If you are thinking about developing your first game, it is important to choose the right engine that will be able to cover all your needs and desires in the game creation process. Nowadays, there are so many game development engines and many beginners can easily get confused. Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, Game Maker Studio, Source, RPG Maker, CryEngine, and dozens of other popular platforms are ready to help you in the development of your game.
In today’s article, we will introduce you to all the advantages and disadvantages of Unity and Unreal Engine and help you to make the right decision.
Advantages of Unity
It is Easy-to-Use
Unity is considered the most popular engine for creating games. This spawns hundreds of videos and tutorials on Unity game development. You can find any information you are interested in on YouTube or in Google. Moreover, the Unity platform provides an opportunity to follow their courses to learn more about the capabilities and technologies of the game engine. There are online tutorials for basic and advanced use of Unity. Thus, you can learn how to make real games right from the comfort of your home.
Unity uses C#, which is considered easy, has a very intuitive interface, and the architecture is straightforward. Many game developers consider Unity the best choice for beginners because of its simplicity. Of course, newbies will need time to understand the functionality of the engine and watch lots of tutorials. EJAW has been using Unity for game development for over 10 years now and boasts the ability to provide quality outsourcing services for creating absorbing games.
Cross-Platform Game Development
If you want to make a profit and increase your income, as well as make your game more popular all around the world, you should allow people to download it from different platforms. Developing a game for just one game platform is not a bad idea, but it will be much better to expand your target audience.
Porting a game to another platform that uses a different set of technologies is a huge effort and will often be outsourced to another company, which would take months of development. Porting to a new platform is much easier with Unity, you might want to take into account the unique features of each platform, but Unity makes porting much easier. Let your players enjoy your game from such game platforms as iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, PlayStation, Steam, and others.
Wide and Friendly Community
One of the biggest benefits of developing games with Unity is its large community. This point is very similar to the first one, in which we talked about hundreds of tutorials and courses on developing a project on Unity. On this platform, you can find like-minded people, get them interested in working together, ask for advice from more experienced developers, or share your skills and impressions of Unity.
With more than 2 million members in the Unity community, you can easily chat with someone and get interesting ideas from others. You can communicate directly with renowned and experienced Unity developers right on the forum, read useful materials and learn more about the capabilities of this engine. What’s more, Unity offers a built-in voting system to more efficiently answer popular questions.
It Is Free to Start With Unity
Unity provides a lot of opportunities for the free development of the project you need. A bunch of useful features, tutorials, and tools in Unity3D are completely free. Of course, you have the opportunity to use the Pro version on the platform and get audio filters, video playback, 3D texture support, streaming, custom splash screen, and other useful functions.
This is a great advantage for game development beginners, because they have no experience and they don’t even know whether they want to be developers. Unity gives newbies a great opportunity to try and experiment, as well as make it able for experienced developers to create unimaginable worlds. Unity 3D provides people with all important instruments to create full-fledged full version games. Unreal Engine also provides its services for free, but the Unreal Engine license agreement states that until your game brings more than $ 1,000,000, you will have to pay 5% of the income.
Unity Asset Store
Unity strives to make game development easier for everyone. The Asset Store helps you avoid getting stuck in the game development process. In this place, you can find models of textures, characters, and many other useful things. You can also hire experienced professionals such as artists to improve your project. Conveniently, everything you need is collected in one place.
All these details are published by experienced developers and community members. Moreover, you can not only use these materials, but also sell your own assets. All assets are tested, compiled on all platforms, and have a working demo scene with a demonstration of all features, as well as documentation. The Unity Asset Store is a collection of interesting ideas.
Easy Programming Language
As we said above, working with Unity is very simple, easy, and enjoyable. And all because this engine uses one of the easiest and most accessible programming languages - C#. This is the main reason why Unity is easy for experienced developers to use and for beginners to understand. Also, you can choose JavaScript (UnityScript) for game development. It is really time-consuming to create unimaginable environments with Unity.
High-Quality Graphics
Unity provides the ability to create next-generation graphics and is as powerful as the Unreal Engine. The visuals look expensive, games can be streamed across devices without losing quality, and the high-quality audio and visual effects are supported by Unity. This engine is suitable for creating not only casual mobile games, but also high-quality AAA games, as we said above.
It Is Flexible
This engine provides us with Unity2D and Unity3D. The one advantage is that this engine adjusts to your desires and allows you to create anything in a shorter time frame, so it can be called flexible. Moreover, Unity provides a large set of features and tools that allow you to create stunning graphics and is suitable for making even AAA games. Hearthstone, Firewatch, Ori and the Blind Forest, Inside, Pokemon Go are examples of games developed on Unity. Pokemon Go has been installed by over 100 million people, and the famous Subway Surfers, made on Unity3D, have allowed 2.5 billion people to enjoy the gameplay.
Unity Conference
The purpose of the conference is to unite all like-minded game developers, concept artists, and other specialists who help create projects. You can find the best specialists to develop your first game, learn more about your occupation, gain useful knowledge, and learn about the new opportunities that Unity provides. In this way, you can learn about new technologies to improve your project. In this way, you can learn about new technologies to improve your project. Unite was created to develop an even better community that can help each other.
