Unreal Engine 4.11 Released • Hacker News Board

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#61

Post by coldtea » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

mixedCase wrote: post #56

coldtea wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not Linux is the primary target for commercial game engines (Unreal included) in the first place. Desktop Linux is a tiny niche (measured to below 2%), and Linux gaming even smaller part of that. Heck, even OS X which got around 10% doesn't get much love, gaming wise...

>Desktop Linux is a tiny niche (measured to below 2%), Not for developers. And both Unreal and Unity have Linux editors and support compiling for Linux.

Not for web/server/backend developers, but YES for game developers.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#62

Post by jmatthews » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

hacker_9 wrote: post #44

Keyframe wrote: post #33

If anyone told me 10 years ago that Unreal and CryEngine would be, for all practical purposes, free... It's wonderful time to be a gamedev (tech-wise), I presume. Writing your own graphics engine now seems to be more in line if you really enjoy writing your engine more than the game itself - or if you really want to do something you can't do easily with engines available.

Graphics engines aren't particularly hard to write though once you grep the shader pipeline, as many/all of the latest effects are available for free online (FXAA, HDR, Deferred Lighting etc), though an engine will nicely package them together for you in a ready to use fashion. The biggest problem with this pre-packaged software is when something ultimately goes wrong, which it always does. Then you find yourself dig…

Writing your own engine, when you intend to make a game is a black hole where many many projects go to die.

Implementing a cross platform modern game engine is perhaps a single step below writing an operating system from scratch.

Source- I've written 3 feature rich, but not feature complete, game engines over the last 25 years.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#63

Post by hacker_9 » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #58

hacker_9 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics engines aren't particularly hard to write though once you grep the shader pipeline, as many/all of the latest effects are available for free online (FXAA, HDR, Deferred Lighting etc), though an engine will nicely package them together for you in a ready to use fashion. The biggest problem with this pre-packaged software is when something ultimately goes wrong, which it always does. Then you find yourself dig…

> Graphics engines aren't particularly hard to write though once you grep the shader pipeline That's like saying "car's aren't too hard to build once you understand the four stroke cycle". Did you read the changelog? The manpower involved is immense. (Of course you can write a much much simpler engine yourself, but we aren't talking about those.)

Eh, you cut off the second part of what I said.. What I mean is, if you go down the route of writing your own graphics engine, then everything Unreal has is available in bits and pieces for free online, but you have to have the know how to stitch them together - which isn't particularly hard, and something you should know if you are going into gamedev anyway as it's the basics.

Note I'm only talking about the graphics aka shader side here, not the whole engine.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#64

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

redtuesday wrote: post #22

stesch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's more an inherit problem of how Hacker News works. Good posts get ignored all the time. Just take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest And not every Unreal post gets to the front page. The exact same link was submitted way earlier and if the dupe check would have worked this wouldn't be on the front page because nobody would have seen it.

Ok, I should have made that clearer. What I meant was that at least one post on a minor release of Unreal gets to the front page (at least when I'm browsing HN, maybe later or earlier in the day the postings are not on the front page). Out of curiosity I checked my above claim and it was wrong (hehe), but many releases hit the front page: 4.11 - now 4.10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548139 [75 comments] 4…

The best way to affect this is to post more good stories yourself. You can also add a first comment to the thread explaining what you think is good or important about the story.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#65

Post by inDigiNeous » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

hacker_9 wrote: post #44

Keyframe wrote: post #33

If anyone told me 10 years ago that Unreal and CryEngine would be, for all practical purposes, free... It's wonderful time to be a gamedev (tech-wise), I presume. Writing your own graphics engine now seems to be more in line if you really enjoy writing your engine more than the game itself - or if you really want to do something you can't do easily with engines available.

Graphics engines aren't particularly hard to write though once you grep the shader pipeline, as many/all of the latest effects are available for free online (FXAA, HDR, Deferred Lighting etc), though an engine will nicely package them together for you in a ready to use fashion. The biggest problem with this pre-packaged software is when something ultimately goes wrong, which it always does. Then you find yourself dig…

Writing a 3D graphics engine is one of the most complex things you can do in software. It requires so much understanding of data structures, efficiency, close to the metal programming, 3D math, vectors, translations, what have you.

Of course it gets "easier" once you've done it a couple of time and understand the basics, but really doing it for the first time is a hard edge to climb.

