Before we start i know there will be bias in this forum so ideally i would like to hear from people with experience in both engines, or at least a logical and reasoned approach.
Ive done some prototyping in unity and UE4 for this game and here is what i found.
For the past few years i have been developing in Unity so im very comfortable with using that engine, coding, general usage etc. I started with UE4 when it was called Rocket and switched to Unity from UE4 at around 4.0something due to engine bugs and heavy resource usage.
Using the latest UE4 build i see most of those problems are fixed. it runs so much better now. However, a lot of the core programming and blueprint stuff has changed significantly so it means essentially starting again to learn the engine.
BUT, it just looks so much better in terms of graphics.
Unity
pros,
i know how to do pretty much anything.
it runs on lower end systems.
cons,
even with HDRP it looks outdated.
decent assets are expensive.
UE4
pros,
It looks amazing.
access to very high quality assets through quixel.
cons,
relatively high end system required.
a lot of time will be taken re-learning the engine.
Thats where i am at right now. Is it worth the extra time it will take to use UE4 to make a better looking game for a lower cost.
PC? UE4 is worth a try, and I would expect it to give you less trouble, no need to bother with choosing 1 of 3 rendering pipelines or really any issues at all between versions, no reliance on external plugins to add in features either, Just load the engine and get making stuff.
Mobile? Unity, or maybe godot without a doubt. UE4 mobile has been kinda abandoned. If your experienced with UE4 you can force mobile to work, but dont expect it to not fight against you unless you know and work around its very low limits.
thanks for the replies. its a PC game.
render pipelines and plugins is really a non issue with unity.
because the game is quite an abstract concept a super realistic visual style will add so much to the gameplay experience.
The âfeaturesâ of both engines out of the box is easily enough.
the main question is: do i âwasteâ time re-learning UE4 for better graphics or is the slightly under par visual quality of unity worth the sacrifice.
I doubt you need more than a month to learn unreal unless you are trying to do something very complicated and out of teh ordinary.
If you will be experimenting a lot with art and want realistic visuals, unreal makes it faster and easier.
If you are already know exactly what you want to do and are certain you wont need to do a lot of experimentation in the art department, perhaps stick with what you know.
With unity and its fractured rendering pipelines Iâm afraid youâll run into issues I and many others have faced. You are able to get 3 things working at the expense of 5 others. In other words, to get a full suite of modern rendering options wont be possible. Youâll be forced to compromise.
Besides that, iteration and experimentation will be stymied because of poor editor performance when dealing with anything non-mobile level.
Again, just my experience but I have actually developed the same project in both engines.
I would stay with that, what is most comfortable to you. You can achieve much better quality if you know what to do. The time to learn a new engine can be huge, if you donât only use the basics. If you are really using engines for a longer time I suppose that you are in more complicated things like clicking something together and at that level you will need time to bring everything to the same knowledge standards which you are used to in Unity.
I came from UDK (unreal engine 3) and have several years experience with UE4. Its not that i will be starting from zero but so much has changed since i last used UE4 it will take time to learn those changes.
Although the game is complicated and out of the ordinary its bringing together several things i have done before in both engines. @BIGTIMEMASTER i know what you mean about compromise specially with HDRP
To add my 2 cents, when I was first deciding on Unity vs UE4 I did some experiments creating identical scenes in both. This was 6-ish years ago and both engines have made significant changes and advancements so this is a bit dated, but my impression echos much of what has already been said. For mobile, Unity definitely has the edge, but I have released UE4 mobile games with some aggressive optimizing. For high end, I would give that to UE4. It seems that in many cases, itâs possible to achieve high-end with Unity and low-end with UE4, but they default to opposite ends of the spectrum.
As I said, my experience with Unity was the exact opposite of UE4. Again, my information is dated now, but to get something looking like a UE4 demo with similar editor features, you spend a lot of money on plugins in addition to the base cost of Unity. I know that some people dislike the monetary licensing scheme that Epic Games has chosen, but honestly, if I make $1M on a game because their tool helped me out, I would be honored to hand over my 5% to them. And if you still dislike that, there are custom licensing options.
