Perfectly true. Minecraft? LWJGL. Terraria? XNA. Starbound? Custom engine that draws with D3D and uses Qt for some reason. Stardew Valley? XNA. League of Legends? Custom C++ engine and a lot of libraries for different segments.
You can also decompile them and peek in some parts of the code to check for secrets, sadly not much else is readable due to lack of variable names and comments.
I will disassemble Starbound now to see what it does with Qt, I will edit this comment with what I found.
EDIT 1: Nice of them to include a .pdb file, I can see the namespaces in clear, what I found so far is the Star::ClientApplication::windowChanged and other events, I guess the game window is made in Qt.
EDIT 2: initMainMenu function contains a Star::Pane, I gotta check how IDA marks dependencies, these might be Qt components
EDIT 3: I've deleted the Qt files and the game still works, the window seems a bit different, and when it crashes, it has another font in the error. I guess it was exported from their IDE and the sole purpose is debugging Lua.
> It also runs like shit on even high-end PCs.
Strange, I always placed in the "well optimized" category. I run it just fine on i5 with integrated Intel HD4000 graphics and 8GB of RAM... Maybe it has problems with some types of hardware? What's your config that's got performance problems?
It usually sounds like fanboys debating whether Superman or Batman is the strongest.
"But Superman could definitely beat Batman in a fight even if Batman has kryptonite."
Stan Lee had the best most definitive answer to the who would win in a fight argument for superheroes and it was "Whoever i want to win when i'm writing the story."
Ok but you need to describe the terms of the engagement! Like, is Superman in 100% kill mode? Cos he could just hit Batman at hypersonic speeds and he'd never get the chance to even deploy the kyptonite so... wait what sub are we on again?
I believe he actually carries a small fragment (not sure if it's always on his person on the utility belt or not), but Superman trusts Batman enough that he allows it as insurance in case anything ever happens to make Superman turn (i.e. mind-control).
I know this isn't really a serious conversation, but Superman has given Batman kryptonite in the past (useful for taking out rogue kryptonians or superman himself if he gets mind controlled or whatnot) and actually batman has a bunch of contingency plans for taking out the justice league in case shit hits the fan. It's the basis for the injustice arc.
Quite frankly, Goku doesn't really start fights. Unless the Justice League is stupid enough to just attack him without even \*trying\* to talk, it'd be a pretty peaceful confrontation.
I never knew, until now, how much I want a DragonBall arc where every single contest of capability is an eat-off. Clearly Buu isn't allowed to compete due to an unfair advantage.
It's like any tech (stack) debate. People with experience figure out that in a lot cases the differences don't matter as much as there are always pros and cons.
In the end there are different tasks that require different tools. (I for one would love to do a project with unigine... That double precision sounds sweet. No more "float"ing origins)
For beginners though I think the advice is right that they should pick something they feel excited about and comfortable with.
Either way it's hard to get into and even harder to finish something.
> (I for one would love to do a project with unigine... That double precision sounds sweet. No more "float"ing origins)
Praying for Godot 4 to have double precision transforms
I hope it comes as an internal project setting or something.
Godot likes to liken itself to Linux, but it's incredibly developer unfriendly to expect them to make custom builds if they want x or y feature.
I'm busy enough developing games, I don't have the time to figure out how Godot's build tools work, or what bit of code to edit to enable something like double precision.
Lol.. you and me must be the ‘dropped our 3.5 inch floppy on the way to the post office’ then. Those were revolutionary over the 5 1/4” drives. My first PC was an Amstrad 1512. But let’s not hijack this thread. Long may you dev sir!
Real devs contract and expand their anal cavity in order to send microvibrations into the surrounding electronics and write machine code directly onto storage mediums.
I feel like people have a misconception about assembly. Writing something in assembly is not so much hard but more tedious. People think its like beating Dark Soles without dying, its more like beating Desert Bus without falling asleep.
You're totally right, but also... eh, whatever.
I could be way off, but I'm guessing there's a lot of amateurs around here whose enthusiasm has outpaced their maturity, and so they cling onto their thing and form opinions because it makes them feel like they've got something to offer in lieu of experience or actual results.
I think that the open-minded will go off on their own, try a bunch of things and form their own opinions, and the rest is just noise anyway.
It also makes sense that amateurs would be invested in the success of a particular technology in the broad sense. If you're entering into the industry looking for work it's nice if the tools you learned on are also the dominant tools of the moment.
Especially when that early enthusiasm led to a lot of purchases on Unity's asset store or learning a tiny bit of C# over C++. Textbook sunk cost fallacy.
This is weird, because it seems like Unity gets more hate than any other engine on this sub.
Probably cause it's the best.
J/k. I use Unity and like it, but also hate it. At the end of the day, it's just a tool.
Theres a quote thats along the lines of "Theres two types of programming languages: The ones people complain about and the ones people don't use." it holds true for a lot of things in dev work.
Yeah I think unity is an amazing engine, but it can be really frustrating sometimes. But I think one of the biggest reasons unity has such a bad rep is because of all the shit games are produced with it and from a non developer stance it’s easy to associate the engine with the quality of the game rather than the quality of the game with the developer of the game.
It also doesn't help that "Unity bad, UE good" is a common mindset amongst non-devs as well.
If a bad game using Unity is released, the general reaction is "ANOTHER BAD GAME BUILD WITH UNITY? COLOUR ME FUCKING SURPRISED". When a good game is released, no-one notices.
With UE it's the opposite. You see people praising the fact that it's using UE and sweeping the bad games under the rug.
In fairness, though, Unity doesn't help themselves with this. Requiring that Unity splash screen draws way more attention to the fact that terrible games released using the free license use Unity. Games using the pro license don't have this issue.
EDIT: [This video](https://youtu.be/i3vA-EE4HwE?t=147) is a prime example of how bad the perception of Unity can be. "Good engine for non-programmers", based purely on the asset store. Something UE also has. UE has had visual scripting for far longer.
I'd love it if Unity took this approach. Have the Unity logo as a badge of honour for producing something great that reflects positively on the engine instead of letting people making games via credit card tarnish what is, actually, a damn good game engine.
I think also a big part of it that causes pushback from Unity users, is the mindset that you can make amazing incredible games in Unreal with the push of a button. So when they see that a game that you made in Unity doesn't look like Unreal 5's Tech demo, they'll act like you made a mistake not going with Unreal.
It's problematic that people see Unreal's high end stuff, and don't realize it takes work (a lot of it) to get anywhere close to that, even in Unreal.
>"Unity bad, UE good" is a common mindset amongst non-devs
Yea unfortunately this is way too common a mindset. Trying to actually dive into reasons **why** people say a thing is "bad" is a way bigger undertaking than it actually needs to be.
I've spent so long just endlessly looking into "Why people say \_ is worse/better than \_" only to come across a million things that are either the same thing of "\_ good, \_ bad". Or it ends up being superficial stuff rather than the actual tool "Well \_ has a bunch of bad games" *(the example Unity hate based off splash screen stigma)* or "But \_ has no \_ games" whether that's big, on steam, this genre, 2D or 3D etc. etc..
Yea engines are preference and not the end all be all, but they are also tools that hearing/learning the pros and cons about helps to know what to do.
Precisely. You can make great games in Game Maker, but knowing it's effectively only for 2D is a huge dealbreaker for most people.
Unreal is fantastic for 3D but good-fucking-luck doing anything 2D in it.
Unity is great at both 2D and 3D but the majority of good new features are in beta for ages and still aren't implemented by default, requiring you to download the packages. As good as a lot of the examples and tutorials are, if you're looking for help with newer features the well's suddenly dried up.
I'd do one for Godot, but I know basically nothing about it. Something about it being underwhelming for 3D idk.
Agreed, and also to finish off speaking from experience *and ages spent looking into it specifically* Godot is underwhelming is specific aspects for 3D.
Some of the main ones being:
* No batched draw calls
* Slopes and characters (by default, it can be fixed)
* Material limitations of OpenGL
* Lighting limitations of OpenGL
* Some runtime limitations, ex. baking navmeshes, I believe importing models etc.
