Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

By DrunknMunky
in Gamers' Hangout

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

DrunknMunky Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

Tim Sweeney on Mar 19, 2014

 

Unreal Engine 4 launches today. What we?re releasing is both simple and radical: everything.

 

Epic?s goal is to put the engine within reach of everyone interested in building games and 3D content, from indies to large triple-A development teams, and Minecraft creators as well. For $19/month you can have access to everything, including the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine?s complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development.

 

This is the complete technology we at Epic use when building our own games, forged by years of experience shipping games like Gears of War for Xbox and Infinity Blade for iOS, and now reinvented for a new generation. Having the full C++ source provides the ultimate flexibility and puts developers in control of their schedules and destinies: Whatever you require to build and ship your game, you can find it in UE4, source it in the GitHub community, or build it yourself ? and then share it with others.

 

Develop in the Unreal Ecosystem

 

Beyond the tools and source, Unreal Engine 4 provides an entire ecosystem. Chat in the forums, add to the wiki, participate in the AnswerHub Q&A, and join collaborative development projects via GitHub.

 

To help you get started, we?re shipping lots of ready-made content, samples, and game templates.  You?ll find it in the Marketplace in the Unreal Editor. Right now, it simply hosts free stuff from Epic, but its resemblance to the App Store is no coincidence: It will grow into a complete ecosystem for sharing community-created content, paid and free, and open for everyone?s participation!

 

Ship Games with Unreal

 

We?re working to build a company that succeeds when UE4 developers succeed. Anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users. If your game makes $1,000,000, then we make $50,000. We realize that?s a lot to ask, and that it would be a crazy proposition unless UE4 enables you to build way better games way more productively than otherwise!

 

So, will this effort succeed? That?s up to you and your judgment of the engine?s value. Unreal Engine 4 has been built by a team of over 100 engineers, artists and designers around the world, and this launch represents all of our hopes and dreams of how major software can be developed and distributed in the future.

 

We find this future very exciting. It?s no longer dominated by giant publishers and marketing campaigns, but by a simple and honest proposition: Gamers pay for great games, and anybody who can valuably contribute to building those games can succeed, from indie developers, to large triple-A teams, and to individual programmers and content creators, too.

 

A New Beginning

 

This first release of Unreal Engine 4 is just the beginning. In the C++ code, you can see many new initiatives underway, for example to support Oculus VR, Linux, Valve?s Steamworks and Steam Box efforts, and deployment of games to web browsers via HTML5.  It?s all right there, in plain view, on day one of many years of exciting and open development ahead!

 

We have enjoyed building Unreal Engine 4 so far and hope you will join us on this journey as a contributor to the future of Unreal!

 

Tim Sweeney

Founder, Epic Games

 

https://unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

Brendeth

Posted
Posted

Subscription based payments are really taking off, this will hopefully be a viable payment method for any small studios or even students to get their hands on a solid engine. I wonder if this will be just the push that makes Unreal the status quo for this gen as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

UE4 seems impressive. I'm beginning to like it more than CryEngine now. $19 per month is pocket change, even for a small indie developer. I can't wait to see what they come up with in the next 2 years.

 

Subscription based payments are really taking off, this will hopefully be a viable payment method for any small studios or even students to get their hands on a solid engine. I wonder if this will be just the push that makes Unreal the status quo for this gen as well.

It seems like it. There's a large community behind UE4 and a heck of a lot of documentation for people that have no experience with an engine SDK.

 

I hope they release a free version for personal use. I'd love to play around with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...
Grand Master

DrunknMunky Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted

With the release of Unreal Engine version 4.1, we've updated the EULA to accommodate this low-revenue situation:

Now, the first $3000 of gross revenue per product per quarter is exempt from royalties. And, if gross revenue is less than $3000 in a given quarter, then you don't need to file a royalty report.

So, for example, if your game makes $2500 in a quarter, then you don't have to pay anything or file a report. If your game makes $4000, then the royalty due is $50, which is 5% of ($4000 minus $3000).

 

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/31562/is-royalties-starts-from-first-few-s-earned.html#answer-34244

 

-----

 

Bioshock 1 running on UE4

 

  • Aergan and trooper11
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Ironman273

Posted
Posted

Dammit!  I thought it was actually the whole Bioshock 1 game that they could just port over to UE4 and it would look that good.  I wonder how much work that would take?

