Things that would make me switch to Unreal from Unity

[zooby]

@karltheawesome;288001

I don’t think C# would add much to be honest. The problem I always had with C# in Unity is it fell in an awkward middle ground. You didn’t have enough low level access to do really awesome stuff with the engine but it’s also not simple enough that just anyone can pick it up. You still need to learn quite a bit of programing before you can use it. In this way Unity wasn’t really accessible to artists and non-programmers.

Blueprints bridge this gap, someone with almost no programing knowledge can start doing stuff straight away and coders can still do anything they want in C++. What I would like to see is a way of writing blueprints using simple text scripts since it can be slow to hook up all the nodes and everything. I don’t think sandwiching C# in the middle would do anything but make it more complex and hard to manage.

On the stability of Unity, it rarely crashes to desktop because the editor is running in a mono sandbox. Exceptions are caught and displayed as warnings or errors. In my experience of using it it doesn’t actually have less bugs. The bugs it does have are much harder to find since you don’t have source code access and it doesn’t always tell you about them. As much as crashes to desktop are annoying you do get a full stack trace allowing you to identify the issue.

This would be nice. But if you’re going for text scripts then you shouldn’t invent a new scripting language… what about… C#? The problem with blue prints is that you really need a massive screen to be able to see anything at all. They’re not exactly compact. I mean to do Math.sqrt(xx+yy) in Blueprints would can take up a whole screen. (Yes they have little scripts for math expressions now). But personally I prefer the middle ground of a scripting language somewhere in between C++ and blueprints. Other options would be Javascript/Python/Lua. But I just happen to like C#.

A compromise would be that blueprints are created from a text box. What I mean is you type in “myFunction” and a myFunction blueprint is created. Then you type in “(” and it jumps to the first variable, then you type in “23” and it fills in that variable, then you type in “,” and it jumps to the next variable. I think you get what I mean. So that typing a script and creating a blueprint from the keyboard is virtually identical.

Or just make blueprints more compact so you can fit more on the screen while still being able to read them!

Maybe people don’t realise that for people trained in text programming, switching to a visual system is actually quite hard!

[anonymous_user_bca41a09]

Yeah you pretty much nailed what I mean with your comprimise. I don’t mean making or implementing a full scripting language, that wouldn’t really make sense as it would have to abide by the limitations of blueprints. But to be able to use a lot more keyboard commands would be nice.

[LcSweeper]

You can same the same thing about C#. Once you get the hang of c# it becomes easy. I used Unity for a bit and had to learn C# when I got the hang of C# it was much easier using Unity.

[Uprentiss]

Once you get the basis of any language down others should be much easier, it shouldnt take you months to be good or atleast know how to use c++ if you are really familiar with c#. plus you can’t change an engine just cuz it does not personally fit you, you have to learn to fit the engine all software is like that. I hate when people ask to fix things that is not broken, it sounds like the people has an entitlement issue, this is something you should have to work for not have handed to you.

[Lucasmontec]

Uprentiss, people are asking for features not fixes.
, the UE4 c++ workflow is what is lacking in VS. Usually, when I code, ‘intellisense’ or any other smart auto complete is the main documentation I use. This helps me learn about the engine or what I’m working with way faster. It is a modern thing on IDEs to provide documentation on code. Anyway, does VS community at least allows me to generate function bodies from prototypes (and maybe sync them with refactoring)?
, you can keep C++. This doesn’t mean other users need to use it. UE4 doesn’t even need to support other languages officially but just provide a nice wrapper API. I don’t actually care about UE4 adding a new modern language but I’d like at least to see support for other IDEs by default. If this doesn’t affect you then just don’t say anything. (and just to make you even more mad, UE4 and java would be amazing)

[Chooka]

a hybrid of c++ and blueprint is where it is at! c# or java would only hold ue4 back. in before the knee jerk reactions, there is nothing wrong with both c# and java, ue4 just doesn’t need either.

