So a fair few talented unreal engine developers have come from the Unity3D community - myself included.
With that said - Why did you leave Unity3D behind?
I will start this thread with the three major reasons why I left.
I am primarily an 3D artist - Unity did not offer allot of control for what I wanted to do at the time. Unreal Engine 4 provides allot of Control for both artists and programmers. Not to mention that features would be incomplete or just unfinished.
Community - The Unity3D community always has made me feel like crud. No matter what I did. No matter how hard I tried the community made me feel dumb, stupid or just overall bad.
Lack of moderation - With the above said - Lack of moderation by the moderation staff over at the Unity3D forums. Moderation staff would āLikeā posts that are down right offensive towards newbies and people still learning. Similar to this one.
I left Unity3D because, while I like the engine, I was getting a bit bored of how far behind its features were lacking in th free version, the pro is far too expensive to buy even just for a month 100+ is too much.
I like UE4ās features, its community is amazing and willing to help you out and because with Unity3D its community is a bit harsh (no offense to current unity3D devs)
Well, I made my first game in UDK, my second in Unity and my third will be made in UE4. The reasoning behind why I switched back to Unreal is pretty simple. Unity only has one advantage, making Prototypes or even Alphas in it is faster and easier.
There is just one problem with that, you canāt sell Prototypes and (argueably) Alphas on Steam. And past the Alpha stage Unity failed me in all ways imaginable. Iām a visual scripter, not a programmer, so I used Playmaker which is a third party asset that had itās own share of bugs (dat global object var corruption o.0 ) that made it challenging to get the game out of Alpha state. Trying to make the game look and polished was an uphill battle for me. Partly because the post process effects are locked behind the Pro paywall and partly because even the highest rated assets in the store are justā¦ not that good. Again fixing them up into something useable took almost more time than just making it from scratch in Unreal with Kismet/Blueprint.
Another problem that I completely underestimated is that Unity is often used for mass production of games which means itās harder to get attention for your project in a pile of flappy bird clones. Since UE4 is much more accessible than UDK I see this problem comming here as well, but to a much much lesser extend. Iām confident about this because the Unreal community is !
A big advantage of UE4 is its rapid development, from the Beta version I tried to 4.0 was a big step and now 4.0 to 4.5 feels much better again for such a short timeframe. The Unity 4 updates released in that timeframe are kind of laughable in comparison since they adressed none of the core issues the engine had. (Presumably they will be adressed in 5.0, so devs can pay for that.)
With Unity I often had to pay for core features like the material editor (Shaderforge), then struggle with plugin compatibilty just to end up with inferior quality. While in UE4 I click on a button, or a checkbox and I have exactly what I need.
Obviously UE4 is far from flawless. Unitys dynamic lighting system was what made me switch and I think itās still better than UE4s. Getting good performance in the Unreal Engine is a constant struggle for the kind of games I make.
Whereas in Unity I started with 1000FPS and ended up with like 200FPS after adding loads of enemies and dynamically lit objects. The same scene would have abysmal performance in UE4.
Then again you canāt sell a game based on the fact that it runs at 200FPS, so that makes the decision to choose UE4 easier.
Additionally I get lots of free stuff (not sure if we are allowed to say what) and support from Epic.
All I got from Unity Technologies is some free drinks and the offer to just pay $750 for Pro from a representative who had too many of those drinks. No thanks.
There is so much potential with all 3 of the engines; UnrealEngine4, Cryengine, Unity3DPro, just UE4 really drove the nail on the head flush with the board, unity drove the nail in but it was loose, and cryengine drove it in halfway and bent.
