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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

#111

Post by andersa »

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…

Blueprints are not performant, they are potentially the slowest scripting language to ever be used in a significant way, worse than python even. If you don't believe this, try implementing some basic number crunching routines in pure blueprints and see how long they take to execute. Though if you're just using them to configure and glue together C++ classes, like most gameplay code is doing, then it's usually fine.

Reading other people's blueprints and understanding them is much harder than doing this with the equivalent code - having to follow the wires everywhere is a nightmare with all visual noise. I often jokingly call it a write-only language. Not to mention the part where you must have compiled the project and be running Unreal Editor with all the assets loaded to do this in the first place.

And then you can't even properly diff or merge them without using some special tool that doesn't properly integrate with your version control and only works reliably half the time.

Blueprints are fantastic for familiarizing yourself with the engine, since you can quickly discover all the things to do from the context sensitive search. They're also great for people to get started with their projects and prototyping. They're not at all suited for production work in a large team.

I really wish Unreal Engine supported a proper scripting language so the choice isn't between noisy node graphs hidden in binary asset files and raw C++ code. People keep shooting themselves in the foot with both of these.

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

#112

Post by PeterisP »

owenpalmer wrote: post #33
jaimehrubiks wrote: post #31

> It's free until you make a million bucks USD, and only after that is it 5% gross, and only in quarters where you made more than $10,000 USD. So most folks never end up paying anything. There are no subscription fees or anything. To clarify, if you make a million bucks, and then one dollar, you only owe them five cents. It sounds very fair to me, what are the general thoughts here?

I'm surprised they can sustain such low pricing

Just as in game microtransactions, it doesn't matter how much or little the median person is paying, because all the profit is in the minority of very big payers / 'whales', so you optimize the payment structure of the small payments to ensure that they don't prevent you from capturing the whales.

If your game doesn't earn a million dollars, it doesn't matter to Epic, because all those (many!) tiny games in total don't earn enough that even a much higher pricing would move the needle.

However, if the low-end pricing structure means that one more (or one less) blockbuster chooses this engine, that makes all the difference, because they are going to pay the full rate out of the billion dollars they earn.

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

#113

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>They make the engine API extremely discoverable.

yeah, because the UE documentation is absolutely horrid (and it's not like Unity is better at this). I have lots of gripes, but I think the meta issues involve how BPs cause so much community knowledge about the c++ API to be buried. Absolutely fatal if your game cares about performance.

>They are performant

They are performant... IF you know how to weave between them and c++. Shame that courses don't really seem to emphasize that and you simply hit that wall once you're working on a project.

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

#114

Post by akhosravian »

enragedcacti wrote: post #55
danudey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic made more than $5bn in profit from 2018 to 2019, according to documentation from Epic's court case with Apple, and $5.1bn in revenue in 2020. https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22417447/fortnite-revenue-... With numbers like that, collecting a half-million dollars from even ten blockbuster games per year is probably not even worth the time and energy it would take; that would be 0.1% of their revenue, which, rela…

> collecting a half-million dollars from even ten blockbuster games per year I don't think that's in the right ballpark. PUBG has generated about $15 billion in revenue over 6 years or $125 million per year in revenue for Epic. Jedi: Fallen Order sold 10 million copies at full price in its first four months, netting Epic ~$20 million. Even an indie game like Stray netted Epic ~$2 million in one month of Steam sales.…

FWIW basically no established game developer is using the standard terms epic provides. If you’re in a situation where you have a high degree of confidence you will owe Epic money it is worth reaching out in advance.

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

#115

Post by johnnyanmac »

andersa wrote: post #111
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…

Blueprints are not performant, they are potentially the slowest scripting language to ever be used in a significant way, worse than python even. If you don't believe this, try implementing some basic number crunching routines in pure blueprints and see how long they take to execute. Though if you're just using them to configure and glue together C++ classes, like most gameplay code is doing, then it's usually fine. R…

>I really wish Unreal Engine supported a proper scripting language so the choice isn't between noisy node graphs hidden in binary asset files and raw C++ code. People keep shooting themselves in the foot with both of these.

That's apparently what UE's new Scheme based language, Verse[0], is aiming to do. But this is very new tech and currently used in the Fortnite editor part of UE. It's not quite something to use in the main engine yet.

[0]: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/uefn/verse-lan...

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

#117

Post by corysama »

ffhhttt wrote: post #59
owenpalmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they can sustain such low pricing

Technically if your game is not F2P Unity will still be much if your revenue i a couple if millions (even with their bizarre and convoluted per install pricing). Also I don’t think they have that many people working on the engine (they have less than half the employee count of Unity) and it’s probably subsidized by Fortnite revenue to some extent.

Games that expect a large revenue are expected to negotiate a custom contract with Epic. That has been their practice going back to Unreal Engine 1.

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

#118

Post by johnnyanmac »

nottorp wrote: post #73
owenpalmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they can sustain such low pricing

They’re financed by blood diamonds. I.e. tencent making their initial funds from gacha on the Asian market and now trying to buy legitmity with it.

Tencent purchased a stake in Epic in 2012, years before the f2p mobile market took off.

Tencent isn't just a mobile game company, they are basiaclly Chinese Microsoft for how many parts of the industry they are entwined in in their home country.

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

#119

Post by bluescrn »

hypeatei wrote: post #97

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.

C# support is/was its killer feature. Game dev without the pain of C++, and without being limited to non-standard scripting languages (or worse, visual scripting spaghetti)

With Unity, you can use C# for everything, from the simplest 'spin this object around' script to customised rendering pipelines and complex in-editor tools.

Performance was clearly good enough for the engine to become wildly successful, particularly amongst indie/mobile developers making smaller games, and experienced users learn to avoid the main performance pitfalls.

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

#120

Post by johnnyanmac »

akhosravian wrote: post #114
enragedcacti wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> collecting a half-million dollars from even ten blockbuster games per year I don't think that's in the right ballpark. PUBG has generated about $15 billion in revenue over 6 years or $125 million per year in revenue for Epic. Jedi: Fallen Order sold 10 million copies at full price in its first four months, netting Epic ~$20 million. Even an indie game like Stray netted Epic ~$2 million in one month of Steam sales.…

FWIW basically no established game developer is using the standard terms epic provides. If you’re in a situation where you have a high degree of confidence you will owe Epic money it is worth reaching out in advance.

True, but I also imagine that Epic isn't bargaining down the rev share too low. Or, companies are fine paying 8 or even 9 figures upfront in anticipation of such success in a custom contract.

I can't imagine it being chump change.

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