Posts by Zezeri

  • Cryengine VS The World: Is it a good platform for indies?

    I would say it depends on the project. Every engine has it's advantages and disadvantages and that includes cryengine. For example, if I were to make a photorealistic outdoor fps, I'd probably go for cryengine. However, for a indoor 3rd person stealth game, I would probably use UE4.


    Visuals:

    I think for indoor, UE4 wins here. As you can bake Lighting here, CE can't keep up with this, as it has only IBL and SSDO for indirect Lighting (plus a large-scale AO approximation iirc). However, that doesn't mean that CE can't still look very good indoors.


    For outdoors, UE4's kite demo proved that it can look and perform quite well. They've showed some neat tech like DFGI/DFAO & RTDS along with a special GI approximation for terrain.

    However I would argue that CE ,with it's proven track of outdoor titles and tech, is still ahead of unreal in terms of quality and perfomance.


    Talking about shaders, UE4 offers a very flexible Shader Node editor. CE has pre-built shaders where you just plug your maps in and it (usually) looks good. Trading flexibility vs perfomance here, I would argue.


    Particles are better in UE4, CE has yet to get GPUShaders and other advanced things.


    Workflow

    UE4 has a better Terrain system than CE.


    The static/animated geometry export process of UE4 is more streamlined (fbx) than Crytek's with its own custom exporting tools. Crytek is working on fbx support, but UE4 has this in place already and wins here for ease of use.

    However, UE4 has an integrated Asset browser, while CE uses Windows explorer, which I find more convenient.


    UE4 has Blueprint which allows for rapid *prototyping*. CE has a similar system called Flowgraph, which is more limited than Blueprint though.


    UE4 has a more up-to-date and organized UI than CE.


    Other

    Epic invested a lot into the indie market. There's answer hub, youtube tutorials, live streams, many, many devs on the forums, a marketplace and very frequent updates with lots of content. CE hasn't seen such a big investment into that direction yet. Although there are things coming.


    UE4 has no monthly suscription costs but takes 5% royalties. CE takes 10 euros a month but doesn't take any royalties. So If you're seriously making a game, UE4 is going to be more expensive for you. However, UE4 also offers complete source code. Whether that's needed, depends on your project.


    CE seems to be more optimised in terms of perfomance in many cases. Sandbox takes less ressources than UnrealEd for me, although that is no indication of the perfomance in the final game. That depends on the specific use-case and scene, so I would encourage anyone to do tests beforehand in both engines.


    Conclusion

    So yeah, I've tried to list some of the major aspects, but there's obviously tons more to it, as engines are very complex systems. Feel free to correct me , if I got anything wrong. Personally, I think that both engines are awesome. And I would be happy to choose either one, which fits my project needs best. Also taking into account the different business/license terms of course.

    Ultimately, it depends on your project's need and it probably makes sense to evaluate both. However, there are at least 2 indie games that are looking very nice on Cryengine's indie business model:

    Umbra:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SQUhLaTugM


    Miscreated:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKuwsqhvBOQ


    Also sorry for all the errors, really tired atm :)

  • GTA V

    I'm certainly going to get this one


    As for visual improvements in comparsion to consoles - well I don't really expect a lot. Higher resolution, anti-aliasing, higher view distance and maybe some higher-res textures. Dunno what else to expect. Some Rendering goodies like hbao or tesselation?


    Btw, are there any presentations/gdc talks from Rockstar about the GTA franchise?

  • Buying a gaming laptop :o

    Hmm, I think the asus rog751 (the one you got) is better than this one.

    While the aorus is lighter and slimmer and also a faster due to SLI, I'm not a huge fan of Multi GPU.

    Asus is better temperature and noise wise. Plus, the rog751 has a IPS panel.

  • Unity 5

    Let's say you make 1 million revenue. Then, epic gets 5% of that, 50k.

    After that, the publisher gets, according to your contract, a set percentage, i.e. 70%.

    Then you are left with 30%


    Also possibly some publishers might want to have you pay for the license, so they'll substract the 5% of your 30%.

  • Unity 5

    "Yeah the naked eye can immediately see that Unity is cheaper in the long run, but I guess the cost is justified. And shouldn't the total amount due be less than the traditional publisher cut? Who might not cover all your running costs anyway(?)."
    Who says you cant use the 5% model and also use a publisher?


    "Speaking of running costs, do you know if Steam/App store/etc and engine licensing are deductible costs from taxes?"

    Yes.

  • Unity 5

    Unity doesn't have any royalties, just like cryengine.

    Also, some ppl are accustomed to its workflow and it seems quite easy to work with. Plus it has very good perfomance.

  • Buying a gaming laptop :o

    http://www.dabs.com/products/msi-g…=51220000&src=3


    This one does have 12 GB RAM and not 16, but it does also have a GT850M instead of a GT750M, which is a lot better. GPU is definitely going to be a laptops bottleneck, not the RAM. 12 GB is plenty and you can still upgrade it. GPUs are not upgradable in Laptops ususally, so this is whats going to slow it down heavily in 2 years. GT850M is still slow, but better than a GT750M at least.

    But: Always make sure to google for reviews of your notebook model. There's so many pitfalls with notebooks to watch out for.