Any plans for another scripting language besides blueprints/C++

General Feedback & Requests
62

You’re a bit too focused on repeating argument “employees wandering through millions of lines of source code”. It’s invalid since nobody needs to know the entire engine. At the same time blueprints (or any other scripting language) it’s also the way of “wandering through the entire engine”, thousands of methods exposed. Still, nobody needs to know it all.

Understanding the engine by reading its source code it’s not “wasting time wandering thru millions of lines of source code”. It’s making most of the engine. Especially when someone is writing functionality which it isn’t available already - in the engine or any Marketplace plugin. You writing something new code, you have to be ready to understand underlying software, hardware and problem to solve… There will be never documentation on everything you need.

But do they document code for every single feature and Apple app available? I ask since Unreal C++ syntax/core changes slowly and there are no many changes. The community would use a proper explanation of core Unreal programming concepts. I totally agree with this part.
Although comparing documentation Swift API with documentation of engine features is a bit off. It’s impossible and pointless to document the ever-changing engine, the source code is the best documentation.

Epic does slowly work on the online course, explaining some things in live streams. It’s far from ideal, but the official docs it’s the only learning resource.
There’s an amazing amount of knowledge and help provided by the community. You can ask about the engine on Reddit on Unreal Slackers and often receive a proper explanation. No need to be this glorified “huge software house”. The hobbyist will get there the same as “AAA engineer” if the question was properly phrased.

Obviously, companies with bigger employee count always have an advantage while working with huge software/mechanism. Not only in IT :wink:

63

Avoid learning C++ ? 10+ years C/C++ programmer here. (not gaming). Scripting could provide ultra fast compile time like BP. That alone will be a game changer for productivity. Then, UE framework integration. How well is UE4 API with visual studio or any other IDE compared? I’m wrong ? Still listening… (Not to mention versioning binary files with BP)
Most programmers (not artists) want to avoid blueprints because when doing complex gameplay logic, it’s obvious that in one screen of code, you are watching 4 of BP. If you tried doing something like this in both worlds, you know what I’m talking about.
I don’t know why so much fear of change, obiously it’s not needed not for artists, but yes for programmers.
And by the way, by a reddit post of himself, Tim Sweeney already said some alternative language may be coming.

64

Well, it’s kinda obvious that custom scripting language would be extremely useful. The common ground for programmers and technical designers. Even C++ in the Unreal version is to difficult for many technical people who aren’t full-time programmers.

I understand some resistance about this idea because is super-hard to create the scripting language environment that doesn’t suck. Like UnrealScript.
It needs to complement existing layers: Unreal C++ and blueprints. Make things easier than more complex, which makes it even a bigger challenge.

This quality requirements rules out using C#, it would be a hack

65

That’s the only reason I would be willing to support a real scripting language. But only if “ultra fast compile time”, means faster than what we have now and no need of an external IDE.

66

I am for one making my own because my “dream game project” needs it. I can’t afford wait and see if Epic decides to do it or not; but I don’t believe a single bit scripting can ever solve any of the problems complained about here.

The only solution to those problems is you either know the API or hire somebody else who does.

67

Apple is way bigger than Epic Games but it’s not that Epic Games is a small company either so they shouldn’t have any trouble providing full public updated documentation of all engine APIs if they hired enough employees to do that job.

Apple APIs include many DSP math ones as well as networking.

Just take a look at the Apple documentation archive: Documentation Archive
there you can find so many source code example and API documents …

And the up to date documentation here: Technologies | Apple Developer Documentation

Let’s check the compression framework for example: Compression | Apple Developer Documentation
… do you see how everything is so clearly documented ? From the links on that page I can know everything about the classes included in the framework and how to use it. No time wasted.

Here the Core Image framework: Core Image | Apple Developer Documentation
same is pretty easy to understand everything and if you know how to code you are immediately productive this way… in a few hours you can actually manage using the APIs in the app you are coding with Swift.

And there are 234 fully documented framework APIs to quickly look thru and know everything about. If Apple can do that surely Epic Games can too. If only they wanted to.

68

Thanks for links, it’s looks like a great documentation, indeed :slight_smile:

Although… you realize that app developers pay 30% from every app sold on the App Store? And UE4 is free to use for the first million-dollar. Plus only the first 5% of game’s price (without VAT) or custom flat deal (like $50K per platform)?

