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So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

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Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#91

Post by andybak »

brundolf wrote: post #78
spywaregorilla wrote: post #18

> I heard Blueprint sucks! > Blueprint actually rules. Look, I get it - why would a visual scripting thing be good? They're all shit! I agree. > Blueprint is the only one that's any good. It's amazing. It will also help you learn the engine. Everything you do there will be applicable to C++. No matter who you are, you should start in Blueprint. It's 100% true that you can build an entire game in Blueprint. Yeah, with…

My hangup with blueprints has always just literally been: I'd like to type them out with my keyboard instead of using a mouse I wish they offered like a "Bluescript" language or something, that just maps 1:1 with blueprints but lets you write them out as code

I think lossless roundtripping with a textual representation is essential if node-based tools want to escape the local minima they all seem to get trapped in.

Either that or the ability to use 3rd party editors so competion and innovation can happen in the same way it has for textual code editors.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#92

Post by spywaregorilla »

andybak wrote: post #75
spywaregorilla wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is downvoted. > - Find and replace a variable > - Finding all references I think the basic search tools are pretty good. I can't say I expect find and replace to be super common. I would prefer to do such things one at a time. > - Change a variables type I would say you really shouldn't be doing this too often. It's compiling to statically typed code under the hood so this will frequently cause a lo…

> I can't say I expect find and replace to be super common. I would prefer to do such things one at a time. This seems like a very strange thing to say. I presume you do text-based coding as well? Multiple cursors, search/replace, bulk refactors and other semi-global operations are a huge part of my normal workflow and I can't quite fathom how visual coding would change the need for that. Regarding refactoring - I'm…

I'm a data scientist day to day, which is a very different feel from coding up game systems. The latter is a lot more intricate and intertwined. The text coding I do in c++ for unreal is probably more involved.

I can't say what you're saying resonates with me as familiar. I've always been confused at why people ever feel multiple cursors is useful if not just begging for disaster. You can, for example, rename a property in a blueprint class, and that will flow through to all references to that property in other blueprints, if that's closer to what you mean.

When I think about refactoring I think about taking some logic and making it into a more reusable function; or abstracting it into a shared component. I would say the former is what I was saying, and the latter is more of a capability offered by the engine than the tooling. Reparenting classes to compatible alternative parents and moving properties and logic to component classes is relatively comfortable in my opinion.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#94

Post by spywaregorilla »

andybak wrote: post #90
timeagain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point. Yeah it isn’t code and it has downsides, but it is a GUI for discovering and learning to intuit the API. To not use it would be tantamount to refusing to read the documentation. When entire teams are using visual programming tools through the entire dev lifecycle (incl. refactoring and maintenance), wake me from my cryogenic freezer!

But the original article and the post we're all replying to isn't arguing for using it for "discovering and learning to intuit the API" - they are arguing for using it for the bulk of coding tasks.

No I don't think so. You can. I do about 80/20 bp, gradually shifting some content to cpp as I need more specific network replication capabilities.

But they're definitely referring to learning by doing stuff in blueprints. I would agree with this. Figuring out how something ought to be done with the engine in blueprint and then re-implementing it in cpp is the more pleasant experience imo.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#95

Post by doctorpangloss »

dbrueck wrote: post #71
aschearer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do people using Blueprints deal with: - Find and replace a variable - Change a variables type - Merging changes from multiple commits - Refactoring - Finding all references I'm a fan of visual coding and use it extensively in YWDHT but have found the above challenging. I'm curious how Blueprints solves these issues, especially for larger teams.

Earlier this year we completed a huge refactor that involved, among other things, getting us almost 100% off blueprints (now we use them just for little bits of presentation logic in UIs). BPs are amazing for discovering how to use the engine - they provide a sort of guided exploration of things, especially when you don't know what you don't know. For us they really, really, really broke down when it came to version…

It's nice to hear from someone with real experience.

Blueprints clearly delivered negative ROI. In general they probably do. This is the worst time to be advocating for visual programming, considering the first truly groundbreaking application of AI is going to be in writing code.

The real question is, did C++ give you any real ROI either? Probably not, it probably only got in the way compared to the way Unity is architected.

> Gone are the days of changing one thing and then git saying that 100 files have uncommitted changes!

You're using Unreal, but not with Perforce? Get back into the time machine buddy!

People's expectations about this extremely clunky engine are way too high.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#96

Post by interestica »

TacoRabbit wrote: post #86

It's also worth noting that if you're concerned about Epic Changing the Deal and doing a rugpull like Unity, they've said you can simply not accept the changes and continue operating under your existing terms you agreed to: "If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access…

I think Unity had that same provision? Until they changed it:

"Unity silently removed their Github repo to track license changes, then updated their license to remove the clause that lets you use the TOS from the version you shipped with, then insists games already shipped need to pay the new fees."

https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_sile...

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#97

Post by hypeatei »

Unity never seemed like a good engine. It's CPU bound which is extremely aggravating for a GAME engine.

A popular game made with Unity, called Rust, always gets a lot of shit from players because GPUs don't do anything except give a couple FPS. I'd be glad to see Unity die with these pricing changes.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#98

Post by sosodev »

tapoxi wrote: post #65
bastardoperator wrote: post #56

Or you can wait for Source 2 which is rumored to be dropping on September 23rd with CS:2

Source 2 has been out since 2015, with tooling, but so far I think the only third-party licensee is S&ndbox. It's not so much a modern game creation platform as it is a collection of Valve's internal tools. Also from a technology standpoint it is miles behind Unreal Engine.

It seems a goal of S&box is to allow more developers to ship games that are built using Source 2. I'm curious if we'll see much of that in the future.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#99

Post by musicale »

mrtksn wrote: post #89
blinding-streak wrote: post #67

Unity offices are closing due to death threats. Things going smoothly after their pricing change. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-14/video-gam...

What up with the gaming community? I get the the players being carried away or be from a special demographics but aren't the game professionals aware that they are doing business? Underpaid developers, death treats after some pricing changes. Wow.

The developers are revolting.

Re: So You've Decided to Move from Unity to Unreal Engine

#100

Post by dbrueck »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #95
dbrueck wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year we completed a huge refactor that involved, among other things, getting us almost 100% off blueprints (now we use them just for little bits of presentation logic in UIs). BPs are amazing for discovering how to use the engine - they provide a sort of guided exploration of things, especially when you don't know what you don't know. For us they really, really, really broke down when it came to version…

It's nice to hear from someone with real experience. Blueprints clearly delivered negative ROI. In general they probably do. This is the worst time to be advocating for visual programming, considering the first truly groundbreaking application of AI is going to be in writing code. The real question is, did C++ give you any real ROI either? Probably not, it probably only got in the way compared to the way Unity is arc…

> The real question is, did C++ give you any real ROI either?

We actually moved most of everything that was in BP (and a good bit of what was in C++) to Python, so it addressed all of our issues while also speeding up development and, somewhat surprisingly, giving us a decent performance boost too.

> You're using Unreal, but not with Perforce?

Yeah, definitely not going to use Perforce, haha - might as well be using SourceSafe!

> People's expectations about this extremely clunky engine are way too high.

Unreal absolutely does have its warts, an almost overwhelming amount of complexity, and we've run into our share of issues. Sometimes you're amazed at how quickly a feature can be implemented, and then other times you spend days on something you thought was going to be trivial. We replaced the replication system with something better suited to our needs, for example. That said, on the whole we're pretty happy with Unreal (both the renderer and the materials system are very impressive).

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