UDK Questions

[Chosker]

Bah if you list problems, we might determine if they are engine problems or if you are doing something wrong. Or provide suitable work around.

sure I can list problems.
- The one I already pointed out, the crash after Keeping Simulation Changes for an actor with a property that references another actor. 2 days ago I was finally asked for my project files by an Epic guy so I'm hoping the matter will be solved soon, but again this problem goes all the way back to April 4th.
- Imposters were introduced and advertised as a feature in 4.3 and even in 4.4 they were not working (haven't tested in 4.5)
- Animation re-targetting for different Skeletons was introduced in 4.4 with documentation that was pointing to menus and tools that only came in 4.5. despite I tried, it wasn't usable at all in 4.4. in 4.5 the toolset is there, but when I try to re-target an anim from Blueman to a character with a regular Biped from 3dsmax it crashes.
- PostProcess blendables still don't work for SceneCaptureActors
- The material editor feels laggy and annoying. gone are the days of instant context menus and connecting nodes in a trusty way like UE3. now we have context menus (right click, or drag a connector into the empty space) that take ~5 seconds to load the first time, and also not snappy-instant the next times. and the visual feedback for the connectors doesn't match the behavior (the connector "hole" lights up and you end up dragging the node). opening blueprints also takes longer and longer every time, like 10 seconds to open a character (and my graphs are completely empty)
- Didn't happen to me, but a coworker's character blueprints got corrupted from an engine bug (fixed in 4.5) and lost some work. I've seen a number of threads with people that lost a lot of work because of corrupted blueprints.

And it's also not getting slower. Unless you can provide hard proof (numbers), comparison between identical scenes in different version of engine, then it just "I feel like it is slower", which means exactly nothing.

you're right, I cannot provide hard proof because I won't go back to 4.0 and use a stopwatch. but it's a general feeling (mostly loading times of sub-parts of the editor) and I'm not the only one with it. perhaps you just have better hardware than mine.

Translucency sorting is bad. Why is bad ? Because we don't have forward rendering. Why we don't have forward rendering ? Because engine lacks features to support it on PC. And on the other hand you complain that they add to much features (;.

no, translucency sorting is as bad as in UE3, which had a forward renderer from the start.
like I said, try intersecting two translucent spheres or setting a character's opacity to 0.99. the same problems were present in UE3 btw, which had a forward renderer. so a forward renderer alone won't fix this issue.
and while you can claim that forward rendering would be a new feature, for me it's just a method to fix an existing broken feature (translucency sorting)

Well. You have to understand some things.
They are using engine for their internal projects. Internal project have priority when requesting new features.

and you have to understand some things as well. people are paying for this engine.
not everyone can pay $20 per month and Epic know and enforce this. and for someone that's waiting for a specific feature, pay for a new month to see the new feature doesn't work (and again after another month's release), can surely feel deceptive.

It's completly normal in engine development and I don't see any reason to cry about it. You don't like you make your own engine (;.
[...]
Challenges of game development. If something is stopping you, you work around it, or fix it yourself.

I don't have the time to make my own engine, or fix an existing engine. I want to make a game which is why I'm using an existing engine in the first place.
I can cope with broken features if fixing them is a priority, no problem. at work we deal with editor crashes every day, but we fix them in a matter of hours/days. in UE4 you report a crash, wait a week for a response (though I understand the volume of problems in AnswerHub is huge), and then wait 1 month (if luck is on your side, else 2 or 3) for the next big release to include a fix.
but having a new feature introduced and advertised to find out it doesn't work, and see the focus going into yet another new feature, is a different thing.

[iniside]

the features are being used. you might not be facing problems but others are.
I don't use UE4 a lot (still focus on my UDK project), but every time I have some time to use it I hit a roadblock that forces me to focus on something else.
I could list you my problems but I doubt you're interested and/or affected by them, but the worst case offender is a crash while trying to keep an actor's modified properties after a Simulation (vital for my NPC work) which I reported back in April when UE4 was still in beta, was fixed for only a few cases in 4.2, but still appears in 4.5, yes 6 months later. and this is only one issue from a number of them.
I've also gotten crashes while working on more mainstream stuff (materials), and the whole thing feels slower as new features are added.
and translucency sorting is still as bad as it was in UE3, 10 years ago. just try intersecting 2 translucent spheres into each other. or take a character's material, set it to translucent, and set the alpha to 0.99. the magic of horrible graphics will appear in front of your eyes

my point is, missing future features don't block nearly as much as broken existing features. DirectX12 will still be there in 6 months, and I doubt the lack of better World Composition tools is blocking a game from being developed.

