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[Mik2121]

Welcome to the Unreal Engine 4 Official Thread.

As with the old UDK thread, this is a place for all of us to gather and help each other.
If you are interested in making games or just playing around with the new engine, you're in the right place.

Please note that this thread is a work in progress. I will update it during the following days, but I just wanted to have something up for us to gather in one place.

// I will add a few showcase entries tomorrow. If you have suggestions, post them below! //

Unreal Engine 4 is here. Starting now developers everywhere can take advantage of the fully featured toolset, integrated systems and the full C++ source code.
You get everything so you can build anything.

You can download Unreal Engine 4 now by registering on their official website: https://www.unrealengine.com/register

The subscription plan is $19 per month, plus a 5% revenue. This is what you get:

// Unreal Engine 4 features and tools
// Full C++ source code access via GitHub
// Official documentation and tutorials
// Forums, AnswerHub and wiki access
// Ongoing, regular updates

*Note that you can subscribe once and download UE4, then cancel your subscription. You will be able to use the engine forever.
However if you do this, you won't be able to get new updates until you subscribe again.

// Windows 7 64-bit or Mac OS X 10.9.2 or later
// Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or faster
// NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or higher
// 8 GB RAM

// I will be adding links here tomorrow, sorry //

// Here I will be updating with each month's main updates and a link to the rest.//

 

[Mik2121]

I know the thread right now is very empty, but I will add images and stuff during the next few days. If you guys have suggestions for things to add, feel free!

I don't wanna have a very long first post though, as this will be mostly about talking with other users rather than having a lot of into on just one post.

 

[VisceralBowl]

Looks nice so far.
As someone who uses Cryengine and didn't like UDK, do you think that UE4 is different as far as workflow and usability goes (from UDK)?

 

[Stallion Free]

Nice nice, I think I'm gonna subscribe soon since 20$ a month is so damn cheap and hopefully that will light a fire under me again since I let me tutorial learning in UE3 stagnate.

 

[Xater]

So I heard UDK is now available for Mac which would make me want to fool around a bit with the level editor stuff, but it looks like there no longer is a free option?

 

[Uncle Rupee]

As a user of UE, doesn't the 5% royalty bug you? I mean, knowing that Cryengine and Unity don't have one? And that the subscription is twice the cost of Cryengine's?

 

[Mik2121]

Looks nice so far.
As someone who uses Cryengine and didn't like UDK, do you think that UE4 is different as far as workflow and usability goes (from UDK)?

Depends on what you didn't like about UDK, but the workflow is fairly similar I think. I'm an Environment Artist though, so the kind of stuff that I play around with will vary a lot from the kind of stuff that a programmer would use.

When it comes to programming I know it got better, but you will want a programmer's reply rather than mine

As a user of UE, doesn't the 5% royalty bug you? I mean, knowing that Cryengine and Unity don't have one? And that the subscription is twice the cost of Cryengine's?

I don't plan on selling any game for the foreseeable future. As I said above, I'm an artist so I'll use the engine just to showcase my content. For that, I won't need most of the smaller updates so I'll just cancel my subscription and only renew it every few months when something big art-related gets implemented and I want to use it.
One thing this engine has going for it though, is the amount of documentation (I know right now there's NONE on my OT, haha!). That's a biggie for a lot of developers so I can see many people sucking it up for the 5% royalties :/

 

[syko de4d]

Subbed to the thread

I am a dev Noob but you cant do wrong with just 20$, but i have no credit card so i hope paypal options comes soon. Just to create your own stuff and walk around in VR will worth the 20$ for me.

You buy the first month, get the whole engine, unsub and when you sub again in maybe 6-12months you get all the updates from the last 6-12months?

 

[Prophet Steve]

So I heard UDK is now available for Mac which would make me want to fool around a bit with the level editor stuff, but it looks like there no longer is a free option?

Unreal Engine 4 has no free option, but you could try it for one month and cancel afterwards, as you can keep the version but won't get updates.

