Hi, I am just starting my game making journey and I’m hoping you all can help me out with something, I’m trying to decide between Unity and Unreal to start and commit to long term, I understand a good number of the differences between the two and I’m not here to ask “Which is better” I’m not trying to start an argument but what I was curious about is this.
Considering the different Genres of games there are, 2-d platformers, Kart racers, Racing games, 3rd person shooters, Horror games, MMO’s, Card games (MTG, Hearthstone to name a few) with just how many their are. What would you consider to be the biggest strengths Unity has over Unreal?
Like an example I’m looking for is more “I’d say unity makes waaaay better open world, action adventure type games but I think unreal makes better fast twitch games like rocket league or anything needing super tight control to focus on skill and competitive games.”
just the opinions of people who have experience would be very helpful <3
The type of game you’re making isn’t really dependent on the engine you’re using when considering these two. I’d split it this way:
Unity is better for:
Smaller games, 2D games, mobile games because Unreal packages tend to contain a lot of bloat. This fat can be trimmed if you know what you’re doing but there’s always some amount of overhead that you don’t really need for these types of games. Modding is easier in my experience.
Unreal is better for:
Games that target realism, graphically. Unity can create photorealistic images as well, but its 3D performance tends to be worse than Unreal’s when targeting this style.
You’re not going to go wrong with either one, really and I use both daily as a consultant. When it’s my choice, I use Unreal because I prefer its workflow and templates. Unity on the other hand has a more mature and vast marketplace.
I know this is kind of a non-answer but neither is really out and out better than the other. They both can do some of the same things. I do think that Unreal is more on the cutting edge but the maturity of Unity’s community shouldn’t be ignored. They have created amazing solutions where Unity Technologies as a company has not delivered.
Unreal also has a great community full of talented people, it’s just not been as public for as long as Unity has and never will be. That said, most game design concepts are interchangeable between Unreal and Unity so if you find a solution for the engine you aren’t working in, it can probably be adapted to work for your engine.
Are you at all comfortable with any kind of programming language? Do you plan to use visual scripting at all? Blueprints are definitely better than Unity’s VS component in my opinion, but writing scripts is easier and faster on Unity than on UE. I end up doing most of my scripting using blueprints then move over performance critical stuff to C++, like an enhanced prototyping solution that can work as a final solution. Playmaker in Unity is fine but a little slow and not so feature rich, so I tend to stick to writing scripts in C# there. C# compiles in a few seconds while C++ can take much longer, especially when editing a class or struct. Blueprints are ready in a moment, maybe two.
If you’re just starting out with no point of reference, make smaller games in both engines. Don’t start on your magnum opus immediately. Get a feel for both before you commit to either because porting between them is a gargantuan task. Take a month each and do the tutorials to make simple games and wet your feet to understand what goes into using both engines.
Thank you! I wouldn’t consider it to be a non-answer at all, it very much does help, I have ideas for a few starter games I want to try and knowing that games I want to keep small on file size and be able to reduce bloat is very helpful and exactly the one of the kinds of answer I was hoping for.
I genuinely appreciate you taking time out of your day to reply to me, thank you!