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

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

#241

Post by zerr » Tue, Mar 03, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #235

rplnt wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Xamarin had any license accessible to hobbyists.

In case you are not aware, last fall they doubled the free edition size limit and introduced a $25/month subscription option (eventually the same price at $300/yr). https://store.xamarin.com/ Xamarin is free for students. https://xamarin.com/student

How they measure the size actually?

Another important thing - Xamarin.Forms should be in the free edition, if it is aimed for starters.... Big studios or established companies can afford to develop native UIs for each platform separately.

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

#242

Post by netinstructions » Tue, Mar 03, 2015, 8:43 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #9

How does it fare against Unity? My understanding, from previous versions, is that Unity offered a lot more tooling than Unreal. Also, Unreal's SDK demanded a lot of C++ code, which can be unappealing for small studios compared to Unity's Mono and several possible (managed) language choices. However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing. Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competi…

Something that I look for when comparing tools/frameworks are the number of Stackoverflow questions and answers. http://www.arepeopletalkingaboutit.com/tags/unity3d,unreal-e... offers a quick visualization. I may have missed a few tags, but it looks like there's a very large amount of people talking about Unity3d on Stackoverflow relative to Unreal. No wonder they want to open it up to the masses.

Of course that can be interpreted many ways (Are there active email lists? Are there active forums elsewhere?) and raises other questions (What's the best way to learn a tool/technology?) but it's at least one useful metric for checking in on my FOMO.

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

#243

Post by unsignedint » Tue, Mar 03, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #178

jameshart wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty gameable (and who would be better at gaming systems than games devs?). "Oh, yeah, we made $2999 on Gem Clan Quest, then $2999 on Gem Clan Quest Super Deluxe Edition, and $2999 on the Gem Clan Quest Candy Kingdom DLC, which is more of a sequel really, so it's a totally different product..."

My guess is their not interested in the small fry and are looking for companies that earn hundreds of millions. If a company was gaming this pricing creating 100 products each earning $4,000 (vs. $400k) they are saving $15,000 and are likely to hurt their business via customer confusion.

Doesn't necessarily have to be that high. It's more that they are trying to earn their revenue for actual game publishers of all sizes.

Other than the particularly small scale operations (someone's side project, etc.) if the product hasn't hit $3000 revenue in its lifetime, even small/medium sized business would be fairly troubled in the standpoint of sustainability.

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

#244

Post by nulltype » Tue, Mar 03, 2015, 9:58 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #185

nulltype wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think microsoft calls this "Shared Source"

Actually no. Microsoft branded several licenses that way, but some of them are OSI-approved and FSF-approved (while not compatible with GPL).

Then I guess we need a new name. The engine is "readable source"

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

#245

Post by kayoone » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 6:35 AM UTC

hayksaakian wrote: post #209

shadowmint wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing. If it runs. ...and that's a big IF. The editor ran like absolute rubbish originally on macs, to the point where it was actually unusable. They've done a lot of work on that, but it's still miles away from the unity editor. I think it's really hard to argue the unreal editor is better; it's a lot slower , but it does have some nice tools. You also can't create extensions…

what about macs running windows? i'm curious to know if it's a hardware issue or OSX related.

definitely OS related, it's fine on windows, even on macs. Just the underpowered GPUs in most macs make it not really a pleasure to work with, Epic recommends workstations for development work. Personally, i'd just build a windows pc for UE work, it's not suited for laptops anyway.

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

#246

Post by kayoone » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 6:36 AM UTC

shadowmint wrote: post #186

deelowe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compare unity and unreal. To answer the question about c++, with UE4, the blueprint system removes almost all of that. Entire games can be written in their visual programming language. I also think there are ways to use c# ( https://mono-ue.github.io/ ), if you prefer that as well. C++ is needed if you want to extend the native classes. Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing. It really shines in…

Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing. If it runs. ...and that's a big IF. The editor ran like absolute rubbish originally on macs, to the point where it was actually unusable. They've done a lot of work on that, but it's still miles away from the unity editor. I think it's really hard to argue the unreal editor is better; it's a lot slower , but it does have some nice tools. You also can't create extensions…

OSX support is more or less experimental and macs (except the Mac Pro) have pretty weak GPUs. Also performance on OSX is far worse, so you are better off just building a budget workstation if you plan to seriously work with it.

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

#247

Post by curiously » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 6:51 AM UTC

Gurkenmaster wrote: post #227

curiously wrote: post #94

So my question is this. Can you use UE4 to build large online worlds like those in Rust and The Forest? Or is there a limitation like some people have suggested? What is the specific limitation exactly it hasn't been clear. Can you use UE4 to build cross platform games, on mobile and browser? Does UE4 have something like Crytek's terrain editor? That's my one favorite thing about Cryengine is their environment editor…

Someone else in this submission mentioned this thread: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large-S... >In 4.6 maximum size of map is 20km x 20km. >Now to put it into perspective. Single continent on Azeroth in WoW (exluding Northend and Pandaria) is something like 7x4km.

so from that thread seems like Altis from Arma 3 is roughly 16 X 16. I think that is quite big enough. Maybe if one was building a MMO sort of map, you would patch those 20x20 maps somehow.

I was thinking of creating a giant map like Altis and then putting players on it to roam around and stuff. Cryengine makes this very easy I think but haven't gotten to it.

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

#248

Post by ctdonath » Wed, Mar 04, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #109

ctdonath wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make money with it, you give them a fair share. Entry cost is $0. They'll ignore the first $3000 gross because hassling lots of "little people" for under $150 isn't worth the hassle for anyone. Pretty amazing, really. I've been in graphics since just drawing a line on the screen of a $6000 (2015 dollars) computer was a big deal for a beginner; now you can get a seriously robust graphics engine for no cost , devel…

> revenue I know this probably isn't the place, but I am fairly sure they mean income, not revenue.

revenue |ˈrevəˌn(y)o͞o| noun

income, especially when of a company or organization and of a substantial nature.

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

#249

Post by hgjfgjf » Sun, Mar 08, 2015, 8:20 PM UTC

curiously wrote: post #94

So my question is this. Can you use UE4 to build large online worlds like those in Rust and The Forest? Or is there a limitation like some people have suggested? What is the specific limitation exactly it hasn't been clear. Can you use UE4 to build cross platform games, on mobile and browser? Does UE4 have something like Crytek's terrain editor? That's my one favorite thing about Cryengine is their environment editor…

In 4.7.2 is max. 100mi² = 259.00km²