Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Bester]

What is Codex's opinion of Unreal Engine 5?

Anybody here working with it?

I can only speak for myself but I am baffled why any solo dev would choose UE5.

Normally, for large companies, Blueprints exist for iteration and quickly testing some implementation. Then you put it into C++.
But as a solo dev, you just do it ALL on blueprints. And the speed of development on BPs is blazing fast.

A special word on animation. Unreal can do it all. Automatic animation retargeting. The animation blueprint is unparalleled in what it can do. And if you're interested in something like motion matching, UE has got you covered with paid (torrented) plugins.
And that's just one aspect of the high level functionality - animation. You have a sound designer on your team, Unreal has MetaSounds. You want networking - Unreal has unparalleled network system that you can work with in the editor - you select the number of clients and hit play: it launches a dedicated server and any number of client windows that immediately connect to the server... in EDITOR.

The only reason why not to use Unreal is if you want to do 2d. Otherwise, if you're not using Unreal, it's only out of ignorance.

So you are the "more is better" type. Look at all these fancy features, it makes UE5 x10 better. The gypsy wedding of engines.

Is your game just a renderer with an empty screen or do you have mechanics? Are your models animated? This means writing cpu/gpu animation in your engine. It takes years to write all of the foundation, or will rely on high level functionality the engine provides.
It's an entirely utilitarian approach, not emotional and not irrational. Your analogy doesn't fit. If the engine offers something you don't need, don't use it - it shouldn't bother you. You seem to imply that it should bother you, which is irrational.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

What is Codex's opinion of Unreal Engine 5?

Anybody here working with it?

I can only speak for myself but I am baffled why any solo dev would choose UE5.

Normally, for large companies, Blueprints exist for iteration and quickly testing some implementation. Then you put it into C++.
But as a solo dev, you just do it ALL on blueprints. And the speed of development on BPs is blazing fast.

A special word on animation. Unreal can do it all. Automatic animation retargeting. The animation blueprint is unparalleled in what it can do. And if you're interested in something like motion matching, UE has got you covered with paid (torrented) plugins.
And that's just one aspect of the high level functionality - animation. You have a sound designer on your team, Unreal has MetaSounds. You want networking - Unreal has unparalleled network system that you can work with in the editor - you select the number of clients and hit play: it launches a dedicated server and any number of client windows that immediately connect to the server... in EDITOR.

The only reason why not to use Unreal is if you want to do 2d. Otherwise, if you're not using Unreal, it's only out of ignorance.

So you are the "more is better" type. Look at all these fancy features, it makes UE5 x10 better. The gypsy wedding of engines.

Is your game just a renderer with an empty screen or do you have mechanics? Are your models animated? This means writing cpu/gpu animation in your engine. It takes years to write all of the foundation, or will rely on high level functionality the engine provides.
It's an entirely utilitarian approach, not emotional and not irrational. Your analogy doesn't fit. If the engine offers something you don't need, don't use it - it shouldn't bother you. You seem to imply that it should bother you, which is irrational.

UE5 offers me nothing I need, therefore I dont use it.

 

[Kev Inkline]

A plot twist: People have different needs.

 

[tritosine2k]

FWIW there are criminally underused blueprints, that'd perhaps even allow some half decent realtime rendered 3D. Also for UE4 stuff exists you won't use because it was developed for in-house customized UE4 renderers.
Customized UE5 is... IDK... I wouldn't even go anywhere near that I'll prefer to watch this stuff from a good distance.
Even unity will barely run without custom stuff...

 

[Tyranicon]

What is Codex's opinion of Unreal Engine 5?

Anybody here working with it?

I can only speak for myself but I am baffled why any solo dev would choose UE5.

Normally, for large companies, Blueprints exist for iteration and quickly testing some implementation. Then you put it into C++.
But as a solo dev, you just do it ALL on blueprints. And the speed of development on BPs is blazing fast.

A special word on animation. Unreal can do it all. Automatic animation retargeting. The animation blueprint is unparalleled in what it can do. And if you're interested in something like motion matching, UE has got you covered with paid (torrented) plugins.
And that's just one aspect of the high level functionality - animation. You have a sound designer on your team, Unreal has MetaSounds. You want networking - Unreal has unparalleled network system that you can work with in the editor - you select the number of clients and hit play: it launches a dedicated server and any number of client windows that immediately connect to the server... in EDITOR.

