#Unity and Unreal Engine

[source-code-lab]

How to Make Custom Game Development: 2024 Guide

As gaming continues to captivate audiences globally, now is the perfect moment to dive into game development. Understanding the top game development languages is crucial for getting started. This article will explore the leading languages for game development, including popular choices like Unity and Unreal Engine.

We’ll also provide examples of languages used in various games and highlight free resources to kickstart your journey into video game programming. If you’re interested in custom game development services or just exploring the field, this guide will help you navigate the essentials of game development.

[heccison]

[magichats]

all the news going around with unity's really got me worried for games that are already several years into development like Hollow Knight Silksong and Billie Bust up.

Just rough because I don't suppose a whole lot of games are going to be able to pivot game engines, let alone so late in development. Like it is easier said than done to pivot early in development but i've been following the development of several games that are years in at this point and the fact that they're grandfathering older titles into this is just... it's just bad.

The potential loss of games in terms of archival on such a massive scale....

[wauzmons]

We have been Betrayed, Backstabbed, Bamboozled: The Future of Elysian Eclipse

So, if you are active on our Discord, you know that EE is made in the Unity Engine and the CEO just decided to massively fuck over all the devs who are using it...

Callum Upton made a great video explaining the situation:

But it gets even worse!

Unity since defended themselves, saying that these fees are only affecting 10% of their customers, because of the $200k and $1m thresholds, so Indie devs don't have to worry about that.

…which isn't true:

Unity Plus

They aren't only introducing these fees but also changed the regular pricing plans! They just removed "Unity Plus" which is the lowest tier and costs about $50/month per dev with taxes. This is what most indies use. The next higher tier costs QUADROUPLE that amount and is also required to remove the universally loathed "made with Unity" splash screen. Oh! And if you have the personal tier, you won't be able to use Unity offline anymore! It now needs to do a license check every 3 days to function!

Unity's Ad Service

The fees will hit devs that do free-to-play mobile stuff especially hard, since they still have to pay the fees even when the players don't buy anything, meaning they could end up owing Unity more than they make in income. But what's this? If you use Unity's advertising service for your game, you will get a discount on the fees! The majority of mobile games run on Unity, meaning they are trying to monopolize the mobile ad market with this!

Publishers

Elysian Eclipse has caught the interest of a really big studio and publisher, who is considering to handle the marketing and publishing for the game. They are obviously planning to make the game come out big with sales, going beyond Unity's thresholds. But since the game is made in Unity, they probably now have to reconsider that carefully, since that would cause a massive amount of fees with Unity's new pricing model. So any game using Unity is now an instant turn-off for publishers, also massively hurting indie devs who don't reach that income threshold yet.

What will happen now?

So, Unity can't be trusted anymore and should be seen as a major threat to us and the gaming industry. Even if they walk back on some of these decisions, what has been said, has been said. They showed that they don't care about destroying thousands of games, as long as it nets them profit, so who knows what they are going to do next?

I will pause the development of Elysian Eclipse and release the Patreon demo, including all the prototypes like Aquatic Stage for free today. I canceled my subscription and it will run out next year, so Unity isn't getting a single cent from my games anymore.

Unreal Eclipse?

In the meantime I'll focus on improving my C++ skills, so I can work more effectively in Unreal Engine 5. Unreal is the current industry leader, offering much better solutions for graphics and performance for 3D games. It is also partially open source and completely free until you reach $1 million in revenue.

It is unlikely that I will be able to just translate the game from C# to C++ and port it over, since it is using a lot of engine-specific features. This basically means, we will start from scratch... I can't tell yet how much work this will be or in what ways the game will change.

But one thing, you can always be certain of: I will NEVER BETRAY MY DREAM. I will finish this project, no matter who or what stands in my way. I hope you will continue to support me on this journey.

That being said,

FUCK JOHN RICCITIELLO!!

Fucking cunt.

