I started learning how to write code with blueprints about 4 months ago. This is my first project in unreal.
I’ve made art for one other indie game before. I never touched a computer before 2017. Everything I know I learned from the internet or from hiring consultants for advice from time to time.
If you are a paid professional, you should act like one. You act like somebody who has had bad luck with game development so is sour on it, and rather than having the courage to look inward you whine incessantly like a troll. I get tired of seeing the same names in every single thread - especially giving noobs a hard time and telling them all manner of nonsense.
You should try unity out, or cry engine if thats what you prefer. Maybe there youll have success in making whatever type of game can’t be made in unreal. If you spent as much time developing as you do complaiing on forums, you’d have some games under your belt by now.
I don’t care about proving anything to an internet troll, but any noobies reading this should have a more balanced perspective. You can be a total computer moron and accomplish a lot with unreal if you are not lazy and you have some methodology for solving problems.
If you want to accomplish nothing and make everybody around you feel grumpy all the time, follow the path of the complainer.
when the sun is low and shadows are extra long there is a spike in performance, as seen here.
One thing that helped me tune performance a lot was the free marketplace packed “rural australia”. That’s a fantastic example of how to get good performance with outdoor, foliage heavy scenes. Its made by art director from battlefield games. Apparently he doesn’t find unreal to be “broken.” And he’s a well enough paid professional that he’s giving away such an immesne amount of work for free.
This game is like alpha stage if you want to call it anything. Once I get closer to finished I’ll hire some tech artist to help me go through and optimize it properly. Just to reiterate, I first built this game in Unity. But the editor was so slow, it took 10 minutes to open somtimes. And it had memory leak issues. And performance was low in general. It seemed impossible to finish the game. Plus I had to hire help because I have trouble with traditional coding.
I decided to try and make it in unreal and I commited to learning c++ if I had to if the engine performance checked out. Turns out I didnt have to becuase blueprints are so robust. I’ve been able to do much of the work on my own, saving me tons of time and money. And as you can see, performance is completely reasonable.
Being an indie dev I couldnt care less if this game gets 60fps on a 4k monitor. My audience does not care. It is not important. My strategy is not to target the same pool that is served by hundred million dollar studios. And if unreal isn’t good enough for them, who the hell cares? They have their own engines anyway. Nobody who ask questions on public forums is part of that crowd.
That’s not necessarily true
There’s tons of (let’s call it weekly) consulting work for some of those companies too who try and test the viability of using UE4/5
I have several royalties from published games.
The only ones that get a hard time from me are Epic @AntiGravity can definitely attest to that.
And idiots who misspeak or troll on the forums with 0 proof and 0 experience, pointing other users down completely wrong paths which end up costing them Money.
You claiming that “the engine is great” while admitting you don’t do traditional coding, and that you run on a 1060 “so everything has to be ok for everyone else”, is to say the least insulting thing I can thing of a Red Flag.
Maybe get 2 or 3 years of development and releases under your belt. Maybe make some money by offering your expertise to others.
Then, maybe (because it’s still doubtful, opinions are subjective afterall), your opinion might actually be worth something to someone instead of being literally the best forum troll I read the past 2 weeks.
Also, let’s bting it back on topic:
What Everyone cares about is why people like you think the engine is Great when it is in fact a clutter of broken crap.
I think “I’m on a 1060” goes a long way to defining why you think the engine is great…
And just maybe, that’s partly the reason why the epic team DGAF about much of anything like bug fixes in the engine…
Not that this is “correct” behavior on epics part by any means…
so your response is, “i have vague experience, I swear I am somebody, and nuh-uh to everything you showed. Oh, and epic hates me, they wont talk to me.”??
Who here said anything even remotely close to any of that?
Maybe there’s a reading comprehension issue here too.
Enough trolling please.
You have given everyone enough to go on already as to why you erroneously think the engine is great.
Keep working on your thing, get back to this topic in a year or so when you have more experience with releases and publishing.
Let us ALL know what you think then. If your opinion is unchanged or not.
That will probably be much more beneficial to everyone anyway.
I’m not knowedgable enough to judge which engine is better.
But in terms of customer support, Epic feels like Adobe and Autodesk to me. Literally no official support for individual users.
I think their strategy is very clear and clever: support big projects like The Mandalorian only, so they have materials for PR. Treat indie users who got lured as free QA.