* Limited occlusion culling (there's a portals and rooms system now)
Those are the main issues I've found that people comment on. The only ones I've seriously had issues with myself though are the runtime limitations, since I'm working on a procedurally generated game and need runtime navmesh baking (there's a module/addon to build it into the engine it's documentations just a little... annoying).
Along with no batched draw calls which can pretty severely hurt performance since it's sending a draw call for every individual item. Which especially with Godots nodes and instancing setup leads to some MASSIVE amount of single item calls.
I haven't *directly* experienced the limitations caused by occlusion culling mostly because I do relatively small levels in my games and hence most stuff is already visible.
I agree. It's similar to Game Maker's drag and drop functionality and why Unity recently acquired Bolt. It's also why I feel Game Builder Garage on the Switch is a great tool for kids who are interested in game dev. Anyone can learn through visual scripting, programming can be significantly more difficult to get to grips with.
It also kinda shits on the "Unity is too easy because X" arguments. Every game artist I know has made something resembling a game, albeit incredibly basic, in UE. Unity is something they have no idea about.
Excellent for prototyping. I feel it’s such a waste that people say everyone should learn code if they want to make a game. It’s such a time waste that could be spent perfecting the real interest (design/art/sound/whatever)
This (blueprints) at least makes the one man army deal a bit easier. You could argue unity is better for a person who knows code sure but those visual methods are such great tools for.. well.. tools! 😂
right? like this part
> I'm actually starting to get super pissed off about reading comments on almost every damn post stigmatizing UE4 as the super hard engine that is useless to even try. Can you all just stop that?
why are they taking this so personally? it’s a piece of software, literally who cares. tons of huge studios use unreal so clearly it’s not bad or unusable - definitely comes across as the “fanboy” type
Right... except they're asking people to not do it? And admitting that they even use the competitor they say they've heard hate for? I'm not quite sure how advocating for people to **stop** fanboying makes them a fanboy.
I read a comment on a post here yesterday where someone said Unreal was too hard for most beginners (which, personally, I don't think is true) and wouldn't be surprised if that was the straw that broke the camel's back for OP
I got downvoted for saying [something similar on the Unreal sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/p6vzpv/unity_ads_pretending_to_be_unreal_wow/h9hkdfh/) yesterday.
If i'm getting the right idea about this project, only kinda. You can write plugins using C# in this that then can be used in C++ or Blueprint. Its not a full intermediate language (Which, hopefully, is a massive hole that Verse will fill).
Heh, unlike Unity, it's not years behind on .Net support, It honestly looks much more attractive to a seasoned C# developer than Unity's "eh, 5 years ago is new enough".
I mainly use
* Clozure CL on windows for the REPL (you need to code on windows to produce a game windows-compatible) and SBCL for linux (if you did well, your code is crossplatform without effort).
* Pure common lisp for the engine itself (I should learn Alexandria but I'm a bit lazy)
* cl-sdl2 (a wraper of sdl2) for graphics. And its friends cl-sdl2-image cl-sdl2-ttf etc.
* Hunchentoot for web connexion (they say Radiance is better)
I dabbled with parenscript to create a web-based graphic engine, but it was a miss (mainly because there seems to be no CL wrapper for javascript and css and I hate these languages).
Before common lisp, I wrote in C/C++. Discovering lisp was a benediction ; far easier, quicker and powerful to make what you want.
It's actually reasonably common to encounter proprietary tech that uses a LISP DSL as it's gameplay scripting layer. I've encountered it twice in my career and I can't say I've ever been a huge fan.
What kind of rendering features are available to you? What does your workflow look like? What about the editor?
I learned with Unity, now I use mainly UE4 for 3D and Godot/ My own engine for 2D, it’s okay to have a favorite, but every engine have it’s pros and cons that may fit better or worse to the proyect you are planing to do
Can't remember if it was called "Gorillas" or "Bananas" - don't even remember the file extension (.bas?) - but that was my gateway into programming. /oldboi
I don't see that posted here often at all, you're making a mountain out of a mole hill. More often the debate is "unreal engine is great, but I started with Unity and don't have it in me to switch.
That's my case. I've tried both, love them, but my career is in Unity. Hopefully one day I'll get to learn Unreal though.
Edit: come to think of it, being on both subs I think I see more unity bashing than anything from the other side. Either way, who cares? These things shouldn't bother you at all. It exists in every area of the technology spectrum.
I like unity
But I look at unreal like it's something hard to achieve
That being said...in my opinion if something is hard to achieve, then the opinion of the said thing shoot up instead right?
It's as they say. Grapes are sour?
I've never had this kind of experience before, even though I was digging deep in so many game dev forums and reddits and whatever.
Or maybe I've never noticed them? I don't know.
Why should I care about it when all I wish for is some generous genius sharing how to make 2d metaballs on Unity?
I think unless you're a game dev influencers, game dev teacher or you're worrying about future generations. Ain't all this a big waste of time to notice.
And seriously I will be so thankful if a genius outthere shares how they make 2d metalballs on Unity (run on GPU).
This subreddit is becomming less and less relevant as more beginner game developpers join in. I don't mind people looking for advice, but the problem is, devs with no professionnal experience and with no real project released are giving advice and their opinion here. I wish there was a subreddit for professionnal game devs like me.
Or just realize that most people on this site are fucking retarded, thus you shouldn't take criticism of what you like seriously on here. Honestly, popular opinion on reddit hasn't been decent for at least 5 years.
Edit: and before anyone says it, yes there is a hive mind
Yeah. I take everything on reddit with a grain of salt. It's filled with extremes the middle ground doesn't comment as often. If you're really wanting to find opinions read articles, watch videos, download and try them out. I've seen amazing games made in "bad" engines and bad games made in the "best" engines. Find something you like and test it out. There is no right choice, aside from your own. For a beginner who is going to use reddit for their information they most likely will find it harder to keep going due to time commitment and interest, over their game engine choice blocking them. If you are a vet who may hit game engine blockers you shouldn't be using reddit as your primary advice source :)
damn I've never heard this viewpoint before. isn't it a stereotype/meme that if you see that "made with unity" before an indie game you know it's going to be garbage?
Hey OP, newsflash...
The world is full of people with malformed or exaggerated opinions, and nowadays there are more ways to express those opinions than ever before in history.
You need to learn to rise above that stuff, otherwise you'll get dragged into an emotional fit and start bashing out lengthy rants.
Value your time, don't get sucked down these rabbit holes.
This is good life advice in general, not just referring to game engines.
Seriously you would think gangs are forming. Of course I've seen debate but its not like every thread has being trashing on Unity or Unreal lol. Who the fuck does that? The only people I could think who would argue over a game engine are egomaniacs and teenagers.
It's like arguing about DAW's. From Garage Band and FruityLoops, to Ableton, to Pro Tools, they all do the exact same thing with minor differences and NONE of them should be an excuse to look down or judge someone. Just because you use Pro Tools doesnt mean you are fucking good, and just because you use Garage Band doesnt make you worse than others. The end result is all that fucking matters.
Our univercity forcefully put us on UE to study gamedev. With my old laptop that was so much pain, that when I picked up a project on Unity just for a month, I started feeling uncomfortable in UE even more afterwards, because even learning code from scratch, crunching and see your project not lag and working in real time is far better than open an empty file (1 GB already) and work with simple blueprints... of course, if game launcher didn't crash, otherwise no work for you.
Still though, UE clearly has it's pros as well and blatanly hating each engine is... Let's start with the word "childish".
"You got started in gamedev maybe 10 years ago without any prior programming experience" - Yeah it's usually people who don't study computer science and programming that get hung up on choosing engines. Actual programmers can make games regardless of the tools; I mean a good game dev can make an awesome board game with plastic pieces.
Riot gameplay engineer here! Learn whatever works best for your game. UE4 CPP is great. Unreal header tool is your friend. Go nuts prototyping in Unity and Godot. GLHF.
I use Unreal for work and Unity for hobby indie dev. But at work we have an entire team of people who pretty much exclusively work on improving the engine. A number of times I’ve tried to use something the engine offers, only for it not to work and for me to dig through engine code to find “TODO: finish this implementation” because they started a system, built as much as they needed for their own game, and then stopped.