Bah if you list problems, we might determine if they are engine problems or if you are doing something wrong. Or provide suitable work around.

The point I have not encountered any road blocks since beta. I managed to keep my code updated with each release (though I admit there is not that much code).
And it's also not getting slower. Unless you can provide hard proof (numbers), comparison between identical scenes in different version of engine, then it just "I feel like it is slower", which means exactly nothing.

Translucency sorting is bad. Why is bad ? Because we don't have forward rendering. Why we don't have forward rendering ? Because engine lacks features to support it on PC. And on the other hand you complain that they add to much features (;.

but based on your argument ("fixing something they don't use"), then why introduce features that won't be used by anyone?

Well. You have to understand some things.
They are using engine for their internal projects. Internal project have priority when requesting new features. On last stream Ray Davis said they don't have yet game which use something like Massive LOD system but they planning on one (which means Epic is starting working on some new game). And it aside from Fortnite and UT will dictate what they will be proportioning for engine development.
It's completly normal in engine development and I don't see any reason to cry about it. You don't like you make your own engine (;.
It's seems like everything they adding, they feel it will improve their work.

Next are serious licensee (AA+, like Lionhead, Sony, Microsoft). They are also using engine and requesting new features.


I really don't see that much people complaining about the fact that they can't finish or do anything, because something is utterly broken. Challenges of game development. If something is stopping you, you work around it, or fix it yourself.

tl;dr Game Engines are never complete. Adding new features will always have precedence before fixing non-critical bugs. New features have precedence because you can't possibly predict, what your new game will need. And because of that you always have to add something new to support it.

[tegleg]

i kind of agree with everything said here.
why did epic kill udk? who knows, seems crazy to me too

ue4 is awesome and will continue to get more awesome, but i see a theme in epics decision making that makes me wonder if its worth sticking with the unreal engine at all.
take udk for example,
in the beginning it was small and fast, just about everything worked. it stayed that way for a few updates with big improvements that also worked.
then at some point, seems about the time the dreaded scaleform reared its ugly head and the built in gui system was removed, there was a decision that went something along the lines of
"fix bugs? No add features!!!"
and this trend is becoming apparent in ue4 too, there is a difference in that the real big bugs are addressed through direct communication with ue4 users and eventually get fixed, at least for a while.
but there does seem to be the same kind of feature adding frenzy going on while most bugs are ignored, and just like udk, its getting slower and more bloated with every update. there seems absolutely no attempt at optimizing the existing code, instead they add features to the features that slow it down even more and potentially cause more bugs.

[Chosker]

The point is people expecting new features, not fixing something they don't use.
Open World support is still severely lacking in UE4 and it's going to be focus over next few months. Which is good thing. There is still no forward rendering, there new things that lie just ehad (DirectX 12 for example), and it all begs to be implemented ASAP to the state it's working.
But hey what do I know.. I pull new branches from GitHub as soon as they are available ;p.


Besides. I can't turn blind eye to broken features, because.. I didn't encounter any broken features that stop me from working.
Most "broken" things I have even encountered turned out be working just fine, I just didn't know how to use them, didn't know they existed or I have broken them myself by writing bad code. But this hardly make them broken by design.

the features are being used. you might not be facing problems but others are.
I don't use UE4 a lot (still focus on my UDK project), but every time I have some time to use it I hit a roadblock that forces me to focus on something else.
I could list you my problems but I doubt you're interested and/or affected by them, but the worst case offender is a crash while trying to keep an actor's modified properties after a Simulation (vital for my NPC work) which I reported back in April when UE4 was still in beta, was fixed for only a few cases in 4.2, but still appears in 4.5, yes 6 months later. and this is only one issue from a number of them.
I've also gotten crashes while working on more mainstream stuff (materials), and the whole thing feels slower as new features are added.
and translucency sorting is still as bad as it was in UE3, 10 years ago. just try intersecting 2 translucent spheres into each other. or take a character's material, set it to translucent, and set the alpha to 0.99. the magic of horrible graphics will appear in front of your eyes

but based on your argument ("fixing something they don't use"), then why introduce features that won't be used by anyone?

my point is, missing future features don't block nearly as much as broken existing features. DirectX12 will still be there in 6 months, and I doubt the lack of better World Composition tools is blocking a game from being developed.

