Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by GhotiFish » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:33 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #113

GhotiFish wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

??

... so?

What provision on that page would I violate if I made an FLOSS project based on UE4?

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

#122

Post by scott_s » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:35 PM UTC

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.

I would phrase it "contracts" - which has the implication that if you violate the contract, you may be sued. Contracts are how just about everything is "enforced". I think that programmers tend to think that if something is required, we must have programmatic protections in place that ensure it actually happens. Most of the world does not work like that; they rely on contracts.

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

#123

Post by fuzar » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:36 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #112

nightski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

It's conditionally free. If it were unconditionally free that would permit you to use the term without question or having people call bullshit. When they do call bullshit, which is to be expected, it's absurd to go around accusing them of whining and being ridiculous. Get a grip.

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

#124

Post by cwyers » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:37 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #117

cwyers wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

iDTech is no longer licensed for third-party use; only Zenimax properties can use it. CryEngine is available -- they have a $10 a month subscription plan that is royaly-free, but you don't get source code access like you do with Unreal Engine here. (They offer seperate terms for source access.[1]) Unity exists, but I don't think it's in quite the same tier as Unreal (although for some projects that may not matter).

[1] http://cryengine.com/get-cryengine

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

#125

Post by droidist2 » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:38 PM UTC

Detrus wrote: post #116

brandonwamboldt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

Interesting. Yeah, I wonder if they have a way to import/export textural representations like Max/MSP or Pure Data patches.

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

#126

Post by Detrus » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

benihana wrote: post #84

bladedtoys wrote: post #55

I'm very glad of course but... ...technically all they did was lower the price by $19 a month. ...and bought a lot of press for that ...and a lot more shots at the 5% revenue. It's really great of course. But better yet, it's really very clever.

They did way more than that. They removed barriers to entry. Unreal becomes available for exploratory actions now. Before there was a $20 entrance fee just to try it out, now I can play with a project for free. You can use it for demonstrations or school projects now with basically zero risk to try it out.

It was really $20 then $20 whenever you want to upgrade. And it's mainly for kids with gaming rigs. Good luck running any demos on Intel Integrated Graphics, much less the editor.

Unity can be used for free, with limits on certain features but good enough for school. Runs even on crappy $500 laptops.

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

#127

Post by deelowe » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:49 PM UTC

Alphasite_ wrote: post #106

deelowe wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, keep in mind that you can get roughly a maximum of 20 sq km with the default landscape tool (not sure about performance at that scale). I believe there's also some hard coded limits around the number of simultaneous players (16?), though it seems fairly easy to work around. Again, not sure about performance.

Nothings really hardcoded when you have the source at hand.

True. Also, there are rumors that epic is working on a multiplayer implementation of the player centered coordinate system.

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

#128

Post by djur » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:49 PM UTC

zzalpha wrote: post #61

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations Free software very much is subject to engagements and obligations, these being the terms of the respective license. Is your argument based on an excessively restrictive, ideologically motivated definition of the word "free" that does not fully represent how the word is used in practice? It's funny, because by your own statement, "open source" is also an exce…

It's funny, because by your own statement, "open source" is also an excessively restrictive and ideologically motivated definition, what with OSI and FSF definitions being largely equivalent. For some reason I doubt you believe this. Why would you say that? I actually explicitly believe that the FSF and OSI have coopted the term "free" in order to bend it to their own definition, while in fact espousing a position th…

Since when does the OSI advocate for copyleft licenses, explicitly or otherwise? It was in fact founded -- and the term "open source" was coined -- in order to advocate for free software licensing separately from the FSF's ethical positions and promotion of copyleft.

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

#129

Post by jokoon » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:52 PM UTC

How really easy is it to set up a beginner's project with this engine ? I mean it's a commercial engine, it has all the bells and whistles, but how easy is it to learn it ? Does it require one to use the editor to use the engine, or can I start with a simple bit of code and start going from there ?

What I hate about unity is the whole interface editor thing, it's big and you must use everything to use it. Is this Unreal Engine more earth to earth when it comes to programming ?

If it's a powerful 3D renderer but it's hard to use for simple things and it's not easily extensible, it's not really worthwhile.

I see it's very powerful, but I'm still wondering about the real utility of an "engine" versus a library.

For example, if you have some new idea and you are a programmer, and you want to be able to experiment and not be constrained by the design of the engine, I doubt such engine would really be relevant. Programmers need simple tools and frozen platforms.

I guess this engine is great for small studio who want to make a real 3D game quickly, if their programming style fit well, but if you're an indie or a demoscener and you're just experimenting, this engine is just too powerful.

I mean it's great to have such great and powerful tools (if they can last at least 5 year and not make projects obsolete) for free, but I don't see becoming a standard in the game programming community, and I don't know why...

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

#130

Post by antihero » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

I'd be interested to see how the royalties work when UE for is not the primary part of the product.

Say, hypothetically you had an advanced visualisation component that you wanted to build in UE, or a virtual tour part of a much larger app. Or even using it to provide some sort of AR experience, however this was just one feature of a much much larger project, which revenues could be in the millions. Does that mean they get 5% of the whole thing? Or just the part that directly relates to the game engine?

Not knocking it, I think it's a great model, but it does make for an interesting problem. I think Unity is a better choice for this sort of scenario, of course, but still.