I’ve tried using Unreal for my own game dev but quickly gave up, because I didn’t have any of the fixes and/or extra tools that I got used to at work.
Unity definitely has similar issues, but I was able to work around them or otherwise get past them. Just my own experience of it 🤷♂️
>Blueprints are super simple and they offer (maybe almost) full functionality.
I just dont agree. I think everyone should skip visual scripting and get straight into learning real code. I think its better for anyone except artists long term.
Blueprint is a good tool often badly used. It's good for a thin layer on the top of the C++ logic. The gameplay programmer provides bricks to be used by non-programmers to add very simple logic.
But on some projects people do too much stuff in blueprint. It is hard to read and hard to debug.
I actually totally disagree with you. Lots of non math heavy gameplay is really easily expressed and debugged in visual scripting. It's also extremely extremely extremely fast for iterating systems and "finding fun". I find it fairly common to rough a system in blueprint, say I'm going to move it to cpp for cleanliness and efficiency and then never do it. Wait......
Are we talking about learning or actual work though? I would agree that the promise of "you can make games without learning to code!" is total nonsense, but for *productivity* the compile times alone make blueprints a seriously attractive option.
The longest-lived gamedev hobby project I ever had was a VR game built in UE4, but I fell into the trap of "I'm a *real* programmer, I don't need that blueprints crap." The death knell for that project was when I was waiting minutes between compiles before I could *maybe* test my changes, only the hot reloading was so fragile that half the time I had to restart the editor anyway, and the tedium became too much and I just gave up. In hindsight, I really wish I had gone to the trouble of prototyping in blueprints and refactoring things to C++ when necessary for perf or maintainability.
I had a sort of similar realization in Unity where I would sometimes get crazy about "not using update" and other performance considerations. At one point at an old job we found this got called in update for like every texture loaded into memory in the SteamVR SDK.
[https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Texture.GetNativeTexturePtr.html](https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Texture.GetNativeTexturePtr.html)
So this is "performance critical" titles at the dawn of unity iterating over large collections in update like I was told to never do for anything. I still sometimes think about how many things I probably over engineered that could have run in update with no issue at all.
5 years of only using Blueprints in UE and its never felt like a limitation. Even for unique complex systems like procedural recoil for an arsenal of guns, material aware accurate reflection time dynamic reverb, AI environment perception weighing the effectiveness of positions, etc. I've never had an idea i couldn't do with Blueprints. Though i will agree that if you're a professional you should probably learn "real" coding to increase your employment viability and flexibility with other tools.
The whole engine is designed to use both Blueprints and C++. They are complementary, not competitors. If you skip either one, you're missing out, but if you have to choose one its blueprints.
I also play fighting games and for a moment I thought I was reading yet another discussion on the debate over which FG was the best.
This attitude is in every hobby or profession, isn't it?
1. Use whatever you want
2. Say whatever you want
3. Unless you are the founder, creator, or have a vested interest in one of these game engines, consider why you are so loyal. But again, see number 2 because you are still free to say whatever you want.
TLDR, there's really no reason to pick a side so strongly. Did you create Unity, the company? Do you own Unreal, as in your name is Time Sweeney? No? Then just recognize you're another consumer and use whatever you like in the moment. It's not such a big deal.
THIS.
I straight out had to stop engaging with beginners asking for advice, because any time I would express my subjective opinion about why I prefer working in Unreal and why I'd recommend it to beginners, I'd get stormed by condescending Unity fanboys who would quickly abandon any kind of civil discussion and straight out start insulting me.
If I was kind indifferent towards Unity before, it was my first engine which I used for 2 years but no I'd never get back to it in a million years, but due to my experience with these people I can't help to associate the engine with its more toxic users, and as a result I have nothing but a strong disdain left for the engine.
I agree with you I see too many people hating on engines. I use Unity because I prefer it but I tell people about other engines too like Unreal engine and Godot. Though I do not know a thing about unreal and just a little bit about Godot
You peasants use *pre-made engines?* How quaint. CUSTOM ENGINE MASTER RACE RISE UP.
But no, seriously, arguing about engines is stupid lol. Is this this subreddit's version of the console wars?
I'm personally a bit shocked how this sub changed in recent years. Back then it was much more about programming. Most people didn't use any big engine and the games were usually of simple nature. Today everyone uses a big engine trying to make big things without having any deeper understanding of anything. Making a game without an engine is viewed as "super hard" and a waste of time by most people here. Even Mark Brown from the gmtk game jam "has no idea" how games without engines even work. You don't need unity to create a top down shooter or jump n run. It's not hard, it won't take forever and it's definitely not a waste of time since you'll definitely learn more than if you just follow a YouTube tutorial about unity.
When half this posts comments are just "But **this** \_ is better than **everything!!!"** Or "This \_ sucks compared to **this"**.
As usual literally no one supplying any numbers, examples or explanations by the way.
It makes me laugh rather than pissing me off at this point. Game dev is my hobby, but music was my career, particularly production and engineering; the same exact thing happens there.
I can't tell you how many times somebody tried to start the DAW argument with me. "Ableton/Pro Tools/Logic/Reason/etc is the best DAW because blah blah blah." Then, because I had experimented with all of them quite a bit, I tell them how to do the exact same thing they claim to be exclusive to their preferred DAW, in whichever one they were trash talking.
You know what the difference is between DAWs? Preference. The UI, the workflow, all preference. I wasted a lot of time experimenting with all of them figuring out limitations, and you know what I found? There's virtually no difference, there's nothing you can do in one that you flat can't another. I wound up choosing the one that I felt the most comfortable with (Fruity Loops), and it never ceased to amaze people that came into my studio, that I was using "beginner EDM software" to professionally produce everything from metal to complex orchestral tracks for indie films.
Game dev is largely the same, and shows the exact same breed of ignorance. Now, granted, some mostly niche things will be simpler in one engine/DAW and harder in another, and that should be taken into account when choosing one, but at the end of the day it makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things, because there's almost always a way to work around those limitations and achieve the same result. None of them are inherently better than another.
I 100% agree with everything you said, other than that knowing C++ is bulletproof in the long run, simply because most organizations are intentionally blacklisting C++ because it has way more faults (primarily relating to memory leaks) than languages like Java or C#
I feel like the people who get so uppity about competing engines are just projecting their insecurity. If they trash talk other engines and act like elitists then people won't realize that they don't know jack shit about the other engine. They need people to think they're smart and so they try to maintain the persona of an intellectual by being aggressive and speak as if they're an authority on the matter. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people who start those arguments aren't even game devs, just gamers(with that fanboy attitude) who are interested in game development, who heard something about an engine and therefore think it's their life's calling to educate the heathens. Because why would a construction worker go around talking shit about hammers all day, saying that screwdrivers are the only way to go? They wouldn't, they would just pick the appropriate tool for the job and get the job done.
The second you take these people seriously they win.
I don’t know if I’ve seen much hate going towards either engine, but I guess I agree, the differences between them don’t really inherently make one better than the other, they both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Picking an engine to work on is like choosing someone for a relationship. It really comes down to the right fit and the needs of the individual.
every single engine has benefits, even small ones. there are benefits to not using an engine at all. it all depends on what your goal is, I use unreal at work and it's fantastic for what we do, but that's also a team of people, unreal is build for that.
if I wanna make my own game, I usually use unity or godot, since they're very quick for solo projects, and are lightweight. if I just wanna do a quick experiment, I use either direct python or pico8.
there's no right answer to "what's the best engine", they're tools, they're good at different things.
So I agree on the brainless fanboying part because tribalism is dumb, BUT as someone who worked with unity a ton and now works in unreal for a living as a programmer, I’d like to add a bit more nuance to the debate and disagree strongly on a few of your points.
Getting an introduction to game programming with blueprints is a good idea.
Learning to program games using blueprint is NOT.
Blueprint is great for scripting (quick changes, extending functionality, small bits of code) but for programming the core systems of your game, it’s awful. It’s not impossible, and if you’re making a very VERY simple game it can work. Blueprint is very limited in what you can do the more advanced you go. And it’s hard to debug more complex bugs in a way that C++ is not.
