A look at Unity and UE4 from the perspective of a complete gamedev noob.

As promised, here's the gamedev note on Unity and UE4 :)

Tea or coffee?
Cats or dogs?
Black or white?
Unity or Unreal Engine 4?

These are the questions that have plagued man since the dawn of time, with the possible exception of maybe the last one. And the answer sort of lies in personal preference. So, dear reader, how do you like your caffeinated water/animal companions/arbitrary colours/free game Engines? Here's my short take on it.

I've got about a year of experience in Unity, so I'd like to think that I'm fairly competent in it, however, I have to admit that I'm far from it. Over the past week, I installed Unreal Engine 4, for the heck of it, just to take a look, and was completely blown away. One of the major advantages that UE4 has over its competitor is the sheer amount of out-of-the-box support that it offers completely new users. I was able to set up a first person controller in minutes, via a drag and drop operation. To do the same thing in Unity, I spent twenty minutes finding a decent tutorial, and ended up following a sixty-minute tutorial on how to fire lasers with a LineRenderer instead in order to set up a halfway-decent one that didn't use deprecated syntax. Another big plus was the ability to run tutorials in-editor (a major godsend - no more concentration-breaking Alt-Tabbing between the Editor and a Youtube window every few seconds. However, a scrollbar and some resizability options should be added to the tutorial window so it doesn't take up more than half of the 3D Viewport when you're following it.

Of course, this isn't to say that there aren't any problems with UE4. I do see some potential difficulties in changing the existing resources so that they'll work the way you want them to, if your intended purpose is outside the very narrow limits set by the blueprints you're using, given that I've been doing tutorials for the better part of a week, and I'm yet to see a single line of code. In Unity, I was set up and coding within two hours of starting the very first tutorial.

All this is not to say that either engine is inferior. I'm simply stating the facts as I see them, from the perspective of a complete newbie. I'm sure that, to an experienced developer, the choice between Unity and UE4 is pretty arbitrary, but to me, a guy with barely two and a half games under his belt, UE4 is the clear winner when it comes to support for new users. Don't crucify me for expressing an opinion.

Given the simplicity afforded by UE4, I'm even considering making a simple FPS demo myself, maybe with a friend to make some simple models for me. Expect to see some work on props and such soon!

Feb 03, 2017: Hopes.

It's the end of another long day.

GSOC 2017

We had a session on GSOC 2017 today at uni. I had been interested in GSOC for a while, so I've resolved to at least attempt to participate this year. I hope I find a good project! Fingers crossed :)

MIC 2017

Also on the menu is the Microsoft Imagine Cup, which I and a few friends plan to form a team and make a submission to. Unfortunately, there seems to be a sum total of zero data on the Sri Lankan National Finals - a cursory glance at Microsoft Imagine's Sri Lanka landing page gives us the message "Your country has not yet announced plans for Imagine Cup 2017" or something similar. Once more, fingers crossed that sorts itself out in time.

Empire: Warlords! (It's a working title) ;)

This ambitious little project finally has a proper artist. Really, he's got a graphics tablet and everything, he must be a pro. Well, he's actually another friend of mine from uni. I hope he'll live up to expectations.

The Inquest: Cursed Sword

TICS, as I have come to refer to it, moves along, slow and steady. I am working on a demo that will demonstrate the core functions and systems of my planned final twine.

Labyrinth

This one you may not have heard of. It's a rushed little demo a friend and I made on Unity for Android in 12 hours for a local game jam. It was edutainment-based, and we've had a lot of interest in a stable release on the Android platform.

Gamedev notes

I've been messing around with Unreal Engine 4, and can I just say, WOW. Will writeup a short gamedev note in a separate post, watch out for it.

EDIT: Formatting. HTML is a harsh mistress, but they tell me I'll eventually come to love her.
EDIT 2: Fixed missing hyperlink to Microsoft Imagine.

Hello World

Cliché title, check.

Hello everyone, this is my first post on my new blog. Planning to keep updates on all my projects so that any interested parties can read up :)