Atavism for Unreal Engine

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

We would like to hear from you about Atavism for Unreal Engine. We are considering creating a dedicated team which would be responsible for this task.

[cwgstudios]

We switched to Unreal due to the instability of Unity - It would be fantastic to use Atavism on the Unreal platform.

[Aizen]

Unreal dont got that many assets and i wold say no coos i dont wanna se team get split and then takes longer  to get updates + i dont wanna pay 5% to Unreal

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Aizen

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

23 minutes ago, Aizen said:

Unreal dont got that many assets and i wold say no coos i dont wanna se team get split and we get updates even longer + i dont wanna pay 5% to Unreal

Yes, these are solid arguments Aizen, but Unreal Marketplace has right now over 8k packages compared to 50k on the Unity Asset Store, and if you will consider it that some of the Unity packages are already included in the Unreal like streaming, proper foliate handling, etc. then this doesn't look that bad.

As for the team split, it won't gonna happened, as we stated it will be a dedicated team for that project (if we will decide to make it).

5% is not so much, depending on your title, team, and progress, you should keep in mind, that bigger income will cause you to jump into the higher Unity license, as you won't be able to use Unity free, which will also cost you $35 for the cheapest license, and $125 per month for a higher one, which will let you generate more income as the cheapest license is limited to $200k annual revenue or funds raised. So, in situation when you will generate revenue like 250k annually, and you will have let's say 20 team members working on your game, you will have to have 10 x $125 per month which is $1250 monthly, and $15k yearly, while in the same situation in Unreal you will have to pay 5%, which is $12,5k, so in this case unreal is cheaper with the royalty. The benefit would be if you would work with a smaller team and generate more income.

To resume, there are always pros and cons, so it's not so easy to decide that this or that will be cheaper or better, it's more than that, and it depends on the individual use case.

[kobaltic]

I think you should post on the Unreal engine forums to see if people want it. It is two different markets and you are asking your current Unity market if they want an Unreal version. Try to get information from an untapped Unreal market. I love Unity but it sucks for large scale games with out adding in a ton of modification.

[MHdev E.]

Unreal is much better, it supports all platforms and its optimized by default, you can create large worlds without the need of any plugins, LOD and textures are handled internally in Unreal, when it comes to visuals and optimization i think Unreal is the winner here, Unity's HDRP is still in preview and unstable as fuck. Unreal has a decent learning curve but once you guys get comfortable with Unreal's Blueprints you will like it. Their Linux editor runs stable too on Vulkan right now. I can definitely recomment Unreal.

[MHdev E.]

1 hour ago, Aizen said:

Unreal dont got that many assets and i wold say no coos i dont wanna se team get split and then takes longer  to get updates + i dont wanna pay 5% to Unreal

Yeah but most of them are garbage on the Asset Store, on Unreal Side almost all of them are modular and when it comes to quality its always AAA.

Unreal supports FBX import too, if a release will happen for Unreal, a conversation shouldn't be that hard. 

textures (.PNG, .JPEG), objects (.FBX, OBJ) and for your terrain you can easily create a b/w heightmap from it and extract your current splatmap from it and assign it in Unreal.

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by MHdev E.

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

37 minutes ago, kobaltic said:

I think you should post on the Unreal engine forums to see if people want it. It is two different markets and you are asking your current Unity market if they want an Unreal version. Try to get information from an untapped Unreal market. I love Unity but it sucks for large scale games with out adding in a ton of modification.

We are asking here, because some developer are with Unity because Atavism is only for Unity, so basically we would like to know your opinion. We love Unity too, and as you said, it sucks in large scale without modifications, even the simplest elements are not working correctly like character controller, streaming objects (no streaming at all), handling big number of objects requires additional packages, etc. etc.

9 minutes ago, MHdev E. said:

Unreal is much better, it supports all platforms and its optimized by default, you can create large worlds without the need of any plugins, LOD and textures are handled internally in Unreal, when it comes to visuals and optimization i think Unreal is the winner here, Unity's HDRP is still in preview and unstable as fuck. Unreal has a decent learning curve but once you guys get comfortable with Unreal's Blueprints you will like it. Their Linux editor runs stable too on Vulkan right now. I can definitely recomment Unreal.

Unity within 2-3 years will catch most of these missing elements probbaly.

[LucianBlack]

Would absolutely love this. I know that Unreal requires more raw power but atavism would look gorgeous in Unreal. I would absolutely love to work on it in that engine. 

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

Keep in mind that it's in addition, it's not like from now on Atavism will be only on Unreal. We are trying to get your feedback, and your opinion. Team which is working on Atavism for Unity will remain within that project, updates won't change, so this is not like "no, because quality of service will drop", but it will be a totally separate team which would work on this project, separate support, etc. as it would be partially a separate project, so why not have an option to make another game on Unreal?

[probluebox123]

Oh I really hop this happens because unity3d I know little about it just the basics but unreal engine I know a lot of. So I really hop this happens

[Mr.Merritt]

how will switching over work?

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

9 hours ago, Mr.Merritt said:

how will switching over work?

It's too early to decide about that, right now we want to get feedback from you about this project.

[SecretAnorak]

Atavism for both platforms would be wonderful. Having seen the potential of Atavism from it's initial release, watch it stall with the previous developers, then see its resurrection at your hands, I'd love to see you guys go from strength to strength. My only concern is that you don't spread yourselves too thinly. After such amazing progress, I'd hate to see things stall again.

