Unreal Engine 4 FREE...

Very true. But this is why established/larger studios are hesitant to seriously consider UE if they are already using something else. (at least based on price). UE is driving at price, and they are making it so developer on the lower end of the revenue scale pay practically 0$. (which is about 90% of developers). Devs/studios that do are successful or positioned to be successful aren't jumping at the 5% and the custom licenses are way more than Unity. UEs main target are those who aren't going to generate revenue for them. So where is their revenue stream? Are they banking on small devs who happen to make it big? They are losing ground on AAA games due to much more competition. Either they have a different monetization strategy (possibly modding/UGC) or they are shoot for the old (and failed) strategy of 'get enough free users and we'll figure out how to make money later". Do they have a brilliant strategy or is it the last ditch effort? Will they eventually be able to compete with Unity, or will they go the way of Torque? Unity on the other hand is a solid proven successful business who aren't going anywhere.

It is a fantastic deal for those under that revenue mark, and are basically getting a AAA engine for free. But how long can they keep it up? They are gaining some users, but really aren't gaining much market share, and what they are, they aren't charging for. Who knows what they will or won't pull off, but right now, they aren't convincing the big potential revenue sources to switch.

 

I'd still have expected it to be successful AAA games. Are they really losing so much ground in that arena that people think they're at risk?

While I expect that the custom licenses would cost more than Unity, I wouldn't expect them to cost anything wildly different to the licenses they had in the past. And I definitely think there are projects that UE would be more suited to than Unity. So I'd have thought there'd be plenty of room in the industry for both - and I'd also hope they don't squeeze each other too much in a fight for dominance, since I'd rather a bunch of strong forerunners to choose from than a few who are struggling because of too tight a competition.

 

I am a little surprised that so many of the UE4 advocates seem hell-bent on comparing the UE4 licensing to the Unity Pro licensing.

I've never used Unity Pro, and have no real plans to in the near future. I'm still using the free version of Unity. I still haven't run into a situation that requires me to acquire Unity Pro. For me, the most apt comparison is between two engines that are now available at no cost. I have both of them installed on my computer right now. Who wins? I win!

Having more options and choices is always better for the end consumer. This competition between solid software packages is gravy for me, and other hobbyists of my ilk. We now have tons of choices among multiple high-quality game development packages. This crowd can argue the merits of either engine until you're all blue in the face. I'm going to be over here, enjoying them both.

 

Unreal Engine is AAA for AAA title. No doubt to it. So many worldwide game studios, example huge titles already proven.
But what about indie? They are not related with indie at all. No indie team can make AAA title with just free of UE4.

Realistically, indie developer should make his own money by game making.

Now, what is UE4's benefit compared to Unity in perspective of indie (1~2 man team)?

Why he can endure whole new learning curve of UE4 for what? What he can earn in game development?

It need precise reasons to consider.

 

Had my eye on $80 top down city on the Unity Asset Store. It's 50% off on UE marketplace and with my $30 credit just paid $10.

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For those people having problems running UE4 - check settings and switch to shader model 4 or even mobile (but mobile will have to recompile shaders which takes about 10 minutes). Then check the scalability under settings or game will look blurry when playing in the editor if set under 100%. Other post processing things are in world settings I believe that can be turned down and it runs really well on an i5 4570, HD 7850, Win 7.

I'm not jumping ship from Unity, but UE4 is fun to play with if you turn down some stuff. And I figure anything I learn with UE4 I can take back to Unity in some form.

 

Nice. Maybe I use my free 30$ for that too...

Another tip: if you are on a notebook get a coolingpad. I need that for newer games too, e.g. Wolfenstein New Order would kill my notebook after 20-30 minutes from overheating.
I had no problems with UE4 4.7.1, except the launcher crashed brutally once when I tried to update/download all free content at once. Even taskmanager could not solve it, had to reboot.

 

@zombiegorilla,
Big studios pays lot of cash upfront to Epic to avoid paying 5% royalties.

 

Per the business model, Epic has done very well with its own games as well as licensing its engine(s) out to studios making some of the most successful games of the last decade. Earnings have never been an issue there as far as I know. I think a great many AAA developers already see Unreal as the premiere third party engine - just look at their developer list and game history. So AAA really isn't their problem.

