The Great Engine War 2014: Unity vs. Unreal vs. RPG Maker 2k3 vs GameSalad vs. [ETC]

This thread exists so that you can flesh out one key assertion we all keep seeing, whether we give a rat's rear or not:



What is your favorite game engine?

Why is it better than everyone else's?*

Most importantly (given this is a Unity forum):

What can Unity do to approach the monolithic awesomeness of your chosen game engine?

Discuss!

*: Anyone who answers "my game engine is bigger!" will be laughed right out of this thread. There are also combat cyborgs who will shoot said posters, but I will neither confirm nor deny assembling them.

 

Snowdrop. but its not a public engine. so you have to be apart of the studio to use it ,but on the public site, i would say Unity5.

 

Unity 5 isn't public

 

Whats cool about snowdrop? Or is it just "shiny graphics" engine? Got any links to share?

 

What is my favorite game engine?
...The RPG Toolkit. And, Unity.

Why is it better than everyone else's?
The TK lets you make JRPGs really really easily. Also, the RPG Toolkit was my first game engine. As far as Unity is concerned, because it's generally useful and easy to understand, is extremely flexible, and generally makes game development easy for me.

What can Unity do to approach the monolithic awesomeness of your chosen game engine?
I would really like to see Unity Tech put out a basic JRPG kit/tutorial. RPGs are a well-loved genre in any event, but giving people a basic set of best-practice principles, and some code/assets that show how you'd go about implementing them, would be really nice. As far as Unity is concerned, nothing because Unity.

 

The first thing after the realtime GI, realtime reflections, procedural destruction would be the visual scripting that runs the engine as a whole from physics to gameplay mechanics to graphics.

 

will be in two months

 

Nope. Only those who pre-ordered U5 will get the early access to the beta version.

Therefore, not public until release date.

 

Well you can be 100% sure that someone will leak the beta, making it public, like always.

 

I like how Unity5 is looking, but I am going to have to hold back judgement till it's out and I can see just how ready for use it is.

Lighting is so incredibly important for making a good looking game and Unity5 has the best tech out of the box. On paper anyway. Can't wait to actually try it out.

It's also nice to see sound design being taken to another level in Unity5. That is is super exciting and is definately an edge in Unity's favor over other commercially available in engines. It's an edge that isn't to be overlooked imo.

 

+1. as always.

 

Lighting, artwork and post are essential as Aabel says for making a good looking game. There's no if's or buts about it..

As far as engines go, they all have strengths and weaknesses. But I think it's getting to the point with Enlighten and UE4's work in progress LPV / lightmass upgrades CE is still the king of outdoors it's not worth the hassle / you're not going to miss it.

Where UE4 leads the pack is PC and Console tools, just the shear amount of out the box features and how rapidly they develop gives a clear advantage in this sector. Where it falls over is general performance sucks compared to Unity and it's way behind for mobile. (Also stability in some areas)..

Unity has the mobile segment wrapped up nicely, it's quick / lightweight and finally reached the point of stability / maturity. It has a long way to go to be a dominant force for PC / Console but if they keep doing what they're doing I have every faith they could be.

At the moment I see it as Unity vs. Unreal and both are damn good. Let's all have fun with them..

On a side note, if I was doing a 180 right now and swap back here are the things I'd miss instantly. World composition with point of origin and layer streaming ( I mean it's just fantastic), material editor ( I love UE's Mat editor), cinematics (although I know Unity are working on this) and the out of the box TOD function also maybe just how damn impressive the VFX system is.

It's like being in an Engine candy store HEHEH!.

 

This guy shows off unity well:

DX9 water


DX9 Water

Interactive erosion

Millions of billboards

Whitecaps

Atmosphere scattering

 

Oh, sweet jesus. There has been a new version out for almost a year and I didn't even know it existed. Boy, those were the days... of not getting anything done.

Don't ever see going back though, unless it was for a game jam or something. I would probably be more likely to rebuild toolkit editor features in unity and consider it the best of both worlds.

