Unreal Engine 4: source code and near free

[Kafu]

A big move from Epic (https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welco ... l-engine-4):

For $19/month you can have access to everything, including the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine’s complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development.

Support for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

[Kojack]

Yeah pretty crazy. Unity 5, CryEngine upgrade and price drop, Unreal exposing source for a tiny fee. All in just a couple of days. Plus Sony VR headset and the second Oculus Rift going on pre-order.

(Don't forget the Unreal 4 cost also includes 5% of the gross income of your game)

[Zonder]

(Don't forget the Unreal 4 cost also includes 5% of the gross income of your game)

That is quite reasonable TBH better that an outright fee. You do play the gamble it might of been cheaper to license outright. Great for trying to get into the market though.

[Kojack]

It's interesting that they take the 5% from the cost of the game on an app store, not what you actually earn from it. If you sell a game for $10 and apple/microsoft/google keeps $3 (they all charge 30%), then Unreal takes 5% of the $10, not the $7 you actually get.

Still pretty reasonable.

[Klaim]

I don't consider any royalties for tools to be reasonable personally but I guess for some projects/people it's still ok.

[TheSHEEEP]

Can anyone say what Unreal is actually really good at?

We evaluated some engines for our project, but those we tested (Unity, CryEngine) were bad at what we want to do (display a lot of objects at the same time (instancing), plus modern shading (deferred)). So we decided to "just" do it ourselves with Ogre. Unreal we never tested because of the pricing.

[Klaim]

I guess it's the same than for the others: the integrated tools.
I don't know for Unreal4, I used Unreal3 SDK recently for some freelance work but not for the graphic side. I guess if you really want to control completely the graphics so that it's optimized for your specific case, Ogre is the cheaper to-the-point solution.
I also use Ogre for 2 reasons: same big count of similar things displayed (instancing) and also flexibility (because my game is partially about hacking the display so I need to be able to do some unexpected graphic disturbances easily).

[Thyrion]

instantly downloaded the source

[jumbo]

Cryengine announced a $10 month subscription without a percentage royalty. Both engines are leaving ogre in the dust with that, especially since they have good level tools and better integration with game components (networking,sound etc).

[Klaim]

Yeah that's the point: the tools and their integration. Ogre is just better if you need precise control inside the graphic part of the code.

These engines are totally unusuable in for my current game (because of very game-specific requirements). It don't mean they are not generally a good solution.

[hydexon]

I'm as quite impressed too with the upcoming engine and very reduced prices, even i never seen a very popular AAA engine give you full source code access, even in GitHub without pay many thouslands of dollars to get it (Many devs around other forums, to get access the Unity source code was a nightmare in process and price), no proprietary or rare VCS systems.

I'm still dying how the hell works the "Hot Reload" feature in UE4, updating C++ code in real-time without recompiling like a script?,damn.

[AlexeyKnyshev]

I'm still dying how the hell works the "Hot Reload" feature in UE4, updating C++ code in real-time without recompiling like a script?,damn.

Quite simple in theory, it is memory as low level technique (for example runtime dll/code loading and of course reloading). And it is compiled code.

[Xavyiy]

Can anyone say what Unreal is actually really good at?

I guess it's the same than for the others: the integrated tools.

I have never used UE and I have no plans nor interest to use it, but I really loved the new demonstration videos. After watching these videos I can confirm that there is a lot of things where UE4 is really good at

[youtube]FcxA_xYnHZ8[/youtube]

[Klaim]

I'm still dying how the hell works the "Hot Reload" feature in UE4, updating C++ code in real-time without recompiling like a script?,damn.

This is nothing special, you can do it yourself if you want. There are other engines that do this but most of them are not public.

[Thyrion]

that's realy exciting. some time ago they wanted over 500k$ for the source and 25% of revenue or so?
Now they throw it out, for nearly free...

Engine War : Unity , Unreal, Crytek(10%) who's the next?

The death of all not as polished Engines like Torque 3D, Neoaxis etc. ?

Hopefully the Ogre3D Team doesn't give up or loose their motivation ...

What things are bad in the unreal engine?
network?
Ressource hunger?
Large Terrain?
Much Objects?

[hydexon]

that's realy exciting. some time ago they wanted over 500k$ for the source and 25% of revenue or so?
Now they throw it out, for nearly free...

Engine War : Unity , Unreal, Crytek(10%) who's the next?

