I am a beginner at programming and especially game development. I finished courses for android and iOS with teamtreehouse online in order to learn how to make mobile apps. However I am wanting to make mobile games, and that means I have to pic up a game engine.
I am planning on starting with simple 2d games (like you tap and something happens) and after going trough many pages of Unity vs Unreal it seems that Unity is better for mobile 2d game development.
According to some of the pages I read- Unreal is more for 3d gaming and can be to powerful (take up memory) for simple games.
However I do feel that I would like to make 3d games at one point (possibly for pc )and unreal sounds more appealing because of that.
What do you all think?
Is unreal just to powerful to make simple 2d mobile games and I should learn to use Unity? Or is Unreal capable of being lightweight enough to be used for simple mobile 2d game development?
ps games i would consider simple (relative to other games) and that are similar to the games i would like to start making include: flappy bird, bird climb, Guess the Brand, possibly panda pop, ect. You know games where you tap and something happens.
I don’t think Unreal is too powerful … I just think Unreal’s mobile support needs some maturing first.
Having said that, you could make a mobile game with Unreal quite easily and with some manual tweaks and modifications you will be able to release the mobile game but it is not as easy as Unity … YET. 8-}
thanks! and i have spent some time looking at threads and some people have said that since the engine is meant for AAA games it takes to much space for simple games. I am not really sure if it is true tough and that is why I am asking haha. So are you recommending Unity for mobile development? Also you can recommend any game engine its just both of these are the most popular and support cross platform
I wouldn’t mind learning both, its just I want to start with the best choice (and possibly not have to learn both) The game(s) I am wanting to start with (I do want to put them in the play store and app store ect) I think would be considered simple(like the ones i mentioned, one input: touching the screen) So i don’t think it is to complicated (relative to other games) a breakdown would be great and I have been looking around threads (I think I have read some of your posts, cool to see you reply haha) to make a choice, but I decided to post so I could get answers i specifically need. Also they both support ads and in app purchases right?
As I said … I would probably use UE4 because it has some advantages over Unity (don’t want to go in to that here) but it takes some manual processes and tweaking to get your game working nicely on mobile.
However Epic is releasing updates all the time and with each update the mobile supports gets better and better … IMHO I would stick with UE4 but just keep in mind that some stuff needs manual intervention.
For instance you can reduce the APK size … but you need to manually move files around. If you feel this is too much effort than Unity is the tool for you.
I think I will learn them all eventually but to start off for simple mobile 2d games what would you recommend ? Another way to see this is if I said i will build flappy bird, don’t touch the white tilei mentioned, what engine would you recommend?
Well i guess its both. I want to learn design and the engine, but I am starting with simple 2d games. I guess its more with me wanting to learn unreal because of the greater potential, but unity seems to be a better match since it aperantly is more of what i am looking for (mobile 2d games )
Are you implying that making mobile games in unreal would cause more customer problems and what ever you make on it would be harder to sell in comparison to Unity? if so why is that?
I’m in the same boat as you are, and after looking at both engines, I decided to go with unreal. I’m still in the process of level planning, writing, and making the sprites, but I think that unreal will be better for development of a 2D game in the long run, especially since it means I don’t have to do too much coding because of blueprint (don’t get me wrong, I think coding is just as much fun as the next dev, but I would rather focus on making fun sprites and environments than coding everything).
If you plan to stick to very simple mobile games, I actually recommend Unity.
I’ve been working on a mobile game myself using UE4. And from what I’ve experienced, the project size is massive (my game is sitting at 116 MB, and nothing I do with my assets will reduce it), there currently does not seem to be any IAP support, the last patch completely broke the ability to use saves, ad support is very limited (the only options are to place a horizontal banner on either the top or bottom of the screen), many graphical options are completely unsupported on mobile (literally the only lighting you can use is baked static, for example), and performance is not great among other things.
UE4 is an amazing engine overall, but mobile support is a MASSIVE weakness.