[iniside]

interesting. I share your view on this but it seems for the most part, the people in the UE4 community don't.
recently there was a roadmap/wishlist thread where this guy smallB raised IMO valid concerns (albeit a little bluntly) and then most responses turned against him, either turning a blind eye to any broken features, or taking an attitude of "accepting things the way they are".

the thing is Epic themselves are enforcing this method of 'subscribing for one month only if needed', but with the current state of the engine this is impossible. there's many cases of features that should work but simply don't, or only get fixed after 1, 2 or even 3 major releases (i.e. feature X introduced in 4.1 gets fixed in 4.4)
what's worse, it doesn't seem this is going to change because it seems Epic is in a hurry of implementing new features instead of slowing things down a bit to make sure everything is working and stable in many more setups and situations. "it works on my computer, so ship it" is not really user friendly

The point is people expecting new features, not fixing something they don't use.
Open World support is still severely lacking in UE4 and it's going to be focus over next few months. Which is good thing. There is still no forward rendering, there new things that lie just ehad (DirectX 12 for example), and it all begs to be implemented ASAP to the state it's working.
But hey what do I know.. I pull new branches from GitHub as soon as they are available ;p.


Besides. I can't turn blind eye to broken features, because.. I didn't encounter any broken features that stop me from working.
Most "broken" things I have even encountered turned out be working just fine, I just didn't know how to use them, didn't know they existed or I have broken them myself by writing bad code. But this hardly make them broken by design.

[Altair80]

Ok, this isn't a good time to restart studying Game Engine. I'll wait a while.
Thanks.

[fighter5347]

UE4 4.4.3 / 4.4.5 is crashing incessantly on me, although 4.4.5 is more stable. It happens doing simple random things like moving meshes or flying through a level.
I'm using a 670m which should be up to the job, with a Win7 set-up that's otherwise pretty **** stable!

Actually I dont know what you guys are doing that the UE4 is always crashing

I just got around 2-3 crashes since I started using the UE4 -> that's a pretty low amount for over 1 year. I'm using the UE4 every day for several hours and for all kind of stuff (coding, materials, level design, blueprints,....) Make sure to keep the autosave enabled, use backupfiles so that you dont lose assets when a crash happens, always use the latest gpu driver, start the engine with admin rights

Btw, would be cool if you could report your crashes on answerhub so that the UE devs. can help you and other people with the same problem: https://answers.unrealengine.com/index.html

UE4 is just not ready, not for Indies anyway.

In my opinion it's the best what could have happended to the indie scene -> you dont need to be a good programmer to create your game. Everything can be done with blueprints in a very short period of time. But when you are a good programmer, your possibilities are unlimited, because you have access to the source code.

For me personally the UE4 gave me the opportunity to create my own full game (with my limited scripting experience it was nearly impossible with UDK)

You dont need to always have the latest version of the engine, because as far as I know you get the bug fixes even when you have unsubscribed + not every update has stuff that is really crucial for the further development of your game.

[Neongho]

Do you think this is possible guys?

1- Epic Destroys UDK forums, No more forums.

2- Epic Kills UDK downloads, no more accesible downloads.

3- Epic stops updating UDK ( Well this one is already there).

4- Epic denies new projects with UDK, and it's no longer aviable to be used?

Can that happend? at any moment ? what happend with UE2 and UE1 ?

Sounds crazy, " well for some who knows", but there are still atleast 100 projects with UDK out there, or more. And that may be relevant to them.

Any idea ?

[frankit]

Yeah, there's some interesting exchanges back and forth in that thread, thanks Chosker... While the UE4 forums are active which is good, they can be a little curt. I noticed that when I put in a request for dynamic / procedural worlds in one of the Roadmap threads...

Overall though, its good to see that others aren't immune to editor crashes. But I get the impression that mine are more frequent and more annoying. Oh well, roll on 4.6 as someone else said! Meantime, it would help if the editor instantly restarted with the last map loaded, instead of always sending you off to the crash report dialog...

Yes, the monthly subscription model "you can cancel anytime" line isn't really credible any more....

[Chosker]

UE4 is so incomplete right now, that its not of practical use without the updates IMHO.
Just look at all the work remaining too, check out Roadmap, Trello, forum wishlists etc...

UE4 4.4.3 / 4.4.5 is crashing incessantly on me, although 4.4.5 is more stable. It happens doing simple random things like moving meshes or flying through a level.
I'm using a 670m which should be up to the job, with a Win7 set-up that's otherwise pretty **** stable!

In my view there's a huge gulf between the two products at present. UE4 is just not ready, not for Indies anyway.
Whereas UDK is stable, highly evolved and has absolutely no future, WTF??? Oh, well, its a crazy world we're in!

interesting. I share your view on this but it seems for the most part, the people in the UE4 community don't.
recently there was a roadmap/wishlist thread where this guy smallB raised IMO valid concerns (albeit a little bluntly) and then most responses turned against him, either turning a blind eye to any broken features, or taking an attitude of "accepting things the way they are".

the thing is Epic themselves are enforcing this method of 'subscribing for one month only if needed', but with the current state of the engine this is impossible. there's many cases of features that should work but simply don't, or only get fixed after 1, 2 or even 3 major releases (i.e. feature X introduced in 4.1 gets fixed in 4.4)
what's worse, it doesn't seem this is going to change because it seems Epic is in a hurry of implementing new features instead of slowing things down a bit to make sure everything is working and stable in many more setups and situations. "it works on my computer, so ship it" is not really user friendly

[frankit]

unfortunately its driven by commercial decisions

Sure, so is music and film, but that doesn't make it right. I fear it may be necessary to go off and learn another game engine for a year as Tegleg recommended in a related post, and then return to UE4 later. That is, unless I can get a hook into this engine somehow. A bit part of the challenge is that the marketplace cupboard is pretty bare and expensive too. Case in point: 35 dollars for 'background mountains' and well over a hundred for a ledge climbing system... WTF???

[Nitetro]

UE4 is so incomplete right now, that its not of practical use without the updates IMHO.
Just look at all the work remaining too, check out Roadplan, Trello, forum wishlists etc...

In my view there's a huge gulf between the two products at the moment. UE4 is just not ready, certainly not for Indies.
Whereas UDK is stable, highly evolved and has absolutely no future...??? Ouch! Its a crazy world to live in!

UE4 4.4.3 / 4.4.5 is crashing incessantly. It happens doing simple random things like moving meshes or flying through a level.
I'm using a 670m which should be up to the job, with a Win7 set-up that's otherwise pretty **** stable!

Hi Frankit

Interesting comments on this thread regarding UE4 v UDK, it is a crazy world as you say, but unfortunately its driven by commercial decisions

[frankit]

UE4 is so incomplete right now, that its not of practical use without the updates IMHO.
Just look at all the work remaining too, check out Roadmap, Trello, forum wishlists etc...

UE4 4.4.3 / 4.4.5 is crashing incessantly on me, although 4.4.5 is more stable. It happens doing simple random things like moving meshes or flying through a level.
I'm using a 670m which should be up to the job, with a Win7 set-up that's otherwise pretty **** stable!

In my view there's a huge gulf between the two products at present. UE4 is just not ready, not for Indies anyway.
Whereas UDK is stable, highly evolved and has absolutely no future, WTF??? Oh, well, its a crazy world we live in!

[fighter5347]

Which engines do you advice?

Unreal Engine 4 costs too much, is it true?

I would also recommend you to take a look at the UE4, because

-it's pretty easy to use
-an active community
-blueprints
-.....

As Chosker already mentioned, you have to pay 19$ per month, but you can also unsubscribe after the first time and you will be still abel to use the engine -> but you wont get any updates (after resubscribing you will get the most recent ones)

For more information:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/forum.php
https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4

[Chosker]

UDK won't get any more updates so you could say it's dead

UE4 costs $19 per month. I wouldn't call that "too much" but to some it might not be affordable (to ask $19 to your parents or whatever).
still you can pay once and stick to the one version you have (you can still use it) but you'd be stuck with broken features one way or another.