The introduction of UDK, and then of UE4's licensing terms, was probably an effort to increase their share of the indie and hobbyist segment (not really aimed at AAA developers). By comparison, Unity's strong suit has always small to medium developers, as well as independent contractors and some large developers working on smaller (or mobile) titles. Hearthstone comes to mind as an example of what Unity excels at.

The roadblock for Unity regarding PC and console AAA development, based on what I've read here on the forum (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that development of large games often runs squarely into performance and other roadblocks. It also hasn't been the best tool to facilitate coordination between the members of large teams.

In this regard, I think Unity's biggest hurdle will be retaining and acquiring new PC and larger game (AAA) developers, while Epic's biggest hurdle will be improving the state of its mobile development, reducing its mobile deployment size, and attracting more of those mobile and indie developers.

So, TL; DR: Earnings aren't likely to be an issue for Epic. I think Epic's challenge relates to increasing its share of the indie market, not the AAA market, and the reverse is probably true for UT.

 

There is also the Paradox C# based engine.
It supports or will support as many platforms as Unity and is also Open Source.
http://paradox3d.net/

I always liked the look of this engine as its similar to something I started to write.

 

It still has a few, but definitely has lost ground. Most of the major franchises have their own, and there are many more AAA engines than ever before. Prior to the Tencent investment, they had shut down several studios, and there were reports of financial problems. After the investment, a lot of key folks left. [/QUOTE]

I know they vary depending on a lot of factors. The two cases that I know of were, as you said, not to different from the past. (which is substantial), and in one case was a single title and the other was limited amount of titles. (both were console, and only one was AAA).

I totally agree 100%. A legitimate competitor(s) to Unity in its key space would be a great thing. Both for simply having options, and to keep Unity on its toes. Unreal just isn't stepping up to that yet. They seem to focusing on price, and are a little unfocused. Folks in this industry are slow to change sometimes, it took over two years for us to make a good case for Unity, even after it became the dominate tool. Companies that have invested and committed resources and time to Unity, are going to need a lot better reason to consider UE than price. The price dropping and unclear direction smells like panic. Unity isn't perfect, but at least there is no doubt they'll still be around this time next year.

 

Well, I'm really considering switching over to Unreal. There is some license tomfoolery going on (basically Unreal's EULA doesn't allow you to bundle Unrealed with your game and I want my game to be moddable) that I'm talking over with Epic's support which was really helpful so far (they've even told me how to build UE4 on Linux even though technically it is not supported, for Pete's sake!), but all other things point me to using UE4.

Such as:
- Proper, build-in level editor (in Unity there is Probuilder, but you have to pay extra, whether you have Pro or Free)

- Blueprint system, which basically allows you to build your game with blocks so the only thing you need to code in "actual" coding language are more complex systems, and I say really complex (in Unity there is Playmaker, but you have to pay extra, whether you have Pro or Free)

- Better lighting and materials (for this project it is not really needed, but will be useful in future, in Unity you need Pro for that)

- Realtime shadows (more than 1, as per Unity Free)

- Other realtime stuff


Actually, considered switching over way back when it was sub-based, but that license thing I've mentioned (not being able to bundle Unrealed with the game) stopped me. I've understood why it was there though, protecting Epic's revenue. Now, however it seems like nothing but an artifact, so I'm trying to resolve it with Epic.

Using that little thing called "proper arguments", that, unlike in Unity's case, doesn't fall on the deaf ears.

 

Of course they do, that is/was their model long before the royalties. But also not too long ago, they had very little competition in that area, now there is a lot.

 

I would expect that to not be a problem in the near future. Maybe not directly bundle it but at least be able to link to it. With the upcoming release of Unreal (the game) they are driving at the moddability, and of course with UE free now, you should be able make it work soon. Heck you may even be able to let your players sell mods and get a cut.

 

Unreal 4 the free open source engine. I could see quite a number of people being very happy with that.

 

Darkhog - That unrealed thing must be doable. Goat simulator has a SDK kit for modders and Viscera Cleanup Detail. Probably more games if you look around. It could be something as simple as a config file for that specific game and the modders would just use the UE4 editor (just a guess because I don't mod).

