Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
unrealengine.comIt appears they've backed off on the royalties, too: originally, it was 5% of gross[1], and now it's 5% of gross after $3000 sales per quarter.[2]
1 https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4
That change happened about six months ago. It's quite nice, they don't even ask you to file any paperwork if your revenue is under $3000 for a quarter.
Does $3000 reset every quarter or it it a one-tune limit? Is it (gross - $3000) * .05 or gross .05 when the condition is met?
The phrasing is ambiguous, unless I'm missing some grammar rules. And no, I'm not asking out of pedantry.
>When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter.
Not only does it reset per quarter, it is per product as well.
That seems pretty gameable (and who would be better at gaming systems than games devs?). "Oh, yeah, we made $2999 on Gem Clan Quest, then $2999 on Gem Clan Quest Super Deluxe Edition, and $2999 on the Gem Clan Quest Candy Kingdom DLC, which is more of a sequel really, so it's a totally different product..."
My guess is their not interested in the small fry and are looking for companies that earn hundreds of millions.
If a company was gaming this pricing creating 100 products each earning $4,000 (vs. $400k) they are saving $15,000 and are likely to hurt their business via customer confusion.
It may also be a case of people you don't want as your customer. I can only imagine that someone with this kind of attitude would use support resources very heavily if they had access to paid support. Maybe not to the tune of $15k, but who knows.
Doesn't necessarily have to be that high. It's more that they are trying to earn their revenue for actual game publishers of all sizes.
Other than the particularly small scale operations (someone's side project, etc.) if the product hasn't hit $3000 revenue in its lifetime, even small/medium sized business would be fairly troubled in the standpoint of sustainability.
It's an issue of not being able to compete with Unity any other way too. Small developers that gain experience with your engine sometimes become big developers, who are going to be used to your engine. Makes sense.
That does not scale really well, unless are really on the edge of this 3k. As soon as you start earning more, your users will be confused if you release 'new' product every month. Besides, I bet if you read full license, it will have proper legal rules there against this and other tricks you might come up with.
I think maybe this falls under the EULA?
"6. Records and Audits
You agree to keep accurate books and records related to your development, manufacture, Distribution, and sale of Products and related revenue. Epic may conduct reasonable audits of those books and records. Audits will be conducted during business hours on reasonable prior notice to you. Epic will bear the costs of audits unless the results show a shortfall in payments in excess of 5% during the period audited, in which case you will be responsible for the cost of the audit."
Yeah, but I think $3,000 is a small enough increment for them. You'd need to do this dozens of times for it to be a meaningful aggregate amount. And that situation should be fairly obvious and easy to police.
My initial reading is (gross - $3000) * 0.05, but I imagine they spell it out precisely somewhere.
There are more info here: https://www.unrealengine.com/eula
The after $3000 sales per quarter was implemented in April '14 but seems better communicated now. Tim Sweeney answered this himself in April.
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/15056/need-some-c...
I've always wanted to know how the 5% royalty is enforced.
Other, much lesser known, engines have attempted to do something of this sort by acting as an intermediary eg. publisher, planning to pay developers after they were paid by Apple. For obvious reasons that was immediately dismembered by the community.
The only way I can figure is they'll ask for an iTunes connect login so they can check on the numbers for themselves.
Speaking as a developer, it just sounds like something to be avoided from the start.
Lawsuits.
I imagine the revenue distribution would follow a power law here. So it would only really make sense for Epic to go after non-compliant "whales", where the unpaid royalties exceed the legal costs.
Also, the more profitable the project, the lower the non-compliance rate, probably. It makes little sense to defy the royalty agreement if you have a successful project.
I would phrase it "contracts" - which has the implication that if you violate the contract, you may be sued. Contracts are how just about everything is "enforced". I think that programmers tend to think that if something is required, we must have programmatic protections in place that ensure it actually happens. Most of the world does not work like that; they rely on contracts.
To handle noncompliers, they can get off of the various App stores with a simple DMCA request, no complicated lawsuits required, unless the developers appeal the take down, which probably involves a lot of "under penalty of perjury" lying.
Why would breach-of-contract have anything to do with the DMCA?
I assume cma is suggesting that the contract would allow Epic to revoke the license of anyone that failed to pay their 5%.
Once Epic exercises that right, any further distribution of the product would be a violation of Epic's copyright and Epic could file a DCMA takedown.
Because the developer doesn't own the copyright to the engine?
It's unfortunate that this model really only works for large developers serving broad markets like gaming.
Whereas if you're an indie developer writing image processing code for example, it is going to be hard to find infringers and harder to strongarm them into coughing up licensing fees.
I expect this has the effect of keeping source code behind closed doors that would otherwise be public.
They don't necessarily need to do a lawsuit. They could just shut down your UE subscription until you file the relevant proof of earnings.
You don't need the subscription to work with the engine, its a GitHub repository you can just locally clone.
So a state-of-the-art graphics library, a critical component to your new, moderately successful video game, doesn't deserve 5% of the revenue?
Yeah, if you think you can write your own alternative to Unreal Engine for less than (revenue-$3000)*0.05 per quarter, then by all means, you should do that.
Competion is a wonderful thing.
I can't build a decent car for less than the cost of a low end BMW. But, there are plenty of other companies than can.
So, the real question is what are the other options out there and I suspect there are few engines that can come close.
iDTech is no longer licensed for third-party use; only Zenimax properties can use it. CryEngine is available -- they have a $10 a month subscription plan that is royaly-free, but you don't get source code access like you do with Unreal Engine here. (They offer seperate terms for source access.[1]) Unity exists, but I don't think it's in quite the same tier as Unreal (although for some projects that may not matter).
Perhaps not, as a graphics programmer, rewriting the rendering system is comparatively simple, enjoyable, and perhaps not worth 5% of a moderately successful game.
However, UE4 is much more than just a graphics library. I'd argue that it's editor alone is worth many times more than their rendering features. And IMO, it's trivially worth the 5% of revenue.
Writing a rendering system or this rendering system? I think you're underestimating the tech here. Could you match their real time global illumination, radiosity, physically based rendering, etc with good performance? I get the impression you'd need to go over like 100 different papers to even get a baseline implementation, without any clever optimizations, for a modern engine like UE4.
Yeah, any reasonably skilled programmer can write a pretty graphics engine as a hobby project, since that is the fun part of making an engine. It's all of the other boring stuff that is worth (arguably) more than 5%. Writing the resource management system and the editors takes a long time and a lot more effort and is not as fun or glamorous as writing a rendering engine.
Not to mention this is much more than a 3D rendering middleware.
Or, you know, pay the royalty you agreed to pay and stop being a thieving scum.
I would think they have some sort of enforcing mechanism. It almost seems like the $3,000 limit is a signal of the cutoff when it starts becoming worthwhile to pursue scum buckets.
Speaking as another developer, their terms sound incredibly fair.
I thought it was always after $3000
How does it fare against Unity?
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.
However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing.
Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competitive with Epic's offering, but was Windows-only.
EDIT: Unreal does have a comparison page for Unity developers: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/From...
It's hard to compare unity and unreal. To answer the question about c++, with UE4, the blueprint system removes almost all of that. Entire games can be written in their visual programming language. I also think there are ways to use c# (https://mono-ue.github.io/), if you prefer that as well. C++ is needed if you want to extend the native classes.
Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing. It really shines in the tools department. Check out the landscape editor, materials editor, and animation tools on youtube. Pretty fantastic stuff.
The game engine itself is better than unity in almost every way with a few big exceptions:
1) multiplayer map size. unity can pretty easily support large online worlds 2) support for mobile/tablets. unity is the dominant platform on those devices. 3) community support. unity has a much larger community, better documentation, and a much more populous online store (though unreal is catching up)
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large-S...
According to this thread, as of version 4.6, the maximum supported multiplayer map size out of the box is 20km x 20km. Is this the limitation you were referring to? That wouldn't accommodate an MMORPG or Minecraft, but otherwise seems quite big.
Never understood the concept of measuring map size in km. It's like measuring distance on a map while ignoring scaling. Something like source's hammer units make a lot more sense to me.
In Source the scale is fixed (1 "unit" ~= 1 inch) and I imagine the same's true for UE.
1 unit = 1cm in UE, so 20km has some value as a measurement in game.
Of course, what matters more is what you do in that 20km, but it's also a limit coupled tightly with distant mesh performance and float accuracy issues.
It would accommodate MMORPG - that is couple of times the area of WOW during it peak years.
Also, keep in mind that's likely 20km x 20km x 20km.
Isn't that the use case for Level Streaming?
sure it would. you don't have to load it all at once
If it runs.Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing....and that's a big IF. The editor ran like absolute rubbish originally on macs, to the point where it was actually unusable.
They've done a lot of work on that, but it's still miles away from the unity editor.
I think it's really hard to argue the unreal editor is better; it's a lot slower, but it does have some nice tools.
You also can't create extensions as easily (if at all?) as you can for unity.
As you say, they're two different things, and the unreal editor is actually not bad... but if you were to compare them, the unity one would certainly rank more highly.
Actually you can create extensions to the editor, but it requires a lot more of work compared to the counterpart. Also, i use both UE and Unity on my mac, and while i agree that UE crashes a lot, that's mostly on user error. Unity, on the other hand, crashes while importing textures, generic assets, resizing textures, hangs when clicking play, etc.
OSX support is more or less experimental and macs (except the Mac Pro) have pretty weak GPUs. Also performance on OSX is far worse, so you are better off just building a budget workstation if you plan to seriously work with it.
what about macs running windows? i'm curious to know if it's a hardware issue or OSX related.
definitely OS related, it's fine on windows, even on macs. Just the underpowered GPUs in most macs make it not really a pleasure to work with, Epic recommends workstations for development work. Personally, i'd just build a windows pc for UE work, it's not suited for laptops anyway.
I was thinking about something like Lua.
Now, the multiplayer map size limitation seems odd nowadays.
Mostly to do with floating point precision, the devs of Star Citizen ran into the same issue with Cry Engine when they tried to make things space-scale, and ended up initially stuck with small battle-arena maps. UE4 can re-origin things for a single player moving through a large world to maintain physics precision, etc. but it doesn't currently work with multiple people and their server model.
So, basically what Kerbal Space Program does. Which also doesn't work well with multiple people.
That said, keep in mind that you can get roughly a maximum of 20 sq km with the default landscape tool (not sure about performance at that scale).
I believe there's also some hard coded limits around the number of simultaneous players (16?), though it seems fairly easy to work around. Again, not sure about performance.
Nothings really hardcoded when you have the source at hand.
True. Also, there are rumors that epic is working on a multiplayer implementation of the player centered coordinate system.
Can you even compare them :)
Evaluation of software, be it library, framework, sdk or a whole engine+tools is much much harder than writing actual software, especially when royalties, copyright and other legal issues are involved.
In reality there is no way of knowing what would do your best, so you can look at specific bad parts and take that into decision making, for example, for what I've heard (and possibly it could be wrong):
- Unity is not really good when lots of people have to edit the same files, merging is not really good, and the server option does not really cut it. (For example Quake's engine .map text files are not so bad to merge in cvs/svn/p4/etc.)
- Unreal had always had the bad "fame" of 30-only fps game, while this is okay for certain shooters, or 3rd person games, it would've never worked for "Call of Duty" where the brand was simply established with 60fps. To some people this might sound a bit pedantic, but 60fps matters! (And >60fps does not really, unless you need to swap frames for a 3D VR device of sort)
That to be said both engines surely have really good parts. From little I've explored in Unity, what got me first was the ability to extend the editor while it's running - I could add menus with functionality while it was running - this is super cool.
Unreal on the other side is well known engine with lots of people from the AAA game industry familiar with it, and while the editor might seem completely foreign to people starting in the game industry, it's pretty well known by many others (I guess they don't advertise it much).
The hidden gem of Unreal for me, was it's internal UI system, which could be used as a separate project - it has docking, controls, etc. - it might be a good replacement for Qt, MFC, wxWidgets, etc.
I have never heard about this "fame", yet I cannot think about game that is 30-only fps?
I can think a lot of games that are ue1-4 that are not bound by fps limits at all.
Editor in UE4 is streamlined from what UE3 was. Its now quite easy in the end.
Sorry, I wasn't clear - from what I know, on the consoles only few Unreal games on one specific console made it to 60fps. I could be wrong, and have old information, and yes this greatly relates to older Unreal engines, and from what I've heard (over and over from people working with it) it was the script language and kismet (maybe I'm confusing terms here) that was the limiting factor.
Now I'm a generalist, that ended up as tools engineer, so I might be talking complete non-sense, but again when I've talked to anyone from my previous studio or others that was the overall sentiment - Unreal can't give us 60fps unless Epic are directly involved and custom version for a game is done.
(Obviously you can do 60fps always, but it may not be up to the visual quality of other 60fps games).
Looking at UE4 and blueprints, it seems that they've understood their weak point and worked aggressively on fixing it. So it could be that UE4 would deliver 60fps just fine matching visual quality of other products at the same fps. (aaah, now someone would add - what about resolution? heh, I dunno - I think upscaling is just fine, but then you have all these crazy journalists digging up... frame rate is much more important though)
Thanks for a great review of both.
I am confused, so is Unreal unable to do 60 Hz?
Do you have any experience with the UI system or know about any projects using it? I wonder what Gotchas or limitations may exist.
Check out some videos on the UE4 Blueprints system (flowchart programming). I'm pretty impressed at the product they created there, IIRC there are some games made on Blueprints alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFZCp4xsPmo : Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints in Solus (1h)
Something that I look for when comparing tools/frameworks are the number of Stackoverflow questions and answers. http://www.arepeopletalkingaboutit.com/tags/unity3d,unreal-e... offers a quick visualization. I may have missed a few tags, but it looks like there's a very large amount of people talking about Unity3d on Stackoverflow relative to Unreal. No wonder they want to open it up to the masses.
Of course that can be interpreted many ways (Are there active email lists? Are there active forums elsewhere?) and raises other questions (What's the best way to learn a tool/technology?) but it's at least one useful metric for checking in on my FOMO.
The graphic of the comparison page is a bit unfortunate from Unreal's POV. I get that they want the arrows to indicate "move to" as in move from Unity to Unreal. Can't help but interpret it as Unity >>> Unreal though which is probably not what they intended.
I really like this easy 5% above X model. Seems fair enough.
I'm actually super curious as to why you have that opinion, UnrealEngine has been around longer, and has always had significantly more in the way of production quality tools and features. There are certainly differences, especially when you get down into the details, but two large features Unreal has had for 10 years, shader graph tools, and animation blend trees, are either new and still painful in Unity (mechanim) or only existent as a third-party add-on (shaderforge)
I think Crytek's graphics look quite a bit better and more realistic then Unreal 4, but I don't know if the tools are just as good. Also not sure if Cryengine is competitive from a performance point of view (could be a trade-off with the better graphics).
Unreal Engine 4 is capable of producing VERY realistic environments. Check this out:
If you prebake the lighting and use ridiculously high-rez textures, you can make any 3D engine look like that. Static geometry is cheap.
For some developers, source access must be a huge deal over Unity free version - if you want to roll your own entity system or do a native plug... WAIT! unity 5 is now out, including all features in the unity engine for free (including native plugins), with no subscription, and entirely invalidating the premise of this comment.
My understanding is that Crytek is in some financial trouble. It would be unwise to rely on them for future support.
Crytek claims otherwise in an IGN article from last year[0], although the circumstances are quite suspicious.
How could a company so successful not turn profit?
[0]: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/06/24/crytek-reportedly-in-...
CryENGINE is now available as Software as a Service model. $10 a month and no royalties
If you don't need the C++ performance, my guess is it makes more sense to go with Unity and use their C# version.
It's not as clear cut. You can use C# with Unreal Engine if you prefer, and Unreal Engine offers a lot that Unity doesn't (e.g. Blueprints).
I recommend everyone interested in the two try both. I personally prefer Unreal Engine, but everyone is different.
Unreal Engine is also moving quite quickly, adding new features, marketplace content, improving the UI, etc.
I've been trying to decide which to cut my teeth on, to build a prototype MMORPG. I'm comfortable with C++, though my colleague won't be. Any suggestion on which engine/toolkit would be better for that type of build? Graphics quality is not a big concern, mostly just want to use the tool that have the best chance of becoming proficient with.
I don't think either engine is well suited for an MMO to be honest. You are probably better off looking at something like the HeroEngine.
Unreal Engine's built in networking systems are suitable for 64 players, maybe 128 tops. It's replaceable, but I wouldn't recommend delving into that.
I will say this though, if you have 1 C++ programmer with UE4, they can create functionality not builtin to the engine and expose it via Blueprint (the visual scripting language) for non-programmers to use. Blueprint is a fantastic and very easy to use tool. Take a look at the forums to see the incredible things people have built with ZERO programming knowledge.
I don't know about ZERO programming. If you look at RayCast vs RayTrace here https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/From... building anything complicated with Blueprint creates a massive amount of visual clutter. It looks clearer in C++. Maybe it's easier for a novice as they're building it since the autocomplete and component system hold your hand, but reading it after is a nightmare of following lines and looking at a lot of essentially commented out code.
And talking about Blueprint code is done through screenshots https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?60637-Unable-... I guess there is still no auto generated text representation you could copy paste.
It is possible to copy/paste blueprints as text only. The only caveat is that the output is kilometric (a blueprint of mine with ~60 nodes produces ~2500 lines of text).
Interesting. Yeah, I wonder if they have a way to import/export textural representations like Max/MSP or Pure Data patches.
To redistribute code written with Mono for Unreal Engine, you must have a commercial license to the Mono runtime. These licenses are available from Xamarin for Mac, Android and iOS online, and you can request Windows licenses through support.
https://mono-ue.github.io/about.html
If you want to code in C# it is the primary language for Unity, and a commercial third party unsupported add on for UE4.
Actually Unity will be compiling C# to native code via IL2CPP to avoid paying royalties[0] for more recent Xamarin versions.
[0] At least that is how I read the whole situation
I believe Crytek stepped down from the "indie" scene.
You can actually license the engine royalty-free for $9.90/month through Steam (http://www.cryengine.com/get-cryengine)
That's unfortunate.
I love the way their engine renders water and had ideas for it.
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 all 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 ?
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 ?
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.
I see it's very powerful, but I'm still wondering about the real utility of an "engine" versus a library.
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.
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.
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...
> 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 ?
The programming experience in UE4 is great, but is clearly not what you are looking for. It's very opinionated, And your code very much needs to fit within it's framework.
> 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.
It's not a powerful 3D renderer. It has a quite nice 3D renderer. But Unreal is a game engine, and must be treated as such, it's renderer isn't really modular, and if a 3D renderer is all you want, I suspect you can be better suited elsewhere.
> I see it's very powerful, but I'm still wondering about the real utility of an "engine" versus a library.
I could perhaps go through a lot of examples to help illustrate the point, but perhaps the significant amount of games that ship every year based off of Unreal Engine is better evidence that there is significant utility in the "engine"
> if you have some new idea and you are a programmer
What if you aren't a programmer, what if the idea fits within the bounds of what the engine is built to do. Certainly, there are large classes of problems that UE are poorly suited for, but there are also large classes of problems that a web browser, or even a blender are ill-suited for, use the tools when they suit your problem.
> 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.
I'd agree that this engine is poorly suited for demoscene type work, but depending on your game, UE is great for indies, and depending on what your experiment is, can be great for experimenting.... Not all experiments are technical in nature.
> but I don't see becoming a standard in the game programming community
Unreal Engine is already a standard in the game programming community, and has been for 10 or so years.
In my opinion, if you're just a hobbyist programmer who want to experiment building games on the side, it makes more sense to build your MVP demo using humble html5 canvas (I personally use pixijs, but things like threejs or whatnot might be more appropriate depending on your idea). This is because building a good indie game is a big commitment requiring lots of time (which is money), and unless you're building this game for your grandchildren, it makes sense to test the market with a MVP and try to raise money for it on a kick-starter site before you commit to building it on a powerful engine like Unreal (or Unity).
In addition, worrying about powerful graphics as an indie game dev is like worrying about distributed database scalability as a minor e-commerce startup. Your priorities are messed up and, just like how you can just get away with mysql on a free heroku instance as long as you have interesting junk to sell on your ecommerce startup, so too can you get away with a shoddy 2d engine with box2d physics as long as your story is engaging (or your mechanics are fun).
It really depends on what type of game you're planning to make. Go to any game jam and look at the amazing games prototyped in Unity over a weekend. Compare the html5 games. It's often night and day. The amount of stuff you can get done in an engine you're familiar with so many tools and plugins at your disposal is a huge force multiplier.
Of course do whatever you want. Most of my projects have been HTML5. But at the same time I recognize that free importing of nearly any format of 3d assets into unity and built in animation, collision, physics, ability to edit nearly all parameters at runtime, even code. Is a huge boost once you get used to it.
I don't have any experience on Windows, but here're my 5 cents.
>What I hate about unity is the whole interface editor thing, it's big and you must use everything to use it.
Unreal Editor is even bigger.
>...earth to earth when it comes to programming ?
~4k headers, they have their own build system. Using Xcode is not very fun, it's either indexing/compiling, or just waiting while the build system tries to decide which files were changed.
A powerful machine with SSD for Unreal is a must. Unity is not that beefy (thus responsive), but you don't get a powerful editor for materials, AI, visual scripting and so on out of the box.
Also guys at Unreal prefer new features over stability. Every release is a fight with bugs.
They're all like that. One of my favorite games keeps running out of memory because Unity 4 doesn't really work on 64 bit windows so they had to stay with 32 bit.
> Also guys at Unreal prefer new features over stability.
Unity was just as bad on the stability department in my experience. And at least Unreal pushes their new features to production quality. Unity on the other hand seems to push for new features just to hit a feature list on a box cover.
I think what may be missing that this is more than just a "graphics" library, and that by taking over the event loop and overall structure of the app they make it so that you can get a running game (as opposed to rendering a quad) far faster.
Game development forums are full of skeletons of people that tried to roll their own "game engine", forgetting that their goal was to make a game[1]. Unity (haven't used Unreal yet) makes it so that you can get a prototype done in less than a day. I probably looked like a kid waving my phone around like a joystick to steer my sub around a 3D ocean, changing the handling, etc. Starting with a graphics library would make that a multi-day task.
[1]: No really, when I was younger I essentially stopped working on my game and developed a fully compositing GUI/Window manager. Fun, but totally besides the point.
It has a system called Blueprints that allows you to use a node-based system so you don't have to write any code at all.
I haven't used Blueprints myself as I prefer their C++ option but I have seen a number of gamedev streams using Blueprints exclusively.
A demo of the astounding capabilities for those who haven't seen:
This is my favorite Unreal 4 demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8 (sadly missing the wonderful quote "I light my level by dropping a sun in.")
I'm completely in awe of the feedback loop here. It even compiles and swaps code while you're in the game!
Unfortunately that demo is outdated. They dropped a lot of that GI tech because it was never made performant for medium spec machines.
Keep in mind this is all done with "baked in" lighting. Still amazing, but to get that kind of graphical fidelity, you have to use static lighting.
According to the AAA graphics programmers I've consulted with now that we're in the age of physics based renderers this level of detail is pretty much possible in all 3d engines. You could take those assets, throw them in pretty much any other physically based renderer and they'd look the same.
I would be nice to see someone try that with these assets.
More the capabilities of the designer than the engine, since it is all static, but that scene is stunning.
I do wonder if Paris apartments have big glass double doors between the lounge and the master bedroom though. Could make visiting friends a little, erm, intimate.
nice. the thing i found odd is how the reflections/glare changes from simply looking around without moving. quite unnatural
Uncanny valley, if anything: reflections are supposed to change with a changing viewing angle and/or surface angle, whereas just camera movement has no immediate effect.
