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Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

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Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#121

Post by tomatowurst »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #59
minism wrote: post #30

Having worked in Unity as a hobbyist for about a decade and considering the switch to Unreal due to obvious issues Unity is currently facing (3 rendering pipelines being the main one), I'd like to hear more input from the programmer experience in both engines. I think C# in Unity hits a really nice sweet spot: You have a powerful and expressive type system, can use nice high level features like async/await, you get (…

I'm a hobbyist who tried switching and really didn't like having to use C++ or blueprints. Epic is working on a new language called verse though, so that might change the situation.

Thing is, it's not just having an approacheable/hireable language, its about the availability of tutorials, learning materials, community, and existing code. That takes a lot of time and its Unity's moat that Epic can't really replicate by creating yet another Unrealscript

You absolutely cannot use UE without ending up with C++, blueprint only shines with animation rigging, material, vfx where you need a lot of quick feedback loop by exploring possibilities.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#122

Post by Agentlien »

chii wrote: post #118
markus_zhang wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks I understand that, just that the whole engine seems to be a huge blob that is difficult to approach. Maybe I should just focus on one part.

i would imagine it's easier to delve deep into UE since their source is actually available. I dont know if you can step into unity's code at all.

Source code access in Unity is available but very expensive, even for large studios.

Coming from a background of working with engines where the source is available it has been frustrating to me being unable to dig into or modify the engine. Especially when I'm at the mercy of some obscure engine bug. But most of the time I've managed to make do.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#123

Post by jackosdev »

dogles wrote: post #67
wokwokwok wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not as bad as you imagine. Here are some of my experiences regarding swapping to unreal: - the c++ gameplay framework is very friendly. It’s GC, with good high level wrappers that provide stuff like options, maps, classes (ie. Reflection). - The unreal discord c++ channel is full of people who will actually answer your questions, it’s brilliant. - Every high level blueprint function is a c++ function. I cannot e…

Just want to +1 that Rider for Unreal [1] is GREAT. It's also totally useable for non-Unreal C++ projects. Things like code inspection (e.g. goto definition/find usage/etc) and refactoring are actually fast, unlike Visual Studio. I've got a few quibbles about low-level (think asm) debugging, but I've pretty much moved exclusively to Rider at this point. The Unreal-specific stuff is nice as well: being able to see wha…

Rider was damn good compared to Visual Studio, been over a year since I used it and was still in beta then as well

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#124

Post by maushu »

rtpg wrote: post #113
trzy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the point about the difficulty of grayboxing with Unity. Can you elaborate? All my projects start with programmer art — often just the built-in primitive (cubes, spheres, cylinders, planes).

https://joewintergreendev.tumblr.com/post/152188146576/repos... Here are a set of videos that compare UE4 to Valve's stuff. Just like making it easy to drop a bunch of stuff in and texture things nicely.

Have you seen probuilder for unity? Here's a old video: https://youtu.be/a8JOk8nuK0k

Unity basically bought this third party tool and is now a free package.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#125

Post by panzerboiler »

rtpg wrote: post #74

Not to tone police that much but I really don't get people like Casey. Like his whole thing is spending a billion years writing his game engine, and then whining about all these "bloated" tools. Just completely dismissive of everything that doesn't align directly with his values (which don't include actually shipping game!) I like people who write their own engines and make bespoke things for fun. Just really dislike…

You have been overly dismissive of Casey's work. HH is a treasure, and if you consider that he explained the how and the why of every single line of code, on stream, without cutting any corner, your consideration about the time spent become meaningless. There are people interested in copy-pasting and glueing together pre-baked parts to ship something, and there are people interested in developing a deep understanding of how things work, to be able to break and reassemble new toys with complete freedom. There are people that value the product and people that value the process. Casey's work is targeted at the second group, and I thank him immensely for what he does, even if some of his rants are pretty ignorant (usually when talking about things he knows nothing about). Take the good parts. There are many.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#126

Post by [deleted] »

wokwokwok wrote: post #44
minism wrote: post #30

Having worked in Unity as a hobbyist for about a decade and considering the switch to Unreal due to obvious issues Unity is currently facing (3 rendering pipelines being the main one), I'd like to hear more input from the programmer experience in both engines. I think C# in Unity hits a really nice sweet spot: You have a powerful and expressive type system, can use nice high level features like async/await, you get (…