 

Yeah, I'm not going to lie - the TK is really biased towards making a clone of Final Fantasy IV. That's about the zenith and nadir of its capabilities, really. I made a rhythm game with it back when I was in college, but it ran really freaking slowly (though, that was back in the 3.0.6 era - TK 3.1 hadn't yet come out.) Grindalf made a side-scrolling shooter in it, which was interesting, but required a lot of code.

That all was some of the reasons I came to Unity. Anything outside of the JRPG cookie cutter tended to require a positively silly amount of work to get up and running; conversely, in Unity, it may take a silly amount of work to build the cookie cutter, but if you can, you can totally go to town!

I haven't evaluated TK3.2 at all, yet. I might, though, just to see how it's coming along.

EDIT: I should note, way back when when I started with the RPG Toolkit, we had the same problems with newbies who wanted to make an MMORPG with it. Not much has changed in the nearly 10 years I've been paying attention to game development.

 

It should be my game engine is better than yours...


because I paid for it and therefore have to justify the purchase!

 

Unity, of course.

Never used UE, briefly mucked around with CE to make some nice-looking outdoor environments, used to do some Flash stuff years ago and I am a big fan the multiple-users-in-a-scene in PlayCanvas.

 

Blitz basic 2. That was my all time fave, had some great times with it. Even got BUM.

 

I'd think every Unity dev would try UE, to analyze it's strengths and weaknesses. For science, so to speak..

 

I was about to say that..

@Arowx

It's never been about what's the "best engine" it's too subjective. It's about taking what features / tools can be handy out of Engine A and Engine B and making your mind up as to what suits your needs. Although I get that it was supposed to be a little more of a sarcastic point .

 

And then download the latest release on github and start porting great features over to unity

 

Actually it's a known psychological phenomena, if you purchase something you adapt your view of it to justify the purchase.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalization

 

Some may, I sure as hell don't.

 

Ditto. Case in point: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. To say I'm disappointed is a slight understatement.

 

Fox engine REDengine3

Because: what I saw from Witcher 3 is just so awesome
Edit: Sorry, Wikipedia says it uses REDengine3, I thought it was Fox

 

Awesome. Im sure UE4 can do as much as RED because all we know about the engine is its rendering capabilities and UE4 can achieve that (CE3 as well.) Also saying that its your favorite when you havent even used it (you havent even seen what the desktop icon for the engine is) is a completely bias opinion.
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My fav is Unity. Not because of the GRAFIEX but because it is an engine that is light on every computer, super easy to use, amazing community, awesome support, loaded asset store, determined engineers to make this engine better every day, and finally because ITS FREE!

I have valid reasons while most of these people here just vote on an engine that they never even used because the ARTIST (NOT THE ENGINE) created those nice graphics.

 

Has not aged well in a decade, I think it's safe to say. The fact it only had about two updates in ten years probably didn't help much either... and people think unity is out of date.

 

Yes true, but I can dream.

That is not true. E.g. the witcher 3 scenes say a lot about the engine. The artist can be as good as he wants, if the engine cannot render view distances of kilometers and load tons of stuff on the fly, it would not be possible. As a programmer I watch the videos and think in term of awesome engine features, of course nice art helps make the videos cool too. I look for the details, but not because I think they are nice, but to see that the engine can render such detail level on 30 characters at the same time.
You could be the best artist in the world, you could never do such videos in Unity 4. For me these videos show mostly engine features.

 

I would narrow them all down to Unity and Unreal due to a conclusion taking into account cost, ease of use, flexibility, stability, power that can be achieved through simplicity(2d and 3d realistic worlds), community support, company support, and a pretty certain future that they will be here for the long run. Other engines have a lot of these but not all of them. I own both. I bought Unreal simply because I couldn't see a reason not to spend 20 bucks to try it out. At the end of the day, I think Unity wins because it has the best learning curve for achieving any given goal. that is my humble opinion and nothing more, and I'm not looking for a crazy debate, just giving my view.

 

If you want the best graphics, use Inform: because no amount of technology can match the power of pure imagination.

 

RPG maker is only for JRPG fans

 

Not for "any goal". Nothing is best for "any goal". If your goal requires something that UE4 has out of the box but not Unity (realtime reflections, GPU particles, landscape, huge levels, cutscene editor, ....), the opposite is true for sure.

