Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mono for Unreal Engine

tirania.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#81

Post by AlexeyBrin »

numo16 wrote: post #80
AlexeyBrin wrote: post #79

From http://mono-ue.github.io/about.html > To redistribute code written with Mono for Unreal Engine, you must have a commercial license to the Mono runtime. These licenses are available from Xamarin for Mac, Android and iOS online, and you can request Windows licenses through support. So, if I want to use this commercially on Windows I will have to buy a license for the Mono runtime ? Judging by the price for the Mac…

The Unreal license is only that much if you keep your subscription going. You can subscribe and then cancel your subscription whenever you want, while still being allowed to publish using the latest version of UE4 that was available while you were subscribed. From the EULA: After cancellation of your Subscription by either you or Epic, you will not be entitled to access or use future Versions of the Engine Code or As…

I know about the Unreal license and I actually think it is a decent price for the engine. My comment was more about the Mono runtime licensing that ads up quickly and it is more than the initial cost of UE 4.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#82

Post by gillianseed »

frik wrote: post #70
WallWextra wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unoffical reason is Xamarin wants too much money.

Mono is open source and free software. Because of the "single static binary" policy (no dynamic linking) of app stores you have to obtain a proprietary license from Xamarin. • The C# compiler is dual-licensed under the MIT/X11 license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The tools are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The runtime libraries are under the GNU Library GPL 2.0 (LG…

>We only require licensing for uses of Mono and Moonlight on embedded systems, or systems where you are unable to fulfill the obligations of the GNU LGPL.

In other words, you have to pay a license fee for shipping the Mono runtime in a proprietary game, which is what Unity does.

So Unity has negotiated a license deal with Xamarin for the Mono runtime version they use, and if they want to use a newer version they will have to pay more, which they aren't doing.

Instead Unity has developed il2cpp which means that they no longer have to ship the mono runtime with each game and therefore no longer have to pay the license fee for shipping mono.

Atleast that's what I've gathered.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#83

Post by azakai »

cwyers wrote: post #78
pdaddyo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does solve their biggest issue - ultimately enabling Unity projects to publish to the web without plugins (WebGL / javascript). Once all code in a Unity project eventually ends up as C++ (even if it started as C#), they can leverage Emscripten, asm.js and related technologies to enable Unity devs to use C# in the editor, which is converted to C++, and ultimately Javascript. It seems crazy, but it might just wo…

"But it does solve their biggest issue - ultimately enabling Unity projects to publish to the web without plugins (WebGL / javascript)." I'm not really sure that is their biggest issue; HTML5 publishing of Unity games seems mostly a novelty at this point.

It is still pretty new, yes, but it seems to work well (see for example https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/10/unity-games-in-webgl-owlch... ), and it's been one of the most-asked for features by Unity users on their forums.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#84

Post by Alphasite_ »

frik wrote: post #70
WallWextra wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unoffical reason is Xamarin wants too much money.

Mono is open source and free software. Because of the "single static binary" policy (no dynamic linking) of app stores you have to obtain a proprietary license from Xamarin. • The C# compiler is dual-licensed under the MIT/X11 license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The tools are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The runtime libraries are under the GNU Library GPL 2.0 (LG…

How would that work with the App store now, since you can dynamically link to frameworks?

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#85

Post by cturhan »

Well this is very strange. Language shouldn't matter so much. Eventually you will use the same function name for any language. Whether it's c++, c# or f# you will use same functions e.g. `setActorLocationAndRotation` so I didn't get that.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#86

Post by jstedfast »

MrDom wrote: post #74
frik wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mono is open source and free software. Because of the "single static binary" policy (no dynamic linking) of app stores you have to obtain a proprietary license from Xamarin. • The C# compiler is dual-licensed under the MIT/X11 license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The tools are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The runtime libraries are under the GNU Library GPL 2.0 (LG…

It's not just mono they need, it's the IDE. The default IDE that comes with Unity is MonoDevelop. If they upgraded the runtime, they'd have to pay for Xamarin's IDE. I wonder if embedding the java runtime would have been cheaper in the long run.

Our IDE is free for anyone to use, whether you are using our iOS, Android or Mac products or not. It's also open source (except for the addins that work with our iOS, Android and Mac products).

