Frustrated With Unity, Looking At Unreal As An Alternative

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey everyone, hope all is well on your end. =-)

About three years ago, my friend and I jumped ship on UDK, and went to Unity. There was literally nothing good about UDK: documentation was poor, the scripting was deplorable, and anything we wanted to do just could not be done.
As such, both my friend and I have a very bad taste in our mouths concerning any engine Epic puts out.

I have not done much research just yet, and I haven’t talked with my friend about this, however I would like some personal insight on if Unreal is the engine for our game. In the meantime, I’ll be researching off and on as I get time.

's the list of must-haves in an engine, things that I’ve either found extremely lacking in Unity, or are just simply things that have to be present
>Terrain tools capable of creating vast and detailed landscapes
>Networking and the ability to create an MMO-style game (this is an absolute must)
>Animation tools that are to the point and easy enough to grasp the concept of (as opposed to Mecanim, which has its merits, but is overall a system I’m not happy with)
>The ability to create exactly what we want in the ways that we choose (IE our combat system comprises of melee, magic, and gunplay, we need an engine that will allow us to do all three)
>A scripting/programming language that’s not hard to grasp and get the hang of (I have heard the newest Unreal uses C++, is this the case across the board?)
>The ability, or at least capability, to create stunning visuals
>Quick turn-around and iteration of ideas (no jumping back and forth between programs and constantly re-importing assets just to see minor changes)
>Version control, an engine has to have its user data accessible to things such as Bitbucket
>Fully featured (essentially not having to buy assets just to get a feature the engine should have)
>Reasonable licensing terms for commercial usage
>Good documentation on every feature of the engine, including any sort of documentation needed for writing engine-specific code

I have huge reservations even posting for feedback due to how poor our experience was in the past, but it has been quite a few years since then, and I feel our game is worth me being open-minded about these sorts of things.
So, given what I’ve said so far, do you think that Unreal could fill, or even overfill, our wants and needs?

Thanks for your time, and take care!
Oh, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. =-)

2

Pretty much everything you have lister is applicable for UE4, except for scripting BUT there is Skookum Script which is v. fast and v. good plugin and Nexon have a free UnrealJS plugin. No C# or Lua though.

3

>Terrain tools capable of creating vast and detailed landscapes

Check out the kite demo, look into level streaming and the hopefully upcoming origin shifting.

** >Networking and the ability to create an MMO-style game (this is an absolute must)**

There is no limitation on clients, but the default networking has no special case handling for MMO-style games.
With full C++ access, nothing stops you modifying, enhancing or outright replacing the existing network solution as required.
You can always check out he MMO Starter Kit too.

>Animation tools that are to the point and easy enough to grasp the concept of (as opposed to Mecanim, which has its merits, but is overall a system I’m not happy with)

UE4 uses the FBX format for raw files.
Retargeting support is built in.
The animation Blueprint system is powerful and continues to be improved upon.
Third party plugins exist to enhance it further with more robust IK and the like.

**>The ability to create exactly what we want in the ways that we choose (IE our combat system comprises of melee, magic, and gunplay, we need an engine that will allow us to do all three)
**
If you can program it, you can create it.

>A scripting/programming language that’s not hard to grasp and get the hang of (I have heard the newest Unreal uses C++, is this the case across the board?)

Depends on what you define as “scripting”.

There are some plugins that add support for JavaScript and one for Skookum.
If you’re talking about C#, F# or <insert some other scripting languages >, no.

If you’re talking visual scripting, Blueprints have you covered.
The vast majority of content on the marketplace with any kind of programming is Blueprint based.
The vast majority of tutorials with any kind of programming is Blueprint based.

C++ should be used when you simply cannot do something with a Blueprint or raw speed is required, though nothing stops you from prototyping everything in Blueprints first.

>The ability, or at least capability, to create stunning visuals

You get what you put in or pay someone else to put in :slight_smile:

>Quick turn-around and iteration of ideas (no jumping back and forth between programs and constantly re-importing assets just to see minor changes)

I’m pretty sure you can rig up the editor to auto-reimport files, though I haven’t used it (I mostly code).

The UE4 editor is not a model or animation creation package, so you’re still going to need other programs to create content.

Blueprints can be edited, compiled & debugged in-editor, which is nice.

C++ can be recompiled in-editor too, which is also nice.
You can get Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition for free and it can be used to compile any C++ changes (game or engine) and debugging.