The only reason why not to use Unreal is if you want to do 2d. Otherwise, if you're not using Unreal, it's only out of ignorance.

This is what I mean.

I took a look at Unreal years ago and found it much too complex, and the common wisdom at the time was that "you need a large team and a 5 million dollar budget."

But now I look at it, and it's perfectly plausible for a solodev (and there have been a few high publicity "solo" projects recently to come out of this).

I don't know whether UE5 is much more accessible or simply that I just got better at dev'ing.

When your other main choices are Unity, Godot or some weird niche gamemaker software, it makes Unreal look attractive.

 

[Bester]

What is Codex's opinion of Unreal Engine 5?

Anybody here working with it?

I can only speak for myself but I am baffled why any solo dev would choose UE5.

Normally, for large companies, Blueprints exist for iteration and quickly testing some implementation. Then you put it into C++.
But as a solo dev, you just do it ALL on blueprints. And the speed of development on BPs is blazing fast.

A special word on animation. Unreal can do it all. Automatic animation retargeting. The animation blueprint is unparalleled in what it can do. And if you're interested in something like motion matching, UE has got you covered with paid (torrented) plugins.
And that's just one aspect of the high level functionality - animation. You have a sound designer on your team, Unreal has MetaSounds. You want networking - Unreal has unparalleled network system that you can work with in the editor - you select the number of clients and hit play: it launches a dedicated server and any number of client windows that immediately connect to the server... in EDITOR.

The only reason why not to use Unreal is if you want to do 2d. Otherwise, if you're not using Unreal, it's only out of ignorance.

So you are the "more is better" type. Look at all these fancy features, it makes UE5 x10 better. The gypsy wedding of engines.

Is your game just a renderer with an empty screen or do you have mechanics? Are your models animated? This means writing cpu/gpu animation in your engine. It takes years to write all of the foundation, or will rely on high level functionality the engine provides.
It's an entirely utilitarian approach, not emotional and not irrational. Your analogy doesn't fit. If the engine offers something you don't need, don't use it - it shouldn't bother you. You seem to imply that it should bother you, which is irrational.

UE5 offers me nothing I need, therefore I dont use it.

Your initial statement was you were baffled by anyone using UE5. I explained why people use it. The fact that you don't need it is a nonsequitur.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

What is Codex's opinion of Unreal Engine 5?

Anybody here working with it?

I can only speak for myself but I am baffled why any solo dev would choose UE5.

Normally, for large companies, Blueprints exist for iteration and quickly testing some implementation. Then you put it into C++.
But as a solo dev, you just do it ALL on blueprints. And the speed of development on BPs is blazing fast.

A special word on animation. Unreal can do it all. Automatic animation retargeting. The animation blueprint is unparalleled in what it can do. And if you're interested in something like motion matching, UE has got you covered with paid (torrented) plugins.
And that's just one aspect of the high level functionality - animation. You have a sound designer on your team, Unreal has MetaSounds. You want networking - Unreal has unparalleled network system that you can work with in the editor - you select the number of clients and hit play: it launches a dedicated server and any number of client windows that immediately connect to the server... in EDITOR.

The only reason why not to use Unreal is if you want to do 2d. Otherwise, if you're not using Unreal, it's only out of ignorance.

So you are the "more is better" type. Look at all these fancy features, it makes UE5 x10 better. The gypsy wedding of engines.

Is your game just a renderer with an empty screen or do you have mechanics? Are your models animated? This means writing cpu/gpu animation in your engine. It takes years to write all of the foundation, or will rely on high level functionality the engine provides.
It's an entirely utilitarian approach, not emotional and not irrational. Your analogy doesn't fit. If the engine offers something you don't need, don't use it - it shouldn't bother you. You seem to imply that it should bother you, which is irrational.

UE5 offers me nothing I need, therefore I dont use it.

Your initial statement was you were baffled by anyone using UE5. I explained why people use it. The fact that you don't need it is a nonsequitur.