There are a lot of Unity customers on our forums using Xamarin Studio already.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#87

Post by the_why_of_y »

gillianseed wrote: post #82
frik wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mono is open source and free software. Because of the "single static binary" policy (no dynamic linking) of app stores you have to obtain a proprietary license from Xamarin. • The C# compiler is dual-licensed under the MIT/X11 license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The tools are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The runtime libraries are under the GNU Library GPL 2.0 (LG…

>We only require licensing for uses of Mono and Moonlight on embedded systems, or systems where you are unable to fulfill the obligations of the GNU LGPL. In other words, you have to pay a license fee for shipping the Mono runtime in a proprietary game, which is what Unity does. So Unity has negotiated a license deal with Xamarin for the Mono runtime version they use, and if they want to use a newer version they will…

You can bundle LGPL libraries with proprietary applications quite easily; it just has to be possible for the user to replace it, which is rarely a problem because the usual situation is that your proprietary code sits "above" the LGPL library.

But reportedly Apple does not allow LGPL in its app store for some reason.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#88

Post by mnglkhn2 »

gillianseed wrote: post #82
frik wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mono is open source and free software. Because of the "single static binary" policy (no dynamic linking) of app stores you have to obtain a proprietary license from Xamarin. • The C# compiler is dual-licensed under the MIT/X11 license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The tools are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). • The runtime libraries are under the GNU Library GPL 2.0 (LG…

>We only require licensing for uses of Mono and Moonlight on embedded systems, or systems where you are unable to fulfill the obligations of the GNU LGPL. In other words, you have to pay a license fee for shipping the Mono runtime in a proprietary game, which is what Unity does. So Unity has negotiated a license deal with Xamarin for the Mono runtime version they use, and if they want to use a newer version they will…

Unity has negotiated a license with Novell. Now they would have to do it again with Xamarin for the newer version of Mono. But we don't know if Unity was really nice to the Mono guys when Novell pushed out what would quickly become Xamarin. As always, if it were only money things would be simpler. But if there is some beef things will drag.

Plus, Unity has forked Mono and they contribute to their own internal version. At the same time they are working hard on their own proprietary il2cpp (to export to C++). The writing is clear: they will drag things as long as possible with using their old version of Mono until they are able to switch to il2cpp.

My personal opinion is that Xamarin guys are better at Mono and that UE4 coupled w. Mono/C# might put quite a bit of pressure on Unity.

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#89

Post by mnglkhn2 »

numo16 wrote: post #80
AlexeyBrin wrote: post #79

From http://mono-ue.github.io/about.html > To redistribute code written with Mono for Unreal Engine, you must have a commercial license to the Mono runtime. These licenses are available from Xamarin for Mac, Android and iOS online, and you can request Windows licenses through support. So, if I want to use this commercially on Windows I will have to buy a license for the Mono runtime ? Judging by the price for the Mac…

The Unreal license is only that much if you keep your subscription going. You can subscribe and then cancel your subscription whenever you want, while still being allowed to publish using the latest version of UE4 that was available while you were subscribed. From the EULA: After cancellation of your Subscription by either you or Epic, you will not be entitled to access or use future Versions of the Engine Code or As…

Unreal's model of subscription+5% of top revenue becomes a real nice deal when coupled with Mono. All o fthe sudden there is room for C#/.NET devs to be able to contribute to the platform. It should be a nice boost for UE4's adoption

Re: Mono for Unreal Engine

#90

Post by nailer »

Arelius wrote: post #29
nailer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blueprint, the default UE4 language, seems functional. All functions are pure functions, with input and output, not methods, there's no 'self' or 'this'. That said, I'm not an expert on Blueprint or FP so maybe someone who knows more can tell me whether that assessment is accurate. (And I totally understand that some people will prefer F# and access to all those .net classes anyway)

That's not true at all, There is indeed a "self", and nearly all functions are executed in a context with a valid self. Additionally, there are plenty of nodes such as "Get Player Controller by index" which allows the user to access and modify global state. There is a "pure" option to check on a particular function, but the language itself makes no checks as to the validity of this, it just allows the execution engin…

Ah interesting re self - how did you find out about that?
Post reply on HN