To give you some idea of quick iterations, we debugged an issue last night.
If it was a Blueprint or minor content change, its took a few seconds to use P4V to sync the changes.
If it was a C++ change, then it took 5-6 minutes.

“5 to 6 minutes? That’s crazy!”
Keep in mind that this was 5-6 minutes when it was a C++ change the server required for us to test online from multiple locations across the planet.
I live near Melbourne, Australia and don’t have have an ADSL2 connection, let alone a fiber or business-class one.
The server is in New York and the other guy I was testing with is in Columbus Ohio.
The longest part of the whole process was waiting for the server to compile, as it lacks a bit in terms of raw compiling power (needs more RAM & cores).

>Version control, an engine has to have its user data accessible to things such as Bitbucket

Several version control solutions are supported and there is documentation and tutorials floating around on how to use them.
We use Perforce for both C++ & content.
VS2015 handles all the C++ related changes.
The UE4 editor handles all the content related changes.

>Fully featured (essentially not having to buy assets just to get a feature the engine should have)

Define “feature the engine should have”?
UE4 lacks a proper real time GI solution out of the box.
This is a must for some people while others don’t give a proverbial.

** >Reasonable licensing terms for commercial usage**

5% royalty unless or talk to Epic about custom licensing.

>Good documentation on every feature of the engine, including any sort of documentation needed for writing engine-specific code

There will never be enough documentation and there will always be documentation that is missing or out of date.
Welcome to game development :slight_smile:

4

Hello. Yes the latest version(s) of UE4 are amazing and definitely worth your time to look at now. Do your research and you’ll see what I mean.

I started with Unity a long long time ago when they first came out. A couple years ago changed to UE4; and recently took a look at Unity 5 and decided to keep with UE4.

Checkout Epic’s YouTube channel for some great videos that will quickly show you some of the things you’re looking to compare. Also their Twitch feed. In a short time you’ll get a really good idea of how different things are now from when you last were into UDK. Compared to then UE4 is very different. https://.youtube.com/user/UnrealDevelopmentKit/playlists
Also for some quick bite-sized examples to give you more of an impression, this guy has popular, quality videos: https://.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwqnA65RFUf-8xIFQYV8Zjziv4gUqjLZ_

I completely agree about Mecanim. UE4’s Persona and Animation Blueprint stuff rocks.

This may be helpful to you: Unreal Engine for Unity Developers | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation

I feel between Unity and UE4 the licensing is different, but honestly if you’re paying for the larger pro tier unity editor I’d seriously consider UE4. This was my logic for my case: For the Unity Pro version it’ll cost $1500 per year. Even if you don’t make a dime from your games. Each year $1.5k. Unless you’re one of the top rare hidden gem success stories, your game may not even pull in that much in a year to cover the cost of the engine. On the other hand if you’re using UE4 and don’t make a dime, you pay nothing. If the game starts to make some money but doesn’t break $3000 in the current quarter of the year you still pay nothing. When the next quarter starts, the “clock is reset” so-to-speak and the previous money earned is not a factor so if the game makes more but still doesn’t break $3k in that quarter’s earnings you still pay nothing. You’ve made some money overall and still paid zero. Let say in the 3rd quarter you finally break $3k and have made it up to $5k just in that 3rd quarter. Now you owe some money to Epic… 5% of that quarter’s money that was above $3k. Which is 5% of $2k and equals a whopping $100. Not that big a deal in the long run. And all that is independent per game. So if game#2 just earns money now and again, then stops making money for a while, then makes some money… none of that game#2 money is factored into game#1’s calculations at all. I believe those licensing regulations are also in effect for as long as the game is out there in the market. I think you’d have to make $30k above $3k in a quarter to have to pay epic the equivalent unity pro cost of $1500. That’s a nice problem to have.

As far as C++ goes, yes. UE4 core engine code is rooted in C++. They’ve added custom macro code to help their engine do some useful and needed magic. So off and on there may be some non-standard C++ stuff you’ll see that may be odd to traditional C++ coders; but two things to think about there… 1) UE4 has Blueprint. An amazingly powerful, super easy-to-get-into system that may alleviate your need to even do C++ coding depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. 2) Once you get your feet wet with how to do things in C++ it’s not more “difficult” than C# or UnityScript/JavaScript it’s just “different”. C++ code executes fast. Period. Blueprint is super easy and quick to get working. The combination of the two really does give you great flexibility.