I was using those three engines at the same time about year ago, UE4 Beta, Cryengine, and Unity3DPro doing some prototyping for a few game ideas i have and all were great but UE4 Beta blew them all out of the water by the pricing and what they have to offer, AND it was in a beta phase! The time in which i could develop something for Cryengine or Unity3DPro i could do twice or even thrice the amount of work in UE4. I didnāt like the fact Unity3DPro was primarily a scripting platform and programming Cryengine was really hard to get any help with, although once i found some help and figured stuff out it seemed everything just kept getting weirder. it really boiled down to what i was paying for and what I was getting. With cryengine, you get allot and pay a little but also you get little help. Unity3DPro it seems you pay allot and get a little and then keep paying for extra stuff that should have been included with the original version and still have to maintain it yourself essentially, with ue4 you pay a little, get allot and you get allot of help, even from the devs. All in all, the quick time in which i could get stuff running in ue4 and have it look fairly decent, i was just getting other things barely setup in Cryengine and Unity3DPro. The visual scripting element was a huge deciding factor as well, but really i donāt even use it much, only for prototyping stuff, then program it based off of those blueprints; I love that. I was also familiar with the UDK class hierarchy already and i felt it was the right choice for the kinds of games i wanted to make plus the UE4 templates and free marketplace stuff. Itās just a win win win for me.
Mainly, it was because I donāt like using and setting up materials in Unity. Something about it just bothers me, I like UEās way of doing it much better. Oh, and I like the metalness/roughness way of doing PBR much better than Specular/Gloss. And you know, UE4 has a lot of other stuff vs Unity, but I donāt deal with that stuff as much.
The material editor is one of the biggest reasons I like Unreal better. And the lighting, it just works even though you still have to deal with lightmaps. Though we are still using Unity for a project at work. One of the big advantages for Unity is the asset storeāwe needed several things that neither engine have, like touch screen support and I wouldnāt have been able to figure out how to add it by myself but luckily thereās a plugin for Unity. But as people have said, you have to get some things from there as standard features, like a UI system (NGUI) while Unreal already has the essential things.
I started with blender game engine, wich is fun, becouse its total trash, but it can be programmed with nodes, wich is a good intro, and also you crate the 3d models on the same program, wich is useful. Ive worked the most with UDK, and learnt unity for a contracts. And i didnt really liked unity a lot, i just feel its way too barebones, and at the moment you need something a bit complex, you better do everything yourself. going to that point, i almost prefer to create my own engine with OGRE than using Unity.
As a gamer that loves Dungeons and Dragons I played through Neverwinter Nights 1 and found that they included a toolset which also included multiplayer. NWScript looked similar to C/C++ and was very powerful. I started learning it and was hooked. Made a Middle Earth module that has been copied many times and modified from the NWVault. That lasted roughly nine years then tried Neverwinter Nights 2ā¦which had a better toolset and easier coding but so many things that needed to be worked around to get to work that worked perfectly in NWN1. NWN1 needed a graphics updateā¦and I am going to do it!
I found nothing except Unity3D really to at least attempt to replace the NWN1 Toolsetā¦which is what I want to design. Interiors 10m x 10m snap together to form interesting dungeons, houses, castlesā¦whatever. With Unity3D it had basically NOTHING included. So Pro Grids and Pro Builder and Playmaker andā¦Blah Blah Blahā¦purchase from the Asset Store. Then making each work together! Gawds this makes me sick up! Then you get everything working togetherā¦install the latest Updates from each/any devās assets and now something is broken again! Ask a dev a question and receive no answer or perhaps the standard answer being āRead the Docsāā¦whichā¦Are NOT Updated for THIS UPDATE! Gawds! Not to mention the Asset Store can be really random quality with coding related assetsā¦requiring more code fixing!
So now I have been working in UE4 and it simply works. Almost everything is includedā¦I certainly miss NGUI though! I have been transferring NWScript coding into Blueprints and all is working perfectly (BPs take awhile to make)ā¦and I have not coded any C++. At this point I am positive that having a NWN1 style toolset envisioned in UE4 is very very possible. I am certain there will be something that does not function but when it happens with you lot and Epicās amazing helpers will have something in mind for it.
It is absolutely striking how very different the approach to this is between Unity and UE4. I also very much love all the polish in the UE4 interface as wellā¦Unity is simplyā¦blah. I get all this UE4 for 20 US?
One last example. Using World Machine and making a heightmap to import into each UE4 and Unity3D is much simpler in UE4. Plop in the colour map on top of it and start painting veggies in UE4. In Unity3D I need TerrainComposer and RTPv3 to make an equivalent quality map. Even though they are both super amazing they take a lot of time to get the colours to overlay properly and shaders to work properly. Not to mention if you are using the Free Unity then you will be missing a lot.
