“Distribution to end users - You may Distribute Engine Code licensed to you under
Agreement (including as modified by you under the License) incorporated in
object code format as an inseparable part of a Product to end users who are subject to
an end user license agreement which explicitly disclaims any representations,
warranties, conditions, and liabilities related to the Licensed Technology. However, the Product may not consist of or contain any Engine Tools (i.e., the Product may not
Distribute or statically or dynamically link against modules in either the Developer or
Editor source folders) nor provide functionality allowing the creation of standalone
products utilizing the Licensed Technology”
Emphasis Mine
You can write your own C++ API as long as it is devoid of UE4 types, and you can’t ship editor or tools code. Feel free to bundle a stand-alone FBX importer or whatever you need to allow importing meshes etc. You may have to provide your own mesh components to render them, I’m not sure if UStaticMeshComponent can be created dynamically but Epic does have an FDynamicMeshBuilder (or something to that effect).
Question for someone at Epic that might know, but is there a way to bundle or gift copies of the engine license to users? I really want to support modding for my game and will do so via data files for as much as possible, but I’m okay with the situation of users that want more than that having to get the engine.
What I’m wondering is if it’d be possible to bundle in a gifted copy of the engine license for something like a Kickstarter reward tier, or as part of a “modder’s” or collector’s edition type thing.
To be clear, I’m not talking about redistributing the engine with the game or anything like that, but specifically just gifting a license that would end up going through the normal licensing/account process.
(Maybe such that people who wanted to do that end up just buying them up-front and getting a redemption/coupon code or something?)
I think even making your game moderately moddable using XML files, and then offering the users amazing modding flexibility with a UE4 sub for just $20 would be a great middle ground.
That’s my plan, though I won’t be using XML If I have to do it in a manual way where I just direct them to the UE site and such, so be it, but it’d be way nicer to be able to get a prepaid code to give them instead.
Not going to happen. The engine is licensed again every month, so you don’t have that much money per supporter per month, and Epic won’t want you giving the engine once to players in the hopes that after a month they will continue to illegally share parts of the modded engine code/features without paying. The whole idea even of small monthly cost for individual developers, may be riding on the understanding that modders can see a false hope in stepping up to the Game Developer subscription tier, and will then financially support the engine in being deceived that they’ll do so much with it. And “everyone is happy” that way.
What makes more sense is to give it all away for free and only charge for the released games. Epic has all ability to constrain it legally exactly how they want, as they have shown, so what’s the problem? The problem is the whole perception behind , relating to what money is, what government and what a much less important human being is, and the resulting idea that modders should always be at the bottom and have such incredible difficulty at creating games compared to the artists who happen to have thrown some cash at the right company.
No, you don’t want to talk about all the details of why the world is way, and neither does anyone else in the entire gaming or game developer world. The reality is that there are ideas like classism and neoliberalism behind all of . Politics is everywhere. And so, on thread just like everywhere else, you will just be made to be quiet and not discuss it too much and deal with it, like with the hidden prices on cg software websites. The expectation and the result is that the poor people will never actually get the power to make their own culture or break the chains of the existing stories of what the world is about, and extends through hundreds and thousands of years in human history; the “masters” own all the money/gold and so on and so they are able to shape the stories of what is happening. The AAA video game industry is the perfect example of shallow, predictable corporate-owned stories inaccessible for modification to ordinary human beings, basically touchable Hollywood propaganda. But nobody talks about and yet it is everywhere. Nobody has the attention span for all the details and the lengthy discussion, and they’d rather focus on their own life and individual challenges, so the never comes up for most people, and so it is that very thread is about denying and circling around the of what it’s so obvious to me the thread is really about.
Just wanted to point out regarding , you can cancel your subscription after you have downloaded everything and use it for as long as you like, you do not need to do a monthly payment unless you want the latest updates.
Of course I prefer to use the monthly option, but a modder could just pay the $20 once and use it as is.