I can’t speak to the MMO and network capabilities personally, but I’ve seen these: https://.youtube.com/results?search_query=ue4+networking

Yes, UE4 is much more fully featured with built-in capability you’d find yourself having to buy Unity asset store stuff to equate to what UE4 provides out-of-the-box.

I feel most of your bullets are met by UE4 in my opinion. Give it a run for a month or two. Can’t hurt.

5

Hey there, thanks everyone for your responses!

Anadin, I come from a C# background, but I’m certainly not opposed to learning new things. =-)

Kris, that kite demo is impressive, to say the least. I know that within Unity, you could achieve that sort of thing, but only with the right plugins or series of programs. I suppose my question then becomes “is the landscape in the kite demo all made with stock UE4 tools?” I hate sounding cheap, but I’m on a limited income, so paid assets are typically not something I can manage…
I bring up our combat system because within UDK years ago, we tried our hand at this sort of system and found it to only be suited for gunplay. So long as there is the capability to create what we need and when we need it, then UE4 may be a good fit. =-)
Hm, this blueprint system seems fascinating. I suppose when I bring up scripting, it was mainly to see if Epic has gone away from whatever (in my opinion) horrible language they used in UDK. That stuff still has the potential to give me nightmares.
As far as visuals, I would have to say I wasn’t very clear. I know that with Unity, you can create great visuals, but the problem then becomes how much you have to dig into the engine and basically warp it to your desires (at least from my experiences.) I’ve seen great things from UE4, but am not clear on how much they have readily available, and how much you have to just make up yourself.
I understand that UE4 is no Blender, for instance. As far as debugging issues, five to six minutes sounds pretty good to me. My friend and I sometimes have to spend an hour or more trying to figure out why a specific Unity feature isn’t doing what we want, and most times it seems we come away with “Unity just can’t do that.” It’s possible that Unity can do whatever it is we’re trying to do, but it’s certainly not made clear in any sort of documentation that we can find.
It sounds like version control is a non-issue, so I’ll move on.
When I say “feature an engine should have,” I would call that statement partially fact and mostly opinion. =-)
A great example is Unity’s lack of, for instance, proper terrain tools that have in-depth intuitive controls. You can make some great things, but it’ll cost you with third party assets. Don’t get me wrong, I like that you can edit Unity so thoroughly, but I feel that a fair amount of features just aren’t there. Another example concerns networking. There’s built-in networking, but it certainly isn’t something I would want to build a game on, and while there are third party assets, none of them really fit the bill, shall we say. My friend spent over $200 on an asset that advertised itself well and failed to deliver on its promises. It’s these sort of things I’m looking to avoid.
Licensing sounds incredible, and will be something I’ll look into further.
I suppose my statement about documentation was too broad in scope. I’ll go with another example: my biggest sticking point with Unity is the fact that their documentation is great… Until you actually try to make something. They have a scripting manual, but real-world use cases? Those are few and far between, leaving us to hope the all-mighty Google can lead us to the right answer before sucking up too much of our time. I’m not opposed to searching, but I suppose I got spoiled back when I was working with XNA. There seemed to be good documentation combined with real-world examples on a fair amount of things. Unfortunately at that time, XNA was discontinued without our knowledge, so when it came time to do more advanced things, we were pretty much left without any known way to do it whatsoever, and no one was really talking about it, either.

Erling, thanks for the links!
The amount of playlists Epic has is pretty incredible. Looks like they’re of good length, too, which doesn’t mean much, but there’s at least potential for quality information. =-)
Unity has those sorts of things, but it’s almost always narrated by a robot, in such a way that only gives you an overview of the feature, but not actually how to utilize it. Much like the majority of their documentation, to be honest…
Right now, we’re on the free version of Unity, well “free,” I suppose if you want my honest opinion on it.
Your licensing example sounds quite impressive. I wasn’t honestly aware that you had to pay that much for Unity per year. That’s… Wow. I thought it was a one-time thing.
The one thing that concerns me are these non-standard C++ features. I suppose the only worrying part is how much documentation they have concerning that.

I need to do a lot more research before I can safely say UE4 is worth the jump and learning curve, but overall, everything looks promising, more promising than Unity. I’ve been coming to the realization that Unity simply isn’t the right backbone for our game, if that makes sense. It’s a great engine, and coming from an XNA/C# background, is more familiar to me. But that familiarity seems to come with the price of not having features we desperately need to make our game a reality.

