Should I switch from Unity to Unreal 5

Intro

Unreal Engine 5 is a direct upgrade from Unity. There is no reason not to upgrade really. Unreal 5 has better graphics, it has blueprint, it uses C++ rather than C# so you can learn something that will help you make money easier, the inbuilt features are better in Unreal. Unity is missing a lot of features that are required to be filled in with Asset Packs. Asset packs can break each other or break your game. I speak anecdotally but Unity wasn’t able to build my deliverable. I tried really hard to get that great game to work, but the deliverable failed. Shameful. Unreal also has a better asset store.

And while you’re at it, wanna make a 2D game in Unreal? Is it even possible, <—— find out here.

Is Unity or Unreal better for beginners?

It is a shame because this is what it is advertised as. But no, Unreal is better for a beginner, you can script in blueprint with no programming knowledge, in a better more stable more powerful & beautiful ecosystem. If you code, C++ is a more marketable language.

Is Unreal engine better or Unity?

Is Unity easier than Unreal?

No, Blueprint makes Unreal much easier. Unreal requires no programming knowledge to start making your game. If you do code, C++ is harder than C#, but you don’t need to, & if you code, you should learn the language that makes more money.

Ok so let’s go over some of the reasons to switch to Unreal in more depth.

Better Graphics

Graphics alone kind of take the cake, Unreal just looks better. Flat out, no comparison, one is just objectively better than the other. The first time I got my character in Unreal, I was just in awe of how good it looks. My character was just stunning in appearance, like the best quality AAA game I ever played. Except cuter, somehow, in ways that are hard to quantify.

Unity on the other hand, takes a lot of work to look good. You have to get HDRP working in your project, which means that every asset pack you purchase, will have to reformatted to HDRP, and there can and will be problems. Even with HDRP makeup, Unreal still looks so much better, but HDRP still comes with so many problems. You will find your game breaking again and again and again and again. You will purchase asset packs and be aghast at what you see, oh, you’ll think, I just wasted all my money on this asset pack, and it doesn’t work in HDRP. And then, standard? Good lord falling over on a bike to nowhere, is standard bad looking. Its like a game from PS1 or PS2 at best.

Not a good scene.

Seriously, Unreal is so much more beautiful, it’s unreal, badumbumchhhh. The graphics are stunning, my models import at damn near max quality. It’s not quite the same quality as my high rez renders, but it’s close, it genuinely is. The graphics are sharp, pretty, high definition, when it comes to beauty, this is already gameover on day 1. But the issue runs far deeper, it is not only about beauty and visuals, that’s just one aspect of the problem.

Beauty is actually the number one issue. But let’s discuss some of the other problems.

THE ASSET STORE

Unreal has the better asset store. Is the long and short of it. The Unreal Asset store is better, in almost every way, it has a better interface, it has better assets and better sales, it gives away free stuff every month, some of the stuff is really good. Yes, the Unreal Asset store is much much nicer. If you want a good asset store, Unreal is the model. Unreal is also a more complete product, out of the box it does more than Unity has ever been capable of doing. While Unity plugs holes in it’s inherent insufficiencies with Asset Packs, Unreal has everything you need built into the engine. There’s no comparison, Unreal has a better asset store, it’s night and day, the asset store is a direct upgrade, the interface is a direct upgrade, the out of the box capabilities are a direct upgrade. EVERYTHING is a direct upgrade. In magic the gathering terms, Unreal is a strictly better card, replace the original card in your deck or double it up if you need the extra utility but you now need the better card if you want to do well in the metagame.

Now let’s talk about the Unity asset store in a bit more detail. The biggest problem with Unity is it needs asset packs to be functional. Unity lacks most of the out of the box features that Unreal has, and consequently, it needs asset packs. It is shameful nonsense. Unity has no AI, so you have to buy AI packs from the store, but there aren’t any good AI packs, it’s Unity. The best you can get is Emerald AI, but it is broken when combined with other asset packs, and it doesn’t work very well. Furthermore, the stuff on the Unity Asset store isn’t as good. It doesn’t look as good. It’s less beautiful than the stuff you get on the Unreal Asset Store, it functions worse, it breaks compatibility more often. Asset packs break other asset packs, it’s a nightmare.

