Never used Unreal, but I found Unity very strong in the following aspects: 1. C# much easier for less experienced programmers 2. Asset store has good quantity of assets, art, sound, programs 3. Great official manual, API docs and tutorials 4. Very active community and forum when you need answers for something 5. Cross platform is so easy One thing I found Unity missing: does not have the awesome out-of-box lighting setup that Unreal seems to have.
1. True, unless you use bp's 2. Unity store has more assets, but the quality is debatable 3. Unreal's c++ docs are awful, but their blueprint docs are better than Unity's c# docs imo 4. True 5. So is with Unreal
Love how balanced and unbiased Rick answers are. Totally agree with him. Just wanted to add a couple of extra points: - IMO UE4 has a MUCH BETTER platform overall, the value you get by using UE4 for your project isn't even comparable to what Unity offers. UE4 offers Quixel, a more robust/feature-complete engine in the big picture/store fee discounts to sell your project and more recently even today they've announced their acquisition of RealityCapture - the best photogrammetry solution out there! - instead of learning Unity I'd go for Godot, which is FOSS, and has a similar freedom/flexibility that Rick states in regards to Unity - super easy to just grab it, get into it and work your own quirky weird game be it for Web, Mobile, or Desktop, and soon (in development) for XR platforms. All that Free&Open Source. It even has a library with TONS of plugins, pre-made code/features and such made/supported by the community. They're also working on Godot version 4 which will bring top notch graphics with a totally new rendering engine made with Vulkan, and tons of new features and re-writing and making even more and better features. Also - for 2D Godot is probably one of the few 2d+3d game engines with an ACTUALLY 2D Engine - it's not a stripped down 3D to make 2D - so yeah it's better than Unity for 2D games overall as well. - In the end, as Rick has said - it's up to you and what project you're working on, don't get stuck with that, these are just tools, just try them for a bit, grab the one you enjoy the most and stick with it!
I've been developing for 3 years on Unity and these days I'm not sure I'm a fan of Unity anymore. It feels like Unity lack of direction and don't know where they are going with URP/HDRP, then Dots but nothing is ready. For that reason asset developers struggle and have to work in double/triple because Unity said "this is the way". It is not normal that an asset publisher create a bridge to make all the shader compatible between all SRP while it should be Unity's job right at day one. So my feeling? Unreal take part of your profit, for that reason they earn money when you succeed and you can see it with the content given for free by Unreal. Unity? Mostly take commission from the asset store... I still recommend Unity, I ship 3 projects this year on this engine but I will definitely try Unreal before starting a new one.
True. Unity feels like its all over the place. 2d 3d mixed a lot of useless stuff is in 2d project. I tried working on small Ecs project and Dots still.... in development. For 4 years or 5?
I think which engine you would choose is down to your workflow style. One thing I personally find great about Unity is it's built-in animation tool that can be used to animate literally any aspect of any object in your scene (including parameters of custom scripts)
I so strongly disagree with the simplicity part. I am not a programmer and unreal was easier to me thanks to the blueprints. I know unity now incorporated their own visual scripting for free which also might be good for beginners. Another thing I really don't like about unity is the fact that they have these different versions of the engine based on whether you pay for it or not. Unreal is free for everyone, no payments required and also provides HUUUUGEEEE amount of useful assets and tools It is extremely easy to prototype in unreal thanks to high quality templates and there are a lot of courses and tutorials that can get everyone started real quick. I would really dismiss the simplicity argument as I think it stopped being valid a long time ago
In Unity you don't have any disadvantages regarding engine features using the free version. You only pay for services like Team Collab, Cloud Services, Tech Support, Enterprise Learn Live Sessions etc. You have ALL the features of the engine with the free version. They paywalled the dark mode in the past but not anymore. So no need to bash the price module ^^
This sounds EPIC, pun intended. I am glad to see Rick in another video - I highly enjoyed all the videos I've watched from his RU-vid channel. I launched my first game, Kazakh 'Jack, yesterday on Steam. I made it with GameMaker, but I'm super interested in learning an engine designed for 3D games. I'm going to look more at Rick's courses and probably buy one later today. Thanks for the informative interview and your hard work, Tim and Rick! - Mister Iwa @ Iwa Interactive
I know this question doesn't have a right answer, but as an Unreal Engine 4 user I can tell you without hesitation that if you want to develop a mobile game, just choose Unity. In Unreal, even an empty built for mobile project will end up having 60-100 mb without special engine tweaks.