And there are many other factors which make such comparisons pointless? Apple hires nearly 150 000 people.
Does source code for entire Apple operating systems is publicly available? If not, that might one key difference while documentation for Apple is much more critical than for UE4. And why they put effort into this for the first place :wink:

It’s obviously possible for Epic to fully document the entire engine.
At the price of slower development of the engine itself or paying much more for the engine. There’s no free launch, but you make it sound like it would be just hiring 10 more guys and they would provide detailed, up to date documentation :wink:

If I had to choose, I need working software and significant upgrades much more than detailed documentation. All I would appreciate it would be general description of systems, no need to be fully documented.
And better organization of general documentation - there’s so much good thing in live streams, but you need to find on your own, watch the entire video. Streams on topic X aren’t linked to the documentation page on topic X.

69

No one forced Epic Games to make Unreal Engine free to use now up to $1million. They are the ones that decided to have only big software houses pay a lot for premium support.
So that means that it is all good that the public version is lacking full updated documentation, bug fixes take a lot to get fixed with some dating years back still reported multiple times?

The comparison is absolutely legit. Epic Games is a business just like Apple and not an organization that doesn’t make any profit. Having the source code available doesn’t justify anything and surely not having the full documentation always updated online. Epic Games surely can afford paying some employees to do that job. It doesn’t require thousands either. A dozen of employees would be more than enough to create and mantain a full updated documentation of everything.

I don’t know if you are trying to justify them at any cost or what else you are trying to say here? I wouldn’t care paying $50/month or $100/month for Unreal Engine if that included full documentation and more. Epic Games on its own decided to make the engine free for indie developers now. But that doesn’t mean that it is all good if the documents are not updated, bugs not fixed and so on. If that is good for you then fine. But I see many complaining and willing to pay for better support if Epic Games wanted to make some profit out of small indie developers.

Videos are no magic to learn things. A good programming book with pictures of key points usually is way better to learn things quickly. The Apple online documentation of all frameworks APIs are just like an online book to quickly learn everything.
All new UE versions add features and plenty of new code and APIs and a lot gets deprecated too. The problem is that many things are kept in alpha/beta stage for months or years and lacking proper documentation too, you could start using some of those features and then they decide to discard everything and add something else but it might not end up being production ready ever either. At this rate having new features that don’t get at a final stable code stage becomes quite worthless.

70

Sure thing. For this reason, I helped folks to develop a community wiki where one of the goals is to explain a lot of programming things. Ideally, this is something Epic would provide.

True, very basic docs on “early access” features would be helpful.
Although there sometimes a nice introduction to things like a new audio system or Niagara long before it became production-ready. I think it’s important to note that the community is providing a lot of great tutorials/guides on new systems. Beating any classic documentation.

Unreal is not like Unity introducing 2 new renderers, where it takes them like 2 years as “production-ready” and provide docs. Although HDRP isn’t production-ready as occlusion culling doesn’t work properly and there’s no Draw thread on CPU, so people were trying to understand “why game on HDRP is super slow on RTX card”. So developers spend on a lot of time to figure which system they should use “old one, not updated and relatively crappy but documented” or “new one, exciting, but there are usually 1 or 2 things that make entire system unusable even if it’s marked production-ready”.

I’m trying to say that source code is always the best documentation. If I have access to the source code of given software with proper comments over methods, very detailed documentation might be redundant and a waste of time. I would welcome simple documentation in many places, “what is this class, example of using it, best practices”. That’s would invaluable for newcomers to the engine.
Although personally, I see this missing like 100 hundred places, but… not like see a real need to document every single class/module in the engine. IMHO, the engine’s API is usually clean and easy to understand.

And I see as incredibly valuable any effort to bring “developer diaries” - how different studios manage game development with Unreal. Their knowledge and practices are pretty priceless for a small developer, especially if nobody in the team worked on some AAA. I would rather pay to see how other developers tackle complex production/engineering topics than explaining source code that I can browse and analyze any time.

Companies providing software without source code have to describe everything for programmers. For this reason, my opinion is that we don’t need such extensive docs as Apple provides.

Perhaps it’s helpful to note that I got prior experience with in-house AAA engines and UE3. Plus with Unity which shouldn’t be even called “engine” in my opinion as every developer needs to build up his own set own tools and plugins in order to start working on a game.
I just never worked in an environment with fully detailed docs and used to it :wink:

71

Have you guys checked-out the Angelscript by Hazellight (https://angelscript.hazelight.se/) ? It’s free and has shipped a few games (I’ve seen job offers for Embark Studios which states that they use it as well).

72

That doesn’t really matter because people expect officially supported language maintained by Epic Games.

74

Lol imagine though what that same code would look like in C++, it would be far more difficult for someone to just look at and grasp what’s going on.

People saying written code is the way to go reminds me of how people used to say you shouldn’t watch movie’s you should read books.