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Anyway back to business.

And when you’re finally done.

The deliverable fails to build. I made a really good game in Unity, no joke. I currently have an Unreal game which is in the framework/alpha stage, I worked so hard on that game. I spent hours toiling and fighting and struggling to get my game built. It was not easy. It wasn’t a lot of fun, it was a lot of work. And right when I thought I had built a game that would be a good framework for a future long term project, the deliverable won’t build. Or rather, I build the deliverable and it doesn’t work. Crashes with memory issues as soon as i try to load anything that isn’t FUNGUS or an example test map from an asset pack. It was the damndest thing, I could take an example scene, make a couple of changes to it, and boom, crash with memory issues when I try to run the deliverable. Ridiculous.

What’s the point in making Unity games, when you can’t build a deliverable? It’s a non-starter right there. You cannot build a deliverable, end of story, game over. Literally game over, no deliverable builds, not happy.

Development in Unreal Engine

Then we get to Unreal. I remember testing Unreal for the first time. After my game broke because I chose the wrong engine, I loaded up a test scene in Unreal, and built the deliverable, and it played, no problem. So I thought, oh, this thing can build a deliverable, nice one. And I started to develop my game in Unreal. It was a long struggle, almost 3 months, but I managed to create a framework for development at least as good as my Unity game ever was, and I tested it. I tried to build a deliverable, and at first, yeah I had problems, took a while to get it running, but when I did, yeah, the deliverable builds, my game runs.

Actually there’s a copy of my game, just a demo of the first few levels and some enemies to shoot, and it’s floating around the internet. I could probably get a decent job with just that, if I didn’t wish to stay in my current job. But that’s not the exciting part. I can build a deliverable, lots of them. I can spend the next two years making my first game, and then I can build my second game, and my third, and my fourth, all in Unreal, and each one building on the last. Basically in terms of game design, I am set for life. In two years when this game drops I might not just get a good job, which I already have, I might be able to actually earn some money publishing my game. It will be good enough to justify the purchase, I am looking forward to completing this game. It will be fun.

Blueprint

Since there’s no equivalent in Unity, I can’t do a comparison in this regard. So I’ll just review blueprint, and no I’m not talking about bolt. Blueprint is the visual scripting system in Unreal. It is so powerful.

While we’re at it, you can check out my article on the basics of blueprint.

Blueprint allows you to do scripting in Unreal without any knowledge of C++. In the entire time I’ve been working with Unreal, I have never encountered a scenario where I needed to use anything other than Blueprint. It is just perfect. It is context sensitive, so you can only use a valid function. You cannot plug a variable into an incompatible pin. It is impossible to do an invalid function in this, you can’t call a function from the wrong place, you can’t misjudge where a variable should go, you can do things with blueprint that you could never do with Unity. It is fully integrated into the Unreal architecture. If you do know C++, you can design your own functions and then make use of them in blueprint. It is so beautiful, it just makes your development so easy.

I guess we can do a comparison to Unity. In Unity, since it lacks any features of this nature, except trying to plug the hole in it’s out of the box capabilities with the bolt plugin, which we will not discuss. In Unity, since it lacks visual scripting capabilities, requires you to code in C# on a regular basis. The good news is C# is easier than C++, the bad news is Unity requires you to code in C#. So Unity is better for beginners right? This is the beginners friendly engine, right Unity marketing department? It’s not like Unreal is waaaaay waaaaay more beginner friendly than Unity by leagues and bounds the size of beached blue whales, right?

Shamefully silly.

Out of the box features

Unreal and Unity are not operating on the same level. The out of the box features of Unreal are incredible, it is a fully featured development system capable of developing AAA Games, for instance it has built in behavior trees. Unity has no such feature, you have to buy behavior trees, which don’t work and break your game. I won’t get into the details of all of them, there’s too much stuff to go over, but basically you don’t need to buy a bunch of asset packs in Unreal, you can make a game without them.

I wouldn’t recommend it, you should some Unreal Environments, some characters, some music, some frameworks, some kitchen sink. But if you needed to in an emergency, and you had to do the same thing in Unity, well, your Unity game would be a little bit lacking to say the least, while your Unreal game would at least have functional AI.

Conclusion

Unity wins, surprise.

I’m crazy like that.