[specialagentartemis]

My hope for this post is to impart some hope. I’ve been making this stuff for a very long time. There is a large world of alternatives out there, many of them deserving a lot more attention. Each offer their own vibrant communities, support, philosophies, and mentalities surrounding making a game.

With the recent Unity news... whether they walk it back or not, they've made it clear they can't be trusted. Nathalie Lawhead, digital artist, video game developer, and game blogger, put together a reflection on this move, the way it follows a similar trajectory as the death of Flash.

And they have a truly impressive list, with descriptions, explanations, and uses, of other game engines and game-making software. Many of them are independent or open-source. If you are a game developer or interested in game development, it's a great resource to think about in the wake of Unity tanking itself.

[obsidiansynth]

Unity attempting to monetize installs will likely be the best thing to ever happen to Godot.

Speaking of, here is some documentation for Unity devs who want to switch to Godot

[lova3d]

If you're thinking about switching to Godot, be careful, because you'll never want to go back.

I kept giving up on Unity because I would have to open the launcher, update the launcher, Sign in, update the Unity installation, and by then all of my energy to make things would be drained and I'd just close it all.

Godot though? It just launches. Instantaneously. No login, nothing.

And on top of that, Unity would bloat my projects so much even a basic project with no assets would be like 1.2 gb, and it'd take another 10 minutes to load.

Godot just loads. Making a project or loading one. So while Unreal Engine has some really cool features, I just love how simple it is to just start working on momentary ideas on godot

[blazehedgehog]

(1/2) Is it hypocritical of me to want to see fangaming move to using free/open-source game engines when the source franchises are neither of those?

(2/2) I feel as though due to their head-start, engines like Game Maker and Clickteam are the ones you're "expected" to use for X franchise. There are already pixel-perfect Sonic and Mega Man examples for those engines, and I've been directly told by a Mega Man fan game community to not even bother programming my own MM game in Godot because it will just play sloppier, and that they won't forgive its flaws just because it was "programmed from scratch" or "uses a multiplatform engine".

I mean, accessibility is nice. And I think the desire to get off of something like Clickteam Fusion is admirable. I like it, I still use it, I actually want to keep using it even as Clickteam as a company feels like it is burning down around itself. But it is slow and clumsy and bloated.

But I also think people just make stuff for whatever they use. Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker were pretty entrenched in SFGHQ for the longest time because that's what everybody ten years ago was using, twenty years ago even, and that's where all the knowledge, tools, and pipeline is.

Thankfully, now we have Sonic Worlds Next, written in Godot, which means literally anyone can spin up a Sonic fangame with clean, accurate code without needing to own a license for some $150 piece of tech owned by an apathetic or ugly company.

[larahug]

3D flame pistol from a concept - crossposted from artstation

[swiriko]

A Pencil and Paper

On September 12th, 2023. Unity announced that it would be adding a "per-install" fee towards developers. [X]

There have already been many indie developers that have already spoken out against it, so I will amplify their voices here:

Inner Sloth, developers of Among Us: [X]

Aggro Crab, developers of Another Crab's Treasure: [X]

However, there's been some interesting takes on where developers are going from here. And the top contenders seem to be two vastly different engines: Godot and Unreal Engine.

Godot, an open source, yet still fledgling game engine.

Unreal Engine, an engine that's been one of the heaviest hitting professional engines for literal decades.

It reminds me of a parallel situation: People fucking off of Autodesk Maya to use literally anything else, people fucking off of Adobe to use literally anything else. Except not everyone can afford to just switch to something else, due to logistical reasons, or that they're entire franchise has been using this engine/software/tool for literal years, and they can't afford to relearn something new.

And to those that switch, there's a siren waiting for those sailing through new waters: Unreal Engine is literally owned by Epic Games, who also own Artstation, who literally ostracized their entire userbase in support of AI art. [X] You're telling me THAT'S one of the main alternatives to Unity? You don't think Epic Games given enough time and greed will pull this same kind of shit or worse once you've built your entire business model upon being dependent of their product?