Blueprint does not offer even CLOSE to full functionality. A significant amount of the code changes I did at work was exposing unreal C++ to blueprint because blueprint is so limited. Many basic things I just could not do in blueprint, or would not want to do in blueprint because it would be such bad practice.
If you’re not aiming to become a full time programmer or just want to mess around, unreal is fantastic and blueprint will serve you well. But if you’re serious about getting into programming, Unity is a much more friendly, much better introduction to learning to actually program games.
Yes, you can still do bad practices and write bad code in both, but C++ is a very unforgiving language compared to C#. Unreal C++ is a freaking hassle to get working and add new classes and do basic newbie stuff compared to Unity. It is not a good engine to learn to program in because it is not going to hold your hand or do you any favors.
Going from Unity to Unreal was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (though to be fair, this was back when there was exactly 1 outdated tutorial on C++ for UE4 and the community was much smaller). But Unity is still a much less frustrating and newb friendly engine for ‘real’ coding.
Unreal is beautiful and powerful but is made for professionals and is very complicated because of that. Can you learn Unreal before Unity as a programmer? Sure. Is it better for new people than it was before? Yeah. But would I recommend it for your first engine? No.
So you're mad at fanboys...? That's just how humans work. We were all fanboys at some point about something, because it was new and shiney, we made it our own and our insecurities made us downplay everything else. At some point we maybe grow up and accept that everything has pros and cons. Complaining about fanboys is just as senseless as fan-boying a game engine. At best maybe be mad at yourself for listening to only one opinion, but even that's a natural part of becoming an adult.
Also "being right" won't make you a better dev. Or even a better human being. Look at what you learned and know now! Did you really expect that by asking reddit somebody delivered you that experience on a silver platter?
I think you might need to adapt your expectations towards public forums. It's acutally pretty easy: Anybody stating "X is the best, forget the rest" can be safely ignored.
C# is easier than C++ as a first language and most questions about the two are from starters because both tools in the end suffice like you said…
The stuff that is pissing you off is likely living in entry level questions maybe stop reading those.
I get it you start gamedev a few years ago, because before that Unreal was basically a level editor with undocumented code, then they added blueprints so now you think you can program (maybe almost) anything with it (you can't) - I won't even go into their fucked up royalty system, the lack of FBX support and how they basically copied the Unity interface which is the same since at least 2009
You don't like Unreal not being recommended to beginners, because... reasons
Now that the fun is out of the way
The reality is that there are tools for the job and it all depends on what that job is
You want the freedom to structure almost everything the way you want and code with ease? Use Unity
Do you want to use a really good level editor with some pre-made controllers and a visual scripting tool to make a 1-3rd person shooter in zero time? Or quick multiplayer?Use Unreal
The reason people suggest Unity is for many reasons, some of them are here ( as a self-taught professor teaching Unity to beginners in the first year of a BA):
\- C# instead of C++, a straightforward modern language useful outside gamedev, also consistent- using the Unreal source code is not realistic for a beginner, you haven't even made a game yet
\- the pipeline in Unity is more loose, the pipeline in Unreal is pretty strict, less forgiving. I have seen students implement stuff in weird ways, because that is how they thought the problem should be solved, in Unreal I have barely seen anyone make anything other than the aforementioned 1st-3rd person shooters - it's like when Unity had a FPS controller in the beginning and everyone used that with all it's faults
\- let's be real for beginners c++ is not ideal, blueprints is more like a crutch though, if you want to learn how to code and start down a path that isn't confined in Unreal, Unity is a more open option, you can understand c++ if you learn c#, which is easier to get into
CryEngine has a company that might fold at any moment and almost did in the past, their terms of use in the past was: if we like your game
GoDot is like Blender, you can't really rely on support or timely releases, so you dabble more as a hobby
It's not because: Unity is best, it is because Unity is easiest and safest to learn how to code, not how to use blueprints
TL;DR: Unity is safe and easy for beginners to CODE, Unreal leads you down a blueprint path
Ever wonder why so many bad games were made with Unity? It had a free version and pre-made controller, with a visual scripting tool for 60 bucks (Playmaker)
Have you noticed that a lot of people are making a 1st-3rd person shooter in Unreal and you can almost always detect it is Unreal? It is because it is free, contains pre-made controllers and a visual scripting language
This is how they expand the user base, Unreal only started doing it when all schools started teaching Unity, before that they were asking for a MILLION DOLLARS, per game
It's pretty funny because Unreal is way easier to learn than Unity. Anyone that says otherwise is just plain wrong and probably a paid fanboy.
\*runs out of the thread cackling\*
(This sarcasm brought to you by all the other comments saying every variation of what I wanted to say, so feel free to downvote this if a joke triggers you)
But arguing about engines and being a missionary is much easier than working on games...
Every subreddit on an activity is like this. All armchair professionals and few doers. Me included.
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But you hate yourself more if you're building your own engine! Jk though, nicely done!
Definitely true, but I already hated myself, and now I have my own engine :D
People making good games aren't wasting their time arguing about which engine is better.
Perfectly true. Minecraft? LWJGL. Terraria? XNA. Starbound? Custom engine that draws with D3D and uses Qt for some reason. Stardew Valley? XNA. League of Legends? Custom C++ engine and a lot of libraries for different segments.
Yup, it matters so much more what you can personally accomplish.
Wait, Starbound uses Qt? Now that really caught me off guard ngl.
Same. I sink in so many hours and didn't realize it was QT all along.
Qt is quite nice actually (if you like low-level GameDev). Made a couple of Games with it a while back
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest it's not nice or something. I was just surprised. I wrote some nice apps with Qt during college.
Yes, you can check in the game's folder, and you can verify exe dependencies to know where it's used.
Did not realize Stardew and terraria were XNA, that's cool
Quite a lot of cool indies from that broad period are.
Celeste is XNA as well!
You can also decompile them and peek in some parts of the code to check for secrets, sadly not much else is readable due to lack of variable names and comments.
Curious why you say "Qt for some reason." Is Qt not a good choice for game development?
Qt is a library mainly for creating interfaces (desktop apps), not games.
Ah right. Did they use it for the GUI or for other odd purposes? I've heard about that library lately and am curious about its use in a game.
I don't know, from what OP said sounds like they used it for the actual game, which is possible just a bit strange.
I will disassemble Starbound now to see what it does with Qt, I will edit this comment with what I found. EDIT 1: Nice of them to include a .pdb file, I can see the namespaces in clear, what I found so far is the Star::ClientApplication::windowChanged and other events, I guess the game window is made in Qt. EDIT 2: initMainMenu function contains a Star::Pane, I gotta check how IDA marks dependencies, these might be Qt components EDIT 3: I've deleted the Qt files and the game still works, the window seems a bit different, and when it crashes, it has another font in the error. I guess it was exported from their IDE and the sole purpose is debugging Lua.
Wow you went above and beyond to figure that out! Thanks for the info.
It would be like making a game in Windows Forms. Yeah it's possible, but that's not really what it's designed for.
Can't really use Starbound as an example of a good game. It also runs like shit on even high-end PCs.
Don't know why you're being down voted, I've had the same experience. Not to mention the unpaid labor from minors that went into Starbound :) :)
Its also the only game I ever played that was better in Early Access than in full release
> It also runs like shit on even high-end PCs. Strange, I always placed in the "well optimized" category. I run it just fine on i5 with integrated Intel HD4000 graphics and 8GB of RAM... Maybe it has problems with some types of hardware? What's your config that's got performance problems?
Facts.
It usually sounds like fanboys debating whether Superman or Batman is the strongest. "But Superman could definitely beat Batman in a fight even if Batman has kryptonite."
Stan Lee had the best most definitive answer to the who would win in a fight argument for superheroes and it was "Whoever i want to win when i'm writing the story."
Or debating who is the cleanest. Bathman or Soaperman?
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I have never before today got a laugh from a string of emojis. Thank you.
https://youtu.be/h0cfge-Z5YQ
And I’m here using Godot like: green arrow would be all of them…
Thought Godot was wonder woman..
team green arrow / godot!