Disadvantages of Unity
Slowness
Creating large-scale, complex scenes with many components can negatively affect the performance of the game, as a result of which developers have to spend additional time and resources optimizing, and possibly removing some elements from the project.
Big Weight Games
In addition, games built in Unity are quite heavyweight: even the simplest pixel game can take up several hundred megabytes on a PC. Yes, for a hard disk of computers this is a small size, but if the project is being developed for mobile platforms, you should think about optimizing its size. If we are talking about a mobile application, then this can take up a lot of memory on the phone. Even if you include a minimum in a simple mobile game – sound, graphics, the installation file will weigh about 20 MB.
Unity3D Watermark
When using Unity 3D, the logo appears automatically. Of course, it may be irritating. Therefore, you can get rid of it by paying for the PRO version.
Advantages of Unreal Engine
Blueprint
Unity provides a visual scripting service with little effort and the system is called Bolt. The Unreal Engine has a similar utility called Blueprint. The main advantage of this technology is that programmers gain the ability to think wider. In addition, advanced visualization using the engine significantly speeds up the work of the team, since you can present your idea in advance and make the necessary adjustments to it. By the way, the famous Fortnite game was made based on Blueprints. This is a clear example of the successful application of utility to life.
Post-processing and Particle System
Unreal Engine allows prototyping. You can convey the atmosphere of the game, create such small particles as snow, rain, and so on. For this purpose, UE offers a variety of tools, from simulating natural phenomena through a particle system to post-processing.
In order to add snow, you need to use the Particle System. You just need to create an emitter (a component of the system that generates particles) and adjust it to your wishes. This is necessary in order to make the gameplay more interesting and realistic. You just need to adjust the values of the next parameters: contrast, hue, or aberration. All functions are easy-to-use and you will not need to search for hundreds of video tutorials or read the forum.
Easy to Create Multiplayer Games
Another advantage of Unreal Engine is the multiplayer game out of the box. In fact, after starting the editor in a few clicks, you can create a project that already has a network game. With the rise of multiplayer games and the bets of big companies on online multiplayer modes, this is a significant advantage that, for example, Unity does not have.
Easy-to-Understand
The engine is written in C++, so users familiar with this programming language will master it faster. However, even without knowledge of C++, it will not be difficult to develop games on Unreal Engine. The programming language is no more difficult than Unity, much less with Blueprint.
Newbies rarely look towards the Unreal Engine. This is because at first glance the interface seems too complicated. However, if you devote a little more time to studying it, you will get a great tool for any creative task.
Large collection of assets
The Unreal Engine has all the tools that designers, programmers, and artists need. Many of them make the work of specialists easier. For example, they support various texture formats, incredibly fully recreate the physical properties of materials, make it possible to change objects in real-time, allow you to select light sources, add effects, etc. A rich collection of assets can later be used to develop other projects, and open source allows you to make the necessary changes to the engine. It can be easily ported to any platform, adapting games for PCs, consoles, and mobile devices.
Nanite and Lumen
In 2021, Unreal Engine released the 5th part of their engine. According to Epic Games, it took the software to a new level of photorealism and this was the main goal of the update. Besides, there are some other important innovations. Nanite is virtualized geometry with micro-polygons, eliminating the annoying “polygon budget”. This geometry allows you to display cinematic-quality geometry that has millions and billions of polygons.
Lumen is another feature for the detailed image, which is completely dynamic global illumination. With the help of the Lumen system, the picture reacts to changes in the scene and lighting conditions, so the incidence of light rays in the game will change in real-time. The algorithm can calculate the intensity, the angle of illumination, and the artist will only have to correct the nuances.
Disadvantages of Unreal Engine
High Requirements
When writing code, it is difficult to notice the gluttony of the engine, but processing unoptimized graphics will require serious power. Moreover, the software weighs over 20 GB. This is why most people think that Unreal Engine is not suitable for beginner game development.
High Prices for Content
The main disadvantage is the overpriced content in the store. Very often, the price for the right things turns out to be in the region of $100. Moreover, there are compatibility issues. Also, there is very little content compared to Unity.
License and Taxes
In order to work on the Unreal Engine, you will need a licensed copy and even have to pay a 5% tax after your game becomes profitable.
Summary
Many novice developers with no experience of working on these platforms often say that Unity is only suitable for mobile games, and Unreal Engine is for creating serious AAA projects. It is not true. Both engines can be used for any purpose, they are similar in performance, and allow you to enjoy many useful features. Moreover, if you have worked with Unity, then the transition to UE will not be difficult. For designers and artists, it will be enough for a few days just to learn the basics of the engine, many concepts are similar.
In this article, we have collected the most relevant advantages and weaknesses of Unity and Unreal Engine. You just have to choose which engine is more suitable for your convenience. In our case, EJAW always chooses Unity for its gaming solutions.
