https://unity3d.com/services/cloud-build
Are we going to see something like this for Unreal eventually? Using ue4 for architecture and having ultra tight deadlines on most of my projects, I would pay for a service like this. Not so much for a final build, but for testing lighting solutions very fast.
That service does not build lighting, it would require a render farm type service to be able to do lighting since it would require high-end hardware and a lot of time. Unlikely to happen given the amount of resources it would require to implement and maintain.
Seeing Epic take a services-focused direction would scare me. That’s what Unity did, and the actual engine’s development almost seems to have stalled.
And now here I am, switching to UE4
It’s fairly easy to set up your own automatic build machine to handle this, so I think devs should just handle this on their own
If its optional, nothing wrong with that!
It might be easy to set up your own build machine, but not all indie developers have that luxuary.
There is something wrong with that, because it means Epic needs to take some of its resources out of the engine development team, and assign them to handling services like cloud build.
If you can’t even afford one dedicated machine to handle builds, I doubt your project is big/complex enough to really be in need of such services
If the service is paid, they can hire people for this service. No need to take resources out of the engine development team. Also, does it have to be Epic? Could be another company providing the service.
Well, for a small team it might be interesting. Same reason IAAS/PAAS/SAAS/etc exists these days. Nothing easier than dumping the stuff at Azure/Amazon/Google and let them handle everything. I dont want to maintain my webserver: handling log files, keeping OS up to date, keeping web server software up to date, worrying about hardware replacement when its too old or is broken etc.
If I dont need to maintain a build server, I have time to work on the game. In the end it could be cheaper than having my own hardware for building. And a build server in the cloud opens up the possibility for scaling etc. If the game grows it will have longer build times. If you need speed, you need to buy more hardware, install it, maintain it etc. In the cloud I can say ‘run the build on 6 servers’ and be done with it.
So from my view: If your project becomes big/complex, you might actually want an online build service!
I strongly agree! I’ve sat up a render machine in my room to render the occasional lightmap, but it feels a bit silly to have it just stand there collecting dust while I’m not building lightmaps.
It’s 2016, feels like I should be able to just click a button to have 20 render farms calculate my lightmaps for me.
It would revolutionize the way we could work, make it so much easier to be a serious AAA game dev from a mere laptop.
With that said tho I’m guessing broadband technology isn’t quite fast enough yet.
Internet speed isn’t really an issue, it’s an issue that they would have to have a large render farm to support it, which is a large business decision.
Let the big cloud providers handle that. Amazon/Azure/Google. They have plenty of hardware. You scale as you like, and pay what you use. Epic (or who would offer this service) creates the software/management tools, and updates it with every new UE4 version.
Thanks for clarification darthviper, I thought the service was able to bake lighting. Suddently it’s not as interesting.
I thought it would work like Martin said… sounds the best solution imo. Theorically I could set it up myself but it would be painfully difficult. It’s not too user-friendly.
CPU-based online renderfarms are everywhere, and lighting build only require cpus. Eventually someone will make the software/management tool.
If you have ever tried rebusfarm, it’s very simple to use. They have a plugin integrated in max, you press a button and they render your scene. If there are problems, the plugin let you know exactly what’s the problems, etc where to fix them. It’s super user friendly. Something like this for ue4 would be very cool.
Huh, really? Can you please give me fairly easy way to set up own automatic build machine for android on linux.