On the contrary, Unity feels like SideFx and Jetbrain.
I have two games on steam (BP Only) and I’m working on another one and I see everything perfect.
If you had tried to create Indies games in 2000, you would have committed suicide, you have to cry less and grit your teeth.
I don’t think anyone in the history of this thread as hazarded such a preposterous ask.
I’d gladly pay for support - If an option existed. Unless unreal reaches out to your studio, the option does Not exist.
I created games before 2000. Heck DarkBasic was a better engine! XD
Really don’t see why you or anyone would try and push releases out with this sorry excuse of an engine at the moment.
Maybe an older version. Sure. I could see that.
But not with .25, .26 or .27.
Literally pick any other engine and you’ll have less trouble…
Particularly considering the fact that I have to build .27 from source to be able to use it. The launcher build is a mess. Menus playing “catch me if you can”, the editor causing the screen to cycle on/off.
My question remains.
Why do I - a client btw - have to be the one to do QA for epic?
I suppose it is normal, in live programs it always happens, I do not know of any app, marketplace plugin or game that does not have bugs, especially if it is in development. Even my own games have bugs and my clients send them to me.
Have you worked with Unity on consoles several years ago? LOL that was hell.
No, thankfully spared from that.
Gameboy roms were their own hellscape too.
PSP was sort of cool.
Really, the only other “bad” experience with engines has been the old VB6 editor thing.
And if you know anything about VB you would know it radically changed after 6. Both editor and rules…
It is, I guess.
But would it really kill epic’s profit to put in a team to actually test releases for a while before adding them to the launcher?
I mean, it’s not like .27 is in preview or anything - people DO update to the latest version if it isn’t a preview.
The end result is bricked projects 6 updates over 10.
And broken editors at least 2 over 10.
A whooping total of 8 bad results out of 10 later… why would anyone suggest this engine over something else?
If there’s a real market for support, perhaps someone should just jump in and fill it?
I imagine you’d have to charge at least $200/hour to pay bills and salaries, if you run this as a real business, and the initial engagement probably needs to be at least 4 hours just to get into what the project is about and what the context of the question is. And then there’s the challenge of “I just paid you $800, and you told me the only way to do what I want to do is to spend 80 engineering-months re-developing a subsystem or forking the engine” sometimes being the answer – are you going to get paid?
Freelancers can probably charge less (I’ve seen as low as $60/hour for people with UE4 experience) but there’s also more work to build up a clientele and to prove your reputation there.
Would this actually be profitable? There exist companies and well-known individuals who do contracting on game development in general; as long as you’re willing to pay people for helping you, why is “it has to come from Epic” a requirement? You could go to some Unreal C++ YouTubers and probably pay them to help you out – but, again the time needed to actually dive in, understand the context and the question, and then render a good answer, may end up costing more than you’d typically want to pay.
Epic sells a product. They need to support that product.
It’s as simple as that.
The mega grant people get on your ■■■ when you don’t support your product they funded.
Why is it OK for small to have to provide excellent customer service but it’s also OK for the company requiring small to provide excellent service to provide nearly no customer service???
(Tongue twister as this may be).
Yea, there’s other avenues to get help. Yes, you could (I do) make money consulting.
But getting help is maybe about 1 out of 5 things that Epic has been doing against its own interests in the past 2 or 3 years.
inexistent engine QA
not finishing efforts after starting them.
bad community support / letting forms run wild?
not responding to bug reports.
not providing any meaningful support.
Maybe we can even add
6) bad code practices in source, leading to the issues in .27.
Maybe, because it’s a huge code base and there’s too many cooks in the kitchen to keep things straight.
They’d really have to pay a team of dedicated people just to go through and analyze all of it / set it to the same styles… and it would take them near a full year…
True. If I hadn’t moved to cryengine with my major project I would actually ask for a quote.
Companies I consulted for who had access to it weren’t really able to get any help - which is why I was hired.
Not sure how much of a difference there is in the end.
But it is an option.
I cannot comment on how helpful UDN is now, but I found it helpful in the past when had a UE3 license.
Even contributed to helping others.
Remember sharing how to get action script / scale form to render 3d meshes nicely… just in time for UE4 beta to start and for all my action script / scaleform work to become worthless.
