every single person working on a project needs to own unity. In small teams the $ to pay for all those licenses isn't really feasible.

 

Except, anybody can download the engine for free, so your point becomes slightly invalidated there.

 

not when its artists that most need to use the features not found in the pro version, and there is no media sharing in the free version because version control is missing.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about ease of use, and Unity is easy to use. I like it and wouldn't be here otherwise.

 

If one person uses Unity Pro, everyone else who is working on the game has to own Pro as well, as per license terms. You cannot mix Indie and Pro in your team.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=35616

 

I THINK UDK IS VERY HANDY and HAVE A NICE EDITOR...

thanks EPIC.

 

I agree with Tysoe, for levedesign are realy important shadows (only Pro), so every team member must have Pro version, second big due for Pro are C++ plugins- more power for coders.

You must have Unity licence for every team member, no 1 for all project, company. Middlewares have licence for project.
We need at least discount for bigger teams.

 

True but also is not (totally) programming using Unity, you want to be a real and "pure" game coder you have to use Visual C# with XNA or Visual C++ with the Dark GDK

then you will have to program the good old (and long) ways with minimal no graphical feedback to see what you code is doing until you hit that Build button to compile it.

I can program I have been a cobol coder in the 80's and C in the 90's, but why shoudl I complicate my life? Unity is great and I still can program inside it.

Now what i need is to refine my graphical skillz :S since everyone know that coders usually are crappy artists, but this with the 3d tools is not a great obstacle, need some time to.

 

I beg to differ. Why does having a high-level library and a good SDK suddenly mean its 'not programming'?

 

Ahah now that's something maybe you also say it's easy to use?

sure enough an engine that is sold for a Million $ need to be at least decent but i have read even compared to torque he miss a few things while he has some that torque dont (torque didnt impress me anyway the trial version is bare with no librairies you cant do much with it and it has some glitch aswell so it was discarded in favor of unity) but we are comparing a 1000$ game engine with a million dollar one and you actually have to buy the full license and pay that money if you are a big company only a indy dev can use it on the free untill he start to make some income with it otherwise they would have lost al lot of money and made a lot of their paying customers really angry.

That said both torque and also gamecore have a thing I would like to see in the future in Unity at least as an option, they both have their preview window in realtime were Unity you need to hit the play button to see it, that is especially nice when you test some physics in your game it's totally interactive.

 

tecnically with Unity you script you use little scripts to attach to your game objects.

You use a graphical interface + scripts to make the stuff do something, when you use classic coding interface you have nothing of that you create everything with code, and load objects with code and place themn also with code and then you watch it once compiled it's a big and different thing.

No need to do it anymore unless one is a masochist evven if he can code alone with no help of graphical intefaces.

 

It's programming, just not engine programming.

 

I agree that using kismet alone is not true programming however creating code with UnrealScript is programming. I feel this whole "scripting vs real programming" is just an elitist emotion. Whether or not you are coding in a low level language like ASM or C or a high level language like C# or a scripting language like PHP or UnrealScript, programming is programming, period.

 

You do not have to derive from monobehavior if you use c#. Thus, you do not have to attach to a gameObject. You can still use all the unity engine functions without deriving from monobehavior.

Scripting is different then programming in that you are not really writing your own methods etc with scripting. You can do whatever you want from scratch in c#.

 

That doesn't help me understand what scripting is. That just sounds like OOP, as if you were on a team with the people who made the API that you use. :?

 

It appears clear that both engines have limitation due to the lack of access to source code, this makes it impossible to change core game engine functionality, and many of the data structures, and data formats are simply unchangeable. This is a given and has to be worked around as part of the development process using one of these platforms.

The UDK is a very feature rich development platform with almost every single feature needed to create a AAA game. It shines in the FPS genre, and can be adapted for other genres. It does not feature source code access, and that access is available for a very high cost, that only a publisher could afford to pay up front.

