Question. Why Unity and not Unreal Engine ?

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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NecroViolator
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2017 8:01 am

Question. Why Unity and not Unreal Engine ?

Post by NecroViolator »

Sorry for being a little daft about this subject but wanted to know why Unity and not Unreal engine ?
Couldnt find any question or answer to this or maybe I missed it somewhere .

Thanks.

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Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Question. Why Unity and not Unreal Engine ?

Post by Interkarma »

Hey NecroViolator, welcome to the forums. :)

There are several reasons:
  • I had a large C# Daggerfall toolset (DaggerfallConnect) written for my own 3D engine and Daggerfall tools in 2009 (Imaging 2 / Modelling). Because Unity uses Mono C#, it was trivial to drop this tool code directly into Unity.
  • When I started porting tool code in late 2014, Unity already had a huge install base (around 4 million at the time) and a great free version. Unreal added a free license in March 2015, a bit late to the party.
  • Community is a vital part of this project and Unity has a much larger developer base than Unreal. This means more people available as contributors.
  • Unity is more accessible to a wider range of developers of all skill levels. This means more potential for modders and contributors.
  • The way Unity builds scenes from batched objects is uncannily suitable for a Daggerfall remake. Daggerfall and Unity both organise scenes in a rather similar way.
  • Unity's support for fully procedural environments, procedural meshes, procedural sounds, etc. is absolutely top-notch. You might not be aware, but I'm converting asset data from Daggerfall's DOS binary files in real-time. Everything is streamed through one procedural scene. Unity is really amazing at this task.
To summarise - Unity is a powerful tool with million of users, a powerful free version, easy to use for developers of all skill levels, and fits the tool specification almost perfectly.

Unreal is absolutely an amazing engine as well. It just wasn't quite the right tool for the job, especially in 2014 when this all started ramping up.

I hope that answers your question. Please just let me know if you need anything more specific.

NecroViolator
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2017 8:01 am

Re: Question. Why Unity and not Unreal Engine ?

Post by NecroViolator »

Thank you so much for your awesome answer. Read alot about Unity vs Unreal and your answer was perfect. Thanks.
Was going to recreate a few old games in a newer Engine so wanted a little feedback, great answer.
Im working in the Serious Engine myself.

Love your work. God speed and love on your mission !.

CrazyCyrodilicCat
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:59 am

Re: Question. Why Unity and not Unreal Engine ?

Post by CrazyCyrodilicCat »

And how difficult is it to transfer the project from Unity to UE4?

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Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Question. Why Unity and not Unreal Engine ?

Post by Interkarma »

I'm not sure what value UE4 would add to be honest, and I'm not willing to speculate on the difficulty of something I've spent zero time thinking about. At the very least, you would need to rewrite everything as UE4 does not support C#.

Please don't necro years-old topics for the sole purpose of sidetracking them. I'll close this now, but you're welcome to restart your new topic in Community if you wish to discuss this idea with other forum members.

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