The death of all not as polished Engines like Torque 3D, Neoaxis etc. ?

Hopefully the Ogre3D Team doesn't give up or loose their motivation ...

What things are bad in the unreal engine?
network?
Ressource hunger?
Large Terrain?
Much Objects?

I doubt very much that they lose their motivation or give up, i have many friends which depends of OGRE (i recommended now lots use it), i prefer a lot OGRE than any AAA engine, or making one myself based in Ogre, i know has their rendering limitants which is a drawback, but the source is here right?, feel free to expand to your needs, no hidden fees. I used UDK, CryEngine before but i never liked it, even with their super FX effects and rendering capabilities.

Torque 3D is "comercially dead" and some of their special third-party middleware is dead too (e.j: PureLight lightmapper, like OGRE's one: Lightsprint), GarageGames only sells "gamekits and asset packs".

NeoAxis i can't say anything because i never tried it, but i see very few applications/games use it.

The only bad thing i find in UE3 only is still using the Forward Rendering pipeline, UE4 is completely deferred with physically-based shading system (when Ogre will have this?, will be cool!).

[hydexon]

Oh, yeah i do little research about the "Hot Reload" feature of UE4, and i find this link http://runtimecompiledcplusplus.blogspot.co.uk/ and this https://github.com/i-saint/DynamicPatcher (some content are in japanese) , may can be useful for OGRE projects which doesn't wish to use scripting engines, even you can use libraries without recompiling the whole game.

[Kojack]

I don't know what UE4 does in this regard, but from what I've seen of students trying to do final projects in UDK, working with teams is poorly supported. Having more than one person doing everything (or one modeller, one world editor and one scripter) just got messy.
I've never tried using UDK for much, so maybe they just didn't know what to do.

I don't know what their version control support is like either.

I'd love to have a system like Lionhead had in Milo. The whole world was vertex coloured triangles in mudbox or z brush (I can't remember which), no textures. The world was integrated into the version control system. You could check out blocks of the world for editing. So you could have multiple artists editing the same area, as long as their sub areas didn't overlap. Afterwards a tool would generate textures baked from the triangle data, with resolution chosen based on how close the player could get to objects.

[Kojack]

I just found out that Unreal Engine 4 has unlimited seat educational licenses also for only $19 per month.
Students need to pay the $19 to get a normal license if they want to have a copy at home or sell their game, but schools can put UE4 on every computer in the campus for only $19 a month total.
Nice.

[iblues1976]

19 dollars for students. that's a great price.
19 a month...

I guess Unity is pushing them to do this...
Actually, I still prefer a Open Source solution, like OGRE.

As a game engine, I was suggested to look a game play 3D, which is open source.

I think if you are building games, 19 a month is not so much. But If you are not building commercial games, while still is a low cost per month, maybe a LIBRE license is better suited.

Who knows...

[MoonStorm]

Unfortunately UE4 and CryEngine are both useless when it comes to generating & manipulating the terrain at runtime, for example in an RTS game. Runtime adding of features such as roads and rivers and in general mesh blending is simply not possible because of this limitation.

UE has a puny yucky spline tool, and you can see in one of their terrain demo levels what a crappy road you can create by attaching a road type texture. The road gets suspended in the air when it misses the terrain. What a disappointment.

The only engine from these two that appear to give a little bit of support, at least in the editor, is CryEngine, with its road/river tool. At runtime however, terrain deformation was deliberately commented out due to problems with decals and collisions, mainly due to FPS multiplayer games. Damn them...

[TheSHEEEP]

Afaik, there is not a single engine-with-toolkit that handles runtime terrain deformation well (if at all).
And only very, very few that handle streaming large terrains (open world as in Skyrim, etc.).
And even if they do handle the latter, they don't feature procedural generation.

[Klaim]

I always wonder if it could be possible with current techs to make a very very big terrain that can be streamed fast enough that you can go at 10/secs and still have good graphics.

[Mikachu]

Afaik, there is not a single engine-with-toolkit that handles runtime terrain deformation well (if at all).
And only very, very few that handle streaming large terrains (open world as in Skyrim, etc.).
And even if they do handle the latter, they don't feature procedural generation.

VoxelFarm does all that really well (very big procedural and deformable terrains), but I don't know if it qualifies as "engine-with-toolkit".

[Kojack]

I always wonder if it could be possible with current techs to make a very very big terrain that can be streamed fast enough that you can go at 10/secs and still have good graphics.

10 what per second?