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Unreal Engine 4 is free for use now

Pretty cool

I might download it, messed around with udk back in 2004 or so (around the ut2003 era, when they included some version of it with the game) I'm curious what it looks like now.


vanishing of ethan carter is ue3 right? How come it has such great vegetation and grass? The one constant across every ue3 game ever has been that ue3 seemingly can't do grass or vegetation without shitting itself.
 
Unreal Tournament looks awesome: www.unrealtournament.com/blog/unreal-tournament-at-gdc/

malcolmFlak04.png

Derailing the thread slightly here, but..


...That's supposed to be MALCOLM?

The modeller fucked up, that facial structure is all wrong for an African american. he looks like an eastern European in blackface.
Also, where the fuck his his beard and stache? And his sunglasses?!

THAT is Malcolm. Bad-ass Black dude. Wide nose. Perfectly trimmed Circle Beard.

Hell, even his UT2k3 model was better than that.

 

AngryMoth

Member
I don't have any experiences with UE but my impression is that the learning curve is a little higher than Unity and it's maybe not as beginner friendly, is this correct?
 

koutoru

Member
I don't have any experiences with UE but my impression is that the learning curve is a little higher than Unity and it's maybe not as beginner friendly, is this correct?
Yeah, basically. Personally, it was much easier for me to transition from Unity to UE4 than just jumping straight into UE4.

That said though, it is definitely possible to just go straight into UE4 with no previous experience.
 

Valkrai

Member
Pretty cool

I might download it, messed around with udk back in 2004 or so (around the ut2003 era, when they included some version of it with the game) I'm curious what it looks like now.



vanishing of ethan carter is ue3 right? How come it has such great vegetation and grass? The one constant across every ue3 game ever has been that ue3 seemingly can't do grass or vegetation without shitting itself.

Vanishing of Ethan Carter uses something called Photogrammetry. They go deeply about how they used that to make photorealistic environments in the game http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
 

AngryMoth

Member
Yeah, basically. Personally, it was much easier for me to transition from Unity to UE4 than just jumping straight into UE4.

That said though, it is definitely possible to just go straight into UE4 with no previous experience.
Ok thanks. I'll probably stick to messing about with stuff in unity for now, but I am really impressed epic is offering all features and source code free considering unity locks quite a few high end features behind the pro version.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Is there any middlewear bundled with UE4? I remember UE3 had a bunch. Does that still come with the free version if so?
 

Helznicht

Member
Am I missing something or do the asset packs still cost money to use before the 5% royalty (not that they are expensive, but still)
 

Stampy

Member
Hmm, I just downloaded the Unreal Engine, but the window opens, and on the Unreal Engine tab there is only option "No engine Installed", but it is not clickable :/
 

Tain

Member
Working in UE4 has been so utterly pleasant. This is wonderful, because it saves me 20 a month that I'd happily be paying for otherwise.

Epic has no need to be desperate. Spend some time with the engine. It's undeniable.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
One big impact I see is on modding. While $20 a month is nominal even for indie developers, it might still be too step for casual modding. Now you can expect everyone who wants to mod your game to have UE4.


True, good point.
 

jediyoshi

Member
I don't have any experiences with UE but my impression is that the learning curve is a little higher than Unity and it's maybe not as beginner friendly, is this correct?

Depends on what you want to do, but generally it's fine for entry in anything. At this point, UE4 is flooded with video tutorials and ready made templates to just get something running immediately and can pick apart as you want.

1uWhrBq.png
 
Derailing the thread slightly here, but..


...That's supposed to be MALCOLM?

The modeller fucked up, that facial structure is all wrong for an African american. he looks like an eastern European in blackface.
Also, where the fuck his his beard and stache? And his sunglasses?!


THAT is Malcolm. Bad-ass Black dude. Wide nose. Perfectly trimmed Circle Beard.

Hell, even his UT2k3 model was better than that.

Yeah you are right he morphology changed compared to before it seems. Keep in mind that this made by fans for the most of it. Well this facial structure exists and is not right (if you forget the original shape Of Malcolm), black north africans look like that (they are very few there though) !
 

Blizzard

Banned
Pretty cool

I might download it, messed around with udk back in 2004 or so (around the ut2003 era, when they included some version of it with the game) I'm curious what it looks like now.



vanishing of ethan carter is ue3 right? How come it has such great vegetation and grass? The one constant across every ue3 game ever has been that ue3 seemingly can't do grass or vegetation without shitting itself.
They might have customized stuff, and Ethan Carter itself used a crazy scan technique for a lot of things. Maybe that was involved with the textures.

Bear in mind the latest version of the engine that came out recently added some foliage improvements: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Support/Builds/ReleaseNotes/2015/4_7/index.html

There are also some nice-looking scenes here: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43710/unreal-engine-4-video-details-gorgeous/index.html

I'm not sure why the video had some UE3 games, although I did run across an article about Ethan Carter possibly being ported to UE4 in the future for consoles or something?
 