I suppose it’s time to download UE4 and see what a day of work can accomplish. =-)

Thanks for your time, everyone!

6

@Hypocrita : I can relate to being a small team and lacking funds, but we’ve never been forced to buy anything due to lack of the engine/editor having it.

Take a look at the following:

This was taken by by JohnJ, located in the USA, a few hours ago during a test session.
zoombapup is crouching down with the LMG, located in the UK.
I’m holding the handgun, located in Australia.

The networking is stock.
The landscape was created in-editor.
The tool used to create the customisation UI to place all those pouches and attachments you see was created in-editor
The door, ladder, cinder block walls, wound actors, windows covers - Blueprints.
The handgun position - character animation Blueprint with offset provided by the handguns Blueprint.
Materials / shaders were all created in-editor (by us or others).

UE4 has plenty of issues and lacks dynamic GI and really robust AI system, but as far as all these basic features, you’re covered.

7

I’m fairly sure they used World Machine, that said if you already have height(or other) maps etc then it wouldn’t be an issue.
You don’t need to use something like WM to make great looking landscapes, but it may save some time.

8

Kris, you mention the lack of a robust AI system, are there at least solutions to enhance what’s already there? The only comparison for what we want to achieve with our game is something akin to Skyrim, IE a world that feels lived in, so we would need an AI system that can manage that (apologies if I didn’t mention the AI system bit before, honestly it’s a bit hard to keep everything straight.)

Xerithas, I looked into World Machine, it looks promising, but its restrictions on size in the free version make it a little less than ideal, unfortunately. Either way, it looks like a good product, one that I’ll need to look into a bit more.

Overall, my friend and I have a lot of ideas we want to implement, albeit over time, so any engine we use needs to either have the capacity to grow with us, or have any features we would need out of the box (the latter probably being unrealistic.) UE4 seems promising, and is worth at least trying out. I’m not sure it will be the engine for our game, or for us, but it never hurts to investigate. =-)

9

I had done some research a while back on the Unity vs Unreal …
2 of my employees came from “hardcore” Unity dev work

The summery of the matchup: Use unity if you want to make “2D linear based games”. Use Unreal if you want to make open world 3D games.

Really it boils down to that. Unity has more “assets” that you can buy. Thats fine n dandy. The limitations, are, as you already noted. Unreal has its ups n downs, but, honestly, the community is what makes this infinity times better.

Both engines are lacking in the ability to “click win” on game creation. Its just not going to happen. I think Unreal exceeds anyones expectations, plus, if you want an MMO - as stated - check out the MMO kit. It literally has everything you would need for a base-line setup.

it always ends up sounds like one of those Apple vs. Android discussions lol …

3D massive world = Unreal
Linear/Small world 2D = Unity

10

As far as your basic MMO-syle AI or even even what you see in Skyrim, you’re covered, as long as you put the effort in.
I’m talking about AI more akin to Swat4, where the AI know how to stack up on doors, clear rooms, coordinate as a team etc.

11

I was in the same boat with you.
UDK was not good enough, and I switched to Unity. I was able to make a couple of games with it, some which are playable.
UE4 was more of what I wanted.

Unreal engine is a GAME engine. Off the bat you get a character controller, game mode controller, AI controller (which more than just pathfinding) and much more.

It’s modules/components make designing much more easier than Unity3D.

12

I think UE4 can do that. I’m going to test it with the Paper 2D learning tutorial.
I will output it to HTML 5 and Android and see how it works.

13

If you are looking for Skyrim type AI, you would need a GOAP like or behavior tree system. Both are good solutions.

14

I was roaming the Microsoft documentation site concerning their .net stuff and I was (am) impressed with the documentation. If UE4 could get that level of documentation for their API…wow! They say they are in the process of improving it, but I fear that its not quite the focus that it should be.

teak

15

This is something I would not expect to come default though.

16

You don’t need to use plugins from the Marketplace to make UE4 work, it comes with everything needed, unlike Unity.

I saw it mentioned that the AI was lacking, but I really disagree. I’ve done quite a bit with AI in UE4. The Behavior System is complete and you can make what ever you want from it, or you are free to make your own system from scratch. If it did have something that was like a particular game allready it would be worse, because then people would be complaining that you can only have AI for game type X ( Swat or whatever it was that was compared to. ) It is very general purpose as it is now and you can do whatever you want with it.

