I wasn't super sure where to post this, since I'm not really looking for advice as much as discussion, but feel free to move this to the appropriate forum mods!

As some of you may know, I'm primarily a Unity user (although I use user in the loosest sense, since I don't really code much these days. I mostly work on game art for fun) and I really like the engine a lot mainly because it's the one I've used the most. I did have to use Unreal engine recently for a job I did, and while it's not wildly different from Unity, there were some obvious differences (such as C++ as the main scripting language, etc.). I've found them to be more or less comparable and similar.

As the title of the thread implies, the question is, which one do you like more?

I was tempted to close this as it is a "this vs that" thread, but it is in the lounge and we haven't had a good bash lately, so maybe this one will survive for a while.

To me the question is akin to: Do you prefer Rocky Road ice cream, or Chocolate Brownie ice cream? There are some small differences between the two and you can debate minor ingredients differences, but on the grander scheme of things they're effectively the same, provide fundamentally similar services.

I don't really like either one.


Canned engines try to do too much, and typically suffer from premature generalization all over the place. The usual result is that you have to endure some serious voodoo if you want performance to not suck, and/or you have to contort your game to do things in the "one true way" so that the engine doesn't vomit all over itself.

In order to do something highly unique and "custom", you have to either mutate the engine (which is a nightmare if you ever want to get updates from the vendor!) or you have to compromise your design in some way.

I'm not an advocate of everyone writing their own engines, but for the kinds of games I like to work on, neither Unity nor Unreal is ever going to really cut it.


For rapid prototypes or relatively unambitious (technically speaking) titles, both are basically fine, and some people will find one flavor slightly preferable to the other based on any number of personal factors. I don't think there's objectively much point in trying to make a comparison in vacuum, because each individual's goals, experience, and preferences will weigh too heavily in the final decision.

These engines are far to be clean and not designed to be threaded correctly, these engines are good for prototyping.
My experience on shipped games : I got less issues working on Unity for mobile games than Unreal Engine.
You can write a game without writing an engine, simply working on needed features.

Another important factor to consider when looking at middleware solutions to a problem is what problem are you trying to solve?

Of course a rather annoying bit that throws a wrench into debating between the two is that it is kind of hard to truly get a good feel for either of them until you have spent time digging around in the guts of them. And I don't mean "I spent a weekend and poked around some demo code", but rather spending time digging down and working with one or the other for months. And the problem with that is: The other one will have changed since then while you're exploring the other.

There is still kind of an unfortunate bias against Unity because of its history of use in relatively low budget projects compared to the bigger names and larger budget games that Unreal has attracted. Larger studios have had the time and money to polish things to a greater degree in Unreal than much of what we get to see in Unity based projects.

I've not be involved with a serious 'from scratch' project in either of them, and haven't done anything with Unreal in the last while, but rather have jumped on board mid/late development with both of them several times. Unreal seemed to start off a few steps ahead and a little more polished if you were looking toward something more "FPS" like in design nature, while Unity seemed to have a toolset laid out for a broader and more general setup but left a little more legwork to bring it toward any specific interaction style.

I'm curious to see other's opinions on whether that is remotely relevant with how either engine stands today, or if it is just a weird bias leftover from old internal development notes.

I'm curious to see other's opinions on whether that is remotely relevant with how either engine stands today, or if it is just a weird bias leftover from old internal development notes.

That is mostly gone these days. While implementation details are different, both work the same on a feature-by-feature basis. They both provide different defaults, and as you mention the defaults tend to favor a gritty FPS feel on Unreal and tend to favor a playful/cartoonish feel on Unity, but they can handle the same if you replace default shaders and replace default controllers.

Regarding the comments up top about threading models, both are designed fundamentally so they only expose single threaded gameplay. However, there are no restrictions on incorporating your own asynchronous libraries or doing multithreaded processing if you choose. I've seen several games that add it quite effectively, using all the cores continuously to good effect. Neither engine does it for you out of the box because typically entering the realm of concurrent processing expands your bugs and code complexity by orders of magnitude. Multiprocessing introduces the potential for bugs that change by observation, values that change mid-read or mid-write, deadlocks and livelocks and other frustrating or nightmare-inducing scenarios. Nothing prevents developers from using concurrent processing and the tools and libraries are available to those who want them, but I think both engines took the right approach to keep the general users in the relatively safe land of a single visible thread.

I just asked this question to myself in the last days. I've been looking for a job in almsot every company in the world, and 80% of them are requiring C++ experience, which means UE in most of the cases.

I've been using Unity almost every day for the past two years and I must say that now that I know it, I wish I started the Unreal Engine before. Don't take me wrong, I love Unity and it has a lot of great qualities, but I feel like that it's still too heavy for AAA projects, and has some behaviors that just let you ask "Why". Unity is great if you are new to gamedev, if you are a non experienced programmer, if you are a one-man show, or if you are developing for mobile.

The unreal engine has a learning curve the resembles the cliffs of Moher, but once you get into it, you can do magic (and find a way better job, if you are looking to work in the industry).

For me as an professional 3D artist I can't understand how people can even make a full game with Unity.

On the surface Unity looks like a full engine, however once you get to the real implementation stage you find that the tools you have are half made and a lot of the basics is just missing. ironically this is what makes it a good engine for mobile games, it has a lot less extra's that won't be used.

The worst for me is Unity's Prefabs and how they don't even work with batching, even if Unity is a batch engine. Why even pretend that the editor is any thing more than a placement tool, when all the tools are broken and the prefabs work against the batch manager?

I understand why so many programmers like Unity, because it's still a old code based engine disguised as and toolset engine. Sorry for the rant Unity is just getting on my nerves, indie devs please stop using it, it's broken and your artist hates it. <_<

Unreal is the better engine, no doubt listing the differences would take ages, they key point about Unreal is that it's made so that all of the people on a team can use it. The blueprints allow everyone to fix small problems and if needed a programmer can write code to add blueprints for special needs.

True because of Unreal's fully functional, feature filled, easy to use tools; it's a bit on the bulky side. However it is possible to dump what you don't use before packing the game.

The down side to Unreal is that it didn't keep any of the old shaders and tools, this combined with it's behemoth size makes it impractical for mobile games.

Also the 2D engine in Unreal isn't great, there are many free 2D engines that exceed it and even Unity's half build 2D tools is better. For 3D games Unreal is the best engine. ^_^

About self made engines, first I admire your skill and dedication, these engines are often slick and elegant. Unfortunately they are hard to use, if the developer isn't around to show you all the quirks things get messy fast.

Second, it would be near impossible for a single developer or indie group to make a engine like Unreal, even a streamline one.

I would never discourage anyone from making there own engine, I find that developers who made a engine in some point in there life, are just better to work with. So you have my admiration, however I have made a small engine in the past and I will never be doing that again. :lol:

Another important factor to consider when looking at middleware solutions to a problem is what problem are you trying to solve?

Of course a rather annoying bit that throws a wrench into debating between the two is that it is kind of hard to truly get a good feel for either of them until you have spent time digging around in the guts of them. And I don't mean "I spent a weekend and poked around some demo code", but rather spending time digging down and working with one or the other for months. And the problem with that is: The other one will have changed since then while you're exploring the other.

There is still kind of an unfortunate bias against Unity because of its history of use in relatively low budget projects compared to the bigger names and larger budget games that Unreal has attracted. Larger studios have had the time and money to polish things to a greater degree in Unreal than much of what we get to see in Unity based projects.

I've not be involved with a serious 'from scratch' project in either of them, and haven't done anything with Unreal in the last while, but rather have jumped on board mid/late development with both of them several times. Unreal seemed to start off a few steps ahead and a little more polished if you were looking toward something more "FPS" like in design nature, while Unity seemed to have a toolset laid out for a broader and more general setup but left a little more legwork to bring it toward any specific interaction style.

I'm curious to see other's opinions on whether that is remotely relevant with how either engine stands today, or if it is just a weird bias leftover from old internal development notes.

It's kind of unfortunate that Unity got such a bad rep, cause it's not super different from Unreal imo. Why is it though that larger studios have stayed away from Unity as opposed to Unreal? I'm genuinely a bit curious about this (seeing as we are debating the two engines).

I don't really like either one.


Canned engines try to do too much, and typically suffer from premature generalization all over the place. The usual result is that you have to endure some serious voodoo if you want performance to not suck, and/or you have to contort your game to do things in the "one true way" so that the engine doesn't vomit all over itself.

In order to do something highly unique and "custom", you have to either mutate the engine (which is a nightmare if you ever want to get updates from the vendor!) or you have to compromise your design in some way.

I'm not an advocate of everyone writing their own engines, but for the kinds of games I like to work on, neither Unity nor Unreal is ever going to really cut it.


For rapid prototypes or relatively unambitious (technically speaking) titles, both are basically fine, and some people will find one flavor slightly preferable to the other based on any number of personal factors. I don't think there's objectively much point in trying to make a comparison in vacuum, because each individual's goals, experience, and preferences will weigh too heavily in the final decision.

Yea I don't know nearly enough about graphics to write my own rendering/game engine. Most of what I've actually studied/know is machine learning and systems programming/networking from my computer science career/studies so far. I'm more into the art side of game dev rather than the actual gaming side, so most of my game work is to showcase the art, hence why I really like engines like Unreal and Unity (though I am admittedly biased towards Unity since I learned it first and used it more).

Why is it though that larger studios have stayed away from Unity as opposed to Unreal? I'm genuinely a bit curious about this (seeing as we are debating the two engines).

Simple it can only reach 60% of Unreal's power out of the box. Also even if the differences between batching and instancing is considered small, once implemented instancing just outperforms batching in the long term. Especially because instancing works with a modular approach.