Edit Update:
Since working in UE4 and Unity side by side I am on the fence and leaning towards Unity. For all the polish of the UE4 UI and the code source once I got past that part the sparkles dulled. Blueprints are much improved over Playmaker but takes so bloody long to be productive. So switching to C++ to take care of things is like pulling teeth with the ridiculously slow Visual Studio. Then in UE4 the Compiling Shadersā¦gawds!..every time you change ONE PIN or PARAMETERā¦Compiling Shaders. Give us a Compile Button! I guess I have been spoiled with how quickly NWN 1 & 2 (NWScript) and Unity (Mono) code and compile. Then there the materialsā¦very complex things can be done with themā¦which is very niceā¦but doing something seemingly simple like Diffuse, Normal Map, AO, Specularity from textures yields terrible results. No Noā¦you MUST multiply this and that added to that then combine these 4 textures THEN plug it into Colour. Fāing really? So much for that.
UE4 is a very nice engine but I shall pass on it. Especially since my personal Unity has all the necessary assets to make it a complete engine.
Community - I was literally afraid to ask questions because of earlier experience. When I was newbie I posted questions here and there and got ridiculed so hard I was ****** up for a week
Crippled Engine - I think at some point Unity devs decided to intentionally cripple engine to push their asset store. Engine lacks very basic features for modern game development - decent level editing tools, A* path finding, templates to get you started and etc. Yes, everything is available on asset store but costs fortune
I hope EPIC NEVER intentionally cripples their engine just for the sake of a few more salesā¦ Since we are going in that direction now with the marketplace.
I would also have to agree with the community bit.
I donāt have much experience with Unity, I just played with it for a while to make some structure and architecture stuff. I donāt know programming so for me it was difficult to get to functional things.
With UE4 I donāt have ANY problems at all, Blueprints are just a blessing and I can do much more with it than with Unity. I didnāt like that in order to take advantage of UT you really need at least 3 or 4 assets from the store to perform basic actions I can do with UE4 out of the box.
Also, when I was younger Iāve spent many hours playing Quake and Unreal and having access to UE is a teenagerās dream come true
As with many others, it came down to a few pretty basic things.
Priceā¦ of course. The free version of Unity isnāt up to snuff, and the Pro version costs a ton. In addition to that, I dislike that the engine requires their special server to work really well with version control.
As others have mentioned, you end up spending a lot of time hunting for assets to do what you need and fill in gaps left by the engine. Then you spend more time trying to integrate those assets. Sometimes you even need to integrate two, three, four etc. different asset packs together, and thatās a mountain of work. The huge list of assets seems great until you need three different ones and they all have to work together.
UE4 does a lot of the stuff I needed special third party assets for out of the box. As a C++ programmer, anything that it doesnāt do, I can add easily myself, due to the source code being included. Any game dev that has taken a project to completion knows, source code is invaluable for making sure you donāt get blocked due to some black box engine internals.
On top of those, I find UE4 way easier to work with in general. I spent a lot of time fighting with Unityās UI at times.
Blueprints are also amazingā¦ being able to debug your code, see the path of the logic etc. in real time is super valuable, as is being able to easily extend BP with new nodes (which is really dang easy).
The networking support in UE4 blows Unity out of the water. With the #2 issue above, the lack of really core networking that is easy to set up replication for is a big problem. Trying to network and integrate several code asset packs together is a nightmare.
In addition to that, a lot of stuff I want to do needed good support for APEX features - cloth, destruction etc. and UE4 has that
I should say I still think that Unity is a good engine, but for me it was never even remotely as productive as UE4 is (even at the early prototype stage, I find it vastly faster).
I quit unity because I couldnāt really get graphics right, and also that community was ridiculous, I donāt know if it still is but I remember whenever I asked a question I would be treated like ****.
I wouldnāt say I quit, I still like it to make a mobile game in a week and releasing it.
But Unreal Engine 4 is just way superior when it comes to programming. I like how easy you get scripts going in Unity, but I hate how quickly **** becomes not managable anymore, due to the dragging scripts into entities system.
Having the whole code base in front of me is just a must for bigger projects and Unity just fails in this department for me.