The internet simultaneously has an entire archive of history, yet the collective memory of a goldfish.

The Unfortunate reality is that it IS one of the main alternatives.

Adobe's main alternatives for digital art has been Clip Studio Paint and Paint Tool SAI, both great software for digital painting, and yet parallel's this same situation. CSP was supposed to be the herald of a new standard, yet fell hard from grace when CELSYS decided to adopt the same dreaded subscription model as Adobe once so many digital artists latched on and became dependent on it. [X] While Paint Tool SAI's lone developer has been rather struggling due to SAI's wide spread userbase being mostly pirates. [X]

At the same time, for 3D Art, the many many other 3D Software packages are also hilariously expensive, with many also requiring subscription models now... EXCEPT for Blender. But blender still isn't considered the industry standard. And yet it's one of the few 3D software I still have installed.

History tends to rhyme, so most likely, Godot will never become an industry standard game engine. But if it has enough people behind it, it can and will be the Blender option for Game Development, with a rich library and marketplace of user-made add-ons and plugins. Open Source, and free.

There is something to be said, however. The Tools DO matter, as much as we hate to admit it, good tools DO matter, ACCESS to good tools matter, the affordability of good tools matter, being able to use the RIGHT tool for an art piece matters, being able to use the most comfortable tool for the artist matters.

That's why Unity's new business model, hell even UNREAL ENGINE'S business model is an insult to game development as an art. John Riccitiello and Tim Sweeney have said to the game industry, "I make the pencil you use, so I get a cut of what you make from it, even if you've already paid to use it."

Fuck off with that shit. Motherfucking RPG Maker had a better business model.

It wouldn't be such a huge issue if it didn't matter. After all, you can make art with just a pencil and paper, but a pencil and paper alone is only a mere FRACTION of the tools we have used to make the raw, unfathomable library of art in the history of art itself.

[fuka-deathpetals]

"Unity is the best game engine" "Unreal is the best game engine"

*EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER*

may I present to the misguided,

these guys

[yagurlhere]

Kay guys, so, one of my dreams is to hopefully make a game, although that'll probably take a quadrillion years to do so...

But, I wanted to ask...

For more context, I'm a beginner and will probably watch tutorials when I start on a software, the only game creating software I have is RPG Maker right now, and I also want to like, create maybe fan-games too, like Pokemon, (even though Nintendo will probably kill me,) and I hope to add stuff like walking with Pokemon, bonding with them, and maybe even a Camp re-creation...?

(Maybe even a Splatoon fan-game since I'm really getting into it...? 🥺)

Don't get me started on the Kirby fan-game ideas I had.

If you have any other engines you think would be good, please recommend them to me in the comments.

[t-beaubo]

So ok, day 3 of the Unity apocalypse and I've been fiddling with Godot and Unreal Engine.

Unreal Engine looks lovely, but it just feels like I'm making a mod for a really well made game, rather than actually making a game.

I've never figured out how to pinpoint the awkwardness I felt with UE until it just clicked for me when messing with it today. so that's fun.

And Godot just feels like alternate universe Unity lmao, a lot of stuff is unintuitive but still makes a lot of sense (and also wont risk me going bankrupt to a rampant asshole CEO's whims).

tl;dr - Gonna work with Godot until Unity massively overhauls their TOS to not allow pricing changes on a whim to existing versions of Unity, and when they decide to not install spyware in their runtime software :)

[tricornonthecob]

when word freezes while saving your 95,599 word document because you decided to multitask while opening motherfucking Unity

[nicklefritzdev]

I found a "Capsule Collider" in my daughter's cute little play vegetables. (Pretty interesting material on the mesh renderer, though... I think it's a sweet potato, but I'll have to talk to the art designer for this simulation).

[obsidiansynth]

Using Unity and want to learn Godot engine?

Fortunately for you, there is documentation to help transfer your Unity knowledge into Godot

If you want to try and salvage your project rather than starting over from scratch, there is an experimental script to attempt converting some parts of your project for Godot