Yeah it’s such a good investment it lead to multiple EA games launching absolutely broken, Halo Infinite to cost like 3 times more than it should while also taking ages to update and let’s not even start with Square Enix’s luminous engine, that was discontinued.
On the other hand unreal engine has lead to horrible performance on so many different games due to poor optimisation and a focus on graphics. I never said proprietary was always better, but it can deliver MUCH better results when paired with a good team and management
The thing about that argument is that a dev can only do so much due to the restrictions of the engine. A mass switch to a third party engine also signals a trend in the gaming executive world to not keep devs full time. Get fresh workers, crank out an asset flip then, lay them off.
Has anyone else done contract work other than the halo team? I feel like its such a strange thing to do for game development and am wondering if anyone else did/does that
With all due respect, that may account for 0.1% of people in game dev, tops. Game engines are tools. Any game engine can make a great game with right inputs. Choice of engine can make a difference, but not many devs can take advantage of those. I would make a game in UE because I know UE. The end.
I think there is some space for art direction in photorealistic settings, but the huge amount of marketplace material that is at your disposal is a big factor, I think. Plus, that's just *easier*, most of the time.
If I was making a specific genre of game, the choice engine may be more significant. If I wanted to make a 2d bitmap style game, I would probably look at Godot.
Until recently, if I was making a 3D game, I would have considered Unreal Engine just for the free shit that would let me, a single game dev, do something with the contributed work of 20 others.
Also, modern engines layer optimisation and clever trick upon optimisation and clever trick, with detailed knowledge of rendering tech, to achieve what they do. And some systems are hellish complex. With enough time you could make a lumen and nanite equivalent, but that's just one ingredient.
Wouldnt that be why unreal and unity are good options in the gaming industry? Because you dont necessarily need to heavily modify the engine to create your game? They’re just really accessible
Wouldnt say just because of the unreal hype.. Look at cdpr for example: they made their own engine for cyberpunk 2077 and it was a bug filled disaster. Unreal makes game dev lot more accessible. Allows for beautiful and complex games while removing the game engine worry. Just a plus in my opinion
That's the lazy mindset that makes me despise Unreal. So instead of working on their proprietary engine, they just threw up their hands and said "let's just use an engine that will make our game feel like practically every other game right now". Variety is what we need not a monopoly.
I dont think thats how it works. Compagnies use popular game engine because thats often what devs are familiar with, not because its cheaper (doubt that it even is too). And if all the games feel the same, thats prob because of the devs. Unreal has way too many customization for this to be a problem
That’s only useful when the devs are short period contract workers. Most game companies usually have long time employees, where it would be more efficient to use a proprietary engine that’s built towards the company’s specific niche
Remember Team Ace's, Ace Combat engine? Awww, man that made the game feel like a jet fighter. Then Bandit Scamco switched to Unreal. Now Ace Combat's movement and aiming has that Unreal, wonky feeling.
You’re right, it’d probably be more efficient and make better final products but building the engine itself and training people to use it leads to a lot more cost and companies do not see the value of spending that much more when they could get a similar product with unreal and such for much cheaper
Although I do agree with you that we need more viable game engines on the market and for studios to make their own more often. But as of right now, unreal engine is a great option and I dont think its as bad as you say it is
I assure you, I'm not just hating on for the sake of hating on it.
I can see smaller indie dev studios using it to cut costs while they work on their own thing. But these multi-billion dollar/yr pubs have no reason to use it. In my experience the movement and aim feel off with unreal. Always has.
You try making your own engine and tell us how efficient and cost effective it is instead of licensing an already made engine. Developing a new game engine and a new game in that engine at the same time is a cluster fuck.
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Creating your own engine is an extremely expensive and time consuming thing. Especially if you want to use it for multiple games.
It can go great like RE engine.
Or it can go like frostbite and just make it worse for devs.
Games having problems in UE isn’t an engine issue. It’s a dev issue.
It‘s just that Microsoft relies massively on them.
I can see smaller indie dev studios using it to cut costs while they work on their own thing. But these multi-billion dollar/yr pubs have no reason to use it. In my experience the movement and aim feel off with unreal. Always has.