Hey guys, so I’m quite new to Unreal Engine as I’ve been working with it for about a month now, so I’m still getting used to everything coming from Unity.
I’m a 3rd year in Game Design at my College and for one of my subjects we’ll be making a game in Unreal Engine. I’d like to make a very simple game (inspired by Choo-Choo Charles) with a simple core game-play loop in the next 6 months. After that I’ll continue polishing it, in the hopes of actually publishing it on Steam, etc.
Now, I thought it would be best to ask this question at the start, but which version of Unreal should I be using? The way I see it there is mixed opportunity costs involved:
If I understand correctly, currently there should be a lot more assets for Unreal 4 seeing as Unreal 5 is relatively new? For example, there’s a hovercraft on the marketplace I’d like to use, but it’s only available for Unreal 4.
Furthermore, how does the workflow of Unreal 4 compare to Unreal 5? Is the latter easier to navigate and does it make a dev’s life easier to get work done in a quicker and more efficient manner?
In terms of lighting, shaders and general quality Unreal 5 is by far superior in this regard so it takes a win here for sure.
I realize there are numerous considerations and nuances that I didn’t mention here, so for those more knowledgeable than me, could you please elaborate on which version I should choose going forward?
I’m relatively new to game dev.now I haven’t a shipped a game.my advise might be useless.but I recommend UE5. .the epic announces Ue5 is more beginner-friendly so I choose it.
the assets shouldn’t be concerned. Ue4 assets can be imported to Ue 5.only some plugins would obsolete.
and Ue5 is the tendency,you know.and getting familiar with UE needs some time. Imagine that you spent a lot time to get familiar with UE4 and some of these days you want ue5.well you have to spend extra time to get used to it.why not from the beginning chose the new one.
I have used unreal 4 for several years and switch to 5 in 2022 i believe.
Thing that change for me the most is Lumen, i don’t have to do Lightmap for all of my static mesh, debug for visual bug to fix lightmap, config lightmap resolution for different static mesh and no more build lighting. In a year i saved weeks/month of work to be honest.
You have to do some testing if Lumen is expensive for your expection of your game quality, adding a sunlight + 2/3 spotlight on the same scene for example on a 1650 gtx will eat some fps with TSA at 1080p. So this will also depend on your optimisation: level streaming (especially light, emissive etc…)
I have used this forum for quite a while, lot of people are getting crash on ue5 especially with metahuman, nanite, control rig. I haven’t used these 3 things since i already have made my character asset before ue5 and am just used to.
I also tend to make more backup on ue5 project especially when am adding new implementation that potentially can break things such as structure or adding anim asset.
One thing am annoy is the removal of Session Frontend from 5.3 , so i recommend 5.2 for now
Majority of assets created for Unreal 4 can be used in 5. Download a version the asset is for, and then try opening the project in Unreal 5.
It might not be plug and play, but most assets should be convertable. Vehicles with PhysX components need to be implemented using the Chaos physics system, and input in older projects is often done with the old method, but that should be easy to address.
.the epic announces Ue5 is more beginner-friendly so I choose it.
, so i recommend 5.2 for now 