Due to it's high level of functionality there is much to learn and the complexity of the editors is high, but so is the amount of functionality, and while some may be unhappy with the ergonomics and usability of the menus, (yes it is true that there are many "hidden" features, meaning it's not always straightforward to find an option and this means long menu expeditions) the features are there to be exploited! All of them even the most advanced like Lightmass, FaceFX, SpeedTree, Kismet (yes node based programming rules, well most of the time), Swarm (distributed job processing). So there is allot of "bang for the buck".

The reason why studios license UE3 in such high numbers is because development cost of these features alone represent many millions of man hours and millions of dollars invested, and also talent that is many times not available. It cuts development time by years, even though it costs a big sum of money.

Looking at the documentation, the engine is clearly not designed to be as abstract as possible, requiring the developer to work around the concepts and limitations (as already pointed out). The UDK requires developers with no source access to "reverse engineer" the mechanics of the engine to make the necessary adaptations to other game genres or concepts that are absent from the built-in. This in contrast with Unity that is designed with abstraction and composition (addition of functionality) in mind. In UDK many times you start with an advanced object and restrict or subtract functionality.

Unity while a great development platform for Indie AA and casual games (with some real effort in shaders and great quality Materials you can get to AAA level, just not with the same ease as with UE3/UDK, any FPS specific comparison is mostly unfavorable to Unity), it's strongest selling point is the ability to deploy to the huge amount of platforms PC/MAC/Iphone/Wii.

It does not feature the same level of advanced features, or editor tools. And while it can provide in the Pro version a lower level of access to the rendering system and provide the ability to add missing functionality, it still does not feature source code access. So while it may provide a lower level access to add missing features, in the UDK those features are (mostly) not missing.

Please don't take this in the wrong way, while i think Unity is a great platform, and having the basic version available for free is a huge contribution to the indies by the Unity team, the Pro version simply does not feature enough advanced features. Some of the features that are Pro only should not be, since any well established open source engine provides the same level of functionality. Let me be specific:

Render-to-Texture Effects
Full-Screen Post-Processing Effects
Realtime Shadows
External Version Control Support
Video Playback and Streaming

IMO these features should be part of the Basic version. The Pro version should provide more advanced features like Global Illumination, Facial animation, a good AI library, Cloth, Destructible Environments, etc... (perhaps the nVidia APEX engines will be integrated into Unity 3.x), however the unity team does not disappoint and lets test the Pro version for a full period of 30-days. But the features pointed out should really be part of the basic package, or a royalties based license.

The development process is easier since you start from a blank sheet and use composition to add functionality. The engine is abstract enough that starting from a GameObject and adding components it's possible to create and save (in the form of prefabs) complex game functionality. So it is more of a straightforward design process vs the UDK "reverse engineer" process. However it is not as feature rich as the UDK and the addition of any advanced functionality requires that you license the C, C++ or Objective-C plugin functionality.

In conclusion, both platforms have their shortcomings, that can be in a way or another worked around. The UDK is "the state of the art", it's a fully-featured advanced AAA solution, it's complex and powerful. Unity is a simpler (the editor is straightforward) less feature rich, but more expandable and far reaching deployment platform, a Pro Unity license and a good asset creation team, together with an original gameplay idea can do miracles. Amazing work can be done in either platform!

Is Unity easier to learn than UDK?
Yes, because there is less to learn up front and it's a higher level of abstraction and composition process that is the way the brain likes to work. But as you advance your project development, there is a need to have advanced functionality that is not out-of the box. Having great tools like the UDK does is very helpful, but it's not a magic solution.

 

I'm wondering, are the UDK's tools as editable as Unity's?

I've always found Unity's editor GUI being programmable in the same scripting language that you write your game in as a remarkable design. Being able to very easily create your own tools in C# by extending Unity allows for some very productive and customized workflows.