As a (former) UE4 mobile developer myself, there are plenty ways you can drastically reduce package size in project settings, and getting rid of the default engine content/excluding unused assets reduces the package size by a lot as well. The UE4 mobile documentation even has a whole section about how to reduce package size. And nowadays everyone has a 64 GB phone minimum so even if there was an extra 100mb package size, it doesn't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things, but that's a whole different discussion! (although i can see why it could still be an issue)
@@KelechiApakama yes, there are ways to reduce the size of the apk, but new devs can't really do it at max potential. Unreal team needs to focus a little on this mobile aspect. Also, while phones nowadays don't have problems with storage size, a lot of people have problems with internet speeds(not my case) so while they would really like to play your game, they might try a 15 mb game instead of your 100 mb one. I myself managed to reduce the size of an apk to 43mb and stopped there since I focus on pc games.
@@tgsnicholas8817 Oh yeah, 100% it's a disadvantage but the way people rule out UE4 for mobile dev and make it seem like it isn't an option is quite unfair to the engine as a whole. There are many advantages that aren't mobile specific but will still have an effect on the final outcome. Plus they added a lot of mobile features that they developed for Fortnite in a fairly recent version (think it might have been 4.21 or 4.22 I'm not sure) so the discussion really needs to be updated imo. But yeah like you I now focus on PC dev, It's just too tempting when you're using UE4 lmao
The problem with free stuff is that you horde a lot of stuff and when the time is to start building, you don't know where to start, what to pick or what to do.
I think it's worth learning at least the basics of both. After all there is nothing to lose and the skills are transferable. There is a lot I like about Unity and I feel more at home with C#, but the more I learnt about Unreal the more it felt like a better match for my project. Something about it also just clicks with me more naturally too.
I'll save you time. Unreal engine is the best tool we have as creators. And just a hint to Game Dev TV guy. We don't use C++ when we make games with Unreal engine. As for Game Jam scenarios, we can iterate and pump out a playable demo faster than any other engine. Have you even opened the engine in the last 5 years?! Lmao
Yeah one thing i don't like about these discussions is the same information from 2013 articles is recycled over and over. Plus some people (not accusing Rick of this by any means) compare the engines without having spent at least a few days working in them. So the same information is relayed, making UE4 look like a horrible, scary place for new devs, so they go to unity and the cycle continues :P
Unity4 was good enough for me it was the first best cross platform engine with normal map fidelity of graphics. so i definitely wont switch. c sharp is mobile friendly as well. making something pretty huge in 2020.2 no demo yet. i fixed the old stealth game tut from 2013 few lines of decent code in that game.
I was in the same spot last year and wanted to break away from Construct. Ended up going with Unreal because I wanted to avoid coding. There has definitely been hurdles with UE4 not being as strong 2D, but with Esoteric Spine and PaperZD I’ve found solutions. Having said that, if you are wanting stay with 2D and don’t mind coding, Unity is probably your best bet. Ironically, gamedev.tv is the course that finally helped me understand Blueprints.
Good advice, try them both out and see which one works for you. How many times has someone told you a movie sucked only to find out you really enjoyed it, or some food was fantastic but you thought it was horrible? I'll watch reviews and if the reviewers opinion tends to align with mine, they'll get more "street cred" and I'll value their opinion more in the future, but for the most part, I dont hold any value in what others think. I need to test it for myself.