As a user of UE, doesn't the 5% royalty bug you? I mean, knowing that Cryengine and Unity don't have one? And that the subscription is twice the cost of Cryengine's?

Well, Unity's free version has a lot less features and Unity has a lot of technical problems. The pro version is pretty expensive.

The price is so low compared to what it has been with big engines that I don't mind 20 per month. The royalty rate used to be 25%. If I work better with Unreal Engine, I don't mind the higher price. If I can work faster and better, I enjoy it more and might get the costs out of it anyway.

Subbed to the thread

I am a dev Noob but you cant do wrong with jst 20$, but i have no credit card so i hope paypal options comes soon. Just to create your own stuff and walk around in VR will worth the 20$ for me.

You buy the first month, get the whole engine, unsub and when you sub again in maybe 6-12months you get all the updates from the last 6-12months?

Probably so, I assume you get the latest updated version. There is not really a backlog of updates.

 

[Mik2121]

Subbed to the thread

I am a dev Noob but you cant do wrong with jst 20$, but i have no credit card so i hope paypal options comes soon. Just to create your own stuff and walk around in VR will worth the 20$ for me.

You buy the first month, get the whole engine, unsub and when you sub again in maybe 6-12months you get all the updates from the last 6-12months?

When you subscribe you get the latest build, which of course will include all the early updates. And yeah, I wanna get my hands on some VR so I can play around my own made environments.

 

[MJLord]

Our Uni just got an entire lab funded by Epic. It might be worth seeing if UE4 came with it, I'd love to check out some of that source code.

Just checked the price conversion. For £10 I'd be stupid not to pick this up really.

 

[Prophet Steve]

Looks nice so far.
As someone who uses Cryengine and didn't like UDK, do you think that UE4 is different as far as workflow and usability goes (from UDK)?

I don't have too much experience with UDK, but yes, it is entirely different. I'd say give it a try.

 

[Durante]

As a user of UE, doesn't the 5% royalty bug you? I mean, knowing that Cryengine and Unity don't have one? And that the subscription is twice the cost of Cryengine's?

What would absolutely bug me is working in a system I don't have full source access to. As far as I know I'd pay a lot more for everything else to get that than I do for UE.

 

[Xater]

Unreal Engine 4 has no free option, but you could try it for one month and cancel afterwards, as you can keep the version but won't get updates.

Hmm maybe I'll do that, but it looks like I should wait a while for that. Epic themselves say that it's not that stable yet.

 

[Mik2121]

I don't have too much experience with UDK, but yes, it is entirely different. I'd say give it a try.

What workflow are we talking about? On the bigger image, it's fairly similar. Specially the art side. Of course with all the PBR and everything, some things change, but overall...
For the programming stuff with all the blueprint system and all that, I can see it being quite different though.

 

[Man]

As a user of UE, doesn't the 5% royalty bug you? I mean, knowing that Cryengine and Unity don't have one? And that the subscription is twice the cost of Cryengine's?

The 5% is debatable but the open source code for all is a huge advantage.

 

[Prophet Steve]

What workflow are we talking about? On the bigger image, it's fairly similar. Specially the art side. Of course with all the PBR and everything, some things change, but overall...
For the programming stuff with all the blueprint system and all that, I can see it being quite different though.

Yeah, the art side of things is what I have the least experience with, so I don't know what the changes would be in that regard.

 

[Raide]

Anyone else toying with the idea od getting this for 1 month and then ending subscription till later on?

I like the changes and I am thinking about giving it a shot but it will be ages till I actually get anything. Need to find some likeminded people to team with.

 

[MJLord]

Anyone else toying with the idea od getting this for 1 month and then ending subscription till later on?

I like the changes and I am thinking about giving it a shot but it will be ages till I actually get anything. Need to find some likeminded people to team with.

Yeah completely. I'm looking for ideas for my dissertation and engine stuff is really interesting to me. Specifically the code architecture.

 

[Raide]

Yeah completely. I'm looking for ideas for my dissertation and engine stuff is really interesting to me. Specifically the code architecture.

