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Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#111

Post by drewcrawford »

drx wrote: post #40
walru wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wanted to know how the 5% royalty is enforced. Other, much lesser known, engines have attempted to do something of this sort by acting as an intermediary eg. publisher, planning to pay developers after they were paid by Apple. For obvious reasons that was immediately dismembered by the community. The only way I can figure is they'll ask for an iTunes connect login so they can check on the numbers for them…

Lawsuits. I imagine the revenue distribution would follow a power law here. So it would only really make sense for Epic to go after non-compliant "whales", where the unpaid royalties exceed the legal costs. Also, the more profitable the project, the lower the non-compliance rate, probably. It makes little sense to defy the royalty agreement if you have a successful project.

It's unfortunate that this model really only works for large developers serving broad markets like gaming.

Whereas if you're an indie developer writing image processing code for example, it is going to be hard to find infringers and harder to strongarm them into coughing up licensing fees.

I expect this has the effect of keeping source code behind closed doors that would otherwise be public.

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#112

Post by adventured »

nightski wrote: post #45
zzalpha wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're right, the word "free" does have specific connotations. Those include, but are not limited to: - not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations - given or available without charge So, is the product free, as in available without charge, as implied by the clause "available for free"? Yes. Is it free, as in not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations, something that is in no way…

Except you are constrained by obligations. The obligation to pay a % of revenue. I mean I think the model is great. But calling it free is ridiculous.

It's hardly ridiculous when you consider where we just came from, the era of $250,000 - $500,000 source access engines.

You're not constrained by obligations if you choose not to make money with your product. So yes, it can be free of charge and free of obligations. Developers have to earn money somehow, unless you want Unreal to cease to exist. This model not only makes perfect sense, the product can absolutely be free in every sense of the word.

People whining about this are being ridiculous.

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#113

Post by SXX »

GhotiFish wrote: post #80
valarauca1 wrote: post #7

The Unreal Engine is free neither as beer, or freedom. Its free as in a mob protection money is given freely , with a lot of strings attached. Overall a very smart strategy. Free Software Walled Gardens I highly believe will start to become a common thing in the software industry. As you get most the benefits of Free Software, without the normally feared industry risks.

To be honest here. The strings that are attached are strings for people who want to sell... Many open source projects do something like this, a dual license where the source code for the project is GPL, but the creator is willing to license it for something as non-gpl to people unwilling to release their source code. This requirement set by unreal is very very analogous. They just have some shifted priorities, howeve…

>this library can now be effectively used for open source initiatives.

No it's can't be because UE4 is proprietary: http://opensource.org/osd

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#114

Post by davefp »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #26
drivingmenuts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's free enough for most hobbyist game developers, many of whom will never make enough (or anything at all, really) from their games to matter. You want ideological purity? Go write your own system.

"Ideological purity" is irrelevant. The point here is that people are abusing terminology to create ambiguity. As we are talking about software, the term "free" has specific connotations that differ from everyday language. UE4 is a source-available, gratis game engine. This is fine. It is not open source, nor is it free or libre.

Whether or not you think it's free, UE4 is absolutely open source: https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#115

Post by archivator »

jrlocke wrote: post #18

A demo of the astounding capabilities for those who haven't seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PQ19BEE24

This is my favorite Unreal 4 demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8 (sadly missing the wonderful quote "I light my level by dropping a sun in.")

I'm completely in awe of the feedback loop here. It even compiles and swaps code while you're in the game!

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#116

Post by Detrus »

brandonwamboldt wrote: post #69
nowarninglabel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to decide which to cut my teeth on, to build a prototype MMORPG. I'm comfortable with C++, though my colleague won't be. Any suggestion on which engine/toolkit would be better for that type of build? Graphics quality is not a big concern, mostly just want to use the tool that have the best chance of becoming proficient with.

I don't think either engine is well suited for an MMO to be honest. You are probably better off looking at something like the HeroEngine. Unreal Engine's built in networking systems are suitable for 64 players, maybe 128 tops. It's replaceable, but I wouldn't recommend delving into that. I will say this though, if you have 1 C++ programmer with UE4, they can create functionality not builtin to the engine and expose i…

I don't know about ZERO programming. If you look at RayCast vs RayTrace here https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/From... building anything complicated with Blueprint creates a massive amount of visual clutter. It looks clearer in C++. Maybe it's easier for a novice as they're building it since the autocomplete and component system hold your hand, but reading it after is a nightmare of following lines and looking at a lot of essentially commented out code.

And talking about Blueprint code is done through screenshots https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?60637-Unable-... I guess there is still no auto generated text representation you could copy paste.

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#117

Post by Retric »

cwyers wrote: post #107
worklogin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a state-of-the-art graphics library, a critical component to your new, moderately successful video game, doesn't deserve 5% of the revenue?

Yeah, if you think you can write your own alternative to Unreal Engine for less than (revenue-$3000)*0.05 per quarter, then by all means, you should do that.

Competion is a wonderful thing.

I can't build a decent car for less than the cost of a low end BMW. But, there are plenty of other companies than can.

So, the real question is what are the other options out there and I suspect there are few engines that can come close.

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#118

Post by djur »

ryanseys wrote: post #108
cdnsteve wrote: post #98

Update: think you need to register first: https://accounts.unrealengine.com/register/index Is it just me or is the source not public yet? https://github.com/EpicGames - No public repos https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github

Why would they not just make the repo public by default? I can't see the major advantage to doing it this way making developers jump through hoops to access your source code. If I don't have a GitHub account this means I have to create 2 accounts just to gain access. Seems unnecessary.

GitHub doesn't allow private forks of public repositories. If you read the licensing terms, you aren't allowed to distribute modifications of the UE4 source to anyone who isn't already licensed. In addition, a lot of users of UE4 would not want to make their changes public.

Also, they would be required to allow GitHub users who weren't UE4 subscribers to create forks, which is a violation of their licensing terms.

Public GitHub repos just aren't really suited for projects that aren't open source.

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#119

Post by wahsd »

walru wrote: post #31
scott_karana wrote: post #3

It appears they've backed off on the royalties, too: originally, it was 5% of gross[1], and now it's 5% of gross after $3000 sales per quarter.[2] 1 https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4 2 https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free

I've always wanted to know how the 5% royalty is enforced. Other, much lesser known, engines have attempted to do something of this sort by acting as an intermediary eg. publisher, planning to pay developers after they were paid by Apple. For obvious reasons that was immediately dismembered by the community. The only way I can figure is they'll ask for an iTunes connect login so they can check on the numbers for them…

Or, you know, pay the royalty you agreed to pay and stop being a thieving scum.

I would think they have some sort of enforcing mechanism. It almost seems like the $3,000 limit is a signal of the cutoff when it starts becoming worthwhile to pursue scum buckets.

Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free

#120

Post by [deleted] »

brandonwamboldt wrote: post #69
nowarninglabel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to decide which to cut my teeth on, to build a prototype MMORPG. I'm comfortable with C++, though my colleague won't be. Any suggestion on which engine/toolkit would be better for that type of build? Graphics quality is not a big concern, mostly just want to use the tool that have the best chance of becoming proficient with.

I don't think either engine is well suited for an MMO to be honest. You are probably better off looking at something like the HeroEngine. Unreal Engine's built in networking systems are suitable for 64 players, maybe 128 tops. It's replaceable, but I wouldn't recommend delving into that. I will say this though, if you have 1 C++ programmer with UE4, they can create functionality not builtin to the engine and expose i…

[deleted]
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