No, I said I am baffled why any solo dev would choose UE5.

 

[Zeusington]

To talk about UE, I have to talk about Unity first. Unity had way, *way* more tutorials from the community. It was simply easier to get your feet wet with Unity for awhile. I'll admit it was fun to prototype stuff in Unity, but scaling up in it was nightmarish. Once a certain percentage of your project relied on Unity's editor, you were screwed.

UE4 is pretty much the opposite; Very few tutorials from the community OR Epic themselves in comparison, but if you could make any meaningful progress in UE4 you were cookin'. Blueprints were *almost* foolproof unless your spaghetti just got too cross. Project Wingman was all blueprints, for example.

UE5 is just UE4 with some changes and much better graphical potential / scalability. For people looking to jump right into 3D, I'll mention Godot for fuckin' around, then demand they learn to make some tools with C++, then move on to UE.

I'm a 2D plebeian using Game Maker Studio 2.3 of all things (good scripting language, and goddamn I just want to draw the sprite without any bullshit) but even if it did 3D I'd probably still use UE unless the game was insignificantly tiny or a literal proof of concept.

 

[tritosine2k]

much better graphical potential / scalability.

in my book that sounds rather like this:

O3DE is a tile-based forward renderer. This comes with several benefits over deferred rendering, like being able to use MSAA or to have different lighting models coexist. It also means that the engine natively handles multiple lights for transparent objects.

UE5 relies on background acceleration structures for "potential".
Not sure you'll like the cost.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

UE5 is a bloated engine, that takes 100s of GB. Even the demos would not run well on high end machines. Its an engine you don't own.

When theres loads of other free engines available I really struggle to understand why solo devs go for UE5. Its an engine headed the way of Unity, and is losing relevance by the week.

I suspect its usually chosen because its a case of "I need x and y features for my ultra realistic graphics" types.

 

[Zeusington]

much better graphical potential / scalability.

in my book that sounds rather like this:

O3DE is a tile-based forward renderer. This comes with several benefits over deferred rendering, like being able to use MSAA or to have different lighting models coexist. It also means that the engine natively handles multiple lights for transparent objects.

UE5 relies on background acceleration structures for "potential".
Not sure you'll like the cost.

Sure, but pushing the raw number of draws that UE5 can would necessitate increasing the minimum computational resources needed either way. To get the same effect in O3DE would require a commitment to writing your own acceleration structures similarly. If you're *that* good at graphics programming then awesome! I wouldn't really *start* there though.

The original question was just what we think of UE5, and without narrowing down the use-case I think UE5 has simply done what all these commercial engines do: Add stuff you *might* need at risk of bloat. I don't think that makes it a worse engine for what it's trying to do, and it doesn't change my general opinion:

For people looking to jump right into 3D, I'll mention Godot for fuckin' around, then demand they learn to make some tools with C++, then move on to UE

I guess a better way to contextualize my opinion would be from the standpoint of "Which workflow should I learn if I want to set good, industry-standard habits?" Godot is fine as it's not so far removed from other engines in terms of interface and workflow that you couldn't pivot unless you're severely autistic, hence my first suggestion as most people start small and it's perfect for small. Unity is used in amateur and professional settings, but it encourages a trash workflow despite being capable if you use it in a way that the official documentation and the gorillion youtube tutorials DON'T tell you, so if you're looking to build a skill set then I wouldn't recommend it. UE's workflow is the closest to what competent bigbois will use even when they roll their own framework, so once you've grow I say learn it even if you don't stick with it.

tl:dr just use Monogame and FUCK everybody

 

[tritosine2k]

O3DE is cryengine fork.

If it can do this, this and WITH MSAA you'll be hard pressed to sell me "better" RPG enviro tech (that's supposedly better because you "dial" time of day and it just works.)
I even find the notion absurd you can just "dial" time of day/weather without excess preparation ( that would be wholly CUSTOM STUFF in UE5 because it's geared towards real-time, in practice that means the VSM "solution" caches ITSELF without supervision ).

 

[Habichtswalder]

tl:dr just use Monogame and FUCK everybody

There is also a Monogame fork called RPG Architect that is basically a more advanced RPG Maker with far-better performance and possibilities for customization. Could be suited for many codexers desires.