Edited June 20, 2019 by SecretAnorak

[Spektrum]

If we was able to buy an Atavism for Unreal before, our decision back in the days will be Atavism on Unreal, thats for sure.

[Kokonut]

My answer won't carry much weight on either side as I'm absolutely new to game programming, and I'm plodding along the tutorials in Unity3 comfortably. I suspect, another 3 months on these tutorials and I'll be 1% there to make an informed decision. At the point where I'm at, I just want to use an engine that can incorporate things like what Atavism offers, but with a whole bunch of 'plug and play' options.

For example, go to the Assets Store, pick out 6 characters and add them in (with no further coding), etc, etc, etc ... for all I know, perhaps it does this now? I don't know if this exists, but is there a service offered by Atavism that would allow someone like me to select assets, and for Atavism to incorporate it into the game. I mean, I really appreciate the tremendous help and support by staff and non-staff members, but what gets my willy wet, is playing and controlling the game settings with no desire to be a C+ programmer. This probably stems from my years of running a 'Rust' server.

Mostly what I want to customise in Atavism, is adding my choice of characters, enemies, buildings and landscape. The game engine itself is superb as it covers a great deal of options in one package. So, if it was a choice between Unity and Unreal, I don't have a clue.

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

10 hours ago, SecretAnorak said:

Atavism for both platforms would be wonderful. Having seen the potential of Atavism from it's initial release, watch it stall with the previous developers, then see its resurrection at your hands, I'd love to see you guys go from strength to strength. My only concern is that you don't spread yourselves too thinly. After such amazing progress, I'd hate to see things stall again.

Thank you for your opinion. If we will decide to start development Atavism for UE4, we will for 100% do it by building a separate team. We will keep the progress which we are making In Unity area.

9 hours ago, Kokonut said:

My answer won't carry much weight on either side as I'm absolutely new to game programming, and I'm plodding along the tutorials in Unity3 comfortably. I suspect, another 3 months on these tutorials and I'll be 1% there to make an informed decision. At the point where I'm at, I just want to use an engine that can incorporate things like what Atavism offers, but with a whole bunch of 'plug and play' options.

For example, go to the Assets Store, pick out 6 characters and add them in (with no further coding), etc, etc, etc ... for all I know, perhaps it does this now? I don't know if this exists, but is there a service offered by Atavism that would allow someone like me to select assets, and for Atavism to incorporate it into the game. I mean, I really appreciate the tremendous help and support by staff and non-staff members, but what gets my willy wet, is playing and controlling the game settings with no desire to be a C+ programmer. This probably stems from my years of running a 'Rust' server.

Mostly what I want to customise in Atavism, is adding my choice of characters, enemies, buildings and landscape. The game engine itself is superb as it covers a great deal of options in one package. So, if it was a choice between Unity and Unreal, I don't have a clue.

This is already possible. I mean you can implement any model to your game based on Atavism, without coding. Here is how to implement new character model https://wiki.atavismonline.com/project/character-model-race-and-class/ or how to integrate your existing scene (environment) with Atavism https://wiki.atavismonline.com/project/integration-into-existing-scene/ and there are much more tutorials on the wiki related to different aspects of the Atavism. 

[Rofar]

I would consider it.  I have experience with UE4 from the coding aspect but not much on the art side.  I think it would be good overall and from what I've heard, I wouldn't be concerned with Unity support dwindling.  How much of the server would be the same on both I wonder.

[Netsun]

Only if whe not have to rebuy a new licence for it

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

On 6/23/2019 at 4:07 PM, Netsun said:

Only if whe not have to rebuy a new licence for it

it's too early to decide if it will be for free for present users or not, but even if not, wouldn't be nice to have such option?

[GambitMonkey]

If you truly are going to keep the same level of effort with the Unity build as you are now by spinning up a separate team then I don't see why not.

With that being said though I am going to be selfish and say if there are resources available to spin up another team then I would rather those resources be spun up on new features and reworks of the existing Unity version rather than spent on a different engine. 

I myself have to much invested in Unity to ever look at switching and so the Unreal version would not benefit me in anyway. Would love to see a rework of the existing game server engine to move away from java to a C# mono engine with easier integrations of third party assets on the Unity store such as AI, Character Controllers, Procedural terrain generators, etc etc. Also having the game servers able to integrate with GameLift, Flexmatch, Agones, and other cloud service game offerings natively would be the bees knees. 

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

Yes, if we will make it then it wil be definitelly a separate team, and Unity progress won't slow down.

There can be much more long term benefits from this. Changes which we will make would be implemented in both proudcts. Also it's a totally new market, and new clients which would like to use Atavism, but it's not available for Unreal. This potentialy would generate an additional income, which could be spent on both branches, because universal Java technology on the server side gives such opportunity.

[Ino89Tv]

Is there an appointment now or have you already started to program? For unreal engine 4?

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

We are still gathering your feedback, and during that time we are preparing for the next huge Atavism release where will be a massive change in licensing, and we will add horizontal scaling for servers.

[Hawkadium]

I did the whole Unity thing first, then fell in love with UE4.  I had to move back to Unity, with great resistance, because there were better MMO options there.

As long as you use your own networking layer and not what UE4 offers, I'll migrate back in an instant.