[Galeon]

Anyone able to code in C#, is able to code in C++ with a fast learning curve.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/QuickStart/index.html

[Shadowriver]

@Lucasmontec;288608

Uprentiss, people are asking for features not fixes.
, the UE4 c++ workflow is what is lacking in VS. Usually, when I code, ‘intellisense’ or any other smart auto complete is the main documentation I use. This helps me learn about the engine or what I’m working with way faster. It is a modern thing on IDEs to provide documentation on code. Anyway, does VS community at least allows me to generate function bodies from prototypes (and maybe sync them with refactoring)?
, you can keep C++. This doesn’t mean other users need to use it. UE4 doesn’t even need to support other languages officially but just provide a nice wrapper API. I don’t actually care about UE4 adding a new modern language but I’d like at least to see support for other IDEs by default. If this doesn’t affect you then just don’t say anything. (and just to make you even more mad, UE4 and java would be amazing)

First of all there is ScriptPlugin, which use reflection system to create bindings for any scripting language. 2nd Unreal technicly can support any IDE, VS is just default one (but still you need VS for compiler, Epic could add support for clang for Windows if it’s not a hassle), building batching job is done exclusively by UBT, UBT does to require VS to be turn on all you need is execute right command (you can see them in Project properties in VS in NMake section). VS (asside of his compiler being used) is practically used only as a text editor. I know some people been able to make UBT work with QtCreator

[anonymous_user_bca41a09]

Before this thread completely degrades into another C# vrs C++ debate I’d just like to point out that languages are only tools, it’s what you do with them that counts! The API provided is the important thing and Epic provides a far superior API to Unityscript.

[anonymous_user_f9a860851 (anonymous_user_f9a86085)]

The biggest advantage to using Unreal is we can all have it our way. We have the source code. We can officially make changes. So why is there this argument. Want the engine to load up faster? Fix it. And create a pull request so everyone benefits, please.

Want c#? Add it with the scripting plugin infrastructure they already implemented. Want LUA? Its implemented as the test case for the scripting infrastructure. Want the editor to look different? You have the source code. Want it to be more effiecient? You have the source code.

Please stop relying on Epic to do what you want, and just do it. Then share it with everyone, if you want. That is the thing that has me excited about Unreal. All the features, and the forward looking design is great, but the big thing is the source code access and the community.

[anonymous_user_f28231101 (anonymous_user_f2823110)]

I might sound like a complete idiot but in my experience the only difference between UE4 C++ and Unity C# is that the first one uses .h files. The syntax in both cases is so similar that you might think both are using the same language. In my defense: I am used to Python so everything that uses ‘;’ as line terminators looks like the same language to me

If you really hate header files - like I do - you could even keep the .cpp files empty and write all you code in the header file. Not that I would recommend doing that.

Support for other IDEs would be awesome. I just cannot get used to VS. It just feels like a bloated syntax highlighter.

[anonymous_user_20ff3372]

@;314634

If you really hate header files - like I do - you could even keep the .cpp files empty and write all you code in the header file. Not that I would recommend doing that.

You can do all implementation in .h files without having .cpp ones at all You don’t need empty .cpp. But yeah it’s not good practise anyway

[anonymous_user_f28231101 (anonymous_user_f2823110)]

@OrchestralMusician;314638

You can do all implementation in .h files without having .cpp ones at all You don’t need empty .cpp. But yeah it’s not good practise anyway

Well, the editor creates them for you anyway. But if the hate is strong enough one might consider deleting them

[breese45]

DamirH said, “I am sorry if I come across as rude but I do not mince words for anyone or anything - if you are willing to sacrifice usability, reduce stability and cripple performance just to cram C# or any other inane language into UE4 instead of learning the (extremely simplified) C++ that UE4 uses, then this probably isn’t the engine / industry for you. Go weave baskets or something, leave the rest of us and Epic focus on the real issues of the engine”

I don’t know what kind of basket weaving you do, but after a hard day of weaving, I come to UE4 to relax and releave the stresses of the day.

