So Unreal Engine can do games... but what about..?

But what about mobile apps like creating and developing my own Calculator? Can I use the Unreal Engine for that? Or what if I wanted to make my own health and fitness app for iOS or Android? Will the Unreal Engine allow me to do that as well?

Theoretically you can do that (it’s pretty easy) -> take a look at UMG :slight_smile:

yep it can do all this :slight_smile:

You can do it but its going to be pretty resource heavy

You can do everything with it. From a calculator to a full MMORPG… greetings to eXi :slight_smile:

Yes but can it make me a sandwich?

Welcome!

That’ll be one pretty calculator :wink:

Guess I didn’t consider that being built with the Unreal engine that whatever device the app runs on would be a resource hog (which makes sense). Is there a way to ensure that this doesn’t happen when creating mobile apps?

Use less resources. :stuck_out_tongue: The overhead will be higher using a game engine for this sort of task.
First of all there is the graphical resources.

Ok so great, you’ve decided it’s a killer feature to give your calculator normal mapping & AO, nice specular tints.
, calculator is so bling!

What about all the other libraries that are loading?

That is assuming you don’t want to rig & skeletally animate your calculator…

Fundamentally the argument becomes similar to “Would you buy a full set of colour pencils if you only want to draw in black & white?”

Sometimes pre-emptive optimisation can be excessive, but I would argue factors like these are ones a wise engineer will consider seriously before approaching a task at hand.

Well windows, for example, renders UI elements. Unreal engine can also render UI elements. It would probably take more work to figure out how to strip out the unneeded parts. If you can make a game with unreal, chances are you can make a calculator on an android phone. It’s probably even easier in fact. You won’t have blueprint, but to build a calculator in Java or on ios in objective C should be trivial if you read a few basic tutorials first.

Launcher is made on UE4 by the way. So yeah, if you want to make a real app(not for learning purposes, but something for the market) you have to cut out almost everything from engine and leave only modules you really use.
So I’m not sure I would recommend UE4 for real calculator production :smiley:

I’ve done a few builds for my android tablet… you could make a pretty nifty looking calculator for it.

I’ve been thinking too about using UE4 to make some fancy non-gaming apps.

How can I disable unneeded modules?

For awhile I was thinking about using UE4 to create a Windows Shell (OSVR Shell… then OSVR was taken away from me… or I got lazy, w/e). So yes, if it can make an entire windows shell, it could make a calculator.

Did you have an OSVR headset?

It would be dumb to use UE for such task. Use javascript instead, your whole calculator app will be less than 1mb…

If you want to make a calculator and you dont know about java and the android SDK just use phonegap and build your calculator with javascript

Using UE4 to make an app that is not a game has no sense, is like if you use a fork to cut off a piece of bread, yes you can do it, but the result will be worse

You would get an app that needs a loot of resources, has compatibility problems with older android versions and old devices and, even if Blueprints are easy to use, they are asy because they have a loot of functions exposed that are aimed for games, so for example if in your game you want to get the current location of your actor you just need one node, but you wont have there a node that helps you with some thinks that you may need when developing for android

If someone wants to make a Notepad, to replace the windows one, I’ll buy that.

It could open up just like the BP_Commentary_Box in content examples audio level.

Simple open, type my text, and move mouse away and it closes and autosaves as note1

If I ever get good enough I’ll make it myself, but until then I have £5 waiting…

example

You’re paying too much attention to the calculator and none to what he said about the health and fitness app, he probably put calculator as an example of something that has practical use beyond gaming.

I think that UE4 could be great to make a fitness app or many other non-gaming apps, just take a look at what has been done using Unity, I don’t know why couldn’t be done the same or even better with UE4, it has better graphical fidelity and Blueprints are .

There also are Corona or Marmalade, but I’d rather take UE4 and start doing something than keeping wasting time to decide wich way is the best and do nothing, do yo know what I mean?

In other words, JUST DO IT. The thing didn’t work as expected? Do it differently or do another thing.

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Sure it can. Make a character blueprint and make him eat BP_Sandwich. :wink: