Epic Games makes Unreal Engine even cheaper for indies

geek.com

7 points·adeelarshad82··4 comments

Sure, it's cheaper and the technology is top notch. But dear god do the tools have a learning curve.

As a dabbling artist who just wants to make something reasonably good-looking, the toolkit looks very intimidating. With Shiva and Unity, the end quality may well be lower, but I'll probably finish the game in the time it would take me to get to know the UDK.

The tools "do have a learning curve," but then you say they "look intimidating?" Have you not evaluated both?

Perhaps they might have a learning curve as a dabbler, but if you wanted to use your skills on projects for industry employers, or find an artist or developer to hire, you'd probably pick Unreal.

Unity probably directly supports users like you better than Epic does, but the size and age of the Unreal engine community tends to make up for that.

Disclaimer: I also built Epic's support system.

Has anyone on HN used the Unreal Engine for a game? Are there any successful indie games released using this engine?

I used it for an architectural visualization startup. I built the entire prototype myself, including a virtual tour guide that used the gameplay AI to find its way around a building, and contracted out the content production to a few artists.

Dungeon Defenders is the most recent "small" title I know of using UE3. Infinity Blade was produced by an Epic Games subsidiary, but they'd be an indie title otherwise.

Most major cross-platform game titles are built on UE3, so it wouldn't be a technology reason that an indie game couldn't be successful using it.

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