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And just read that the previous UDK (Unreal Development Kit) that was UE3 was $99 plus 25% of sales. UE4 looks quite generous. For a small group of indies that create the next big thing - it is a nice problem to have worrying about 5% versus a one-time license cost when you reach that level of sales, a problem a lot of indies probably wish they had. I imagine that is offset a little also by lower taxes on a lower gross.

 

True, and also a lot of it also simply has to do with overall design. AAA games need a lot layers of customization and tooling/pipeline that just isn't what Unity is geared toward. Also, since Unity is deeply multi-platform, it limits the ability to go nuts on the PC/console side (at least without a separate version).

As much as I like Unity, and it fits my studios needs, it just seems unlikely that it will ever be a direct competitor to the big AAA game engines. I don't think that is bad thing. Right tool for right job and all that.

 

Thanks for the heads-up.

 

Don't forget that, with Unity3D it is still a lot faster to start a project from scratch and it's a lot more user friendly than UE4 will ever be.
Plus Unity3D has an insanely huge community and thousands of plugins, addons, etc.

 

99% of steam greenlight indy games are done with unity...

Yeah but the unity rendering is S***. Look at the light system. Barely usable with a ton of purchasable assets. Now go and look at this

. Especially for ArtViz, Unreal is a mayor player! The video is REALTIME. Not pre-rendered!

 

Every tried Blueprints ? I did a test. I created a interactive Inventory within 30 minutes in Unreal Blueprint. Then I try to replicate it in Unity. Took me 4 hours and 3 assets (purchasable) to do so.

 

Your calculation is based on 1 seat. How about a serious game developer with about 20 seats (15 designer and 5 programmer) that would cost a lot with unity pro, right?

 

If Unity adds Screen-Space Reflections and a more unified reflection/lighting system, where baked light, realtime light, SSR, flares, HDR bloom and everything else comes together seamlessly and very effortlessly (similar to Unreal), then Unity will be a strong contender. Add a node based material system and we're golden.

 

Hm, ok ... so I skipped pages 3 to 9 and I guess I didn't miss much. Unity does everything I need and it does most of it in a pretty awesome way. So to be honest, UE4 being free completely does not make any difference to me. At. All. Well, maybe it does ... see below ;-)

It really surprises me how excited people can get about this.

So, I'm pretty sure that there's certain games where using UE4 is the better option and in those cases I wouldn't hesitate much to use UE4. And I know for sure there's a lot of games where Unity is the better option. But if the licensing costs are the deciding factor, you're either living in a low-wage country (there's huge differences and I can see that if you live in India, for example, even $19 is a big deal), or you're not doing business (which is fine - I have no judgement about that but it's just something to keep in mind when watching this whole discussion ;-) ).

The licensing costs of Unity Pro are peanuts if you're doing any kind of serious game development and are living in a country where people's time is worth some money. I pay about €1300 every two years for Pro + iOS Pro + Android Pro, so that's about €50 per month which is much less than what I charge for a single hour of my work. If that would matter at all to me, it would mean that I'm most likely already bankrupt.

So ... of all the things to take into consideration, licensing costs have a really low priority. Stated quite simply: If moving from Unity to UE4 only takes a single month (and doesn't significantly increase productivity afterwards), you waste a lot of money even if UE4 is completely free with no strings attached and no royalties.

And, as some people already pointed out: When you're doing contract work, 5% royalties are usually a show-stopper because you'd have to transfer those costs to your client and most clients simply won't accept that.

So yeah, what I consider the most likely consequence of this move is that all those "I makez MMO plz help" folks move over to UE4 - the sooner the better and I hope UT's announcement today, whatever it may be, won't bring us those folks back. And given that it was announced quite a while ago, it certainly won't be a "reaction", that much is certain. So, I think UE4 going free (except for royalties) is a really good move for Unity because it will change the ratio of noise forum postings here and crappy games created using UE4 in a good way for Unity. So what you'll have is more noise on the UE4 forums and more crappy games created with UE4 and less noise on the Unity forums and less crappy games created with Unity.