Of course you can, yourself, and then you can go on to share levels and content. But it seems logical to just release your game that already loads in Unreal 4’s editor and let modders edit it, at no additional cost because they might just want to make all NPCs killable like I did in Skyrim; you can’t do that with a level editor, you see, even if that game’s developer slaved away to produce it. I’m saying that ** is an unnecessary complication for developers**, and that that’s what the thread is really about.
is a the company promotes to it’s clients all the time, you will see many posts from unreal developers regarding , is not some hidden way of getting around paying a monthly fee, it is how they decided the price structure for the engine would work. I am not wishing anything, I am stating a fact.
For more information please see the EULA and FAQ. Also remember there is a 5% royalty, is where the money comes from.
My thoughts were a bit confused there. Yeah, you can have all the modders just pay once, but, making modding free is what the problem is. It is actually an immense waste of time and resources to have modding tools developed for every new game, just to get around an EULA clause, and is anti-economy, it’s an increase in the amount of work that has to be put into games, i.e. they are making developers do more work for no reason. It’s not financially viable for Epic or they seem to believe so.
I actually have no problem with the idea of paying once myself for the subscription for games that use Unreal. But it is not affordable for most people, I don’t think.
I was reading thread: https://forums.unrealengine./showthread.php?2605-Tutorial-Generating-custom-static-meshes-at-Editor-run-time&highlight=fbx+runtime
You mention a “Make Your Own Game” game. The EULA prohibits using UE4 to make a game/product that permits the creation of standalone products/games unless it is distributed only to UE4 licensees and not the general public.
If you make your own in-game editor, you can redistribute it to the general public (so long as it doesn’t permit the creation of standalone games) if it’s not based on Epic’s tools. Think of a Little Big Planet style in-game editor; that’s fine.
Using FBX importer in your editor would mean your editor is based on Epic’s tools (anything from /Engine/Source/Editor directory), so it would only be permitted to distribute to other licensees.
Now my last question to Epic would be what if you** didn’t** distribute the fbx importer spearately but only had it integrated(i guess still distributed?) in your game. Would they still be able to import models in your game without a license?
I think the last point in bold pretty much answers that itself, you would have to create your own FBX importer, or other importer, in order for it to be used, If it is Epic’s importer, then as it says, would only be allowable to other licensees.
@Archibold, honestly your post/opinion on the gift thing seems rather irrelevant - you’re making up problems that don’t exist. And regardless of your posts and opinion on the idea, I’d still like to know if it’s possible to get users a gift code for a month’s sub to the engine, which, unless you know the actual answer (you don’t), does not require your input.
So when they say ‘FBX importer’ they mean their own?(Epic importer)
But even if you were to make your own it would still be ‘based’ on Epic’s tools no?(you indirectly/&or/directly still need to have it connected to the engine, or am I misunderstanding what they mean?)…
The technology itself was created by Autodesk, but the way you import into UE4 (the interface, the converter that occurs behind the scenes to make the engine understand what to do with it, etc) was designed by EPIC. So long as you are not using EPIC’s import method, but instead create your own custom method as part of your game, you are ok.
Basically if you add into your game a custom way of importing models, that is your own method, and does not use the engine import functions designed by EPIC, that is allowed. To do you will need to create your own importer interface, and tell your game how to use to import models. It is a somewhat complex thing to do on your own, but it bypasses the need to use the UE4 editor to convert and create custom meshes within your game.
I am not sure if anyone here has created a system like before for UE4 (larger teams may have) so it might be a tough road to follow, but if you are creating your own map editor as well, it would be worth it for your users if you don’t wan’t them to go down the individual licence path.
Yeah it would be a great to have in your game, but for most of us smaller dev teams (like my team: just me ) it is quite a task to implement that functionality.
Using FBX would probably be the easiest file format to get all of the textures and normal maps included and showing up correctly on the mesh all in one file, but I suppose it is possible to base your custom importer off of a different file format as well such as OBJ etc. But who knows, may even make things more complex to implement, so no matter what there doesn’t seem to be any shortcuts currently without the engine licencing.
Would be interested to hear if anyone has done in UE4 though!
If I have to do it in a manual way where I just direct them to the UE site and such, so be it, but it’d be way nicer to be able to get a prepaid code to give them instead.