Derailing the thread slightly here, but..


...That's supposed to be MALCOLM?

The modeller fucked up, that facial structure is all wrong for an African american. he looks like an eastern European in blackface.
Also, where the fuck his his beard and stache? And his sunglasses?!


THAT is Malcolm. Bad-ass Black dude. Wide nose. Perfectly trimmed Circle Beard.

Hell, even his UT2k3 model was better than that.

That is a really good point. The model does look like a eastern European in black face. Malcom needs to keep his big chunky design from the previous games. He has always been a recognizable staple of the classic UT games.

Code:
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Unreal_Engine_Comparison.jpg[/IMG]

I do like the colour scheme and weapon design going on in that new UT screenshot though.
 
Damn. I come to work this morning and 3 of the engines I've used last year have all gone free. This is great for small projects.
 
That is a really good point. The model does look like a eastern European in black face. Malcom needs to keep his big chunky design from the previous games. He has always been a recognizable staple of the classic UT games.

Code:
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Unreal_Engine_Comparison.jpg[/IMG]

I do like the colour scheme and weapon design going on in that new UT screenshot though.

The new design is the new flak cannon and it was brought in the previous update, it looked great graphics and design wise.
 

R_Deckard

Member
UE4 must be massively successful for Epic. Either that, or this is desperation, but from everything I have observed that seems incredibly unlikely.

I like this, because UE4 is good. Hopefully its widespread adoption will mean better AA in games, and better PC ports across the board. Oh, and better performance in large-scale indie games than with Unity.

Well, not everyone can spend 15 years learning a language ;)

If its taken you 15 years to learn C++ you are doing it all wrong lol.
 
I don't have any experiences with UE but my impression is that the learning curve is a little higher than Unity and it's maybe not as beginner friendly, is this correct?

I've used both. I'm a fairly experienced programmer and in terms of the programming, it's just your generally C++ vs C#, C++ has always been more complex when it comes to stuff like managing memory. Seriously if someone is an inexperienced programmer and need to use C++, using C++ is a challenge in itself but also getting around learning the huge documentation of UE is also daunting. It's definitely not aimed at beginners in this regard, the blueprint system is fine for beginners and non-programmers and that's why the blueprint system exists. In terms of the actual engine itself and its features, Unity is more difficult depending on what you need from it. Unreal Engine comes with a loooooooot of features, bells and whistles etc that non-programmers or inexperienced programmers can use easily. With Unity, the same stuff is possible but is not shipped as a bell/whistle/feature, you have to implement/make your own.

For example designing levels in UE with its editors and the like is much, much better than Unity, Unity has pretty much non-existent stuff like that so you need to write your own. Personally I think that Unity should put effort into making that but right now for tooling/level editors/designing with Unity you need to put in a lot of work to make your own for your designers/yourself.

UE has out of the box good stuff with the engine for doing things like level geometry such as BSP geometry editor, Unity doesn't have that at all and you have to write your own BSP-style geometry editor. If you don't know how to do that and need one, Unity will tend to be difficult, where as if you need it and UE has it out of the box, UE is easier. Anyone who has done level design/geometry in Unity knows that it's not very good, it's very basic and you need to write external editors or editors within Unity to have a good level designer/editor tool to be productive/have a good workflow. In UE you really wouldn't need to do this because it has fantastic out-of-the-box for doing level design and whatever - no need to write one! (unless it doesn't meet very specific needs)

So yeah it depends on what aspect of the engine you use.
 

Blizzard

Banned
The content delivery network is apparently getting hammered, understandably. The launcher download resume is working, but it seems to typically fail a download after a few percent of progress.
 

Interfectum

Member
I've used both. I'm a fairly experienced programmer and in terms of the programming, it's just your generally C++ vs C#, C++ has always been more complex when it comes to stuff like managing memory, but in terms of the actual engine itself and its features, Unity is more difficult depending on what you need from it. Unreal Engine comes with a loooooooot of features, bells and whistles etc that non-programmers or inexperienced programmers can use easily. With Unity, the same stuff is possible but is not shipped as a bell/whistle/feature, you have to implement/make your own.

For example designing levels in UE with its editors and the like is much, much better than Unity, Unity has pretty much non-existent stuff like that so you need to write your own. Personally I think that Unity should put effort into making that but right now for tooling/level editors/designing with Unity you need to put in a lot of work to make your own for your designers/yourself.

UE has out of the box good stuff with the engine for doing things like level geometry such as BSP geometry editor, Unity doesn't have that at all and you have to write your own BSP-style geometry editor. If you don't know how to do that and need one, Unity will tend to be difficult, where as if you need it and UE has it out of the box, UE is easier.

So yeah it depends on what aspect of the engine you use.