 

[tritosine2k]

I made some experiments a while back narrowing perspective in certain cryengine game in effect it results in pseudo isometric like D2:R. It went down to 10fov without issue and surpassed my expectations. If you keep doing that you'll arrive at proper 2.5D with many-many layers (even generated at wish) and it'll run on phones. This is the real deal as far I'm concerned.

 

[GoblinGrotto]

tl:dr just use Monogame and FUCK everybody

Monogame is life


Added walls. They are kind of hacked in and breaks the tiling. But it was impossible getting them to look good and follow the direction of the hexes.

Here's the failed attempt to make more hex-true walls

Other than that, made some updates to the level editor and the texture atlas editor. They can now compile their changes directly to the current build so I don't have to recompile the game every time I want to test things. Which is so nice, no clue why I didn't add it earlier.

Edit:
Oh don't think I posted this here. You can move around with the character as well and got palette swap support in. So next step is turn based and controlling a squad

 

[CryptRat]

I think the horizontal and vertical walls are perfectly fine (but maybe when playing I'd realise they're not) but judging by a Fallout screenshot you have not chosen the same second line they did which might be or not be why it feels wrong :

The game still looks amazing by the way.

 

[GoblinGrotto]

I think the horizontal and vertical walls are perfectly fine (but maybe when playing I'd realise they're not) but judging by a Fallout screenshot you have not chosen the same second line they did which might be or not be why it feels wrong :

Yeah, I think it would be possible to fix. Just not sure I can do it. I'm really no artist and perspective and large objects are my biggest weakness.

The game still looks amazing by the way.

Thanks!

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I've gotten some serious work in on a "your choices matter" RPG I've been working on, and I have to say, I'm surprised at how easy the whole thing is turning out to be. I was expecting it to be harder, since people don't really make that many on an indie level, and frankly it just hasn't been that difficult to put in. For big things, you keep track of what happens at the time and when it's expected to return later, write it in accordingly, and for small things, just check back periodically to see if something is related later. Of the things I've had to do for a game over the years, it's oddly one of the easiest.

 

[NotSweeper]

GoblinGrotto Hello /vrpg/ fren.
Don't post there again, it lowers your RPG cred.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

tl:dr just use Monogame and FUCK everybody

There is also a Monogame fork called RPG Architect that is basically a more advanced RPG Maker with far-better performance and possibilities for customization. Could be suited for many codexers desires.

Got a link?

 

[Habichtswalder]

tl:dr just use Monogame and FUCK everybody

There is also a Monogame fork called RPG Architect that is basically a more advanced RPG Maker with far-better performance and possibilities for customization. Could be suited for many codexers desires.

Got a link?

It's available on Steam. They also have a Discord that is pretty helpful.

 

[hacknhack]

Got a link?

Looks like @Habichtswalder made a mistake on the link, so....



https://rpg-architect.com/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2158670/RPG_Architect/

Unfortunately tactical style battles are apparently only coming in a post release update. Still interesting, though.

 

[Habichtswalder]

Got a link?

Looks like @Habichtswalder made a mistake on the link, so....

https://rpg-architect.com/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2158670/RPG_Architect/

Unfortunately tactical style battles are apparently only coming in a post release update. Still interesting, though.

Yeah, thanks for posting the accurate link.

It's a shame that the tactical battles are not included yet. That would be something that really differentiates the product from RPG Maker. I don't know if it's already possible to build your own tactical Battle System in architect. Maybe it is.

But I like that you don't need plugins for stuff like mapping without tilesets, diagonal movement, (basic) 3D and custom UI. The developer also seems pretty cool and open for ideas. I once suggested an idea for the dialogue system to make it more CRPG-like and he immediately put it on the roadmap.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

It does not seem fully developed nor isometric friendly. But an alternative to RPG maker at some point in the future.

 

[Habichtswalder]

It does not seem fully developed nor isometric friendly. But an alternative to RPG maker at some point in the future.

Isometric is already definitely easier in comparison to RPG Maker because of diagonal movement and grid-free placement of your assets.