 

That is positive side-effect of using mono :wink:

No, they are not. You have to do things the UDK way, adopt the UDK workflow. That is the downside, the upside is that the UDK way produces very good results, and provides many options. I personally believe that C# based tooling is the way to go, managed code just gives allot more wiggle room to extend the pipeline and add stages to the workflow.

 

@roberdan - 1 thounsand engin vs. 1 milion engin
It could have been compararable, income is same, if you sell 10 000 licences per 1 thousand and if you selling 10 licences per 1 milion. Unities way is better for human society.

Scripting vs. programming.
Scripting should be easier to learn and more productive, but non universal, its simlar as GPU horserpower float operation vs. general purpose processors.
Scripts can be also very hard programming, i professional game development is good make very quick stable engin in lowlevel C/C++ and use some highlevel scripting language as LUA or Python for game mechanics, as is spells, character abilities, AI behavior etc. If scripts fail, you still can can compile and run game. How fetch out C tentacle to LUA is theme for tomes. LUA implementation can be also quick, unlike very slow Unreal script, Unreal script evolution in last 10 years was lazy.
Theoretically levedesigners can be also scripters, but its bad idea, you dont save time.

@CocoKool - Great post, good work.
I want only accent on difference between full Unreal 3 and UDK - see my first post - http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=230088#230088
In case of complex gamestyles, you will probably have problems with UDK.

 

Honestly, I do not really know the exact difference between scripting and programming but I believe once you state writing your own data structures rather than using other peoples structures its programming for sure. Scripting should only be one level deep.

 

Thank you. I have enjoyed your posts also.

Do you mean full source code UE3 or UE3 game plus modding tools?

Let me address some of the issues you have raised in your post:

1) Very slow scripts
This is true. Certain genres can be a challenge to the UDK. Any heavy modifications should be tested in a worst case-scenario. But unless this really becomes a huge bottleneck for your game, it's really not a big deal. It may require some effort optimizing the scripts, but most genres should be doable.

2) Work with own files formats
Not really sure what you mean here. I think you are perhaps complaining about the lack of a reflection and serialization framework. There are workarounds, but it really does suck that standard ISO C++ does not provide such facilities, that are present in more evolved languages like Java and C#

3) Save / Load
Again no proper way to do serialization, means you have to save everything in .ini file. Not cool, but not a show stopper.

4) Level Editor
Oh yes. The UDK editors are heavy-weight legacy code. Nonetheless they are very powerful and feature rich. I personally believe that C# based tooling is the way to go, managed code just gives allot more wiggle room to extend the pipeline and add stages to the workflow.

I do partially agree with your conclusion "but unusable for some realy complex innovative game, as rpg, MMO etc - complex AI or game logic, imposible.". I wouldn't call it impossible just impractical and probably more trouble than going with another route.

---

In regards to the scripting is not game programming controversy, i put scriptters in the programming category. And node base scripting like Kismet counts, it's just a visual way of doing input and outputs, and using function nodes. Softimage ICE does this, Virtools is based on this as are other platforms for gaming and visualization.

Scripting is a crucial part in the implementation of a game design. There are many types of programmers that are part of the process of implementing a game design. You have Engine programmers, Tools programmers, network programmers, sound programmers, sometimes AI programmers, etc... depending on the size and scope of your team, the same person can do all these jobs or you can have several people sharing the same title.

While scripting does not usually require a very advanced level of programming proficiency, it's not necessary to have frequented a college level course on OOD, OOP, it's easier to pick up: start moving objects, bind keystrokes, create events, etc... it is still a huge part of adding interactivity to a game world. While you may have level designers, and others use scripting, it does not mean that it's not actually a programming job. If you are adding functionality or behavior to an object, that is programming.

Sure it's possible to add all that interactivity using low-level programming only, but it's a heck less flexible, requires long re-compilations, it's just a brute force way of doing things. Scripting is one of the first things that gets added to any decent engine. Scripting is what makes the play in gameplay possible. Without it you may have the game engine technology but you don't have a game. Unless you actually decide to go brute force.