Unreal Engine 4 is open source (sort of) for $19 per month

Didn’t expect that from Epic, but there you have it:

https://www.unrealengine.com/

For $19 per month you get access to full source code of UE4. If you cancel subscription, you still have access to the code, just get no updates.

It would be interesting to see how Blender will fit new pipeline.

haha, the unity forums are funny right now.

how so :stuck_out_tongue:
Point us to the funny bits

They’re thinking that unless Unity Technologies comes up with a better deal (because we’re talking the most advanced technology in the world of games here), then the entire company will go under. Never mind the fact that UT already has a subscription system in place as an option.

At least the BGE would still be around, it’s not really competing with anyone at this point and it won’t go away as long as someone has a copy of the code.

Even if Unity will release source code, what’s the advantage of using Unity over UE4 ?

Unity has an established market place, varied types of code one can work with and probably much better 3d application integration. Who knows if that will change on the Unreal front, but one thing is for certain, the competition is good for us.

That said I believe part of this is due to the elephant in the room, which is Valve. Gabe Newell responded not long ago that Source 2 will focus on content creation and a lot of people saw the writing in the wall. Whatever Valve has up their sleave will be something that pushes and opens up game development in a direction that others engines might feel the need to be even more competetive in their approach.

Valve said they would release artist-friendly tools after DotA2 is out, and they haven’t delivered so far.

I don’t see how Unity has better integration than UE4 and variety of code to work with is not a good thing.

Now this sounds like fun! :yes:

Unity has an established marketplace but the quality of what’s there can be questionable at times and at most its stuff that should actually be part of Unity already that others are picking up slack for.

As for better integration with other tools, Unreal is releasing the source code. There is no reason for tools developers to not make their tools work with Unreal (that should include Blender as well imo). Unreal is considered the premiere engine in this space, with previous versions it was inaccessible to indie developers since UDK’s royalties scheme was a bit extravagant and you didn’t get source access to add tools specific to you pipeline, that is no longer the case. In-fact in comparison to Unity this is a huge win.

Unity has a more expensive subscription and licensing scheme at the moment. It’s $1500 flat or $75 for a subscription JUST FOR THE UNITY PRO EDITOR! For the IOS pro, or Android prop integration which are separate packages you need to pay more an you don’t get source access. Unreal 4 has them in as part of the base package for $19 + 5% royalties, which is chump change for any indie developer in the grand scheme of things (especially when Apple takes 30%), add to that source code access on github, an OSX editor (finally!) and industry wide support, its way more compelling that Unity on all fronts, imo. I’d also like to add that Unreal’s documentation out of the gate is heads and tales better than Unity. They have better template projects and examples, the tutorials are complete and actually very tailored towards actually getting something out there as a product and the developers at EPIC are super responsive and have passion for creating the best engine they can possibly make.

I respect Unity for bringing us this far, not that long ago Unreal cost thousands of dollars and only a select few had access to the technology. Now everyone has access to the latest and greatest and to me that’s all due to Unity and when they through the gauntlet down a few years ago with a free version, and at the time more cost effective pricing. Unfortunately EPIC learned too well from Unity and is now going to eat their lunch unless Unity does something to mitigate the damage.

As for Source at this point imo, Valve are more interested on managing Steam (I’m sure they make far more money off of Steam than on any of their games) than actually making games. They just outright buy interesting properties now, rather than release any games they make themselves (HL3). That’s valid business decision but I don’t really think Valve cares as much about making as they do about making sure that their Steam platform is the defacto place to buy games on a PC. They probably don’t care what engine you use at this point. They’ll definitely leverage it to great effect if they want to support a new platform, like they did with OSX and now Linux support, but that usually followed by an announcement for Steam support for said platform.

Good day to be a game developer. Crytek just through the their hat in the ring http://www.cryengine.com/news/crytek…ervice-program

$9.90 subscription, royalty-free. Free to download if you just want to mess around with it. Unity is in real trouble imo.

shamefully looks down So. There was this subscribe button and…

Does Unreal also allow for a free download if you just want to try out the engine (so you can decide if you want to subscribe to it)?