Unreal 4 is not so much a broke engine as it is an unfinished engine with uncompleted features.
In 4.0 there was a lot of promise but in 4.27 there really is no advancement as to key features which in my opinion should have advanced as to the need to create a video game as compared to cough cough advances in the render technology.
If your making a movie, or anything with in the visual media UE4 would be a good choice, but for a video game I have to question the addition of things like the addition of ray tracing unless the intention is to make Unreal 4 the preferred rendering platform as to the goal of achieving a real time interactive rendering solution.
A worth while effort towards replacing expensive rendering farm solutions but other areas of forward design seems to be suffering as to ease of use creating a confusing development tool which other next gen solutions seems to be doing a better job.
This I feel is a problem Epic is aware of as they admit as much the current state of UE4 is a mess as to usability design as stated here.
As someone interested in the use of content over the need to implement code to me the progress of the video game in Unreal 4 is similar in it’s approach as to developing a web page using notepad so visual needs, and the mechanics the drives them, is of more importance as to ready made framework solutions that is hindered as to UE4s ease of use.
Take the animation subsystem for example.
Why in 4.27 are we still dependent on the use of animation blueprints? At this stage we should be using plug-n-play component solutions as to a design pathway that takes to modular design like a duck to water.
As I mentioned I feel the problem is usability as required by the iteration process as to how a productivity application should be designed instead of reinventing the wheel each and every time one starts a new project.
The good news in part I feel the mess is what has motivated the move to Unreal 5.
Just saying.
As to why I use Unreal 4 is simple. It’s fun and fits with my need to figure things out. Solve the problems and mystery of just making something work with out consideration as to the desired result.
I understood that Modular game plugin is to inject new functionality into the base of a game without having to touch any of its code. (Seasons and DCL), as if you were making a mod of your own game, but having access to everything.
I don’t think you can make a lot of agnostic modules to reuse between projects if they have different gameplay.
And without animation blueprints, where do you manage that the animations, the Anim state machines, the control rig, the poses are synchronized?
Well the key is via the use of components using the context based animation concepts rather than the migration pathway used in animation blueprints. The use of components fits with the new game play and features plugin as the plugin handles the issues of dependencies as to the fundamental requirements of migration path driven animation so it can be assumed that the requirements of animation state changes could be don using these two new framework building tools.
As to applied functionality proof of concept still needs to be provided as to the replacement of the animation blueprint that up to 4.27 has been more of an extension as to the codeing requirements rather than doing it’s job of simply changing the current state, with out evaluation, based on an event that has already occurred based on the data supplied but what ever controller is being used.
Reinventing the wheel though will take some time as in most cases Epic by providing simple examples is stating that this is the way things are done rather the stating that it just a base in which to develop more complex design. Example of this trend is the use of “in air” for jumps when in fact the state changes should be based referencing the ground, IE as in being grounded
With out writing a book Epic has stated that the current design logic is flawed, as I pointed out, in what should be considered a next gen video game engine yet sill makes use of technology logic that has been with us since the 1990’s.
This is where the need for components as a staring point comes is as it’s a fundamental building block as to the “requirements” of a top down modular design comes in that excludes the need for dependencies, such as animation blueprints, in favour of data friendly and tree based logic of just making it work.
As an example of concept.
This
Follows the logic of top down as it is a component that is added to the controller and not the animation BP in the traditional usage of migration pathway driven animation.
It is by design context driven of the states necessary to climb a ladder
It is added directly to the controller so no need to cast or play the 20 question Boolean game
It does not require the use of state machines as it gets it’s current state directly from the game controller.
It’s dependencies is limited so easy to adjust to as to custom requirements.
It’s data driven
It functions as part of a logic tree
Best of all components scale like crazy as the requirements is in the component with out the need to figure out how to wedge the expansion into the migration path.
LOL hay sorry but you asked but as a TA there are ways things should work as to usability and although animation BPs in 4.0 was OK in 4.27 they should have be replaced long ago using Star Trek technology.
To restate my opinion Unreal 4 is not broke as much as it’s work in progress so by knowing that it’s up to the end use to decided if they wish to go for the ride, in Epic’s defence has also stated as such, but here is hoping that UE5 is the advancement phase of achieving “Next Gen” status as far as animation subsystems goes.