For some of them you can just lower your goal a little and it works with Unity. For others no chance. Use the right tool for the job. That can be Unity for some but surely not for all.

 

It is not enough that Unreal has those features, you would have to do a complete project with those "out of the box" features. The rest of the project would probably be probably easier with Unity, and of course with Unity 5 down the corner I think that will fix the gap. Also, remember every rule has exceptions of course , so for some things you may be right, but as a general rule, I think Unity will be the tool for the job.

 

The minor aspects of the project by themselves don't justify Unity if it means a lot of additional effort getting the major aspects, such as huge worlds, to function.

Unity 5 may do the job when it ships, but the competition can do it now.

 

I'm not following here, UE4 has persona similar to mecanim it has a UI system called UMG. On top of that you don't have to code shaders because you have a material editor, it has navmesh etc. It already covers what Unity has and then goes on to have additional features explained a fair few times.

I'm not sure what part of Unity is "easier" as such, coding shaders is harder. Building an updated terrain system / cinematics tool / post effects / world and tile composition / dynamic sky system / GPU cascade particle system / Apex / automatic layer streaming / point of origin. Would be much more difficult to do. You could easily waste a year of your game time just doing that!. Which if you have staff really starts to sting in the cost arena.

I wouldn't say UE4 is more difficult to use and in some places I think it's easier, sure it's a culture shock because you do things "their way" especially if you spent a long time with Unity. I suppose I prefer C# and I always will do..

The only bad thing I can say about it is it's a bit slow when compiling / compressing / running lightmass and it's a bit buggy in areas. Oh and there is some impressive WIP's going on, makes you feel a little inadequate when you're new to UE.

 

For the hobbyist like me the answer is simple enough… and it’s not Unity. Sorry. But this has been debated so much, there's really nothing new to say that doesn't just lead to another round of "he said" and "she said". We all have to chose what suits us.

For me, it is that with UE4 the hobbyist gets everything and the kitchen sink, including a fridge an over and a full set of cutlery and plates and glasses. No more tinkering around the limitations of Unity Free when you reach them. No need to buy extra to outfit the utilitarian game kitchen after a little while. It’s all in there in UE4.

What limits is the hobbyists ability and talent. And there’s a question to answer if the hobbyist will ever progress to hit the limitations of Unity Free, of course. That’s a valid question, but if the hobbyist DOES then… Another valid question is whether you get too much, and make no progress BECAUSE of the bewildering set of options.

Though, once the hobbyist makes enough progress to start to think of throwing him- or herself into making it a job, then there are a lot of other questions to answer, and there it comes down to what’s most suitable for the particular project.

But Unity has already given the answer how things go from here, so it's pointless to argue.

 

I wonder what's the purpose of this thread, since the moderators are deleting threads which seems which shows other engines in better light.

 

Consolidation of the discussions. In theory at least.

 

I hope the moderators have finally realized that one such thread is needed, otherwise many other threads will just drift to be about UE4. Many of the now locked UE4 threads have been very popular, people just want to talk about it.

 

Favorite for 2D and small games: Unity
Favorite for 3D and big games: UE4

Why I like Unity: C#, the new UI looks sweet. Playtesting is super fast.
Why I like UE4: Blueprints, open source. (And I say that not because I participate,I obviously don't know C++, it's because UE4 will develop faster than Unity..what is it, 200 Unity soldiers vs a legion of Epic's community enthusiasts?)

Why I don't like Unity: Too much of the functionality is behind the asset store. You can bet UE4 will have the same functionality built in in probably a year. Uber limited asset generation, I mean come on, cube cylinder and quad? not even a triangle or a cone mesh?
Why I don't like UE4: Fat specs and C++. Also, testing is S***.

What can Unity do to approach the monolithic awesomeness of your chosen game engine?

The new UI is a step in the right direction. Some asset generation would be nice. I'm not asking for 3DSMax in Unity but it would be nice to be able to re-position a few vertices or remove a few poligons.