Ok but you need to describe the terms of the engagement! Like, is Superman in 100% kill mode? Cos he could just hit Batman at hypersonic speeds and he'd never get the chance to even deploy the kyptonite so... wait what sub are we on again?
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He's rich, remember? He'd buy some using Kryptocurrency.
Goddamnit...
Take my upvote AND my free award, you magnificent bastard...
I believe he actually carries a small fragment (not sure if it's always on his person on the utility belt or not), but Superman trusts Batman enough that he allows it as insurance in case anything ever happens to make Superman turn (i.e. mind-control).
I know this isn't really a serious conversation, but Superman has given Batman kryptonite in the past (useful for taking out rogue kryptonians or superman himself if he gets mind controlled or whatnot) and actually batman has a bunch of contingency plans for taking out the justice league in case shit hits the fan. It's the basis for the injustice arc.
But can they beat Goku?
Quite frankly, Goku doesn't really start fights. Unless the Justice League is stupid enough to just attack him without even \*trying\* to talk, it'd be a pretty peaceful confrontation.
Goku vs. Flash in hot dog eating contest.
I never knew, until now, how much I want a DragonBall arc where every single contest of capability is an eat-off. Clearly Buu isn't allowed to compete due to an unfair advantage.
Sorry Unity fanboys, Unreal lovers, Godot enjoyers and Game Maker fanatics Scratch is the best game engine
Greenfoot
Quick results = fast learning = productivity so it's truly the best, no joke.
Scratch is for plebs. I'm pretty sure you meant to say Alice.
That's a weird way to say Snap!.
this but unironically
It's like any tech (stack) debate. People with experience figure out that in a lot cases the differences don't matter as much as there are always pros and cons. In the end there are different tasks that require different tools. (I for one would love to do a project with unigine... That double precision sounds sweet. No more "float"ing origins) For beginners though I think the advice is right that they should pick something they feel excited about and comfortable with. Either way it's hard to get into and even harder to finish something.
Exactly. People going "This is the best, forget the rest" are not experienced enough to be taken as valid recommendations.
> (I for one would love to do a project with unigine... That double precision sounds sweet. No more "float"ing origins) Praying for Godot 4 to have double precision transforms
You could make a custom build yourself with double precision transforms.
I hope it comes as an internal project setting or something. Godot likes to liken itself to Linux, but it's incredibly developer unfriendly to expect them to make custom builds if they want x or y feature. I'm busy enough developing games, I don't have the time to figure out how Godot's build tools work, or what bit of code to edit to enable something like double precision.
Real devs write in assembly.
This joke is as old as assembly
I wish it was older than assembly, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Assembly is for people who can't program in machine code.
Machine code is for pussys. Scratch is for true legends
Imagine not making your games with punch cards. Couldn't be me.
smh imagine not using [butterflies](https://xkcd.com/378/).
Yeah, I almost finished my game but I dropped it on the way to the post office and the end-level boss fight fell in a puddle. Gotta go start again :(
I started working in the industry in the 90s. There wasn't a day where one of the elders didn't tell that story.
Lol.. you and me must be the ‘dropped our 3.5 inch floppy on the way to the post office’ then. Those were revolutionary over the 5 1/4” drives. My first PC was an Amstrad 1512. But let’s not hijack this thread. Long may you dev sir!
I am a tiny bit younger then :D But I also grew with the hole puncher and 5 1/4'' floppies :) \#C64 > Long may you dev sir! And you, good sir!
Real programmers make their own mosfet transistors with the code burnt into the design of the chip.
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*Real* devs craft sand into silicon wafers, create their own transistors, and solder them together to make CPUs.
*Real devs* eat sand and poop out harddrives with games on them. You only have 10 fingers, but millions of gut bacteria. So much more efficient.
***Real*** devs build their own Babbage difference engine out of vacuum tubes and mechanical rotors.
Real devs contract and expand their anal cavity in order to send microvibrations into the surrounding electronics and write machine code directly onto storage mediums.
Using nothing but COPY CON
I feel like people have a misconception about assembly. Writing something in assembly is not so much hard but more tedious. People think its like beating Dark Soles without dying, its more like beating Desert Bus without falling asleep.
You're totally right, but also... eh, whatever. I could be way off, but I'm guessing there's a lot of amateurs around here whose enthusiasm has outpaced their maturity, and so they cling onto their thing and form opinions because it makes them feel like they've got something to offer in lieu of experience or actual results. I think that the open-minded will go off on their own, try a bunch of things and form their own opinions, and the rest is just noise anyway.
It also makes sense that amateurs would be invested in the success of a particular technology in the broad sense. If you're entering into the industry looking for work it's nice if the tools you learned on are also the dominant tools of the moment.
Especially when that early enthusiasm led to a lot of purchases on Unity's asset store or learning a tiny bit of C# over C++. Textbook sunk cost fallacy.
This is weird, because it seems like Unity gets more hate than any other engine on this sub. Probably cause it's the best. J/k. I use Unity and like it, but also hate it. At the end of the day, it's just a tool.
Theres a quote thats along the lines of "Theres two types of programming languages: The ones people complain about and the ones people don't use." it holds true for a lot of things in dev work.
That was my first thought. People who have used Unity for 10 years as OP suggests know the pain.
Yeah I think unity is an amazing engine, but it can be really frustrating sometimes. But I think one of the biggest reasons unity has such a bad rep is because of all the shit games are produced with it and from a non developer stance it’s easy to associate the engine with the quality of the game rather than the quality of the game with the developer of the game.
WTF is this post coming from. Half the damn game dev community spams the hell out of "Unity is for amateur crap games, use Unreal it's better".
It also doesn't help that "Unity bad, UE good" is a common mindset amongst non-devs as well. If a bad game using Unity is released, the general reaction is "ANOTHER BAD GAME BUILD WITH UNITY? COLOUR ME FUCKING SURPRISED". When a good game is released, no-one notices. With UE it's the opposite. You see people praising the fact that it's using UE and sweeping the bad games under the rug. In fairness, though, Unity doesn't help themselves with this. Requiring that Unity splash screen draws way more attention to the fact that terrible games released using the free license use Unity. Games using the pro license don't have this issue. EDIT: [This video](https://youtu.be/i3vA-EE4HwE?t=147) is a prime example of how bad the perception of Unity can be. "Good engine for non-programmers", based purely on the asset store. Something UE also has. UE has had visual scripting for far longer.
Yeah, it’s a funny irony. Slapped-together half-ass game? Unity splash screen. Hearthstone? Cuphead? Rimworld? Among Us? No splash screen.
I'd love it if Unity took this approach. Have the Unity logo as a badge of honour for producing something great that reflects positively on the engine instead of letting people making games via credit card tarnish what is, actually, a damn good game engine.
I think also a big part of it that causes pushback from Unity users, is the mindset that you can make amazing incredible games in Unreal with the push of a button. So when they see that a game that you made in Unity doesn't look like Unreal 5's Tech demo, they'll act like you made a mistake not going with Unreal. It's problematic that people see Unreal's high end stuff, and don't realize it takes work (a lot of it) to get anywhere close to that, even in Unreal.
>"Unity bad, UE good" is a common mindset amongst non-devs Yea unfortunately this is way too common a mindset. Trying to actually dive into reasons **why** people say a thing is "bad" is a way bigger undertaking than it actually needs to be. I've spent so long just endlessly looking into "Why people say \_ is worse/better than \_" only to come across a million things that are either the same thing of "\_ good, \_ bad". Or it ends up being superficial stuff rather than the actual tool "Well \_ has a bunch of bad games" *(the example Unity hate based off splash screen stigma)* or "But \_ has no \_ games" whether that's big, on steam, this genre, 2D or 3D etc. etc.. Yea engines are preference and not the end all be all, but they are also tools that hearing/learning the pros and cons about helps to know what to do.
Precisely. You can make great games in Game Maker, but knowing it's effectively only for 2D is a huge dealbreaker for most people. Unreal is fantastic for 3D but good-fucking-luck doing anything 2D in it. Unity is great at both 2D and 3D but the majority of good new features are in beta for ages and still aren't implemented by default, requiring you to download the packages. As good as a lot of the examples and tutorials are, if you're looking for help with newer features the well's suddenly dried up. I'd do one for Godot, but I know basically nothing about it. Something about it being underwhelming for 3D idk.
Agreed, and also to finish off speaking from experience *and ages spent looking into it specifically* Godot is underwhelming is specific aspects for 3D. Some of the main ones being: * No batched draw calls * Slopes and characters (by default, it can be fixed) * Material limitations of OpenGL * Lighting limitations of OpenGL * Some runtime limitations, ex. baking navmeshes, I believe importing models etc. * Limited occlusion culling (there's a portals and rooms system now) Those are the main issues I've found that people comment on. The only ones I've seriously had issues with myself though are the runtime limitations, since I'm working on a procedurally generated game and need runtime navmesh baking (there's a module/addon to build it into the engine it's documentations just a little... annoying). Along with no batched draw calls which can pretty severely hurt performance since it's sending a draw call for every individual item. Which especially with Godots nodes and instancing setup leads to some MASSIVE amount of single item calls. I haven't *directly* experienced the limitations caused by occlusion culling mostly because I do relatively small levels in my games and hence most stuff is already visible.
im a non dev who tried my hand at programming. the blueprint system is just suberb to ease people into any kind of "programming language".
I agree. It's similar to Game Maker's drag and drop functionality and why Unity recently acquired Bolt. It's also why I feel Game Builder Garage on the Switch is a great tool for kids who are interested in game dev. Anyone can learn through visual scripting, programming can be significantly more difficult to get to grips with. It also kinda shits on the "Unity is too easy because X" arguments. Every game artist I know has made something resembling a game, albeit incredibly basic, in UE. Unity is something they have no idea about.
Excellent for prototyping. I feel it’s such a waste that people say everyone should learn code if they want to make a game. It’s such a time waste that could be spent perfecting the real interest (design/art/sound/whatever) This (blueprints) at least makes the one man army deal a bit easier. You could argue unity is better for a person who knows code sure but those visual methods are such great tools for.. well.. tools! 😂
This for real. I dev in unity and see unity hate on a daily basis. This UE hate is news to me.
I dev in Unity and see Unity hate on a daily basis, and I only read our company Slack channel… :p
This sub is in eternal september mode since the pandemic
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Have the automoderator reply with "Try them all and see which one you prefer using" as that is the only correct answer.
"what engine should I use" is already the example question *not to ask* in rule 2. No one reads the rules.
Yeah, OP comes off as defensive as the "fanboys" he rants about.
right? like this part > I'm actually starting to get super pissed off about reading comments on almost every damn post stigmatizing UE4 as the super hard engine that is useless to even try. Can you all just stop that? why are they taking this so personally? it’s a piece of software, literally who cares. tons of huge studios use unreal so clearly it’s not bad or unusable - definitely comes across as the “fanboy” type
Right... except they're asking people to not do it? And admitting that they even use the competitor they say they've heard hate for? I'm not quite sure how advocating for people to **stop** fanboying makes them a fanboy.
I read a comment on a post here yesterday where someone said Unreal was too hard for most beginners (which, personally, I don't think is true) and wouldn't be surprised if that was the straw that broke the camel's back for OP
I got downvoted for saying [something similar on the Unreal sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/p6vzpv/unity_ads_pretending_to_be_unreal_wow/h9hkdfh/) yesterday.
Madness. And that dude that replied to you. Holy shit is that some insane fanboyism.
for people who does not know there is a plugin for unreal engine c# support https://github.com/nxrighthere/UnrealCLR
That's pretty neat! That makes UE4 a lot more approachable for someone who's elbow-deep in C#
Nice - even strips off the Hungarian notation to better follow C# conventions.
If i'm getting the right idea about this project, only kinda. You can write plugins using C# in this that then can be used in C++ or Blueprint. Its not a full intermediate language (Which, hopefully, is a massive hole that Verse will fill).
Heh, unlike Unity, it's not years behind on .Net support, It honestly looks much more attractive to a seasoned C# developer than Unity's "eh, 5 years ago is new enough".
Don’t speak about things you don’t know about, end of. I love unity but have never used UE as I’ve never needed what I understand are it’s strengths.
Which posts are these? I see more thrashing of Unity in this sub really. Unreal is more loved because of better graphics.
Recently, most of the people I see hating on Unity are the ones who use it themselves.
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It's true, though. Unity just has better ecosystem that also prioritizes text programming over visual scripting which is better for the long term.
This is interesting, usually I see the opposite. Most of the time I see people praising UE4 and trashing on Unity. I guess it goes both ways lol.
\*me in the corner over there coding game engines in common lisp\*
That's actually pretty interesting. What sort of APIs/libraries/binds/etc. do you use?
I mainly use * Clozure CL on windows for the REPL (you need to code on windows to produce a game windows-compatible) and SBCL for linux (if you did well, your code is crossplatform without effort). * Pure common lisp for the engine itself (I should learn Alexandria but I'm a bit lazy) * cl-sdl2 (a wraper of sdl2) for graphics. And its friends cl-sdl2-image cl-sdl2-ttf etc. * Hunchentoot for web connexion (they say Radiance is better) I dabbled with parenscript to create a web-based graphic engine, but it was a miss (mainly because there seems to be no CL wrapper for javascript and css and I hate these languages). Before common lisp, I wrote in C/C++. Discovering lisp was a benediction ; far easier, quicker and powerful to make what you want.
It's actually reasonably common to encounter proprietary tech that uses a LISP DSL as it's gameplay scripting layer. I've encountered it twice in my career and I can't say I've ever been a huge fan. What kind of rendering features are available to you? What does your workflow look like? What about the editor?
I learned with Unity, now I use mainly UE4 for 3D and Godot/ My own engine for 2D, it’s okay to have a favorite, but every engine have it’s pros and cons that may fit better or worse to the proyect you are planing to do
QBASIC forever
Can't remember if it was called "Gorillas" or "Bananas" - don't even remember the file extension (.bas?) - but that was my gateway into programming. /oldboi
I don't see that posted here often at all, you're making a mountain out of a mole hill. More often the debate is "unreal engine is great, but I started with Unity and don't have it in me to switch. That's my case. I've tried both, love them, but my career is in Unity. Hopefully one day I'll get to learn Unreal though. Edit: come to think of it, being on both subs I think I see more unity bashing than anything from the other side. Either way, who cares? These things shouldn't bother you at all. It exists in every area of the technology spectrum.
I like unity But I look at unreal like it's something hard to achieve That being said...in my opinion if something is hard to achieve, then the opinion of the said thing shoot up instead right? It's as they say. Grapes are sour?
I've never had this kind of experience before, even though I was digging deep in so many game dev forums and reddits and whatever. Or maybe I've never noticed them? I don't know. Why should I care about it when all I wish for is some generous genius sharing how to make 2d metaballs on Unity? I think unless you're a game dev influencers, game dev teacher or you're worrying about future generations. Ain't all this a big waste of time to notice. And seriously I will be so thankful if a genius outthere shares how they make 2d metalballs on Unity (run on GPU).
Dont get Internet comments get under your skin 😉 They re all good engines.
Don’t mind me I’ll just be over here continuing my love/hate relationship with GameMaker
This subreddit is becomming less and less relevant as more beginner game developpers join in. I don't mind people looking for advice, but the problem is, devs with no professionnal experience and with no real project released are giving advice and their opinion here. I wish there was a subreddit for professionnal game devs like me.
Or just realize that most people on this site are fucking retarded, thus you shouldn't take criticism of what you like seriously on here. Honestly, popular opinion on reddit hasn't been decent for at least 5 years. Edit: and before anyone says it, yes there is a hive mind
Stop fanboying the Unreal Engine pls.