I recently spent a month profiling and setting up user graphics options, but I can now get our commercial simulation software operating at 30fps on machines that are over a decade old with only basic video cards, and over 95% of my code is still in blueprints! I have no doubt that at the low-end Unity would likely be more performant, but Iâm not sure I personally would have the capability to make Unity achieve the same visual quality at the high-end that I basically get by default with UE4.
My project started in unity. The graphics looked significantly worse and performance in build was barely passable (like 30fps on medium level pcâs). Editor performance was the real problem though - it was exceedingly slow to the point I hated working on the project.
Fast forward to UE4 and, like quooted, my project is 100% blueprints. Graphics look several tiers closer to AAA than had been in unity, and staying above 60fps plus I have had users with old potato hardware be able to run and play the game as well.
Iâve made standard optimizations any 3d artist knows to do but there is still plenty more that can be done.
Most importantly, editor performance is lightning fast in ue4. Just hasnt become an issue at all. To me, that is all the difference in the world. Kinda hard to work when you got to wait for every little thing.
Now, big caveats is that my project has all dynamic lighting, large open world, and heavy amount of overdraw from foliage assets. So itâs project by project experience but such has been mine. I actually wrote an article about it here: Unity versus Unreal â LANDNAV (landnavgame.com)
I know Iâve said a lot about this but I lost six thousand dollars and six months trying to make this project in unity because people with much more experience than me told me it wouldnt be a problem. But honestly, I dont think even a well funded team could easily make this project in unity, whereas as a soloist Iâve done nearly all of the work myself without issues in ue4. Itâs not that the project is complicated, just that when it comes to modern open world tools needed to make a game, Unreal has them and they work. Unity has a few things you can get on asset store, but quality is variable and getting lots of third party things to work together is like herding cats. Youâll lose blood.
So I dont buy the âthey are basically teh same, just a matter of preferenceâ argument. They are quite different tools and the development time youâll gain or lose can be dramatically different based on what sort of project you are creating.
interesting. thanks everyone. @BIGTIMEMASTER good article.
the reason im considering UE4 is because of those battles to make unity look half way decent. I spent a few weeks prototyping my game with unity. i tried all the render pipelines running into fairly huge issues with each one and still not getting a reasonable result.
UE4 has that aspect covered out the box.
@MostHost_LA does remind me of âthe Epic wayâ though. bring out a fancy new feature nobody wants that doesnt work properly breaking a few other things in the process, then abandon it and move on to the next fancy new feature. rinse and repeat.
it this really still an issue or do most things work ok?
the game mechanics are complicated and unusual but thats entirely down to me and previous tests show can be achieved in either engine.
Alwayws an issue. 4.18 and 4.22 work somewhat Ok.
Still not good enough for any professional work without dedicating a 3 people team to fix engine issues.
.27 chaos (source build) is interesting, in that itâs been an improvement over any of the launcher trash epic released in the past year or so.
As far as chaos goes, its also trash.
If you plan on relying on physics for anytning at all, go with an engine that supports HavokâŚ
Donât hear at that guy. He is only hating in this forum the whole time. There are many really good things i the engine and it is one of the most used once in the industry. He doesnât like it and every of his posts are the same type. There are always some things not perfect in such a huge product. This is normalâŚ
Greetings everyone; I hope you all are having a wonderful day! Please be mindful to keep discussions on the topic, but more importantly, letâs remember to be respectful to one another and their opinions. Iâm new around here and havenât talked with any of you personally, but I can tell your support for the Unreal Engine is spirited, or else you wouldnât be here speaking your opinions so passionately.
With that said, I hope you all can continue helping @tegleg decide what engine is best to use for the results they are trying to achieve cordially.
ok the version tag thing is preventing me from asking a question
is there a way to âturn downâ the reaction when the standard character reacts with physics based objects?
example,
in reality a person at walking speed hitting a box - the box would slightly move out of the way and the person would do nothing or slow down slightly.
in UE4 a character at walking speed hitting a box - the box pings at tremendous velocity to the other side of the map and the character âlevitatesâ slowly upwards indefinitely.
how do i fix this?
thanks
EDIT: for anyone else finding this its in character movement component - physics interactions. turn everything down to 0.01
try scaling the Z of those boxes so the player can step up onto it.
it will only take 2 or 3 attempts and the character and/or the box will go to the moon.