Documentation will always be a bit behind features, that’s just a reality.

You can script in Blueprints, and then just set them to compile to C++ which gives you more performance if C++ is too much for you.

17

>Terrain tools capable of creating vast and detailed landscapes

UE4 is great!

>Networking and the ability to create an MMO-style game (this is an absolute must)

No engine will give you out of the box MMO capability, especially if you want to shard physics across servers.
Expect to spend significant effort on this, to bend any kind of engine to what you want gameplay to be.
Also, you have to think long and hard about server-side physics, cost versus benefit. If you do NOT want server-side physics, then the Unreal networking doesn’t help you at all.

>Animation tools that are to the point and easy enough to grasp the concept of (as opposed to Mecanim, which has its merits, but is overall a system I’m not happy with)

Animation is a very complex area; it’s not possible to build simple tools for it without locking you out of a bunch of things you’ll eventually want to do.
Unreal has fine animation controls, along a number of axes, and it supports animation re-targeting between skeletons, so it does well as far as game engines go, but no engine will solve “make animation easy.”

>The ability to create exactly what we want in the ways that we choose (IE our combat system comprises of melee, magic, and gunplay, we need an engine that will allow us to do all three)

Unreal has no problem with this. If you need to rip out some C++ and replace it, you can do that, too – you get access to the source code and can run a custom build if you want to. Or just write your own code that’s part of your game.

>A scripting/programming language that’s not hard to grasp and get the hang of (I have heard the newest Unreal uses C++, is this the case across the board?)

It’s C++ for “heavy lifting” stuff, and Blueprints (drag-and-drop) for shaders, AI, and simpler gameplay.
If you do not have a C++ programmer, though, and want to build an MMO, you’re probably screwed. Sorry.

>The ability, or at least capability, to create stunning visuals

UE4, yes.

>Quick turn-around and iteration of ideas (no jumping back and forth between programs and constantly re-importing assets just to see minor changes)

If you want to make a change to a mesh or a texture, you have to do that in Max/Maya and Photoshop, and press the “re-import this asset” button.
The only modern engine in the marketplace that does better, as far as I know, is Autodesk Stingray, assuming you model in Maya.
For simple changes in gameplay (more hitpoints, move a tree, tweak the light color, or whatever) you stay in the editor, though.

>Version control, an engine has to have its user data accessible to things such as Bitbucket

UE4 has this. I recommend Git, but others like Perforce or whatever.

>Fully featured (essentially not having to buy assets just to get a feature the engine should have)

UE4 has this.

>Reasonable licensing terms for commercial usage

Free to use, 5% royalty of gross selling price when you ship. Other terms available by negotiation.

>Good documentation on every feature of the engine, including any sort of documentation needed for writing engine-specific code

The interfaces are reasonably well documented. You will have to spend time learning how the different pieces fit together, though, because there are so many systems, and writing “'s how system X fits in with system Y” for all combinations X/Y is not a tractable documentation job.
Again: If you don’t have a decent C++ programmer who’s familiar with Visual Studio and code browsing, you may be in for some pain.
If, however, you are okay in that world, UE4 seems like one of the better matches on the market. (Nothing will be even close to a perfect match, though.)

18

Hey all, hope you don’t mind me not addressing all the points from everyone!
So many good points and so much to think about, though. =-)

Currently, with everything I’m reading so far, I think it best that we stay with Unity until we at least have our first alpha release. At that time, we’ll definitely need to sit down and make sure we want to stick with Unity, ensure its licensing is what we need, etc.
The reason I’m thinking along those lines is that, well, he and I have been at this for probably five years now, maybe even six, and a release of some sort is desperately needed to keep our spirits up. Literally since the start of our 3D adventures, it’s been one roadblock after another. That’s why it’s taken so long for us to get as far as we have. If it wasn’t innumerable issues with XNA 3D, it was UDK. If it wasn’t UDK, it was Unity’s lack of features. If it wasn’t that, it was just our own bumbling about.
To introduce a completely new engine and many new workflows into the mix now would be foolish, I think.

That all aside, I’ll definitely be keeping UE4 in the back of my mind. I’m more thinking it has what we and the game need than Unity.

I suppose that’s all that needs to be said at this time.
Thanks again for your all your input, everyone!