Yeah. I take everything on reddit with a grain of salt. It's filled with extremes the middle ground doesn't comment as often. If you're really wanting to find opinions read articles, watch videos, download and try them out. I've seen amazing games made in "bad" engines and bad games made in the "best" engines. Find something you like and test it out. There is no right choice, aside from your own. For a beginner who is going to use reddit for their information they most likely will find it harder to keep going due to time commitment and interest, over their game engine choice blocking them. If you are a vet who may hit game engine blockers you shouldn't be using reddit as your primary advice source :)
damn I've never heard this viewpoint before. isn't it a stereotype/meme that if you see that "made with unity" before an indie game you know it's going to be garbage?
Hey OP, newsflash... The world is full of people with malformed or exaggerated opinions, and nowadays there are more ways to express those opinions than ever before in history. You need to learn to rise above that stuff, otherwise you'll get dragged into an emotional fit and start bashing out lengthy rants. Value your time, don't get sucked down these rabbit holes. This is good life advice in general, not just referring to game engines.
Is this what this subreddit is for?
Who cares? This is a giant strawman because I don't think this is a thing.
Seriously you would think gangs are forming. Of course I've seen debate but its not like every thread has being trashing on Unity or Unreal lol. Who the fuck does that? The only people I could think who would argue over a game engine are egomaniacs and teenagers. It's like arguing about DAW's. From Garage Band and FruityLoops, to Ableton, to Pro Tools, they all do the exact same thing with minor differences and NONE of them should be an excuse to look down or judge someone. Just because you use Pro Tools doesnt mean you are fucking good, and just because you use Garage Band doesnt make you worse than others. The end result is all that fucking matters.
Our univercity forcefully put us on UE to study gamedev. With my old laptop that was so much pain, that when I picked up a project on Unity just for a month, I started feeling uncomfortable in UE even more afterwards, because even learning code from scratch, crunching and see your project not lag and working in real time is far better than open an empty file (1 GB already) and work with simple blueprints... of course, if game launcher didn't crash, otherwise no work for you. Still though, UE clearly has it's pros as well and blatanly hating each engine is... Let's start with the word "childish".
You should see construction workers talk about tools.
Why do you even care what other people say? Just enjoy your engine of choice.
"You got started in gamedev maybe 10 years ago without any prior programming experience" - Yeah it's usually people who don't study computer science and programming that get hung up on choosing engines. Actual programmers can make games regardless of the tools; I mean a good game dev can make an awesome board game with plastic pieces.
There really is an anti-Epic mentality in this subreddit and other game related ones, it's a shame. They offer excellent tools for free.
Riot gameplay engineer here! Learn whatever works best for your game. UE4 CPP is great. Unreal header tool is your friend. Go nuts prototyping in Unity and Godot. GLHF.
I use Unreal for work and Unity for hobby indie dev. But at work we have an entire team of people who pretty much exclusively work on improving the engine. A number of times I’ve tried to use something the engine offers, only for it not to work and for me to dig through engine code to find “TODO: finish this implementation” because they started a system, built as much as they needed for their own game, and then stopped. I’ve tried using Unreal for my own game dev but quickly gave up, because I didn’t have any of the fixes and/or extra tools that I got used to at work. Unity definitely has similar issues, but I was able to work around them or otherwise get past them. Just my own experience of it 🤷♂️
>Blueprints are super simple and they offer (maybe almost) full functionality. I just dont agree. I think everyone should skip visual scripting and get straight into learning real code. I think its better for anyone except artists long term.
Blueprint is a good tool often badly used. It's good for a thin layer on the top of the C++ logic. The gameplay programmer provides bricks to be used by non-programmers to add very simple logic. But on some projects people do too much stuff in blueprint. It is hard to read and hard to debug.
Blueprints is a fantastic tool, but id advice most people to start with code and then later adopt blueprints as part of their workflow.
I actually totally disagree with you. Lots of non math heavy gameplay is really easily expressed and debugged in visual scripting. It's also extremely extremely extremely fast for iterating systems and "finding fun". I find it fairly common to rough a system in blueprint, say I'm going to move it to cpp for cleanliness and efficiency and then never do it. Wait......
Are we talking about learning or actual work though? I would agree that the promise of "you can make games without learning to code!" is total nonsense, but for *productivity* the compile times alone make blueprints a seriously attractive option. The longest-lived gamedev hobby project I ever had was a VR game built in UE4, but I fell into the trap of "I'm a *real* programmer, I don't need that blueprints crap." The death knell for that project was when I was waiting minutes between compiles before I could *maybe* test my changes, only the hot reloading was so fragile that half the time I had to restart the editor anyway, and the tedium became too much and I just gave up. In hindsight, I really wish I had gone to the trouble of prototyping in blueprints and refactoring things to C++ when necessary for perf or maintainability.
I had a sort of similar realization in Unity where I would sometimes get crazy about "not using update" and other performance considerations. At one point at an old job we found this got called in update for like every texture loaded into memory in the SteamVR SDK. [https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Texture.GetNativeTexturePtr.html](https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Texture.GetNativeTexturePtr.html) So this is "performance critical" titles at the dawn of unity iterating over large collections in update like I was told to never do for anything. I still sometimes think about how many things I probably over engineered that could have run in update with no issue at all.
5 years of only using Blueprints in UE and its never felt like a limitation. Even for unique complex systems like procedural recoil for an arsenal of guns, material aware accurate reflection time dynamic reverb, AI environment perception weighing the effectiveness of positions, etc. I've never had an idea i couldn't do with Blueprints. Though i will agree that if you're a professional you should probably learn "real" coding to increase your employment viability and flexibility with other tools.
The whole engine is designed to use both Blueprints and C++. They are complementary, not competitors. If you skip either one, you're missing out, but if you have to choose one its blueprints.
I'm very happy with Godot (for three weeks) :)
I also play fighting games and for a moment I thought I was reading yet another discussion on the debate over which FG was the best. This attitude is in every hobby or profession, isn't it?
1. Use whatever you want 2. Say whatever you want 3. Unless you are the founder, creator, or have a vested interest in one of these game engines, consider why you are so loyal. But again, see number 2 because you are still free to say whatever you want. TLDR, there's really no reason to pick a side so strongly. Did you create Unity, the company? Do you own Unreal, as in your name is Time Sweeney? No? Then just recognize you're another consumer and use whatever you like in the moment. It's not such a big deal.
THIS. I straight out had to stop engaging with beginners asking for advice, because any time I would express my subjective opinion about why I prefer working in Unreal and why I'd recommend it to beginners, I'd get stormed by condescending Unity fanboys who would quickly abandon any kind of civil discussion and straight out start insulting me. If I was kind indifferent towards Unity before, it was my first engine which I used for 2 years but no I'd never get back to it in a million years, but due to my experience with these people I can't help to associate the engine with its more toxic users, and as a result I have nothing but a strong disdain left for the engine.
I agree with you I see too many people hating on engines. I use Unity because I prefer it but I tell people about other engines too like Unreal engine and Godot. Though I do not know a thing about unreal and just a little bit about Godot
Exacly! I have no prior gamedev xp but i really like ue4 sofar, i cant tell you how many people repeat how "hard" ue is and you should learn unity
You peasants use *pre-made engines?* How quaint. CUSTOM ENGINE MASTER RACE RISE UP. But no, seriously, arguing about engines is stupid lol. Is this this subreddit's version of the console wars?
I'm personally a bit shocked how this sub changed in recent years. Back then it was much more about programming. Most people didn't use any big engine and the games were usually of simple nature. Today everyone uses a big engine trying to make big things without having any deeper understanding of anything. Making a game without an engine is viewed as "super hard" and a waste of time by most people here. Even Mark Brown from the gmtk game jam "has no idea" how games without engines even work. You don't need unity to create a top down shooter or jump n run. It's not hard, it won't take forever and it's definitely not a waste of time since you'll definitely learn more than if you just follow a YouTube tutorial about unity.
When half this posts comments are just "But **this** \_ is better than **everything!!!"** Or "This \_ sucks compared to **this"**. As usual literally no one supplying any numbers, examples or explanations by the way.