  • Draconian Guppy
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

astropheed Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

If you stop paying the subscription do the tools stop working?

 

If not, this just looks like a $19 tool-set. Then pay $19 whenever a major update happens. Finally pay $19 when it's time to release. Or am I missing something? I really don't have time to research it right now, but I am interested.

 

I'd gladly throw down 20 bucks for this and then not pay anymore until something comes of my initial investment. If I actually make anything with it then I can justify paying more. The problem with these tools are the cost of entry are just too damn high. I own Unity 3 Pro with all the exporters and I've never done anything with it, thankfully that was given to me so no loss.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted
  • Do I have to worry about a billing contract or penalties for cancelling my subscription?

    Your subscription payment automatically recurs, but you?re free to cancel at any time. There?s no penalty for cancellation.

    When you cancel your subscription, you won?t receive access to future releases of Unreal Engine 4, however your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.

 

Source

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

Juguard

Posted
Posted

I love the Unreal series, and always wanted the Unreal Engine to do well, and it has with many games released over the years developed with the Unreal Engine.  But I'm no dev, so do not know what Engine developers like working with, but it seems Unreal, because of so many games released using it.  I like the Crysis series, but do not see or at least not aware of any games that are released, that use the CryEngine for a AAA game from a third party.  Someone help me.  Homefront 2, Rise of Rome?  Those are Crytek games.

 

Any neowin members that mod, develop,  tell us what they like?  Unreal vs Crytek, or another?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

ACTIONpack

Posted
Posted

Still see the ut4 engine still have water issues. :-\

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

Brendeth

Posted
Posted

If you stop paying the subscription do the tools stop working?

 

If not, this just looks like a $19 tool-set. Then pay $19 whenever a major update happens. Finally pay $19 when it's time to release. Or am I missing something? I really don't have time to research it right now, but I am interested.

 

I'd gladly throw down 20 bucks for this and then not pay anymore until something comes of my initial investment. If I actually make anything with it then I can justify paying more. The problem with these tools are the cost of entry are just too damn high. I own Unity 3 Pro with all the exporters and I've never done anything with it, thankfully that was given to me so no loss.

I imagine that this will be a recurring subscription and will feature an "ET Phone Home" method of authentication.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted

Still see the ut4 engine still have water issues. :-\

 

Bare in mind that video was made using the original assets from Bioshock, and the water effects in Bioshock weren't that great to begin with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Experienced

ensiform

Posted
Posted

please someone just port Unreal Tornament 99 into UE4, since no one on Epic can do that...

Eh 2004, or 3 but with the missing 2004 features.

 

3's biggest problem was that it had bad interface or support for running local servers ie on a lan.  Or customizing the servers (better) like UT2004 allowed.  You can't even pick a map to start on in a rotation and continue the rotation there etc.  Also the steam connect error on the steam version basically killed it too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Praetor

Posted
Posted

Eh 2004, or 3 but with the missing 2004 features.

 

3's biggest problem was that it had bad interface or support for running local servers ie on a lan.  Or customizing the servers (better) like UT2004 allowed.  You can't even pick a map to start on in a rotation and continue the rotation there etc.  Also the steam connect error on the steam version basically killed it too.

 

Well 2004 and 3 were OK, while 2003 was bad. But none of them has the same fast paced and feel that UT99 has.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

Brendeth

Posted
Posted

Gears of War 4 confirmed

I actually wonder if they'll use Unreal for the next GoW. The only reason it was on Unreal was because of Epic, since it's wholly MS' property now they might opt for another engine entirely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

neoadorable

Posted
Posted

I actually wonder if they'll use Unreal for the next GoW. The only reason it was on Unreal was because of Epic, since it's wholly MS' property now they might opt for another engine entirely.

 

Good point that i totally forgot. It won't even be Epic, and MS will try to distance themselves from the previous era, especially since Epic is now Tencent basically (i suspect that's the real reason Cliff left when he did).

 

Wonder who'll be doing Gears 4 then? Maybe Raven will finally go back to making action games rather than just sports titles and family-focused releases.

 

EDIT: quick search shows that Black Tusk have already been announced as the next Gears developers, not Raven hahahaha

Link to comment
Share on other sites
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing