Silent_Buddha
Legend
Exaggerated hyperbole doesn't help your case. I mean Gears 4 and 5 immediately come to mind as great looking and great running UE4 games.
Regards,
SB
Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]
- Thread starter mpg1
- Start date
Exaggerated hyperbole doesn't help your case. I mean Gears 4 and 5 immediately come to mind as great looking and great running UE4 games.
Regards,
SB
there were lots of good UE4 games, and there will be lots of good UE5 games.
And what causing perf issues for now is not UE5 in itself, but two heavy features that are nanite + lumen.
It takes time to learn and optimize.
Robocop is showing good results i guess ? Where's the DF analysis of this game ?
And what causing perf issues for now is not UE5 in itself, but two heavy features that are nanite + lumen.
It takes time to learn and optimize.
Robocop is showing good results i guess ? Where's the DF analysis of this game ?
Other than the Gears games and Days Gone, I struggle to think of any developers who aren't Epic managing anything worthwhile from a visual and performance standpoint on UE4. You could argue that FF7 Remake achieves good visuals but the performance is dreadful. Same for the recent Star Wars game.
Maybe but this is not a valid argument to prove those games would achieved good visual or performance with a different engine.
There are too many other variables at play than only using unreal engine.
The stated point was there being a generation of technically troubled UE4 games. Given that you can count on the fingers of even a deformed hand the number of games that were technically accomplished, I would say it's a valid argument.
Curious then, if UE is such a disaster and have been for the last 3 generations, why does it get used? It must have some properties that appeal to whomever makes the decision to use UE as their engine?
Or maybe its about money and no metric that "we" as super picky players on this forum cares about shows up on the radar for the money people. IE UE delivers on the economic front?
Or nobody got fired for buying IBM once, maybe nobody gets fired for choosing UE5?
Or maybe its about money and no metric that "we" as super picky players on this forum cares about shows up on the radar for the money people. IE UE delivers on the economic front?
Or nobody got fired for buying IBM once, maybe nobody gets fired for choosing UE5?
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Subtlesnake
Regular
There being a generation of technically troubled UE4 games is a premise, not an argument in itself. We're lacking a "conclusion" and enough further premises to "prove" the conclusion.
I've not played any of them, but Atomic Heart, Hi-Fi rush and Stray all seem pretty solid looking games. Mortal Kombat 4 looks very good.
There were also lots of lower budget and indie games that were better than they would have been without UE4.
Which 3rd party engines have proven to be better than UE4 at producing a range of games
It makes it more of a known quantity. The engine is well documented, with a public timeline for planned changes, and with a lot of people who already know UE4 in some capacity or who can be trained up on it due to all the docs and all the other developers to talk to online.
UE will in many cases reduce risk compared to developing tech in house, particularly if you don't already have a strong tech foundation already, or mismanagement has lead to in house platforms crumbling.
UE can also, if you play to its strengths, deliver absolutely top of the line visuals. Nanite is incredible, and changes almost everything in terms of geometry.
Nothing is a best fit for everything though, and having a strong in house technical ability (like The Coalition) will still be needed to get the best out of UE. Which is to say, money and good leadership, will be still pay off.
There were also lots of lower budget and indie games that were better than they would have been without UE4.
Which 3rd party engines have proven to be better than UE4 at producing a range of games
It makes it more of a known quantity. The engine is well documented, with a public timeline for planned changes, and with a lot of people who already know UE4 in some capacity or who can be trained up on it due to all the docs and all the other developers to talk to online.
UE will in many cases reduce risk compared to developing tech in house, particularly if you don't already have a strong tech foundation already, or mismanagement has lead to in house platforms crumbling.
UE can also, if you play to its strengths, deliver absolutely top of the line visuals. Nanite is incredible, and changes almost everything in terms of geometry.
Nothing is a best fit for everything though, and having a strong in house technical ability (like The Coalition) will still be needed to get the best out of UE. Which is to say, money and good leadership, will be still pay off.
I think people can attribute too much to the engine without any real technical analysis or insight into other development activities. I bet if Naughty Dog made a game with UE they'd get amazing results. You could pick some game made with UE and come up with a list of ways it's deficient or not cutting edge. We don't know if the developers could have gotten a better result with a different engine (in house or licensed). There's no way to repeat the experiment, and if you compare game x to game y, you have to look at a lot more than just the engine to see why they came to different results. Games like Last of Us 2 and Horizon Forbidden West had development budgets of $220 million. I don't know how many UE games come close to that mark.
Subtlesnake
Regular
Right, if studios lacking technical expertise are more likely to license an engine, and the top AAA developers are likely to build an in-house solution, then that automatically skews the results in favour of the in-house engines.
It’s more complex than that.
About game engines
“Is it better to have your own technology for making games, or should you license an engine?” is a question that I get asked now and then.
www.remedygames.com
I think this is the crux of the matter, there are budget considerations. If we look over to other entertainment mediums like movies, tv and even books. There are big budget titles and there are smaller titles and in entertainment you never really have a 100% sure thing. So you need to cover your bases where you can and UE is just another tool in your belt. Because if everybody needs to make their own engine, there would definitely fewer games for us to choose from and most likely if you are not able to get blood out stone or UE, you most likely will not be able to with your engine either. At least with the same budget.
Subtlesnake
Regular
Well, the entire point of that article is that the end result is a symbiosis of the game engine and the team working with it, and you cannot easily separate the two. That goes against the entire comparison in the first place.It’s more complex than that.
About game engines
“Is it better to have your own technology for making games, or should you license an engine?” is a question that I get asked now and then.
From that article:
"It’s also important that the game team understands the strengths of the chosen technology and embraces it; have solid plan on how to implement that creative vision with the chosen technology, instead of fighting it"
My idea was that teams that choose to license engines may tend to have less insight into the technology they are using, and hence may produce results that are on average worse. As the article makes clear, this is not an engine issue per-se, but technology-human interface issue.
It’s more complex than that.
About game engines
“Is it better to have your own technology for making games, or should you license an engine?” is a question that I get asked now and then.
The thing is, Remedy is almost a 30 year old company, and they've been releasing AAA games since Max Payne in 2001. The northlight engine is probably about 10 years old and they've been iterating on it during that time. The developers that made Remnant 2, Immortals of Aveum just don't have that history and don't have that time. It's nice to say companies should have their own engines, but many of the companies that have in-house engines have been building them for 10+ years. Even when they say, "New Engine!" it's usually not 100% from scratch and in terms of knowledge about how to build engines they have tons of experience. I just think taking random games and reducing the differences down to the engines misses out on all kinds of other things that go into making games. Project managers alone can sink a product.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Although even then it's no guarantee. Look at Creation Engine or Frostbite or From Software's in house engine, for just a few examples (there are many other examples of games using in house engines not performing well or looking great as well). Each arguably does certain things better than any of the competition, but each also results in games that are hot buggy messes at release.
Meanwhile even small studios like The Outsiders (Metal Hellsinger) or Moon Studios (Ori games) or Unknown Worlds Entertainment (Subnautica) or Studio MDHR (Cuphead) can make Unity (an engine with a reputation worse than it deserves) sing and produce incredibly impressive results. But again, there are also lots of Unity games that are hot buggy messes. Same goes for Unreal Engine.
The development studio is what determines if a game runs well or not, looks good or not, etc. The engine certainly helps and can make things easier or more difficult. Arguably the tools available for use with an engine are more important than the engine itself is many cases. But the #1 thing that determines how well a game will look and run is the development studio behind the game.
Doesn't matter what tech an engine implements if the team using it doesn't use it well or aren't given the time to properly optimize their title.
Regards,
SB
Probably Robocop, Talos Principal 2 or Jusant currently, although the games you mention all have their moments. Recent DF video went over this a bit but there's a bunch of new stuff already since then. I'll be very curious to see where Ark lands on console this week, but given how heavy it is on PC I expect it will probably not run well initially and/or require major visual sacrifices. That said it's still one of the best looking games I've played in a long while so there's at least that.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yeah, the first game was initial very rough on console, so I'm not expecting the second game to be much better in terms of performance and adjustments to graphics settings to make it work on console at least initially. Not sure where Ark finally landed WRT performance and graphics by the end, however.
Regards,
SB
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