I have created 2D games before with 2D engines (Fusion 2.5, GameMaker and a couple of really old ones no one remembers). Have a small Android game on Play which has become surprisingly popular. Anyway, for years I have made 3D rendered images for a big 2D game but I don’t want to use the above mentioned engines.
Question:
Since I want to learn Unreal would it be ok to make the game with it or is it a waste of time and energy? Have seen som beautiful 2D games so I know it can be done.
Making a 2D game in Unreal is a pain, but once you understand it and know how it works, it becomes quite simple, that is if you have to use this free plugin PaperZD in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace, since the engine’s own tools are insufficient
The engine comes with Paper2D which is amazingly simple to work with. You can create levels out of tiles and build actors out of sprite(s). Also, if you are wondering if you could use widgets for a 2D game, don’t. Widget performance is awful and not meant for gameplay.
I created a game in Unreal Engine that uses Paper2D. If I could do everything over, I probably wouldn’t chose Unreal Engine for 2D development. It does have decent tools which can result in a good game, but it is truly difficult to set everything up. If you like to to learn new things, debugging and making loads of components from scratch, Unreal Engine will be a great tool for such a game!
This is interesting, I’m using a widget right now for a main menu swipe and the performance on my device isn’t as smooth as it is in the editor.
I’m trying to bring my game over from Unity to Unreal as I’m going fully UE, that said this is the current state of my game in Unity… is this a pipe dream in Unreal?
I can’t compare it to Unity, I have only worked with it for a short time. However, be prepared that Unreal’s widget system in 4 and 5 called “Slate” is a dead horse. They keep adding bling to it in the form of plugins without fixing its core, which makes it an absolute pain to work with. Comparing it to simple html + css + js slate is a horror show. Since your entire game prototype is more of a widget system than a Paper2D game you might want to stay away from UE.
Look around on the web see if you can figure out the most lightweight, clean way others implement such apps for mobile phones (I’m guessing it is one). There are frameworks which make your code work with Android + IOS such as Xamarin. Or an alternative could be just css and html whatever fits the needs best
