Unity VS Unreal Engine For 2D And 3D Games Development

SMICHRISSOFT
6 min readJun 3, 2018

Every day, 2D and 3D games are getting more and more fans around the world, depriving competitors of the opportunity to somehow correspond them. The creation of these games is a laborious process and depends on many factors.

Gaming gadgets such as consoles, smartphones, tablets and personal computers are fully enjoyed by gamers. But for developers such a variety of devices, the difference between operating systems and compatibility is a very difficult development process.

However, despite the differences between the platforms, there is a tool that can help developers in the process of creating new applications, saving time and improving the quality.

Unity and Unreal Engine are some of the most popular gaming platforms available today. Both platforms are excellent gaming tools. The choice of a particular platform depends on the goals that the developer is trying to achieve.

Creating a new game, the developer has to answer many questions: will it be a 2D or 3D game, for a web browser or for mobile platforms, etc. The answers to these questions will help developers determine which platform to use. Both tools can cope with any of these tasks, but depending on what you do, one platform can be much more convenient and optimal than another one.

Unity

Unity corporation owns 45% of the market share. This tool is used by 47% of world developers and more than 600 million people around the world play games created on Unity.

Unity is an ideal solution for creating mobile games. This is confirmed by Unity’s dominance among mobile game developers.

Advantages of Unity

Simplicity

Unity is easy to understand. Often it is used by beginners because the platform offers many ready-made solutions. You can expand the editor with scripts, add new menus, spread the property inspector, and so on.

Convenience

Unity makes the programming process easier, increases the developer’s capabilities and makes it work more comfortable. One of the advantages is that Unity is based on C#, a high-level programming language. Depending on the scale of the project, developers are always using an infinite number of tools in a single development environment. The easier it is for the developer to navigate, the more high-quality the product will be on the way out. C# is a high-level programming language that allows programmers to easily join the development process.

Save time

Unity developers can save a lot of time and greatly simplify the writing of code. In high-level programming, unlike a low-level programming, a natural language is usually used. In addition, many complex expressions are automated. And lines of code like “Hero.Attack ()” or “Hero.Move (place)” are simply much easier to write and decrypt.

The same code written in Unity can be transferred into multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Web, console) with minimal changes. Thus, it helps to significantly reduce the resources required for the development of the project.

Quality improvement

If the work of developers becomes more effective, they will be able to create games of higher quality. It means that the less time the coders can spend on writing code the more time they can spend on developing a new user experience.

Despite the function of cross-platform development, Unity offers developers a full range of 2D and 3D components and a toolkit, so they can create more interesting features, offer better gaming experience and provide a more realistic immersive effect for their users.

Integration

Often developers supplement work with Unity with additional tools such as, for example, Multiplatform Solutions Framework (MSF). This tool simplifies the process of development of a game. MSF increases efficiency by upgrading various aspects of development. For example, storage of files and player profiles on the server and integration with social networks. With ready-made modules, MSF makes the development environment even more flexible and efficient.

And this, in turn, affects the players. For example, users who have the same profile for all devices can play on different platforms, keeping progress between them.

The most notable releases of games on Unity: Wasteland 2, Syberia 3, Inside and Yooka-Laylee.

Unity is a powerful and convenient framework and a direct contribution to the success of the game. It allows developers to implement more interesting features, as well as cool game design. All this turns into a successful and well-sold product.

Unity is an easy-to-use tool for developers. In the hands of professionals, this is an excellent tool. But newcomers should be careful while introducing of all modules in a row. Otherwise, the project will immediately turn into an architectural monster.

Unreal Engine (UE)

Epic Games showed the UE to the world in 1998. From the very beginning, it, directly “out of the box”, offered visualization, rendering, sound engine, AI for NPC, a system for network infrastructure with exemplary performance, an internal programming language, an editor for user modifications and much more. UE is a versatile, flexible and cross-platform engine with a user-friendly interface and open source.

Advantages of UE

A large set of components

Unreal Engine offers a whole set of classes and components designed to create games. Gameplay Framework is a part of the engine, all project templates are created on it. Gameplay Framework classes offer a variety of possible functions — from the description of Game Mode and Player State to Save Game and Player Controller. A special feature of the engine is an advanced network subsystem, a dedicated server and the ability to launch a network game in the editor.

Blueprint

Another advantage of UE is the system of visual scripting Blueprint. It is a powerful tool in skilled hands of programmers. UE is often criticized for using the supposedly archaic and complex programming language C ++. The solution for it is Blueprint. It’s no need to write a code in the editor of visual scripting, so it is great for a fast and easy collection of functional prototypes and development of commercial games.

VR-Marketplace VRT World

One of the main goals of VRT World is the creation of a decentralized VR marketplace on Blockchain. It helps to achieve a transparent distribution of revenue between the platform and developers and the observance of copyright. The mission of VRT World is to guarantee access to the particular projects for developers from any place in the world.

Blockchain allows virtually erasing the line between consumers and suppliers. In addition, it simplifies the collection of donations and the organization of crowdfunding campaigns.

Price

Unreal Engine is conditionally free. The full version of the UE will be free for the developer, as long as the revenue from the game is less than $ 3,000 per quarter. If more the developer should have to share 5% of his income. As the modern market shows that this is one of the most inexpensive platforms when it comes to professional use.

Open source

Unreal Engine gives another great advantage for programmers — an open source. This makes it possible to verify the absence of vulnerabilities and unacceptable functionality for the user, to participate in the finalization of the open program, to use the code to create new programs and fix errors in them.

Visual programming

Visual programming allows developers to limit the work over the design of the user interface to simple and intuitive procedures. This feature enables the programmers to work on coding faster. Now it takes minutes or hours for the manipulations which previously took months.

Working with NextGen graphics

Unreal Engine allows using the NextGen graphics in all its power and colors. It gives the opportunity to create more interesting characters and images in the game development. UE is adapted for working with NextGen graphics so the programmer will not spend time on integrations.

The most notable releases of games on Unreal Engine: Gears of War, BioShock, Turok, Mass Effect, Dishonored, Borderlands and, of course, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Unreal Engine and Unity only seem to be equal competitors. Despite the fact that the level editors at each platform are similar, in practice, UE and Unity are responsible for solving completely different tasks in programming.

If you cannot make a decision, what platform to choose for gaming development, feel free to ask our specialists. They will show how realistic the game can be.

--

--

SMICHRISSOFT

Experts in hi-tech. Passionate about Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Virtual/Augmented Reality.