So it's a rally good thing for anyone using Unity and the Unity forums.

I really do like this Epic move ;-)

 

well, yeah, possible with a purchasable ASSET, which cost about 3.500 USD btw. Woohoo, magic

 

Swoop Moment right here downloading UE4 Right NOW!!!! WHATS GOOD! FREE BABY!!!!!!

 

You forgot UE4 tools : cinematic, shader editor, blueprint, advanced terrain and particles, curve system etc ..., graphics

You save an huge amount of money, because you would have to pay the Asset Store lot of money to buy such tools quality,or such graphics (temporall AA, shadows etc ...) , but even buying you wouldn't have as good tools and graphics features. (just try UE4 particle editor).

Also talented programmers make their own extensions using Blueprints or C++ (building plugin constructor etc ...)
If you can use deeply UE4 and it's tools and graphic features, and you target bigger PC market, than UT can't stand up against UE4.

There is indies beginners selling games made with UE4 already, they just took the 3D engine most adapted ot that meet their requirements.

You don't need to negate so quickly UE4 capabilities and all graphics features and tools out of the box.


But ...
UE4 is not for all people, it is not the best 3D engine for beginners.
There is some reasons people not switching to UE4 directy also :
- you work faster C# and lightweight editor
- bigger range machines support
- lot better mobile
- because it is easy to use
Also lot of non 3D game specialist start with Unity to make a game because it is really easier compared to UE4 big toy.
(That's strange Unity not putting Playmaker or some equivalent visual language like core of Unity already ?)


Just take the right tool, and there is more than UT or UE4 tools for 2D and 3D , from non free to open source, allowing you to make and sell a game.

 

Unreal GDC 2015 Demo Video.

 

#1: Well it's a next-gen game engine so no reason to enable platform for prev-gen console. It's like unity don't support PS2 platform.

#2: You can actually lower down all the default settings like texture quality and render quality etc while you're in development, only enable when you're ready to do packaging or testing. Or you build a PC with decent GPU with an affordable price nowadays.

 

Yu are taking about your personnal case and personnal work and money income.
Your situation is not all indie people situation. Many make and sell games using UE4 because they don't have your limitations or client limitations.

Also production is relative, some people are very good at UE4, even using C++ and go really further, so again it depends on the guy or team behind that is using the 3D engine.

 

This trailer is a little cheating. Clearly some UE3 games in there.

 

It's PS vs Xbox all over again.

Come on guys, just use whatever's best suited to the task.

 

So what is the conclusion?

If you make mobile game, Unity is better? or UE4?

 

Well I did turn down the graphics settings all the way. It still makes my computers fan spin extra hard constantly even if i'm not doing anything in the editor. I think its rendering the screen non-stop... which an Editor should not be doing unless needed in special contexts. The editor runs good on my i7 but is doing something odd Unity doesn't do. Maybe the UI views aren't triple buffered causing there elements to constantly need full re-draws. Just a guess.

 

I do wonder if the UE4 advocates here are actually making something in UE4; it seems like you are all spending your time posting in this thread!

 

We UE4 in a team project, some people seems to talk about UE4 but they never used it, so they needed some refresh about UE4 adavanced graphic features and tools out of the box (for free)
And who said i'm not working in a game while talking here ?

And UT graphic demo looks bad compared to unreal paris demo

 

I just don't get it. How is this any different than before? I mean UE4 did cost only 20$. On release I paid it und canceled my subscription immediately. I looked at it, thought: "Kind of cool!" and then I got back to Unity working on our game.
After some months I paid 20$ again to get the latest updates and canceled the subscription. Again. Looked at it, thought: "Ah, cool!" and got back to Unity.

Spending 20$ once in a while is almost like spending nothing. I really don't get how people start the same conversation again. It's just pointless. I'm not an veteran dev nor a really experienced one. Together with other folks we work on our first "big" commercial title, which is developed exclusively for the PS Vita.
And this might be kind of arrogant, but I think a good dev doesn't complain about which engine is better, but thinks about which engine fits the needs of the game/project he/she wants to create, given that he/she wants to use an existing engine.
There are things I don't like about Unity (speaking of the engine, not UT itself), but overall we love to work with this engine. And I don't see our team switching engines in mid-production (which is probably one of the dumbest things to do) just for the sake of UE4 being "free". It would be a really big throwback in every aspect (induction, workflow, pipeline, etc.).

