I was doing some reading and came across a forum saying that blueprints was something like 10x slower than C++. How would that affect a full big rpg-like game?
Let’s assume I just made two Skryims with UE4; one was done in C++ and the other in Blueprints. Would the BP game be significantly slower than the C++ to the player/gamer? Would the player experience a lot of in-game lag as a result of using BPs? If so… what is the point of blueprints if it is so inefficient? Sorry, I don’t mean to offend, I’m just trying to understand.
I don’t think we have metrics on that, but from what I can gather, only very-low-end PCs would see much difference between C++ and Blueprint, IF there is indeed any difference at all. On most modern computers, the difference in ticktime would be so small it would pass as a small bump between frames - it wouldn’t drop the FPS.
And even should Blueprint be so tick-inefficent, it comes at a major advantage: there’s people (like me :P) who only have a very limited knowledge of C++ who get access to a very powerful, if not the most powerful game engine on the market to make games as they see fit. It gives the smaller creators - the “ideas people” - an easy to learn tool to make concepts come alive. And for that I’m very grateful.
As far as my actual code goes that I have migrated to C++, I have seen differences in speed from 10 to 250x as fast in C++. <- Those speeds are actual tests I have done where I timed the iteration time. Obviously you won’t be seeing differences as high as 250x as a typical increase, but if functional performance is critical, you might want to look into doing it in C++.
Officially, it is said that blueprints is ~10x slower than C++. This isn’t really an issue with blueprint. Is an issue with all scripting languages. It is why it is important to have access to the source code besides core extensions.
Anyway, most games won’t be affected by it since generally you don’t bottleneck at the processor, but at the graphics card or memory.
If you are trying to do lots of math in a short period of time, or AI, then those are the kinds of areas that you would be better off in C++. Generally though you won’t notice the difference.
A “big rpg” is possible full blueprint developed, but the team must be very good programmers.
And very good programmers work faster with a text editor so there’s no point for them to go full visual scripting.
Blueprint is slower just like Java or C# so your mistakes will affect performance much quicker… Btw at least you won’t be able to generate memory leaks yourself, in C++ you will. Memory leaks can destroy your project and you may take months to understand where the problem is.
Both sides have its ups and downs.
Strange, my reply to this never got posted! How rude!
Anyhow, thank you guys for taking the time to answer my question. I wasn’t sure if a mostly BP game would be viable and not one laggy mess. I’ll continue to learn C++, but I think for now, I will keep on using BP until I get a better grasp of C++. Thanks again fellas!