Do you have any experience with 2D game creation? Does UE excel over Unity in that regard as well?
 

Accoun

Member
I
UE has out of the box good stuff with the engine for doing things like level geometry such as BSP geometry editor, Unity doesn't have that at all and you have to write your own BSP-style geometry editor.

Hmm... Interesting. Haven't used it, but I actually heard not so good things about UE's BSP editor, that any Quake editor was better. Although maybe you just meant having one, since a mediocre editor is better than none...
 

Tain

Member
I actually heard not so good things about UE's BSP editor, that any Quake editor was better.

I can't agree with that. I can't imagine doing BSP work without subtractive brushes, and that's something the Source tools lacked as of the last time I used them.
 
Derailing the thread slightly here, but..


...That's supposed to be MALCOLM?

The modeller fucked up, that facial structure is all wrong for an African american. he looks like an eastern European in blackface.
Also, where the fuck his his beard and stache? And his sunglasses?!


THAT is Malcolm. Bad-ass Black dude. Wide nose. Perfectly trimmed Circle Beard.

Hell, even his UT2k3 model was better than that.
Jesus you're stupid.

Actually, you're something worst, but I'm being nice atm.

That is a really good point. The model does look like a eastern European in black face. Malcom needs to keep his big chunky design from the previous games. He has always been a recognizable staple of the classic UT games.

Code:
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Unreal_Engine_Comparison.jpg[/IMG]

I do like the colour scheme and weapon design going on in that new UT screenshot though.
I'm actually surprised to hear this coming from your mouth. I thought you smarter than that.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Wow, after having used UE3 quite a bit, I must say this interface is a huge step forward. I actually feel like I could make something interesting here as opposed to just experimenting. Definitely looking forward to spending time using it.
 
Do you have any experience with 2D game creation? Does UE excel over Unity in that regard as well?

Never used 2D in UE so I honestly have no idea how the workflow is with it but I have with Unity and Unity has a decent workflow with 2D.

The animation system works very well with 2D. Building 2D levels within Unity would be a pain in the ass, it has no good editor for placing tiles unless you buy a plugin for it on the asset store or use a 2D level editor such as Tiled and then export the data and use that data in Unity (so you wouldn't be designing the 2D level directly in Unity).

2D is fine in Unity but I really can't talk about how it compares to UE, never used 2D in UE.

This past day I've been writing a procedural room/dungeon generator and it's done with C# and Unity, it's just white and black tiles at the moment being output on X, Y plane, so top down 2D.

06wf3am.png


uCH4mnp.png


FsDYv9c.png


hDJKdzg.png


In the end 2D is just really working on the X and Y plane in the end and so you just need to write code on those two planes (like for physics/gravity, moving a character with normal translation/vectors without physics you just use X, Y plane, etc). Unity has built in sprite batching, animation, etc so it's fine. UE can do the same if I'm not mistaken but I don't think its animation system would work well for 2D games, instead you'll just want to write your own way of cycling through animations. That's one thing Unity does really well for 2D games, its flexible animation system.

Hmm... Interesting. Haven't used it, but I actually heard not so good things about UE's BSP editor, that any Quake editor was better. Although maybe you just meant having one, since a mediocre editor is better than none...

Oh yeah 100% true, its BSP editor has issues definitely and Quake's is leagues ahead but yeah my point is that UE at least has one if you need it where as with Unity you'd have to write your own and that might be too complex for beginners to do who might need one. Someone did a quick video a while back talking about its issues, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64lKqbbaUM
 

Griss

Member
If anyone has any links to RPG tutorials post 'em or let me know. Hopefully it'll be done downloading by the time I get back from work.

I always find learning the engine and coding easy enough - it's the game design architecture and planning that's super-hard and that always trips me up. You add one teensy new feature and everything you laid out suddenly doesn't work (or you suddenly see the inherent weakness in your data design), or you make it so bloody modular and object-oriented that you can't even remember what tiny class does what (okay that's an exaggeration, but you forget WHY you made it so modular). I am absolutely rubbish at problem solving and data systems like that, and when it's a hobby and you're only looking at the code every couple of days when you get some free time it's 10 times worse. What stats should be held by what object? Which functions should be in the base object and which are more specialized and need to be in derived objects? I'll pick the wrong answer every time. (This is why I'm now in law...)

And funnily enough, that's the one thing tutorials seem to never help you with. Yeah, I can make a nice level and have people run and jump, collide and animate, and yeah it looks like a game. That's easy - it's supposed to be easy as that's what the engine is for. But it's not a game, not really. How the fuck do you set up a battle system like a final fantasy game or create massive nested menu systems with tabs and stuff? What's the best way to store a list of 400 monsters like in SMT with their basic parameters and generate one at will with some random elements? No one ever seems to know, or if they do they don't post it.

Hopefully blueprints will make that part of the process easier but somehow I doubt it.
 
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