19

Yeah, having to re-learn a whole pipeline when so much time was already put in production is counterproductive. Consider it for your next Project maybe; it’s really Worth an in-depth look! UE4 is awesome and robust, with its flaws, just like any other engine, but very Worth it. Great thing Unreal decided to go free as well so we all have easy access to it. I also came from Unity not long ago and so far have not regretted it.

Good luck! And more important, get this game done, whatever engine it is! Reduce the scope, cut features, put it out in the wild! =)

Keep it up!

20

Hey, thanks for your thoughts!

I figured I would do a little update post as some may be curious as to what was decided when I finally brought this up with my friend.
We basically looked at what we had, what we were running into with Unity, and decided that UE4 was worth a try. That was around a week and a half ago. Since then, I’ve worked almost non-stop doing crash course learning of the engine and its features, seeing what can be accomplished with its toolset as opposed to Unity’s.

What I found out was, and still is, surprising.

First off, I would not call UE4 a beginner’s engine. I feel that without previous experience in Unity, I would have been completely at a loss as to what I was doing.
I also have found its visual scripting to be honestly quite astounding. I’m more a visual person, and this feature has really saved me a fair few times already. If I was stuck only doing code, like I was in Unity, then all in all I would have been out of luck, getting almost nowhere.

Visually-speaking, the user interfaces are great, and, concerning gameplay visuals, you can make great-looking things with UE4 with just a bare minimum of knowledge. I hated having to dive into so much of the nuances of why things look the way they do, and when they look that why, and so on, that I honestly had given up with making the game look the way I had envisioned it inside of Unity. Not so with UE4.

I’ve also been surprised with just how much official content is out there. Yes, there are videos, which Unity had, but those videos are accompanied with source, which is just amazing. Fully featured projects ripe for tearing apart and learning from? I love that.
Also the networking, oh my the networking. The fact it’s literally just out of the box ready for you to network and make multiplayer games is just… Wow. I mean yes, it’s mostly generic and not highly specific to what my friend and I are doing, but comparing it to the hell we had with Unity… There is no comparison, really.

Then there are the tools at your disposal. From Persona to level design, to landscaping, to just everything, it feels so much more robust and flexible. It makes Unity feel more like a jack of all trades type of deal. It can do a fair amount with a large number of platforms, but when it comes to PC games, it just comes up short in so many areas. UE4, on the other hand, has felt very refreshing in this regard.

Sure, UE4 isn’t without problems, I’m not a huge fan of having to reorganize folders, for instance, and having to fix redirectors, all that stuff, but at the end of the day, its bugs or shortcomings, however you want to put it, fall into the quality of life category more so than Unity (at least that I’ve experienced so far.) Unity felt more like it lacked major necessary features, and just left me wanting something more, something better.
From the vast depths of tools, learning and otherwise, at my disposal, to the simple fact that it’s so simple to work with once you have the idea of what you’re doing, UE4 has met and exceeded all my expectations.

Now, what have I done in this week or so of power learning?
So much has been done that within another week or so, we’re looking at our first release. It’s obviously not going to be fully-fledged, I think the term is milestone alpha, but this is just huge for us. Within this week and a half, we’ve met what we did in Unity and gone past it. We had been working, on and off, with Unity for about three years at that point, and each time we got close to having something, it just fall apart. I don’t blame the engine entirely, far from it, but being honest, the engine didn’t help.
Our vision for a combat system has been realized without limitations inside of Unreal. We have fully functional locational damage. The thing is getting very close to being networked even, which is the last step before we can release this thing.
It’s just all come together so beautifully, and all in under two weeks of work.

I’m blown away, honestly. I hate to sound like I’m gushing, but it’s hard not to when so much has been done with such a little amount of time.
It’s great, is all I can really say. =-)
I don’t think he and I would be getting ready for our first release if it wasn’t for the engine switch. There were just too many hurdles with Unity.

I suppose with all that being said, to anyone on the fence, if most of your work lies outside of the engine you’re in now, like our work had been (like models, textures, ideas, etc) then definitely consider switching. At the very least, consider trying it for a week, or a few days even. I can’t say you’ll like Unreal as I have, but what I can say is you’ll be better prepared to make a well-informed decision of what works best for you and your game.

I also want to take one last moment and thank everyone on this thread for essentially helping my friend and I take the plunge. When we talked about it, I shared this thread with him, and from there, well, you see what happened. =-)

So again, thank you all, and take care!