The whole "uncanny valley" idea is something that is related to virtual humans, not environments. But yes, agreed, dynamic lighting would make it more believable of course.
It does approach U.V somehow. The more realistic things get, the more I feel it misses something, like touch or smell, making it annoying instead of inspiring.
Update: think you need to register first: https://accounts.unrealengine.com/register/index
Is it just me or is the source not public yet? https://github.com/EpicGames - No public repos
They invite you to their group that has access to it if you subscribe.
Why would they not just make the repo public by default? I can't see the major advantage to doing it this way making developers jump through hoops to access your source code. If I don't have a GitHub account this means I have to create 2 accounts just to gain access. Seems unnecessary.
GitHub doesn't allow private forks of public repositories. If you read the licensing terms, you aren't allowed to distribute modifications of the UE4 source to anyone who isn't already licensed. In addition, a lot of users of UE4 would not want to make their changes public.
Also, they would be required to allow GitHub users who weren't UE4 subscribers to create forks, which is a violation of their licensing terms.
Public GitHub repos just aren't really suited for projects that aren't open source.
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.
Wow, this is great. I really have no excuses now to not be playing with this on my downtime.
They're probably hoping that's what everyone will think. They're losing their monthly profit but also dropping the barrier of entry to almost nothing.
I'm very glad of course but...
...technically all they did was lower the price by $19 a month.
...and bought a lot of press for that
...and a lot more shots at the 5% revenue.
It's really great of course. But better yet, it's really very clever.
$19/month isn't much to you, but to a 15 year old tinkerer, or the 19 year old college freshman, it's good money.
Throughout its history, the best innovations in gaming have come from such people, the most recent being Palmer Luckey.
Unreal Engine was free for students since at least October last year (2014).
They did way more than that. They removed barriers to entry. Unreal becomes available for exploratory actions now. Before there was a $20 entrance fee just to try it out, now I can play with a project for free. You can use it for demonstrations or school projects now with basically zero risk to try it out.
It was really $20 then $20 whenever you want to upgrade. And it's mainly for kids with gaming rigs. Good luck running any demos on Intel Integrated Graphics, much less the editor.
Unity can be used for free, with limits on certain features but good enough for school. Runs even on crappy $500 laptops.
As someone that has used both UE and Unity, Unity is far more restrictive in its free state (no soft shadows, forced Unity splash screen, no level of detail support, no inverse kinematics for animations, no profiler, and many more).
Also the Pro license for Unity is pretty expensive up front -- a few hundred for Pro and then another $100-200 for iPhone, another $200 for Android, etc and thats per month (or $4500 one-time payment for desktop + iOS/Android) regardless of how much you make with your game.
I've built ok looking things in free Unity. One of the most irritating limitations was the ugly light gray theme instead of the darker gray theme.
Pro is $75 per month or $1500, then $75 per month for iPhone. And you can't just stop paying, it's a 12 month contract! If you pay up front then try to upgrade it's $700.
If they had an option to pay royalties and less up front it would be a much better proposition for upcoming indie devs. But they had some pricing thread where they asked the community after Unreal's $20+5% offering and decided it was best to keep current pricing. Perhaps the community felt that if you can't pony up a few K, don't crowd the market with your games?
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.
What a great way to handle it.
Oh wow, just noticed this in my e-mail:
"If you have paid for a subscription on or after January 30th, you will receive a pro-rated refund for your latest month's payment after March 12th."
So not only do I get most of my money back, but also the $30 credit.
Epic rocks.
---
EDIT: I see now it also says as much in the announcement, if only lacking the specific details.
It's available at no charge, but it's not free.
You make money with it, you give them a fair share. Entry cost is $0. They'll ignore the first $3000 gross because hassling lots of "little people" for under $150 isn't worth the hassle for anyone.
Pretty amazing, really. I've been in graphics since just drawing a line on the screen of a $6000 (2015 dollars) computer was a big deal for a beginner; now you can get a seriously robust graphics engine for no cost, develop on a week's-pay cheap computer, and publish for $50 per $1000 revenue after you make enough to bother paying for.
No reason to whine, save for the sake of whining. You can still start with gcc if you like.
ETA: per another current thread, you can get a suitable Linux workstation for $89 http://symplepc.com/blogs/news/16853255-symple-introduces-th... Tack on a USB monitor for another $89, and you can write the Next Big FPS for $178 plus 5% of meaningful revenue.
Specs on that are really low. 2gb of ram with a single core processor? That kind of rig is probably best for 2D development, where something like Unreal or Unity would be way overkill.
A small step up would be something with a proper graphics card and a quard core processor. You can get a very nice computer for $450 nowadays:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/pc-builds/1786-cheap-gaming-pc-bu...
Also, not being able to test on Windows would be a major problem as that's going to be the lion's share of your sale. If you're budget conscious, I'd spring for a 3 year old laptop that came with an AMD or NVIDIA chip. That would be a low end desktop today, but can probably be had for $200-300 or so. Toss in a $80 SSD, and off to the races. I find laptops depreciate fast and that most people haven no idea how valuable that NVIDIA or AMD sticker is on their laptop. That's the difference between being able to play 70% of the games on Steam and being able to play 10% of the games on Steam.
> For developing with UE4, we recommend a desktop PC with Windows 7 64-bit or a Mac with Mac OS X 10.9.2 or later, 8 GB RAM and a quad-core Intel or AMD processor, and a DX11 compatible video card. UE4 will run on desktops and laptops below these recommendations, but performance may be limited.
"Recommend". If you're trying to develop as close to "free" as possible, "performance may be limited."
(I'm often puzzled that when I suggest a nigh-unto-free solution to a problem, someone usually complains some form of "but that's not optimal!" Of course it's not optimal if you're not willing to put substantial resources into it. Just because the solution isn't perfect doesn't mean there isn't one; do what you can with what you've got, and you'll make progress toward perfection.)
I think the point is that it is going to be worse than just laggy UI, it's going to be very painful if you try to use that computer for developing using UE4.
