Unreal vs Source.

[FMPONE]

-Source support and community: Again, you cant compare. Source' community is years old. UE3 community doesnt even exist yet because the games havent been released yet. If you want to compare these two at all, you should compare them in 3 years time.

I agree with your post, with the exception of this.

The sheer numbers involved preclude UE ever having a community to rival Source, CS alone has more players than UE3 and GoW PC combined will ever have, and its mapping community alone will tower over what UE3 manages. Not to mention Source is the simplest modern 3d engine around, no matter how familiar you are with UE I think you can agree Hammer is about as simple as editors get.

UE3 may have a nice, welcoming and very helpful community, but Source will have the best (most information, most rescources, most tools, most content) simply because of the numbers involved

[Scinbed]

Like Hourences mentioned, I think it would be best to revisit this whole debate this time next year, when the engine (UE3) and communities (UT3, GoW, whatever else) have matured to the point Source is at...

(although tbh I'll still think source is shit)

[FMPONE]

Like Hourences mentioned, I think it would be best to revisit this whole debate this time next year, when the engine (UE3) and communities (UT3, GoW, whatever else) have matured to the point Source is at...

(although tbh I'll still think source is shit)

Some great work on your site, I'll say that much

[Hourences]

As simple as it gets? Typing stuff in notepad to make materials is regard "simple" and "modern" ?

We've discussed that before anyhow. As far as the numbers, sure, but of all those players only a few actually mod. Do you have any exact numbers on how many? Or on how many HL1 and HL2 maps there have ever been released?

Source may have a huge community, it may very well be larger than Unreal, but the Unreal community is generally at a different level. For us it is not the community tutorial efforts that makes or breaks the modding. For source I believe it is.

-Unreal has huge contests with a milion dollar in prices, that attracts people.

-Unreal is used by a huge amount of schools now, that also expands the community.

-Unreal has had a number of thick books written for it, again expands the community and speeds up peoples progress.

-Unreal has over 4000 professionals who are working with the engine every single day. Those 4000 are suppose to have a high level understanding of the engine. That group of people who fully understand everything that happens (or hopefully they do) is far larger than Source, which only has a handful of professionals working with the engine. Their skills flows on to the community, one way or another and in a way they in turn attract people.

Source relies on its community, Unreal primarily relies on other things and only then the community. Kind of.

[Zajoman]

Your correct on most things but:

-BSP: If used to the BSP system in UE it is by far faster than anything else. This is purely subjective and you are clearly not used to it. Others are.

-Accessibility: People can get Roboblitz. UT3 and GOW will be released in just months time. This is an unfair comparison. The public didnt had access to HL2 and source when it was still in development either right? Oh wait, it got leaked:P

-Source support and community: Again, you cant compare. Source' community is years old. UE3 community doesnt even exist yet because the games havent been released yet. If you want to compare these two at all, you should compare them in 3 years time.

And UE had a system similar to Source' entities at first, but was later replaced with Kismet because entities are nice, but you will seriously lose the overview, just as much as Kismet. Both approaches can result in an utter mess, only Kismet handles it a little better.

CSG (BSP)

I worked with UnrealEd for 3 years, 1 and a half profesionally. I definitely am used to it. I stand my opinion - Hammer is much faster, much smarter, much simpler and much more stable.

Accessibility/Support

You say that the Source community is years old. Very true. But I'm talking about now. People need to know the comparison as it is now, not what it will be in years to come. And of course my opinions ARE subjective. I don't represent a community or a company of people that share the same thoughts.

Scripting

Scripting is not ideal in both engines. I said that I prefer classical code-scripting to visual coding, not that Source scripting is better than Kismet. Level-object based scripting (HL1, HL2, U1, U2) is there just because these games don't rely so heavily on scripting.

[Hourences]

So youre saying that having to construct a single room of 6 seperate brushes is "much smarter and faster" ?

If you ask me, itd be far simple to just add a cube, and substract a smaller cube out of it. Done.

I also heard of leaks in Quake/HL? BSP stuff not closing in well. Doesn't sound very user friendly to me...

The actual tools aside, the entire additive system is just slow if you ask me and overly complex for simple actions.

How long have you worked with Source/HL BSP ?

And mind you, I have only encountered a BSP error just once in Unreal Engine 3, and that was because some other guy found it funny to substract 60 sided cylinders of bigger clinders and all off the grid.

[Zajoman]

As simple as it gets? Typing stuff in notepad to make materials is regard "simple" and "modern" ?

We've discussed that before anyhow. As far as the numbers, sure, but of all those players only a few actually mod. Do you have any exact numbers on how many? Or on how many HL1 and HL2 maps there have ever been released?

Source may have a huge community, it may very well be larger than Unreal, but the Unreal community is generally at a different level. For us it is not the community tutorial efforts that makes or breaks the modding. For source I believe it is.

-Unreal has huge contests with a milion dollar in prices, that attracts people.

-Unreal is used by a huge amount of schools now, that also expands the community.

-Unreal has had a number of thick books written for it, again expands the community and speeds up peoples progress.

-Unreal has over 4000 professionals who are working with the engine every single day. Those 4000 are suppose to have a high level understanding of the engine. That group of people who fully understand everything that happens (or hopefully they do) is far larger than Source, which only has a handful of professionals working with the engine. Their skills flows on to the community, one way or another and in a way they in turn attract people.

Source relies on its community, Unreal primarily relies on other things and only then the community. Kind of.

Typing Stuff In Notepad

This has nothing to do with being modern or not. This is just one of many approaches. UE3 approach is more visual and more accessible to beginner/casual people.

