Unreal engine for making office programs

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

So, what do you think about that?
I made a few programs, the only thing that stands out is their size. But we are not in the stone age, hardware is capable of that

2

What do you mean by ‘office programs’?

3

No, just no.

Better off making things in excel.

1 Like
4

Just no just because you feel like your knowledge of java and other trash-languages worths nothing?

5

Office programs.

6

That’s totally unhelpful.

If you mean as an equivalent to Microsoft Office; I’d have to ask, what’s the point?

7

Ah, i thought you are trying to troll. I mean all kinds of programs to count things, translate, encrypt, show some selected information from cvs files, etc
It’s faster for me to do that in unreal than in some java or c#
I consider learning to control and program robots with unreal engine, currently I am working on some software that would normally take years to create but I made a half of it in ue just in 2 days, it’s science related stuff and I saw something like that on a some exhibition but meh dude, programming aspect of it is just 2+2, just need some sensors

8

Unless you need some high quality graphical representation of what you’re doing, then it’s very inefficient to do that type of thing with a game engine.

10

Just because you can do something with the engine doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for the job,

11

Why exactly it’s not best in your opinion?

12

Trying to create this kind of software in Unreal is like trying to mow your lawn with a speedboat.

13

I think that is really possible, even in blueprints calibrating the scalability

14

Your comparison is initially wrong. Unreal engine is the fastest tool for creating programs

15

My comparison is dead on. It’s the totally wrong tool for the job and a complete waste of resources.

16

How exactly it is a wrong tool? What makes a tool right?

17

For robotics … not that bad. During my PhD years, some colleges were using UDK, mostly as a visualization tool.

However, using UE4 for the development of “office” programs, not so much. It can easily be an overkill.
But again, it depends exactly on the programs.
You said “all kinds of programs to count things, translate, encrypt, show some selected information from cvs files”.
For simple things like that, Python or even JavaScript is far more efficient (in terms of resources and practicality).
Somehow, using UE4 to develop encrypting programs, especially in BP, is way too wrong.

But at the end of the day, the tools are there, and you are free to use whatever you want.

18

So all programs can be created faster with Unreal?

19

Using UE4 for an office application is certainly unconventional. Unconventional thinking isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it leads to innovations. However, can you please explain to us, how it works? I mean, how is UE4 the fastest development tool? Out of the box it’s not even the fastest game engine when compared to it’s competition. Is it fast in terms of actually prototyping ideas and functionality, or is it fast in terms of performance? Because you can write an office program using Visual Studio that will execute much quicker than UE4 will even open.

20

While you can use the engine to program “office applications” its kind an abusive use of the engine. IMHO you are better of using Qt C++ as it provides literally almost everything you need to code such programs. A very large amount of apps are written with Qt. If you hate C++, you can either use on of the very good python ports(PyQt or PySide2) or simply another language + framework(JavaEE with Swing anyone?). C# with WPF or WinForms(Though both of them suck compared to Qt or Swing…).

However it is totally valid to use UE4 for that. Just be aware you can hit some boundaries or limitations as the engine is still written for games… since its a game engine :smiley: Therefore its geared toward realtime graphics/game code simulation. Office programs, except visualizers are NOT geared toward that. They can use that resources for other things.

21

While it’s possible to use UE4 for a such thing it’s still a total overkill if no heavy or shiny visualization is not needed. The comparison posted by is a very good one.

You would want to make the desktop apps with component/event based systems and not with a game engine essentially running a game loop. On top of everything the extensibility and library support for various features are far better with the apps made for the purpose.