[Jamendxman3]

@zooby;287108

I’m a Unity developer but I really want to switch from Unreal because Unity never fix any bugs and Unreal looks more fun with Blueprints. But I’m not ready to make the jump just yet. Here are the things that would make me switch:

1. C# compatibility. (It could still be compiled down to C++ code using .NET Native). I love using C#. C++ is soooo old school.
2. More modular so that you could make more streamline games just using the bits you need. (The people in the Twitch stream says they’re working on that.)
3. Unreal to work better on low end laptops like MacBook Air. (Perhaps a lite version that could be used on laptops to make simple mobile games).
4. Stop it recompiling 300 shaders every so often. What is up with that???
5. Better widgets.
6. Make the IDE load quicker in 5 seconds or less.

Basically just better for the casual user. Not dumbing down exactly. But making things more obvious - not so many panels - simplify everything. The good thing about Unity you will notice is that it has very few menus and almost no special functionality. Everything else is basically a plugin. That is an advantage because of it’s unified framework it is easier to learn.

I’m looking forward to Unreal 5 but I don’t think I’m ready to make the jump just yet.

PS. I mostly make mobile games (Android/IOS) and Windows 8 store games for PC.

1. This seems unlikely, the C++ seems to be loved by all UE4 developers. Blueprints are fantastic anyways, you’ve heard of ARK: Survival Evolved? Rumor has it that it is 100% blueprints.
2. Not sure what you mean :\
3. You can adjust settings to help you out
4. You can make great widgets with the current system, just look at some UE4 published games.

Personally I think UE5 won’t be out for another 3 years, and based on past engines from Epic Games, that seems to be the case. I was very new to UE4 in February, and within 2 weeks of playing around in my free time, I was off making a large game. I’ll assume you’ve downloaded and used UE4, so I encourage you t play around with it for 2 weeks, maybe work on a simple Flappy Bird game. Epic Games seems to be very good as far as fixing things, release notes are stunningly huge, and with each release, there are tons of new things: What's New | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation

[Jamendxman3]

@zooby;287496

I agree with this bit. It would be great to hear on the Twitch stream things like “We’ve managed to make Unreal start in half the time”, “Shaders take 50% less to compile”, “We’ve streamlined the menu system”, “There is a new lite mode for low end machines”, “You can now write code directly in Unreal”, “Unreal IDE is 50% faster”. Things of that nature. Rather than. “We’ve added feature 1023.” Because instead (like Unity perhaps) feature 1023 could be a plugin and that the real improvements were optimising, simplifying and streamlining the Unreal interface. But that’s just my preference. Maybe a lot more people are interested in feature X.

There are two ways to make an IDE. First is the “bells and whistle’s” approach. Which is to have so many panels and menus that leaves certain audience impressed with all the functionality. The second is the streamlined approach. They used to do the first approach to sell hi-fi’s in the 80’s! But now they have the iPod with virtually no buttons at all! Turns out people don’t like complication.

When I first opened UE4 and saw the highly rendered menus and panels. I just thought “Oh dear. This is going to be slow and painful.” When I opened Unity and saw all the simple chrome menus and panels I thought “This is boring but don’t have to worry about the GPU wasting time rendering the menus”.

Also

7. Make it look better on a laptop screen-size of 1366x768. (i.e. make the panels and fonts smaller).

PS. @DamirH I think you show a bit too much deference. I have noticed this a lot with people using very complicated software. Consider “dwarf fortress”. A game which is slow to load, and had virtually no instructions. Most people would say that is bad? But still defended by it’s hardcore following. And any suggestion that it could be optimised and have simple instructions scorned at as people not willing to take the requisite 100 hours to figure out how everything works. Having worked in software companies I can tell you that we don’t always know best, we don’t always take the best option over the easiest option, and we don’t always optimise everything, and we don’t always test on lower machines. So that’s why I don’t agree with people saying, Unreal knows best and that anyone who finds Unreal too complicated or slow it is their own fault.