Which isn't to discourage people, there is a lot you can do with that kind of mid tier machine, but you are probably much better off trying to something else than UE4.
> revenue
I know this probably isn't the place, but I am fairly sure they mean income, not revenue.
revenue |ˈrevəˌn(y)o͞o| noun
income, especially when of a company or organization and of a substantial nature.
Yeah; the initial title said "is now Free", suggesting by lack of capitalization of "now" and capitalization of "Free" that it was being open-sourced. I'm glad that the edited title uses lowercase for that word.
It is free as in beer, which is the natural definition of "free" for most people.
The natural definition for "free" in the software development world has come to mean "open source".
It doesn't matter what the word means outside this sphere. Otherwise, "engine" usually refers to something like a car engine.
That's a bold claim. I have been writing software for more than a decade and I still associate "free" with "no monetary cost".
Are you talking about the product or the source code?
As in beer, so, the product. Having source code is great, but when I'm trying to get something done I don't really care about e.g. the EFF's moral stance.
It's actually not. It has a very restricted license, and you have to sign up to get the source. So it's not free software or open source.
It's free as beer until you take a sip from the glass.
Also, the US isn't the land of the cheap sakes, which kind of doesn't fit "for most".
Sip all you want. It's free until you serve that beer for money in your successful restaurant.
Free until you take more than 3000 sips from the glass per quarter. So still likely 100% free for all but the successful indie devs and larger studios.
Just in case this helps you in the future: "cheapskate" is the term you're looking for.
I was thinking it's a pun about japanese alcohol.
It's free to the 99.99% of people who "have this great idea for a killer game" but never get beyond the first baby steps.
for an open source (MIT licensed) engine that also works in Linux
I don't see the reason for downvotes. The parent's sentiment is pointed, but has merit. It's initially doesn't cost anything, but if you want to charge for a game, it costs you. You also don't get many freedoms along with it, you gain no rights on the code and are bound to whatever Epic comes up with later.
> It's initially doesn't cost anything, but if you want to charge for a game, it costs you.
That's just it though; if you wanted to use this to make a completely free GNU/Linux game, you could, without ever paying a cent to Epic. If you do decide to make a game for profit, it's only when you "make it" that you have to pay for your tools. I see it as a fair and equitable arrangement, where both sides profit if and only if the developer is successful.
Is the source code actually free though? For example, could I redistribute the source code myself and not take any revenue from the people I distributed it to? Could I make some changes to the engine and redistribute it? How would the revenue sharing work if I did something like that and someone using my version of the engine started making money using it?
I'm glad there's another no-cost video game engine available, but I don't think it qualifies as free software in the Free Software Foundation sense of the word free. I haven't seen the actual license though, so maybe it is actually free. It would be awesome if it was.
Sorry, I should have clarified; I didn't use the capital-F "Free" because I was speaking strictly in terms of money. I honestly don't have a clue what the redistribution rights are either, I just think it's cool there's a professional level, tried and tested, modern game engine available to build games that target GNU/Linux. I'm excited to see what comes of it over the next few years.
Could you reasonably expect a more favourable deal on a world-class game engine?
I probably couldn't, but he's still right: link says "available to everyone for free", which isn't exactly what it happens to be. It's not about being greedy or something, it just about fair headlines.
I'd be interested to see how the royalties work when UE for is not the primary part of the product.
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?
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.
Back when UE4 was first released I asked that question in relation to training simulations within larger courses and the answer was that, as no software was being sold, then no royalties would apply! (just the $20/mo subscription cost at the time) Definitely contact EPIC and get a ruling on your specific case, but I was blown away! In the end we didn't go ahead with those simulations as the html5 support wasn't quite ready at the time.
Nice.
Your move Unity. $4500 per seat up front or $225 per seat per month for all-platform access is looking even less appealing for small Indies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
> However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs something in between such as Lua or C#
I'm actually a little curious about this, What does Lua or C# provide for you that using C++ in the context of UE does not? or is it simply familiarity with Lua and C#?
Yes and no memory management. Self management can be scary.
Also I vomit a bit in my mouth every time I read C++ code base.
Is this because I now get a free proprietary game engine with every single Kickstarter game sponsoring?
About time we stop the 500 monkeys reinventing 500 wheels in parallel (at least it's concurrent monkeys, they smell nicer).
Removing most of the business complexity around licensing an engine is a big deal for small developers. This is good news.
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.
You install the engine through the launcher. At least this is how it works on windows I assume it works similarly on mac.
Thanks for that! I thought I was a smart man, until I tried to figure out where to download a daggum engine.
When in the Launcher, goto the "Library" item on the left. You'll be able to install engines there.
Thanks!
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?
You can scale down the quality settings so it can run on just about anything. But I've found the editor itself--if you're not just going to work completely from Visual Studio--needs a fairly hefty computer.
I don't have any experience with Unity to compare, though.
Last time I tried it on MacBook Pro with integrated graphics, which was 6 months ago, there was no way to turn down enough settings in the editor to make it run acceptably. On Macs with a graphics cards it ran with lag.
Haven't found a list of games made with UE4 to try out the final output, but the simplest demos here open but run at 0.2 fps on Integrated Graphics https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?t=11538
And for phones you can't do much on older hardware. METAL is iOS8 only. So this demo https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/epic-zen-garden/id915975445?... starts with iPhone 5S.
OK, I tried the latest version of UT4 in BootCamp on my Macbook w/750M graphics, and it ran pretty well at 60fps with a scattering of High/Med/Low settings at 1680x1050. I'd say that's pretty good for such an early product!
UE4 even exports to iPhone and Android so I'm sure lower end computers will be fine.
Are there games in the wild built with UE for mobile?
I know there are quite a few Unity games out there in the market. I had ruled out Unreal and kinda settled on using Unity for my tinkering with games, because of the pricing differences...but now that Unity is so much more expensive at $1500+$1500 for each platform you want to support (if you don't want a Unity splash screen and the limits of the free version), and Unreal being effectively free forever for me (since I sincerely doubt any of my tinkering will result in a game that makes $3000+ a quarter, ever), I'm leaning toward giving Unreal more of my attention. But, I primarily want to develop for mobile, so having an effective mobile deployment process with the engine is kinda mandatory.