Also I don't see another way but to follow Epic's AND Crytec's lead and do something about the pricing, at least giving us a choice: " Do you want to pay per month or do you wanna offload 5k and be done with it?" sounds way better than "Give me lots of money in one go".
Last but not least, I don't know how Unity will keep up with UE4 rapid growth (I mean the thing is catching up fast, the community is even writing a C# wrapper atm) and sadly I don't have a solution for that. It's just that things tend to be better when the general public can contribute and shape the software and I can't see how this can be beaten.

Maybe I am overestimating the size of the UE4's community, but the engines potential remains very much above Unity at the moment. I could be wrong, it's possible that the devs here can compete with UE nonetheless, but look at other software that gave access to the public.

Skyrim almost turned into it's own engine, there was even 1 modder that made an expansion all by himself, and was later hired by Bungie.

Minecraft has so many mods that some of them completely change the game, there's FPS mods WW2 mods whatever you want mods.

And let's not mention StarCraft 2, where people made FPS's RPG's and even an MMO (that was later banned by blizz).

There are other examples, but I think it's wise not to ignore the success of these games. Sure you can say "But Unity isn't a game" and I'm gonna say "Wrong, they are the same, but one is more fun.". Unity is like Minecraft, where minecraft is a game about making things, Unity is a game about making games. And I suppose I could further the analogy and say that Skyrim is like UE4, with the little exception that the engine doesn't have the limits of the the game.

 

Just going to use this as an example to show how just because another engine has a similar feature, it doesn't make them on par with each other. Have you tried both Mecanim and Persona? Go look at the tutorials and the lengths of them to get a character up and moving and you will see why I say that Unity is much easier. Mecanim is sooo much easier to use, and yes I use both. But I get so anxious because of the difference in ease of use.

 

I've not found it too bad, but then again I used CryEngine for a couple of years. Pulling your own leg off with tweezers is far simpler.

 

And you know this from experience?

 

haha Very interesting analogy that made me laugh. So have you tried Mecanim also? If so, which did you find it easier to use? Thanks.

 

My vote for favorite engine is: ROM 2.4

*teary eyed* The graphics were insane.

 

Of course I have, used Unity for a long while too. Well there is some advantages to animation as a whole, I like how you can just block out animations and Unity separates them for you. The T-pose and joint setup system is cool, making blend trees were quite simple. On the flip side when I used Mecanim initially were a lot of strange bugs so I dropped it in favour of the legacy system until Mecanim had reached more maturity.

 

I think this is because you already put a lot of time into learning Mecanim. I ran through the Persona tutorials and I didn't see anything there that was uber complex, just lots of little details that had rational defaults but the ability to tweak later on when you need that level of control.

If you had no experience with either Unity or UE4 and were a brand new CS grad who had taken some C++ in college it's going to be a no-brainer. If you've used Unity for years as many of us have it's a hard decision because now it's not just feature comparisons but the cost of learning a new complex tool which is what annoys me. That being said I've been working my way through it since day one and I feel like the investment is going to be worth it longterm even if I am burning months now. (edit: also while blueprint is a great feature, I don't find it particularly useful to me and I think it gets too much hype)

 

What are you impressions of Blueprint? So far it feels to me, both from my own experience and reading up on what others have done, that it can be used the majority of the time. Dropping to C++ seems to only really be necessary when speed or extra functionality is needed.

 

I wouldn't want to create complex subsystems in Blueprint. So depends on the complexity of your game. I have seen ridiculously complex blueprints, where I think the same thing in C++ would be much simpler and much better manageable and understandable. I would use Blueprints for simple systems and to glue everything together.
But that people create these huge Blueprints shows that it would work in theory, but how smart that is? I understand that if you miss the C++ or programming skills, but it asks for trouble above a certain complexity level.

 

BP makes perfect sense if you think about it being used so designers and programmers have a common interface to communicate with. Ie. programmers go make this complex system then expose some simple hooks via BP for designers to play with in the scene. As a single developer I've found no real use for it so far aside from tweaking constructor variables in the scene, which is roughly equivalent to the property inspector in Unity.