Example: Compiling 300 shaders
Consider the example of compiling 300 shaders. How long should that take? Well if they are all on hard-disk. You execute a compile program from hard disk. And re-save them to hard-disk. Meanwhile creating a png of the material for the IDE saved to hard disk, each time updating the IDE with the new material. OK, that’s going to take a long time. But it’s the simplest way of doing it. And people will say. “OK. 300 shaders. Obviously it takes a long time. Why are you complaining? This is is a hardcore gaming engine. It’s not for wimps!”

But then you think. We really need to optimise this because we want to appeal to the general public. So we’re going to store all our shader code in RAM. Have the compiler in RAM. And compile the shader back into RAM. Do this, and 300 compiled shaders takes microseconds. Then, only when we need to see a preview of the material is a PNG created (in RAM) for the IDE. Then send the compiled shaders to the GPU in the background.

So you do all this and you find that actually the week spent making all the shaders compile 100 times faster was well worth the effort.

(Also, with physically based shaders, I thought the idea was you just had one shader for all your needs?)

Well recently they’ve added multi-threading to things like compiling.

[anonymous_user_a006f79c]

@Jamendxman3;314713

1. This seems unlikely, the C++ seems to be loved by all UE4 developers. Blueprints are fantastic anyways, you’ve heard of ARK: Survival Evolved? Rumor has it that it is 100% blueprints.
2. Not sure what you mean :\
3. You can adjust settings to help you out
4. You can make great widgets with the current system, just look at some UE4 published games.

Personally I think UE5 won’t be out for another 3 years, and based on past engines from Epic Games, that seems to be the case. I was very new to UE4 in February, and within 2 weeks of playing around in my free time, I was off making a large game. I’ll assume you’ve downloaded and used UE4, so I encourage you t play around with it for 2 weeks, maybe work on a simple Flappy Bird game. Epic Games seems to be very good as far as fixing things, release notes are stunningly huge, and with each release, there are tons of new things: What's New | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation

1. C++ is definitely not loved by all UE4 developers, but it has been intelligently designed to the point where most of the sting has been taken away. C# isn’t invariably slow, neither would it make a massive difference in games development. Anyone who has used Unity knows it’s Mono at the core causing all the issues. It’s an old, buggy slow version with a bunch of features missing… (Hence them trying to get rid of it)…

2. Yeah agree with you, not quite sure what that’s about…

3. I think U4 is a bit at the point of diminishing returns in terms of graphical ability, there are various factors that cause these things which have been discussed at length… But there was a lot of pretty stuff made in Unreal 3, Unreal 4 looks better (slightly) but I don’t believe it warrants the massive jack in requirements.

4. Unity compiles code and shaders instantly, there is no wait time and it was one of the oddest things when coming to UE4… I have not a clue why it would or should ever take that long, I don’t believe I’ve ever worked on an engine or with an engine that needed “instances” to bypass this issue.

5. He said “better widgets” although again still a little unsure as to what that means?

6. When you launch the engine, for me on our mahines (I7-5820K, 32GB DDR, GTX 780TI, SSD) takes about 30 second to a minute to start… Never really bothered me too much, but on the other hand it ain’t quick either…

[Jamendxman3]

@breese45;314706

DamirH said, “I am sorry if I come across as rude but I do not mince words for anyone or anything - if you are willing to sacrifice usability, reduce stability and cripple performance just to cram C# or any other inane language into UE4 instead of learning the (extremely simplified) C++ that UE4 uses, then this probably isn’t the engine / industry for you. Go weave baskets or something, leave the rest of us and Epic focus on the real issues of the engine”

I don’t know what kind of basket weaving you do, but after a hard day of weaving, I come to UE4 to relax and releave the stresses of the day.

Lol, impressive!

[anonymous_user_39dfe35e]

1. Rotations… UE4 = painful Euler angle mess, Unity = Quaternions + Euler
2. Performance… UE4 performance optimization still tbd, Unity = done
3. Doing any game that is not a first person shooter
4. Not having the ultra high end hardware, but only high end hardware at hand
5. The kind of peace in my mind that 500 employes usually get better software done than 100

Hold on…misread the title…it’s from Unity to UE4 not the other way around.