Even for just messing around with and see how things go, $20 is pretty good. I guess if you make some good progress/or if a good update comes along, you can re-sub and get those updates?

I like the Blueprint stuff, so I wonder how far we can get without delving into C++ stuff.

I saw in a few videos about having 2D Blueprints etc. I wonder what other options they have for getting things done a bit quicker.

 

[Uncle Rupee]

I don't plan on selling any game for the foreseeable future. As I said above, I'm an artist so I'll use the engine just to showcase my content. For that, I won't need most of the smaller updates so I'll just cancel my subscription and only renew it every few months when something big art-related gets implemented and I want to use it.
One thing this engine has going for it though, is the amount of documentation (I know right now there's NONE on my OT, haha!). That's a biggie for a lot of developers so I can see many people sucking it up for the 5% royalties :/

What would absolutely bug me is working in a system I don't have full source access to. As far as I know I'd pay a lot more for everything else to get that than I do for UE.

That all makes sense

Well, Unity's free version has a lot less features and Unity has a lot of technical problems. The pro version is pretty expensive.

The price is so low compared to what it has been with big engines that I don't mind 20 per month. The royalty rate used to be 25%. If I work better with Unreal Engine, I don't mind the higher price. If I can work faster and better, I enjoy it more and might get the costs out of it anyway.

Yeah, Unity free kinda sucks with the way they divvy up the pro features but they sort of have to incentivize the paid version somehow. Like you say though, at least UE's royalty has come down significantly. They probably should have just eliminated it, though.

The 5% is debatable but the open source code for all is a huge advantage.

So do you think the new lighting system that Lionhead made will stay exclusive to UE?

 

[NumberThree]

Anyone else toying with the idea od getting this for 1 month and then ending subscription till later on?

I like the changes and I am thinking about giving it a shot but it will be ages till I actually get anything. Need to find some likeminded people to team with.

Yeah, I downloaded it yesterday and I'll probably check it out every now and then, not planning to keep the subscription active. I downloaded it more as a curiosity, I don't even plan to make anything. Maybe something small when I get the new OR devkit.

 

[Man]

So do you think the new lighting system that Lionhead made will stay exclusive to UE?

As far as I know it's more or less the same technique as used by CryEngine 3.

 

[Valkrai]

Now, I'm considering getting UE4 just to try out the new features and see what I can do with it. As someone who doesn't have much experience with UDK, is it much harder than UDK or will be similar to it?

 

[Prophet Steve]

Now, I'm considering getting UE4 just to try out the new features and see what I can do with it. As someone who doesn't have much experience with UDK, is it much harder than UDK or will be similar to it?

It is easier and similar.

 

[Valkrai]

It is easier and similar.

Ok thanks, getting it now.

 

[charsace]

As a user of UE, doesn't the 5% royalty bug you? I mean, knowing that Cryengine and Unity don't have one? And that the subscription is twice the cost of Cryengine's?

Don't like don't use it. Simple. And I'm saying this even though I won't be using UE4. They are providing people with a great tool and the 5% royalty fee is one of the conditions.

 

[belushy]

Great thread, subbed

 

[Tain]

Yup, subbed.

I grabbed this the day it was released and have had a lot of fun with it. The Blueprint stuff is such a huge improvement over Kismet, and the coding side seems notably easier to get into as well. The new UI is great, too. Very happy with it so far.

 

[Koralsky]

Nice, thanks. Will keep an eye to the thread.

 

[-COOLIO-]

niiice. let the age of indies continue!

 

[Neuromancer]

How's texture pop in going to be for U4 games?

 

[Ricky_R]

Should add a note saying: OP best viewed in default theme.

 

[-COOLIO-]

what's the ue4 asset store like? with an infinite budget, could I create a game without creating a single new asset on my own?

 

[Prophet Steve]

what's the ue4 asset store like? with an infinite budget, could I create a game without creating a single new asset on my own?

There are a few free projects on there from Epic that you can use for your own purposes, but no, not at all.

