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Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

unrealengine.com

161–168 of 168 posts

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#161
post #104
post #59

I'll say it, THANK YOU! I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch ab…

What's the best engine you've worked with? (just curious)

Architecture wise, an in-house engine we built for the PS2/Xbox (this was over 10 years ago). But as an overall package (editor, visuals, code, etc) I do think Unreal is one of the best out there. It isn't as simple to start working with as for example Unity3D, and the content processing for consoles used to be very slow, (and personally) not a fan of UnrealScript. But still, I've worked on an FPS, hack and slash and a strategy game with it. It is quite versatile and if you have access to source code (which you do now, but before with UDK only you didn't) you can do some amazing things with it.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#162
post #59

I'll say it, THANK YOU! I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch ab…

How does one even get into game design? I have an idea in my head that I want to get out but it gets more & more complex as I think about it.

Depends, if you want to make your own idea in to a game start simple. Implement 1 core mechanic, you can't care about UI, Multiplayer, performance, or anything like that. Make a proof of concept, make it as simple as you can. Iterate.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#163
post #78

"5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users." As others have pointed out, that is a huge amount, that is probably 25 - 30% of your "profit". The accounting is pretty easy though. Units * SRP * 0.05 == royalty. That said, it is a lot simpler than investing $25 - $30K up front while building the game, only to have it go poof because the market or your designer flaked out. Figure 3 year development at $20/month t…

Gross revenue is way easier to calculate than profit. I like these terms much better.

Not only is it easier to calculate, it protects them from publishers who claim no profit due to "expenses".

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#165
post #59

I'll say it, THANK YOU! I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch ab…

How does one even get into game design? I have an idea in my head that I want to get out but it gets more & more complex as I think about it.

Same as with any position in the tech industry. It's not about job applications and education anymore. It's about networking. It's about demonstrating skills through projects. It's about online presence. It's about conferences and events. It's about reaching out to people who have done it before, and learning from them.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#166
post #5

The 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get). This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit). Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (o…

For retail titles I don't think your number is correct. You're not operating the retail store, so that 30% is all the revenue you get and their 5% would be 5% of that 30%, because the other 70% is entirely devoured by the middle-men.

The things that make up your revenue vs profit gap are probably things like salaries, insurance, and (in the case where you have no traditional publisher) marketing. Even now when an indie game is sold at retail, the retail side of things is typically handled by a publisher and those people handle the retail income and distribute the cut to the developer.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#168
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gross revenue is way easier to calculate than profit. I like these terms much better.

Not only is it easier to calculate, it protects them from publishers who claim no profit due to "expenses".

Yep. aka "Hollywood accounting".
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