Don't think that UE4 nor Unity will make your game better. Think first and foremost about your game/project itself when deciding which tools to use.

 

Designer wise, if you want to work later for big AAA studios, you should be able to work with engines like crytek

So? Unreal 4 uses methods and render pipelines from older unreal engines. I bet Unity GDC don't show just unity 5 products.

 

Unity 5 isn't out yet. Difficult to compare a product. Is it realtime? No external assets or plugins used?

Shouldn't you work on the engine and prepare the release? Or fix the assetstore bugs? Oh sorry, I forgot your are a Product Evangelist. So marketing your product

 

Visually UE4 will do indeed , UT don't have such good graphics and features out of the box.
Even a simple Minecraft like will look better in UE4.

 

No, it's not at all arrogant. It's the simple truth ;-)

 

I have a silver bullet for you guys. There's this thing called MonoGame. It's totally free and open source. No one time payments, no royalties. Write in C#, deploy on desktop no problem.
The engine is not the most important part of the game. It simplifies things, but it won't do much job for you. Remember games like Fez, Bastion or Transistor - great games made with this engine. A bit of trouble with mobile platforms (that's where Unity shines) but you're totally able to make games with it.

I wonder why no one has mentioned it yet.

disclaimer: It's a joke post, don't take this seriously. It's just not very inspiring to look at royalties vs one time payment thing here.

 

You need to turn Real-time Mode off in the top-left of the viewport. It makes my card's fan spin up loudly when that's on.

I've found UE's editor way too much of a system hog to use seriously. After closing it my computer needs a minute to recover. And C++ makes me physically sick.

 

C++ is awesome when you get used to it. I do that for more than 10 years now and still learn new things.

 

It is gonna cost even more with UE. A serious company/studio with 20 people using the engine, it going to realistically need to expecting to get around 2million per year in revenue to break even. Unity will be 30k-90k once (desktop vs mobile). UE will be 100k+ per year. And that is just barely breaking even, the more successful you are the more Epic will take. But of course, if that studio is a complete failure, then UE will be cheaper. But that will be the least of your problems.

 

Unity is easyer, has a bigger community and a marketplace. Unity downside is the price (free in the user eyes vs 4500$+~1000$ on assetstore to get the same thing) and the human mind (we really love "free").
but 5% in not really free.... at least not for big projects and.
There is also c++ vs c# ... i worked with both... and c++ was my first love, but is way harder than c#. c++ is scary at first.
As things go now is seams that Unreal will crush unity, but I am sure that they will do something and that Unity has the advantage. Unreal finished all it's cards... Unity didn't and if they know what to do they will overshadow this decision.
I will try Unreal but I really don't think I'll switch.

 

I just wanted to post something in this thread. Don't mind me.

 

How postmodern of you.

 

This doesn't affect me at all. It's not like the $19 was a huge deal. My choice to continue using Unity (after evaluating UE4) is solely due to it being a better fit for me. It's beyond me why anyone would reason differently.

Use whatever tool makes sense for you and the game you're making. End of story.

Great time to be an indie developer though! Such great technology available at affordable prices.

 

Yes it is realtime with not external assets (other than models) or plugins.

Actually I use both Unity and UE depending on my client, they both have strengths and weaknesses, but I could visually easily get the same results in both. The key is this:

Unity - Takes longer to get visually as good, but the overall product is easier to use, so I tend to find I get to the end result quicker.

UE4 - Easier to get visually great, but the development takes much longer.

Ultimately if I client just needs a quick and simple 3d model viewer than looks awesome UE4 is great, but if they need something were I spend ages on logic and development Unity wins.

For my own games I use Unity the most as I don't have as much time to spend on the coding (I can get the same results in Unity in 1/3 of the time), for client stuff, it depends on the client (as some have in house teams familiar with 1 or the other)

The simple thing is you can only compare them on certain projects, I mean for Mobile you would be insane to use UE4.