There is still a lot of upcoming content of them and it does has a marketplace, but users cannot yet upload stuff to there so there is probably still coming a lot of development on that part.

EDIT: Here, some screencaps of everything what you can find now:

EDIT 2: Whoops, email address still in there, wait a sec. Fixed.

 

[Ianan]

Just downloading it now! Been using UDK for about 4 years so I'm pretty excited with all the changes and to get my hands dirty with this!

 

[Legato.Reborn-]

Great thread, can't wait to see what people will show off in here.

 

[Baleoce]

Downloading it now. For anyone interested, the base install is around 7GB. Also, subbed to thread.

 

[Blizzard]

I subscribed as well. There is already some really cool stuff people are starting in the official forum's work-in-progress section.

I will probably get a month of UE4 soon, but considering I'm trying to spend most of my spare time working on a completely 2D game in a different engine, it is almost a bad idea since it would provide yet another distraction to play with. =P

 

[Rösti]

Quick question: Can you work with point clouds in Unreal Engine 4?

Doesn't have to be animated or anything, just wondering if it can be done without too much effort. Getting tired of working with polygons outside ray casting and ray tracing anyway.

 

[PlumCantaloupe]

Mac and Windows
I downloaded it immediately to try it and definitely it is very impressive on Windows (HP Z620 with a GTX 690). My 2010 MBP could run the demos, but at something like 2fps and a bunch of errors that removed some features.

Thoughts
As more of an amateur programmer/interactive artist I am really intetested in seeing the source. It is great inspiration just to see how they lay everything out. I must admit I am concerned by how this "race to the bottom" will affect competition like Unity though.

Conclusion
It is nice not having parts of it behind a paywall and that the SDK is in C++. I am looking forward to seeing that elemental demo when it is released

 

[maniac-kun]

Do i need a c++ ide to make a game with UE4? Or is this just for core engine stuff?

 

[EVIL]

Do i need a c++ ide to make a game with UE4? Or is this just for core engine stuff?

You can make a game using Blueprint, which is a pretty powerful visual scripting language developed for UE4.

here are some basic Blueprint tutorial video's to give you the basics but its allot more powerful then that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhWc2kAhqI&feature=share&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaG5BW72It4chjhypxIO9ZB

 

[Edwards_Omatic]

As soon as dynamic GI is implemented, she's mine. The current baked lighting workflow is too much of a pain to buy into.
Also subbed

 

[Raide]

I wonder how deep you can actually go without coding. The BP stuff looks really nice. Damn, sitting on the fence is hard!

 

[maniac-kun]

You can make a game using Blueprint, which is a pretty powerful visual scripting language developed for UE4.

here are some basic Blueprint tutorial video's to give you the basics but its allot more powerful then that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhWc2kAhqI&feature=share&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaG5BW72It4chjhypxIO9ZB

Thanks Need to watch some more of the UE4 videos before i buy a subscription. Iam still not sure if this isnt overkill for a 1 man indy title.

 

[Bollocks]

Do i need a c++ ide to make a game with UE4? Or is this just for core engine stuff?

Yes, you can't start the editor otherwise.
It works with VS 2013 Express so at least you don't have to spend money but yes IDE is mandatory as it creates and compiles the project for you.

 

[Soi-Fong]

Ooh this will be fun. Will definitely be subscribing.

Does UE4 already have integration with Oculus? Just asking since I preordered the DK2.

Told my friend about this and he's excited as hell since C++ is the main language he learned in college as a computer science major.

Can't wait till we start working on some stuff together!!

Also, I want to make sure, UE plays well with perforce correct?

 

[cbox]

You can make a game using Blueprint, which is a pretty powerful visual scripting language developed for UE4.

here are some basic Blueprint tutorial video's to give you the basics but its allot more powerful then that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhWc2kAhqI&feature=share&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaG5BW72It4chjhypxIO9ZB

Thanks for this, really looking into ue4 for our next game rather than unity.

 

[kinggroin]

Why don't people wrap some of those tech demos in am executable for us to look at m