Been writing my first 3D C++/OpenGL engine for the last 2 years, one of the most taunting tasks I've taken in my career. And just to cover a very specific use case of graphics rendering, not to do cover an overly generalized case like Unreal Engine is doing.

Unreal engine is also over at least 20 years old, so I think you're overly simplifying the task required.

Graphics engine is so much more than just figuring out the graphics pipeline, ultimately it's about flexible data management in a way that lets you achieve what you want, with performance.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#66

Post by brador » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

TrevorJ wrote: post #49

brador wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X number of employees? The principle of the model is make em pay once they can afford it. So having X employees would usually mean the company can afford to pay say $10 per employee per year to use it.

I understand what you are getting at, but that particular example sounds like a great way to convince companies to adopt a 'no OSS software on work machines' policy.

And what else would they use? You have regular paid software, or OSS software that scales with your business at a reasonable price. I know which i'd take.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#67

Post by hacker_9 » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

jmatthews wrote: post #62

hacker_9 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics engines aren't particularly hard to write though once you grep the shader pipeline, as many/all of the latest effects are available for free online (FXAA, HDR, Deferred Lighting etc), though an engine will nicely package them together for you in a ready to use fashion. The biggest problem with this pre-packaged software is when something ultimately goes wrong, which it always does. Then you find yourself dig…

Writing your own engine, when you intend to make a game is a black hole where many many projects go to die. Implementing a cross platform modern game engine is perhaps a single step below writing an operating system from scratch. Source- I've written 3 feature rich, but not feature complete, game engines over the last 25 years.

Writing an 'engine' is just good code reuse - as I build my game I have 2 separate groups of projects: one is for the engine where I put generic game tools such as model loading, input handling etc - and the other group of projects is my game logic which contain specific jobs and tasks my AI perform in-game for example.

When new engine features come out, FXAA for example, it's mainly just a case of finding it online [1] and implementing it as needed. I've done this with many parts of my engine (model loading [2], animation [3] and physics [4] come to mind) where I don't need to re-invent the wheel, but I have full source for when I need to modify it (always the case), and it comes unrestricted by licences which is another plus.

Cross platform? Mono runtime + Monogame already has me covered, and I can use a modern language to write my games for faster iterative development.

[1] https://github.com/SeriousMaxx/FXAAMonoGame

[2] https://github.com/assimp/assimp

[3] https://xnanimation.codeplex.com

[4] http://community.monogame.net/t/which-physics-engine-is-work...

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#68

Post by brador » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #60

brador wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's open source with a pay x% once you get big enough to make $y thousand a year. It's proven effective and I hope more open sourcers copy the business model. Imagine if Mozilla was supported like this instead of being paid for customer data. It would be a game changer.

Mozilla cares about software freedom.

Mozilla cares about serving their paymaster. Right now that's Yahoo through search integration.

Under this scalable model it will be users.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#69

Post by hacker_9 » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

inDigiNeous wrote: post #65

hacker_9 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics engines aren't particularly hard to write though once you grep the shader pipeline, as many/all of the latest effects are available for free online (FXAA, HDR, Deferred Lighting etc), though an engine will nicely package them together for you in a ready to use fashion. The biggest problem with this pre-packaged software is when something ultimately goes wrong, which it always does. Then you find yourself dig…

Writing a 3D graphics engine is one of the most complex things you can do in software. It requires so much understanding of data structures, efficiency, close to the metal programming, 3D math, vectors, translations, what have you. Of course it gets "easier" once you've done it a couple of time and understand the basics, but really doing it for the first time is a hard edge to climb. Been writing my first 3D C++/Open…

3d Math sucks sure, but you can't just use an engine and expect to not have to deal with it. It's just the reality of the situation. Also I'm not denying the volume of work gone into Unreal, but I am saying that roll-your-own approach is still possible, because many of Unreal's features are available online. It's just it's up to you to integrate it all. Of course writing a C++/OGL renderer from scratch is not nice, I've done the same myself and I promised myself never again :-)

These days C# + Monogame solves all my Language, API and Platform distribution problems and allows for fast iteration during development.

Re: Unreal Engine 4.11 Released

#70

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

stesch wrote: post #15

DanBC wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think HN has some dupe detection. People expect it to catch identical URLs.

HN has a dupe detection. That's why I'm wondering what's going on. It seems to be a bug. When I submit something that is already there the systems gives an upvote and doesn't register it as a second post. But not this time.

The comments at these links should explain:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html