Unreal Engine 4 now free!

Judith on 6/3/2015 at 13:29

Can't say I like it so far. Physically-based shaders and lightning looks nice, but they changed quite a lot about the Editor. The grid and units system feels weird for someone who has been using UUs for ages. It's like they're more interested in what architects will do with it now, as they introduced metric system. I don't know, I'll probably stick with last version of UDK for now.

faetal on 6/3/2015 at 13:37

Metric is a lot more useful, scalable and precise than imperial - once you're used to it, you'll never look back.

Judith on 6/3/2015 at 13:55

I know, I live in Europe ;) The thing is, the previous system wasn't half bad, and it was actually based on power of 2 requirement for textures. Sure, the measurements and ratios were simplified/approximated, but now it's even more confusing. The floor of 128 x 512 feels like it's in millimeters...

Yakoob on 7/3/2015 at 07:55

I got to play around with UE4 a bit during GDC and I must admit I'm more impressed than I initially claimed. The barrier to entry seems to be getting closer to Unity's level, especially since a lot of unitys most powerful editor extension assets (playmaker, node based materials etc) are integrated into the engine directly. Tho I didn't get a chance to really "create" anything. Still, Unity's the sheer amount of assets, tutorials and supported formats/platforms is its strongest suit.

I'm also curious to see how Source2 will compare, especially from the accessability/asset side, and how well it supports non-FPS formats (I know there's been a bunch of non-FPS mods before but they all felt kinda wonky).

Interesting times ahead.

henke on 7/3/2015 at 12:34

Did you get to try out some of the new VR headsets at GDC, Yakoob? Or play any new games?

Yakoob on 9/3/2015 at 21:35

No new VRs (the lines were tad too long), but a bunch of peripheries such as force-feedback inducing joystick or vibrating powergloves. Overall, a little underwhelming and none of them worked very well, but they all were very early prototypes.

Also, this:

Inline Image:

http://koobazaur.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/gdc14-e1425858598809.jpg

Pyrian on 9/3/2015 at 21:57

Looks like you'll need more than hand sanitizer for that one.

Flux on 22/3/2015 at 11:01

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7KRQOdORtM) someone around here might confuse this for a porn archive but it is actually a shocking interview with the developer Unity 5 about competition with Unreal Engine :p

Fafhrd on 23/3/2015 at 04:41

Depending on how much you're actually making, $75/month per seat for Unity 5 Pro could easily be cheaper than 5% of gross income for UE4.

Pyrian on 23/3/2015 at 05:03

When I ran the numbers a bunch of ways, it was almost impossible for Unity to cost more than Unreal. You'd basically need to make at least $100,000 without making enough to support your team size.