The XCom games on PC/iOS use UE4. The Zen Garden (Metal rendering) demo presented at the Apple keynote also used UE. Theres quite a few more but thats the only ones I remember off the top of my head ATM.
For 3D games on mobile, UE should perform pretty well. If you're doing 2D games, other engines may be more efficient (although UE does have a 2D mode).
Sigh!..they are refunding..renewed it just last week..
would love if they support WP8.1 as well..
This is such good news!!!!! I wanted to do something for VR and since I am just one dev things seemed hard doing things the native way. This just made my day.
I used to pay for UE4 and they have now provided me a 30$ coupon to use in the marketplace. 👍 Epic thinks through everything nowadays.
Awesome! I have always wanted to work on Unreal Engine 4, but have almost always been a bit skeptical on the pricing.
I wish Xamarin had a similar license...
I wish Xamarin had any license accessible to hobbyists.
In case you are not aware, last fall they doubled the free edition size limit and introduced a $25/month subscription option (eventually the same price at $300/yr).
Xamarin is free for students.
How they measure the size actually?
Another important thing - Xamarin.Forms should be in the free edition, if it is aimed for starters.... Big studios or established companies can afford to develop native UIs for each platform separately.
not everyone I can not see the website from IRAN unrealengine blocked our IP !!!!
Current subscribers get a $30 refund and store credit. Good times!
Awesome, thats the way it should be.
has anyone here tried it? What was your experience?
So my question is this.
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.
Can you use UE4 to build cross platform games, on mobile and browser?
Does UE4 have something like Crytek's terrain editor? That's my one favorite thing about Cryengine is their environment editor.
Someone else in this submission mentioned this thread: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large-S...
>In 4.6 maximum size of map is 20km x 20km.
>Now to put it into perspective. Single continent on Azeroth in WoW (exluding Northend and Pandaria) is something like 7x4km.
so from that thread seems like Altis from Arma 3 is roughly 16 X 16. I think that is quite big enough. Maybe if one was building a MMO sort of map, you would patch those 20x20 maps somehow.
I was thinking of creating a giant map like Altis and then putting players on it to roam around and stuff. Cryengine makes this very easy I think but haven't gotten to it.
>Can you use UE4 to build cross platform games, on mobile and browser?
Yes, though with a significantly reduced feature set due to the limitations of mobile and browser platforms.
Also, the UE4 runtime once compiled with Emscripten is about 50MB, and that's before the game itself is even loaded (as of v4.7.1).
In 4.7.2 is max. 100mi² = 259.00km²
Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
The last barrier to entry to someone who's trying to explore game making with Unreal has been removed. Thank you, Epic!
wow this will absolutely kill the cryengine unles they also go free.
The Unreal Engine is free neither as beer, or freedom.
Its free as in a mob protection money is given freely, with a lot of strings attached.
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.
It's free enough for most hobbyist game developers, many of whom will never make enough (or anything at all, really) from their games to matter.
You want ideological purity? Go write your own system.
"Ideological purity" is irrelevant. The point here is that people are abusing terminology to create ambiguity. As we are talking about software, the term "free" has specific connotations that differ from everyday language.
UE4 is a source-available, gratis game engine. This is fine. It is not open source, nor is it free or libre.
Yes, you're right, the word "free" does have specific connotations. Those include, but are not limited to:
- not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations
- given or available without charge
So, is the product free, as in available without charge, as implied by the clause "available for free"? Yes.
Is it free, as in not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations, something that is in no way implied by the content of the article? No.
Is your argument based on an excessively restrictive, ideologically motivated definition of the word "free" that does not fully represent how the word is used in practice?
Yes.
Except you are constrained by obligations. The obligation to pay a % of revenue. I mean I think the model is great. But calling it free is ridiculous.
It's hardly ridiculous when you consider where we just came from, the era of $250,000 - $500,000 source access engines.
You're not constrained by obligations if you choose not to make money with your product. So yes, it can be free of charge and free of obligations. Developers have to earn money somehow, unless you want Unreal to cease to exist. This model not only makes perfect sense, the product can absolutely be free in every sense of the word.
People whining about this are being ridiculous.
I wasn't whining. Just stating that it wasn't free - because it surely is not.
It's conditionally free. If it were unconditionally free that would permit you to use the term without question or having people call bullshit. When they do call bullshit, which is to be expected, it's absurd to go around accusing them of whining and being ridiculous. Get a grip.
Isn't "conditionally free" still free?
Yes, but when you don't explicitly state the conditionality, and particularly so in the ad-line, then it's a version of free that one should expect to incite calls of bullshit.
Think of it this way: it's on par with false advertising which companies do get sued for. That's why companies make signs like "up to 30% off" and not just "30% off" (when only some items are 30% off). It is considered, by most, a mis-representation or false hood; a lie if you will.
Tell you what. I'll come work for your company for free except any revenue over 3k I'll take 5% of.
not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations
Free software very much is subject to engagements and obligations, these being the terms of the respective license.
Is your argument based on an excessively restrictive, ideologically motivated definition of the word "free" that does not fully represent how the word is used in practice?
It's funny, because by your own statement, "open source" is also an excessively restrictive and ideologically motivated definition, what with OSI and FSF definitions being largely equivalent. For some reason I doubt you believe this.
When you're talking about software, you should not blame others for assuming "free" refers to the FSF definition, especially in announcements targeted towards technically inclined audiences.
It's funny, because by your own statement, "open source" is also an excessively restrictive and ideologically motivated definition, what with OSI and FSF definitions being largely equivalent. For some reason I doubt you believe this.
Why would you say that?
I actually explicitly believe that the FSF and OSI have coopted the term "free" in order to bend it to their own definition, while in fact espousing a position that explicitly advocates for licenses that restrict user freedom in very specific ways.