4000

Where did you get that number? I don't believe it a bit. It takes one's life to fully understand the engine. Most of the engine developers surely do, but only very few lincensees do.

Source Relies On Community

How do you mean this? I believe Source relies on itself and its child games that are rated as the all time best for PC (http://www.metacritic.com/games/pc/).

[Zajoman]

So youre saying that having to construct a single room of 6 seperate brushes is "much smarter and faster" ?

> What are you talking about? Be more specific, please.

If you ask me, itd be far simple to just add a cube, and substract a smaller cube out of it. Done.

> Or just draw a box and press Ctrl+H.

I also heard of leaks in Quake/HL? BSP stuff not closing in well. Doesn't sound very user friendly to me...

> This is a human error, not CSG itself. You should make your maps right, not leaky.

The actual tools aside, the entire additive system is just slow if you ask me and overly complex for simple actions.

> UE3 have both approaches, subtractive and additive. Take a guess which one is preferred nowadays... Additive, you got it.

How long have you worked with Source/HL BSP ?

> 7 years.

And mind you, I have only encountered a BSP error just once in Unreal Engine 3, and that was because some other guy found it funny to substract 60 sided cylinders of bigger clinders and all off the grid.

> Working with UE3, I suppose you have the access to the UDN. So log in and look for CSG topics. You'll find that Epic discourages from using it at all.

[hessi]

So youre saying that having to construct a single room of 6 seperate brushes is "much smarter and faster" ?

well then create a house from outside with one box in unreal!

man this argument fails so heavily

carving a room is 1 click in unreal

making a house from the outside is (close to) 1 click in source

you know that substractive vs. additive geometry thing

[Hourences]

Having to use a text editor to make a visual thing is like modelling a cube using notepad, how would you feel about that? It is not a valid option. Its completely prehistoric and it is far from userfriendly. You need to see stuff change instantly, not after a recompile, restart or whatever else but real time in a viewport.

Oh I forgot a good one, Lighting preview in Source. It doesnt has it yet it is the most modern and simple editor out there ?

Unreal has fully realtime previewing since 1998. Source still hasnt managed to catch up and youre calling it modern?...

4000: There are a 100 studios using Unreal for their games or other projects. I took the average of 40 developers per studio = ....

Since you are working with the engine, you have access to UDN. On the main UDN page click on Recent changes and then All changes. Now go count how many different studios you see in that list. It may not be a 100 but it prolly isnt far off either.

Source relies on its community to keep the whole thing running. It relies on its huge playerbase to provide user made tools and tutorials. Unreal relies on other stuff to keep itself running, it doesnt neccy requires its community to provide tutorials and all, although its of course never a bad thing if they help out.

[Hourences]

carving a room is 1 click in unreal

making a house from the outside is (close to) 1 click in source

Regardless of how many clicks, will or will you not end up with 6 different brushes for the house in source? Because if you do, and if you will have to modify it later on, youll lose more time adjusting it in source than in Unreal.

[⌐■_■]

Tomato's / tomatoes.

[Skjalg]

I think maybe Zajoman is onto something here..

BUT, I think GOW proved that if you want darker and more grittier stuff, UE3 is the way to go. I might be wrong though, but I can't seem to find a good setting for my env when creating night time maps i source...

[Hourences]

So youre saying that having to construct a single room of 6 seperate brushes is "much smarter and faster" ?

> What are you talking about? Be more specific, please.

If you ask me, itd be far simple to just add a cube, and substract a smaller cube out of it. Done.

> Or just draw a box and press Ctrl+H.

I also heard of leaks in Quake/HL? BSP stuff not closing in well. Doesn't sound very user friendly to me...

> This is a human error, not CSG itself. You should make your maps right, not leaky.

The actual tools aside, the entire additive system is just slow if you ask me and overly complex for simple actions.

> UE3 have both approaches, subtractive and additive. Take a guess which one is preferred nowadays... Additive, you got it.

How long have you worked with Source/HL BSP ?

> 7 years.

And mind you, I have only encountered a BSP error just once in Unreal Engine 3, and that was because some other guy found it funny to substract 60 sided cylinders of bigger clinders and all off the grid.

> Working with UE3, I suppose you have the access to the UDN. So log in and look for CSG topics. You'll find that Epic discourages from using it at all.

The 6 brushes argument: See what I just replied to hessi. Regardless of how many clicks it takes, having to end up with 6 different brushes for just a room is kind of stupid. Why not just 2 brushes?

Leaking: I can use the exact same argument for UT and therefore counter yours. If you make stuff correctly in UT there are no BSP errors either, yet you are complaing about those.

Moreover, stuff cant leak in UT, even if youd create messy BSP. Sure other stuff can go wrong, but it cant leak like in HL.

Additive: I am pointing to the HL approach of requiring multiple brushes for something simple. I know the naming is not entirely correct but from an historic pov it is easiest for me to classify both approaches like this.

7 Years of HL: So tell me this, the first three years of your HL experience, were those enough to fully, 100 percent, understand how BSP in HL works, how to work around problems and the dos and dont dos?

UDN: There is nothing wrong with BSP and epic does not discourage it. The situation is a tiny little bit more complex than just "dont use it". Also, there are plenty of things that are stated incorrectly on UDN. It is not because UDN says so that it is true. Simple example, open some GOW maps and see if there happens to be BSP around.

I have been working with Unreal looong before there ever was such thing like UDN. I know BSP and I know what it can do and what it cant.

[^Slick]

Hammer crashes less.

I win.

=)