A complex answer on this one... because it depends on the game and style of game... I've been gaming for 40 plus years, and I've seen so much change and improvement in gaming and graphics.. but one thing I've noticed in the last decade to today, Unity seems great at FMV but not the best at gameplay, and Unreal seems to excel at gamplay (if you're only comparing these 2 engines against each other, as there are some other great engines out there)... on a tech side I'm sure Rick is spot on, Unity is great for beginners in learning and using the program, whereas Unreal is more difficult... but from a gamers point of view on strictly gameplay not FMV's, my opinion is Unreal wins handsdown, but also it depends on the game and style of game... But overall, Unreal is the winner for gameplay...
0:12 "The answer is Unity"... artist making a shooter game in Epic's Blueprint triggered by this answer XD Yeah, Rick is right. You need to understand the concept of programming. But the hardest part for an artist is to write all those long lines. With visual scripting, you don't need to fill a sentence. If you don't know how to code a line, you can connect the "words"/nodes and Blueprint does the rest. (one day, I'll have enough money to outsource programmers...)
The only experience I have with Unreal is the Conan DevKit and that makes me hate life. The most basic stuff seems so freaking hard in Unreal. Unity FTW!
I prefer languages like c# that have garbage collection built in. Garbage collection has its downsides but I've spent enough time hunting for the cause of random crashes (memory leaks) to avoid languages that don't have it.
Or you could avoid having to make the choice by writing your own engine from scratch like I have on my RU-vid channel. Even though it is a daunting task, it is very rewarding and you gain massive performance gains that generic off the shelf engines just can't provide.
Interesting discussion. Frankly I’ve no clue about both of them 😉 but I’ve seen a couple of YT tutorials. Just from watching those it seemed to me that unreal had some advantages. This guy’s series ru-vid.com/group/PLY9cHlxw3OgjuLmBX1rYPhRwcDfCza1_5 for example showed how easy one can combine blueprints and C++ in unreal, looks like a good thing to me.
This is disingenuous; Unreal is, primarily, Blueprints. C++ is for people who need to squeeze every drop of performance out. I don't use either engine, but if I was to move away from my current, Unreal would win for it's sheer "out of the box" working features. Sure, you can get Unity to work... if you buy into every feature you need on the Marketplace; which is that whole engine's monetization model. "Let's make the engine free, but make our base features suck so much you'll have to buy a replacement from the Marketplace." On top of that, you have Unity's lack of direction; they'll add a feature, and then remove it a couple years later because it doesn't work or there were unforeseeable problems with it-- they have done it several times. Meanwhile, with Unreal, you get battletested features that are heavily tested in Fortnite. On top of that, the amount of content, plugins, tools, and resources Unreal gives you at zero cost is absolutely insane. The only thing Unity has going for it is C#, and maybe it's easier for 2D (but, if you're doing 2D, there are way better engines than Unity)). So, C# is really your only advantage in Unity... one it is likely going to lose when Unreal Engine drops its new scripting language being tested in Fortnite.
Don't know much about Unreal, but I can say something about Unity. Well, I almost HATE Unity, but I won't switch. Cause almost everything Unity does, it does awfull, bad or, at least fine. But the real thing is - it really does everything. I tried to switch to Godot, cause you know, OS and shit, but - I use particles a lot and when I compared these engines particle systems... you are a nice guy Godot, see you next time. I've been looking at Unreal also, but since I'm almost always making something 2d, the superpowers of Unreal just don't work for me, as I've read, it's 2d system is almost dead. And I don't even mention mobile side of things. And in the end of the day Unity sucks, but in total it sucks less for me than any other engine nowdays, cause where other one has zero, unity at least has something. By the way, ATTENSION: by any god damn means, NEVER touch Unity own Networking, use LiteNetLib, use C# sockets, use anything you can, BUT DON'T TOUCH THIS PEACE OF SOUL SUCKER, some day this advice can save your life, so read it carefuly.
A bit too harsh. But yes unity is too spread out between 2d and 3d. biggest thing for me is not having option to remove Z axis in 2d project. Buy any other problems can be managed if you do some reading on occuring problems.
What a load. As if there are only two engines. Starting game programming without even rudimentary general programming knowledge is a terrible idea in the first place. RU-vid being good at answering specific questions? In which parallel dimension? It's full of 15 minute videos of people rambling about random stuff. Read it up if you want a specific answer. Sponsored?