They, of course, happen to restrict freedom in a way that many folks like. But it's undeniable that, from the perspective of the individual user of software, BSD-licensed open source (for example) affords greater individual freedoms than that provided by GPL-licensed software, specifically because the latter is "subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations".
> I actually explicitly believe that the FSF and OSI have coopted the term "free" in order to bend it to their own definition, while in fact espousing a position that explicitly advocates for licenses that restrict user freedom in very specific ways.
The OSI doesn't define "free" at all, it defines "open source" via the Open Source Definitions. The FSF defines "free software" via the Free Software Definition. Neither of these definitions restrict user freedoms, though the FSF tends to develop and promote licenses that arguably do so (the licenses the FSF's develops and promotes are not the only licenses it recognizes at fitting the Free Software Definition, which is pretty similar in substance to the OSI's Open Source Definition.)
Yeah, fair enough, I shouldn't have mentioned them (to be honest I listed them reflexively because the OP brought 'em up without really thinking about it).
They don't restrict user freedom, they restrict distributor freedom with the goal of helping the user. This is a key distinction, because the end user can do anything whatsoever to the source code, no matter what the license wants.
Since when does the OSI advocate for copyleft licenses, explicitly or otherwise? It was in fact founded -- and the term "open source" was coined -- in order to advocate for free software licensing separately from the FSF's ethical positions and promotion of copyleft.
Yup, agreed, my mistake.
There seems to be a semantic argument going on here. As I see it, there are three terms at play
- "Open source"
- "Free"
- "Libre"
and again, as I see it, they all have mutually exclusive definitions. ie.
- the source is available to see and compile
- the project may be used without financial expense
- you may do with this project, and its source code, what you will (and personally I accept the restriction that you must preserve that right for others as not compromising this.)
under these definitions, I would now call the UE4 engine free and open source. I would not call it libre.
Do you object to any of these definitions?
> Do you object to any of these definitions?
In this context, all of them (well, maybe not "Libre", for which you have an approximation of the usual definition.) The common combination "Free/Libre/Open source Software" phrase comes from three different names for approximately the same thing in Software:
(1) Free Software under the FSF's Free Software definition [0]
(2) Open Source Software under the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition [1]
(3) "Libre", a term sometimes used parenthetically to distinguish Free Software in the Free Software sense as discussed above from free-of-charge (gratis) software.
Only to a very specific, and small, group of people does the term free mean something besides it's commonly accepted meaning. You are attaching additional meaning to a word that already has meaning, and then complaining that people are creating ambiguity? Reminder this isn't Slashdot.
> "Ideological purity" is irrelevant. The point here is that people are abusing terminology to create ambiguity. As we are talking about software, the term "free" has specific connotations that differ from everyday language. UE4 is a source-available, gratis game engine. This is fine. It is not open source, nor is it free or libre.
OK, maybe it's better to call it "we're-not-gonna-be-a-dick-about-it" license.
English is context-sensitive language. When reading "Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free" it was pretty clear to me (and I assume most people here) from the phrasing and context that they weren't releasing it in a copy-left license or even as open-source (Actually source code access is given).
Now if they had said "Unreal Engine is now available as free software" that would have been more confusing and misleading.
Whether or not you think it's free, UE4 is absolutely open source: https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github
To be honest here. The strings that are attached are strings for people who want to sell...
Many open source projects do something like this, a dual license where the source code for the project is GPL, but the creator is willing to license it for something as non-gpl to people unwilling to release their source code.
This requirement set by unreal is very very analogous. They just have some shifted priorities, however for me this project now meets the standard of what I would consider "ethical".
Could it be better? Sure why not? It could be GPL dual license, people who want to benefit from open source but release closed source I think should have to pay, that would be better. However, this library can now be effectively used for open source initiatives. This is fantastic.
That's my estimation of the situation anyway, you perhaps do not see it like this. Could you go further into your position?
>this library can now be effectively used for open source initiatives.
No it's can't be because UE4 is proprietary: http://opensource.org/osd
??
... so?
What provision on that page would I violate if I made an FLOSS project based on UE4?
#2, "The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form."
Unreal's license for obtaining the source does not permit you to redistribute in source form, so you can't comply with their license and still fulfil that point.
While it's certainly trivial now for most anyone to obtain that source independently, you can't include that source in your own project while still distributing your own project under any license that the OSD would label as open source.
I think there would be huge problem to what count as "your own project source" as it's going to will hugely use UE4 code. So I posted my thoughts on licensing above.
Your project going to be derivative work from UE4. It's mean Epic of course allow you to share it's source code, but you can't grant any more right to 3rd parties than Epic grated to you.
So no way UE4-based project will be FLOSS or even open source.
It's free as in beer, with the fine print putting a limit on the free beer you get before you're either cut off or have to start buying your own beer. It's like going to a wedding reception and claiming that the open bar is a lie because they stop serving at midnight.
It's free as in a bank loan with no time frame for repayment.
It's a positive development, not sure the negative comments. 5% is chump change if a game is successfull. The engine is also open source (so no hidden malware), runs on Linux and WebGL.
>The engine is also open source
I think you mean the source code is available (i.e., anyone can download it), which is different from its coming with an open-source license, which is what most people mean by "open source".
No, what you mean is Free Software
No, it's not Open Source either: http://opensource.org/osd
I think microsoft calls this "Shared Source"
Actually no. Microsoft branded several licenses that way, but some of them are OSI-approved and FSF-approved (while not compatible with GPL).
Then I guess we need a new name. The engine is "readable source"
At $3000/product/quarter it will also be completely free for many indie game and app developers while they try and build something people want.
Many game developers will be smiling if they have to write that quarterly check.
I have always believed that the base operating system, and general libraries should be Libre, but individual applications should not need to be restricted this way.
This brings the best of both worlds. Freedom in the foundations, and an incentive to have real innovation in end user apps.
But patents and copyrights should expire after ten years.
If you use it for non commercial purposes it is free enough.
It's "free" as in "fair share". You'd spend decades rebuilding something that complex - and you're welcome to do it yourself if you won't give fair reimbursement to those who did and let you use their work with no entry cost.