It’s not as bad as you imagine. Here are some of my experiences regarding swapping to unreal: - the c++ gameplay framework is very friendly. It’s GC, with good high level wrappers that provide stuff like options, maps, classes (ie. Reflection). - The unreal discord c++ channel is full of people who will actually answer your questions, it’s brilliant. - Every high level blueprint function is a c++ function. I cannot e…

[deleted]

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#127

Post by klodolph »

rtpg wrote: post #74

Not to tone police that much but I really don't get people like Casey. Like his whole thing is spending a billion years writing his game engine, and then whining about all these "bloated" tools. Just completely dismissive of everything that doesn't align directly with his values (which don't include actually shipping game!) I like people who write their own engines and make bespoke things for fun. Just really dislike…

> Just completely dismissive of everything that doesn't align directly with his values (which don't include actually shipping game!)

I think you're reading something that's not there. Some big name (and "big" is relative) says something, like Carmack, Stallman, or even someone like Jeff Vogel, and people get up in arms about it. To be honest, I think most people are reacting to how celebrities make them feel rather than what celebrities say. If Muratori is "dismissive", it could be because you feel dismissed, or some other feeling you have, rather than something Muratori is actually saying.

The biggest problem with tone policing is that it's so damn inaccurate.

Anyway, we need people like Casey Muratori in the ecosystem. You get a mix of architecture astronauts and philosophizers with "just get it done and ship it" folks. Both groups of people learn things that the other group needs to know. Both groups of people build things that the other group wants to use.

> Just really dislike people who lack the imagination to wonder why some people just want to make games rather than spend their life writing engine code, and actively shitting on stuff that exists. Just so much negative energy to put out in the world.

Doesn't seem like Muratori to me. He does have his weird fan group that seems to amplify stuff he says 100x (like Blow and Carmack), but calling Unreal "unwieldy" is not exactly "shitting" on it. It is unwieldy, like most mature pieces of software. I often say that C++ is a trainwreck of a language, but that doesn't mean that I don't think that C++ has a value proposition. If I said that with a fan group like Muratori's weird fans, maybe it would make people more upset--as it is, I'm just some unknown commenter on HN.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#128

Post by Jensson »

chii wrote: post #118
markus_zhang wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks I understand that, just that the whole engine seems to be a huge blob that is difficult to approach. Maybe I should just focus on one part.

i would imagine it's easier to delve deep into UE since their source is actually available. I dont know if you can step into unity's code at all.

The power of unity is that you don't have to delve deeper, just start it up, make a script and start writing code. The weakness then is that all the components you code against are horribly bad/slow, so for a bigger game this approach wont scale, but if you are a programmer and just want to code a simple game unity can get you there in a weekend. First project I made in unity was a top down shooter with simple random map and powerups, took a weekend, I've tried using unreal but it is way harder to interface between code and assets and ui there.

Edit: My point here is that in unity you can easily write your own replacements since it is so easy to write new components in C#. This means you don't have to learn how unity did things, just write your own if you don't like what they did. The only exceptions here are physics and the renderer, you can't easily replace those.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#129

Post by klodolph »

wokwokwok wrote: post #51
keyle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used Unreal for years in the past (UE4 only), I agree with you that C# would definitely win over the C++/Blueprint combo. Over the years, especially since blueprints compile down to C++, I've learnt to let go and embrace a lot more this visual programming approach. And it does have its benefits. With a strict approach, just as you would in programming paradigm, the readability and 'visual scanning' of opening…

O_o Blueprints do not compile down to c++, it’s a VM that runs in the engine. The reason no one talks about compiling the engine is because most folk don’t do that. It’s like recompiling python. Sure… if you really want to…

Python is not that bad to compile. For me, less than 1 minute for a full compile of Python. A full compile of Binutils + GCC + Newlib is much worse, but it's still well under 10 minutes. I'm not even using a particularly fast system.

Unreal is more comparable to projects like LLVM or Chrome.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#130

Post by holografix »

akyu wrote: post #35

As a hobbyist I found Unreal to be far better than Unity. The technical debt that Unity has continued to accrue starts impacting you even as a casual user. It's a bit of a mess to be honest. Unreal on the other hand has a very solid architecture and goes out of its way to be reliable and maintainable. Plus you have the full source available in your project to search through if you want to dig into the code. The code…

Can you expand on the networking bit?
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