It appears they've backed off on the royalties, too: originally, it was 5% of gross[1], and now it's 5% of gross <i>after</i> $3000 sales per quarter.[2]<p>1 <a href="https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4</a><p>2 <a href="https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free" rel="nofollow">https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free</a>
How does it fare against Unity?<p>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.<p>However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing.<p>Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competitive with Epic's offering, but was Windows-only.<p>EDIT: Unreal does have a comparison page for Unity developers: <a href="https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/FromUnity/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/From...</a>
Very cool. I can now go from feeling guilty about not finishing a project in Unity Indie to feeling guilty about not finishing a project in Unreal. Seriously though, I'm kind of interested in using this as a playground for the Leap Motion SDK.
Smart. Their previous revenue model was contradictory. Now it makes sense, they want to remove <i>all</i> barriers for building your game on UE4, and focus on making money if you are successful.
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 ?<p>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 ?<p>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.<p>I see it's very powerful, but I'm still wondering about the real utility of an "engine" versus a library.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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...
A demo of the astounding capabilities for those who haven't seen:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PQ19BEE24" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PQ19BEE24</a>
Update: think you need to register first:
<a href="https://accounts.unrealengine.com/register/index" rel="nofollow">https://accounts.unrealengine.com/register/index</a><p>Is it just me or is the source not public yet?
<a href="https://github.com/EpicGames" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/EpicGames</a>
- No public repos<p><a href="https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github" rel="nofollow">https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github</a>
For someone who's actually using UE4 as an artistic break for web dev, I thoroughly recommend it. It allows you to create great environments with beautiful lighting. 4.7 can export to HTML5 too.
I'm very glad of course but...<p>...technically all they did was lower the price by $19 a month.<p>...and bought a lot of press for that<p>...and a lot more shots at the 5% revenue.<p>It's really great of course. But better yet, it's really very clever.
I just subscribed two days ago. The $19 subscription fee wasn't a big deal, but even so, I now have a $30 Unreal Engine Marketplace credit.<p>What a great way to handle it.
I'd be interested to see how the royalties work when UE for is not the primary part of the product.<p>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?<p>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.
I'm hiring a technical Product Manager to work with the Unreal Engine. E-mail me if you're interested in the space, toufique at Google's e-mail service.com
I subbed as soon as UE4 came out, and have been loving it so far. I have had extensive arguments with a fellow dev about Unity, but he has access to 5 while I don't want to pay the huge upfront cost just to have access to the same pipeline to help him, and I feel like the cost of Unity is the main barrier to me using it.<p>Epic is really getting ready to eat Unity's lunch I think. The graphical quality of Unity 5 is comparable, but Epic is making huge updates on short timeframes and they keep doing stuff like this.<p>For anyone interested, blueprints are great for prototyping, but once you have too much complexity in a BP it can easily cascade inefficiencies to the point it becomes very noticeable, so I would suggest using C++ with VS 2013 community edition, which now works with the plugin the Epic provides.<p>Also, there are some features that you can only access if you compile the engine yourself, so that is probably also a good idea for anyone serious about their project.
I always thought it would eventually be free, but I had never imagined it'd be so quick! This is great news for the adoption rate.<p>However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs something in between such as Lua or C# (I'm fluent in both, both come with pro/cons)<p>Also, with this news I'm a bit concerned about it being free, the growth that may lead in a lot of trolling on forums and misinformation. By that I mean, if you have a financial commitment to something, you're a lot less likely going to bash it publicly since you've put your money down towards it. I hope that they can keep the quality of the community to high standards like they have, with clear questions and answers.
Is this because I now get a free proprietary game engine with every single Kickstarter game sponsoring?<p>About time we stop the 500 monkeys reinventing 500 wheels in parallel (at least it's concurrent monkeys, they smell nicer).
Has anyone got it to install? I downloaded installer for Mac (57mb), and when I launch/login, it says "No Engine installed", but no links on how to install the engine. My profile has a link to download the engine, but it just downloads the installer again.
Has anybody done UE4 dev on lower-end computers? I want to make games that can run on laptops with decent integrated graphics (Iris Pro). Does UE4 allow you to turn down all the fancy effects in order to do this at 60fps?
This is such good news!!!!! I wanted to do something for VR and since I am just one dev things seemed hard doing things the native way. This just made my day.
So my question is this.<p>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.<p>Can you use UE4 to build cross platform games, on mobile and browser?<p>Does UE4 have something like Crytek's terrain editor? That's my one favorite thing about Cryengine is their environment editor.
Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.<p>The last barrier to entry to someone who's trying to explore game making with Unreal has been removed. Thank you, Epic!
The Unreal Engine is free neither as beer, or freedom.<p>Its free as in a mob protection money is given <i>freely</i>, with a lot of strings attached.<p>Overall a very smart strategy. Free Software Walled Gardens I highly believe will start to become a common thing in the software industry. As you get most the benefits of Free Software, without the normally feared industry risks.