You wouldn’t be banned from the forum for posts like this, but you have to realize that the way you worded your first post made you sound very spoiled. Spoiler alert folks: nobody here is entitled to anything.
At the end of the day forums are places for discussion, and if anybody helps you in a public forum then they are going out of their way to do so. Nobody is under any obligation to do that, just like you shouldn’t feel like you have to reply to others’ posts. We all need help at times and these forums are generally very good for it - but if you don’t get a response then I’m afraid that’s just the way it is and you have to take some initiative, experiment, and work things out for yourself. The most valuable thing you can do is share that knowledge with the community once you’ve done it, so that everybody benefits. That’s how online communities work, lots of give and take - not just take.
The documentation isn’t great and that’s a known fact, but the examples are frikkin awesome. I know tens if not hundreds of games that have shipped after being based on Epic’s ‘ShooterGame’ example. LawBreakers and ARK: Survival Evolved being two of them! The engine is very easy to pick up if you’re prepared to spend time experimenting - and experimenting is far more rewarding that following a known recipe.
Large companies do indeed pay for custom licensing and support, but they pay very large figures for that kind of support - and that’s how Epic can justify spending valuable staff time and hours on it. Epic is a business remember, not a charity. As for the money you spend on the Marketplace, in the grand scheme of things a couple of thousand dollars isn’t much to a large company - and the majority of that cash goes to other third parties, not Epic.
I think to be honest, it pays to take a step back and think about the Toolset you have in front of you. It’s taken Epic 25+ years and hundreds if not thousands of staff to build it, and you get to use it everyday for free. (5% royalty barely counts IMO, it’s almost literally nothing). 10+ years ago this kind of thing was impossible, and generally speaking if you’re not used to not having these tools around, it’s easy to come off as spoiled at times.
Anyway, I’ll keep this thread open for the time being - but y’all need to try and come back down to planet Earth a bit.
Indeed is true that not just 10+ years ago but even just a few years ago it was not possible to use professional 3D engines without paying $500,000+ for license costs at least… BUT… the market changed and all the Companies/Corporations involved did it lowering prices like never before.
And obviously medium and large software houses still paying millions of dollars for custom license and 24/7 premium support get top priority BUT … does it mean that there must be a lack of updated public documents for very small, small and poor freelance developers then?
Because why opening the market if then the smaller ones have to struggle to find out how things work in the first place due to lack of updated documents?
Obviously no one not paying for very expensive custom license and top priority support would be expecting a reply in 24 hours or even 72 hours from the staff … maybe after 1-2 weeks then would be acceptable… after some months or never would damage more Epic Games in the first place in the long run.
Why?
Because while it is true that many small developers won’t probably finish their projects anyway for whatever reasons regardless and many might not earn a lot of money… in the long run if no one helps those that might grow and earn money with their projects and become small software houses and then go up to medium size … who is losing money? Epic Games in the first place. And clearly the poor developers that would have to rethink their life and stop developing their own projects by themselves.
Epic Games of course is far from a charity BUT they made UnrealEngine4 “free” with a 5% royalty fee for what exactly then? Was that just a marketing thing to look better than competitors and that’s it ?
Or would Epic Games want that as many small developers as possible using their UE4 can manage to create as many successful products as possible to collect fee on and that maybe some of those could even manage to become medium software houses able to then afford paying for expensive custom license and premium support?
I hope Epic Games did it as a medium to long term investment to build up a new generation of small and medium software houses committed to using UE4 for their growing business. Otherwise it would be a disappointment and a bad mistake from Epic Games itself. Yes big software houses can pay a lot of money now but what if some of those switch to competitors, build their own 3D engine or go bankrupt for whatever reason? Even losing a few of those would mean losing a lot of money all of a sudden… so building up a new generation of small and medium software houses as a long term plan strategy would be the best bet business wise. Or not?
In my experience, questions like this often go unanswered for this very reason - they are pretty basic.
For instance, when I google’d unreal engine 4 simple hit reaction, I quickly founds multiple links to this very forum and the answer hub about creating a hit reaction system.
If you can Google what you’re looking for and find pages of links about it, chances are you do not need to ask on the forums.
Nicely put man I just joined being happy as ■■■■ to see that UE4 Engine was free with only successful licensing 5% royalties or something. The fact that you can design your own models for free is great let alone tons of free open source projects that people release or make with the same tools that are crossplatforma most of the time… Too lucky, we’re not worthy lol. This puts an end to my struggle search which honestly only started yesterday when I said might as well start developing games with easy software tools because I’ve played them all my life as a hardcore gamer playing Mortal Online and Ark on hardcore etc I want to target that audience and essentially idk make a better Mortal Online type game eventually…
No one asked you to spend X amount of money on software to fail in acquiring the software or knowledge of said software purchased to do what you want to do… You could probably have spent 0 dollars and achieved this with the right mentality… This attitude and behaviorism is a losing battle in life because there isn’t an issue unless you make it an issue. Happier you better product… If you hate your job you are probably going to make ■■■■■■ product or just not as brilliant product in whatever field you work in… maybe not but more than likely so if you can try and change by taking this constructive criticism and run with it you will go a long way and if not you will be hindered to the same breaking points/stress/ waste of resources and time. Sensitivity isn’t considered by people just like you in the same boat and or have it worse going out of their way to help people in forums etc. Dig deeper in the software you have already purchased by learning more of the coding assets implemented and if they are open to modification/deconstruction by you and reused assuming that you have content not on UE4. Once again not trying to beat you down or make you feel like ■■■■… I just know I myself would want to go out of my way to help you quickly and be able to do it a lot easier without added nonsense that isn’t X gets you to point X to get you where you need to go type information… Well this is my first contribution to the community and I hope it helps lol now I need to learn how to code a little and design models better. Good luck malosal and SaxonRah I agree with you 100%.