Also, is it like the UDK in that you would need to write reams of code to make it work for a genre other than an FPS, one of the benefits of engines like Unity is that the way it comes out of the box is fairly genre agnostic?

They had one but it’s gone now. Looks like it’s a flat rate for everyone. They’ve got an educational subscription where anyone can install it on computers so long as it belongs to the school. It’s a pretty good deal for 19$ a month.

So it’s gonna be Open Source, available on GitHub // as I wish Blender had a repo there//

Isn’t this a Golden, super golden oppertunity to get Blender, super tightly integrated into Unreal Game Engine 4?

I mean on the level of, selecting “Unreal Engine 4” from the Render engine, maybe have a representation of their node logic inside Blender. So you could Model, Rig, Animate, and make basic logic all inside Blender.

And that material editor, omnonmonmn, if you could make Materials inside Blender, hit “P” to start Unreal, and they’re there.

The longer you can stay inside Blender as an artists, the better.

Hahaha. I needed 20 minutes to do exactly that.

Isn’t this a Golden, super golden oppertunity to get Blender, super tightly integrated into Unreal Game Engine 4?

I mean on the level of, selecting “Unreal Engine 4” from the Render engine, maybe have a representation of their node logic inside Blender. So you could Model, Rig, Animate, and make basic logic all inside Blender.

And that material editor, omnonmonmn, if you could make Materials inside Blender, hit “P” to start Unreal, and they’re there.

The longer you can stay inside Blender as an artists, the better.

Exactly what I was thinking. However, I am expecting the Blender cavalry squad to enter any minute and say how Blender doesn’t need to be tailored towards this or that engine. It is a wonderful concept though.

So $20 one time fee is a way too much to pay for full source code with assets and docs and training material?

Obviously you don’t care to read about UE4… Tim Sweeney already said that UE4 is designed to be used for any game. UE4 comes with sample games and templates ranging from FPS to Flappy Bird clone to RTS.

And any game engine requires coding in C++, C# or C in order to add core functionality for unique features. Otherwise you can use either scripting or, like in UE4 engine, Blueprint - visual scripting system. There are game that have been made without touching code at all, using Kismet in UDK and now using Blueprint in UE4.

Well… I can say this for sure. First impressions of the editor feels like a big improvement over UE3, especially in the user friendliness department. Just started playing around with it, so I’ll see how it goes.


Gotta remember to click rather than right click. Also that right click opens useful context menus.

Well I read in another thread that you keep the engine if you cancel the subscription, you just don’t get updates, but that leads to another question on whether or not you can just pay the 20 whenever you need an update after many months have passed so you don’t go the whole sign up > cancel > sign up route.

But yes, 20 isn’t that much, but Crytek was doing it and they wouldn’t actually have to give the source code then (and limit the ‘try’ period to 30 days among other restrictions).

Tim Sweeney already said that UE4 is designed to be used for any game. UE4 comes with sample games and templates ranging from FPS to Flappy Bird clone to RTS.

Heh, so Unity is in big trouble then, heck in that case, the Unreal Engine 4 could become the new standard for game creation. A spoiler though, I don’t think I will be using it now with the number of unfinished BGE projects I have and the fact that so much of my time is absorbed by Cycles, but this does seem to be that ultimate engine that Unity could’ve been, but never got there.


EDIT: I noticed on the Unreal website that people who want a polished product should wait six more months as things are kind of rough around the edges right now and you would currently need a powerful GPU to take full advantage of it, so it seems like things are still early and the initial release is for those who want to be pioneers.

Given that the engine is open source(sort of), there is nothing preventing people for coding a importer for UE4 that directly imports from .blend files, and given the size of the blender community, someone will add that soon. For now, exporting FBX from blender mostly works.

I’ve seen so many people here say that but I just can’t see why. They have a free version and they just got a massive update in version 5 that rivals the features in Unreal and Cryengine. I really don’t know what people are panicking for?