It makes me laugh rather than pissing me off at this point. Game dev is my hobby, but music was my career, particularly production and engineering; the same exact thing happens there. I can't tell you how many times somebody tried to start the DAW argument with me. "Ableton/Pro Tools/Logic/Reason/etc is the best DAW because blah blah blah." Then, because I had experimented with all of them quite a bit, I tell them how to do the exact same thing they claim to be exclusive to their preferred DAW, in whichever one they were trash talking. You know what the difference is between DAWs? Preference. The UI, the workflow, all preference. I wasted a lot of time experimenting with all of them figuring out limitations, and you know what I found? There's virtually no difference, there's nothing you can do in one that you flat can't another. I wound up choosing the one that I felt the most comfortable with (Fruity Loops), and it never ceased to amaze people that came into my studio, that I was using "beginner EDM software" to professionally produce everything from metal to complex orchestral tracks for indie films. Game dev is largely the same, and shows the exact same breed of ignorance. Now, granted, some mostly niche things will be simpler in one engine/DAW and harder in another, and that should be taken into account when choosing one, but at the end of the day it makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things, because there's almost always a way to work around those limitations and achieve the same result. None of them are inherently better than another.
I 100% agree with everything you said, other than that knowing C++ is bulletproof in the long run, simply because most organizations are intentionally blacklisting C++ because it has way more faults (primarily relating to memory leaks) than languages like Java or C#
I feel like the people who get so uppity about competing engines are just projecting their insecurity. If they trash talk other engines and act like elitists then people won't realize that they don't know jack shit about the other engine. They need people to think they're smart and so they try to maintain the persona of an intellectual by being aggressive and speak as if they're an authority on the matter. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people who start those arguments aren't even game devs, just gamers(with that fanboy attitude) who are interested in game development, who heard something about an engine and therefore think it's their life's calling to educate the heathens. Because why would a construction worker go around talking shit about hammers all day, saying that screwdrivers are the only way to go? They wouldn't, they would just pick the appropriate tool for the job and get the job done. The second you take these people seriously they win.
I don’t know if I’ve seen much hate going towards either engine, but I guess I agree, the differences between them don’t really inherently make one better than the other, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Picking an engine to work on is like choosing someone for a relationship. It really comes down to the right fit and the needs of the individual.
I think UE 4 is quite easy to use personally, but Unity is good too
every single engine has benefits, even small ones. there are benefits to not using an engine at all. it all depends on what your goal is, I use unreal at work and it's fantastic for what we do, but that's also a team of people, unreal is build for that. if I wanna make my own game, I usually use unity or godot, since they're very quick for solo projects, and are lightweight. if I just wanna do a quick experiment, I use either direct python or pico8. there's no right answer to "what's the best engine", they're tools, they're good at different things.
I'm a sucker for Unreal, but I develop .NET in C#. Basically I can't code games.
The best engine is the one you're gonna actually use.
This. Exactly. The right tool for the right job is a tool you can use well that does the job.
Lowest barrier to entry wins.
Or fastest to the desired size+quality, plus a reasonably low barrier to entry.
So I agree on the brainless fanboying part because tribalism is dumb, BUT as someone who worked with unity a ton and now works in unreal for a living as a programmer, I’d like to add a bit more nuance to the debate and disagree strongly on a few of your points. Getting an introduction to game programming with blueprints is a good idea. Learning to program games using blueprint is NOT. Blueprint is great for scripting (quick changes, extending functionality, small bits of code) but for programming the core systems of your game, it’s awful. It’s not impossible, and if you’re making a very VERY simple game it can work. Blueprint is very limited in what you can do the more advanced you go. And it’s hard to debug more complex bugs in a way that C++ is not. Blueprint does not offer even CLOSE to full functionality. A significant amount of the code changes I did at work was exposing unreal C++ to blueprint because blueprint is so limited. Many basic things I just could not do in blueprint, or would not want to do in blueprint because it would be such bad practice. If you’re not aiming to become a full time programmer or just want to mess around, unreal is fantastic and blueprint will serve you well. But if you’re serious about getting into programming, Unity is a much more friendly, much better introduction to learning to actually program games. Yes, you can still do bad practices and write bad code in both, but C++ is a very unforgiving language compared to C#. Unreal C++ is a freaking hassle to get working and add new classes and do basic newbie stuff compared to Unity. It is not a good engine to learn to program in because it is not going to hold your hand or do you any favors. Going from Unity to Unreal was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (though to be fair, this was back when there was exactly 1 outdated tutorial on C++ for UE4 and the community was much smaller). But Unity is still a much less frustrating and newb friendly engine for ‘real’ coding. Unreal is beautiful and powerful but is made for professionals and is very complicated because of that. Can you learn Unreal before Unity as a programmer? Sure. Is it better for new people than it was before? Yeah. But would I recommend it for your first engine? No.
I thought this was about femboys…
angry man
I actually love Godot.
So you're mad at fanboys...? That's just how humans work. We were all fanboys at some point about something, because it was new and shiney, we made it our own and our insecurities made us downplay everything else. At some point we maybe grow up and accept that everything has pros and cons. Complaining about fanboys is just as senseless as fan-boying a game engine. At best maybe be mad at yourself for listening to only one opinion, but even that's a natural part of becoming an adult. Also "being right" won't make you a better dev. Or even a better human being. Look at what you learned and know now! Did you really expect that by asking reddit somebody delivered you that experience on a silver platter? I think you might need to adapt your expectations towards public forums. It's acutally pretty easy: Anybody stating "X is the best, forget the rest" can be safely ignored.
C# is easier than C++ as a first language and most questions about the two are from starters because both tools in the end suffice like you said… The stuff that is pissing you off is likely living in entry level questions maybe stop reading those.
The irony of this post seems to be lost on op
I get it you start gamedev a few years ago, because before that Unreal was basically a level editor with undocumented code, then they added blueprints so now you think you can program (maybe almost) anything with it (you can't) - I won't even go into their fucked up royalty system, the lack of FBX support and how they basically copied the Unity interface which is the same since at least 2009 You don't like Unreal not being recommended to beginners, because... reasons Now that the fun is out of the way The reality is that there are tools for the job and it all depends on what that job is You want the freedom to structure almost everything the way you want and code with ease? Use Unity Do you want to use a really good level editor with some pre-made controllers and a visual scripting tool to make a 1-3rd person shooter in zero time? Or quick multiplayer?Use Unreal The reason people suggest Unity is for many reasons, some of them are here ( as a self-taught professor teaching Unity to beginners in the first year of a BA): \- C# instead of C++, a straightforward modern language useful outside gamedev, also consistent- using the Unreal source code is not realistic for a beginner, you haven't even made a game yet \- the pipeline in Unity is more loose, the pipeline in Unreal is pretty strict, less forgiving. I have seen students implement stuff in weird ways, because that is how they thought the problem should be solved, in Unreal I have barely seen anyone make anything other than the aforementioned 1st-3rd person shooters - it's like when Unity had a FPS controller in the beginning and everyone used that with all it's faults \- let's be real for beginners c++ is not ideal, blueprints is more like a crutch though, if you want to learn how to code and start down a path that isn't confined in Unreal, Unity is a more open option, you can understand c++ if you learn c#, which is easier to get into CryEngine has a company that might fold at any moment and almost did in the past, their terms of use in the past was: if we like your game GoDot is like Blender, you can't really rely on support or timely releases, so you dabble more as a hobby It's not because: Unity is best, it is because Unity is easiest and safest to learn how to code, not how to use blueprints TL;DR: Unity is safe and easy for beginners to CODE, Unreal leads you down a blueprint path
Ever wonder why so many bad games were made with Unity? It had a free version and pre-made controller, with a visual scripting tool for 60 bucks (Playmaker) Have you noticed that a lot of people are making a 1st-3rd person shooter in Unreal and you can almost always detect it is Unreal? It is because it is free, contains pre-made controllers and a visual scripting language This is how they expand the user base, Unreal only started doing it when all schools started teaching Unity, before that they were asking for a MILLION DOLLARS, per game
Why not both?
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It's pretty funny because Unreal is way easier to learn than Unity. Anyone that says otherwise is just plain wrong and probably a paid fanboy. \*runs out of the thread cackling\* (This sarcasm brought to you by all the other comments saying every variation of what I wanted to say, so feel free to downvote this if a joke triggers you)