i download unreal 5. confusing mess of a gui. cannot figure out how to do something simple. so i download unreal 4

honestly the gui of unreal 4 is amazing, unreal 5 feels like a downgrade (hmm, i wonder… this seems similar to another certain game dev program that i use…)

anyway, even though unreal 4's gui is awesome, i couldn't figure out how to just get a simplistic physics object to move upon keypress. I read some tutorials and no help. Someone posted a video showing how to do it, but the video was taken down.

I started off excited for game dev and now i feel sick to my stomach.

GM is like a retarded version of Unreal and Unreal is like a retarded version of GM, both are fails imo.

basically, in Unreal you have to do a gazillion things to get an object to recognize a keypress, and they dont give you a nice little notification that of this stuff is needed. How hard would it be to put a message that says “hey, btw this keypress node isn't going to do anything, because of such and such, etc.” its like they handhold me in tutorial mode every step of the way except for the most important bits.

btw the keypress function in gm “just works” spanning an unlimited amount of objects/classes

tl dr: unreal tries to have a simplistic GM-ish interface but theres actually a gazillion hidden settings and buttons you need to apply for anything to function

watch this video (i only watched ⅔ so far) and read the comments for hilarity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEV6VBkJDxo

i already tried godot, next one i will try is unity.

anyway why do games suck?

game devs stick with garbage software and pretend that this is somehow status quo optimal game dev. so nothing changes, most devs have no clue what they are doing with the software but eventually a turd is expelled from their constipated butts after much work and effort. and they are so proud of the turds they pooped out, that they expect everyone else to grind with the same garbage software as everyone else.

tl dr: too much energy spent on fighting with the software, less energy spent on creativity and actually building. too many headupasses that demand churning out and fiddling with buggy or uninutitive software.

Congrats for figuring out gamedev is hard.

Disappointed about seeing you still call anything garbage, just because you don't know how to use it.

But i'm optimistic towards Unity. It became successful because it's easy to use, i've heard.

You really need to gain some perspective. Your comments in this thread and others show immaturity and inability to apply yourself to tasks beyond the trivial. I'd guess you are less than 18 years old. If you are in that age range it's OK, you will grow out of it, but if not then some self-reflection is in order if you want people to take you seriously.

The core difficulty with software of all types is managing the complexity of the system as it grows. Generally as software adds more capabilities, it becomes more and more difficult to expose all those features in a way that is intuitive. Compare a water wheel to a nuclear reactor. Both can generate power to do work. One is simple and easy to understand, but has limited ability, yet the other is far more difficult to run but can power many more things. The nuclear reactor has some irreducible complexity that prevents it from being used by a novice. Unreal, Unity, and other AAA game engines are nuclear reactors, GM is the water wheel. You cannot realistically expect a complex tool like Unreal to have the same ease of use of a simple tool. This is the tradeoff - Unreal provides much greater power and ability than GM, yet requires some expertise to use effectively.

You also need to understand the scale and complexity of modern AAA game engines. They rival operating systems in terms of features and complexity, and are developed by hundreds/thousands of people over decades of time. An expert-level individual developer could spend their entire life writing an engine and not even approach the capabilities that Unreal or Unity has out of the box. The “garbage” software you speak of powers the vast majority of games made in the last 10 years. If it was so bad to use these engines, surely the legions of developers would use something else if it existed and made sense from a business perspective (it doesn't).

That's not to say those engines don't have problems, they definitely do. I personally write my own engine (for 17 years now), but this is a Sisyphean task, and not something you should attempt if you are trying to make games.

So, you are stuck with the existing options and complaining here won't do any good. The best you can do is to suck it up and learn how to use the imperfect tools that are available. At least you have free engines now. Back in the 2000-2010 era, game engines cost big money to use and you would be stuck writing your own.

@Aressera What's that? Is that a “Thanks for being the only game dev to tell it like it is, thankyou for your courage and bravery to share the problems about the game industry! When everyone puts their head in their ass, you are the only one who stands up and say how they feel! I admire your authenticty!”

"Oh you are certainly most welcome, feels so good to be thanked and appreciated."

I'd guess you are less than 18 years old. If you are in that age range it's OK, you will grow out of it, but if not then some self-reflection is in order if you want people to take you seriously.

Guess again

An alternative is I could be old and having less patience waiting for the industry (and society) to get its act together

The core difficulty with software of all types is managing the complexity of the system as it grows. Generally as software adds more capabilities, it becomes more and more difficult to expose all those features in a way that is intuitive. Compare a water wheel to a nuclear reactor. Both can generate power to do work. One is simple and easy to understand, but has limited ability, yet the other is far more difficult to run but can power many more things. The nuclear reactor has some irreducible complexity that prevents it from being used by a novice. Unreal, Unity, and other AAA game engines are nuclear reactors, GM is the water wheel. You cannot realistically expect a complex tool like Unreal to have the same ease of use of a simple tool. This is the tradeoff - Unreal provides much greater power and ability than GM, yet requires some expertise to use effectively.

That's their problem to solve, unfortunately their lack of expertise in the matter seems to be now the burden of indie devs. Unreal is really an engine

Look, its like this

In GM you can have 10,000 objects all listening for keypress events with no lag

Unreal needs to get it right.

Maybe they can make an “unreal n00b version" for indies lacking AAA features they don't need.

The opinion is that Unreal devs are the highest iq devs on the planet so it shouldn't be too difficult for them to do

I want no more excuses why Unreal has it inferior to GM

You also need to understand the scale and complexity of modern AAA game engines. They rival operating systems in terms of features and complexity, and are developed by hundreds/thousands of people over decades of time. An expert-level individual developer could spend their entire life writing an engine and not even approach the capabilities that Unreal or Unity has out of the box. The “garbage” software you speak of powers the vast majority of games made in the last 10 years. If it was so bad to use these engines, surely the legions of developers would use something else if it existed and made sense from a business perspective (it doesn't).

I do. Unreal is really an engine meant for AAA companies to throw money at their devs until they get it to work “just barely enough”. Rogue Company for example has 1000 bugs and more but shipped anyway.

That's not to say those engines don't have problems, they definitely do. I personally write my own engine (for 17 years now), but this is a Sisyphean task, and not something you should attempt if you are trying to make games.

yes that is true

So, you are stuck with the existing options and complaining here won't do any good. The best you can do is to suck it up and learn how to use the imperfect tools that are available. At least you have free engines now. Back in the 2000-2010 era, game engines cost big money to use and you would be stuck writing your own.

someone has to complain for things to improve. the longer people wait to complain the more years its gonna take for devs to improve their engines

ReignOnU said:
someone has to complain for things to improve. the longer people wait to complain the more years its gonna take for devs to improve their engines

They weren't designed for you.

Unreal has thousands of levers and knobs because massive game studios developing multi-million dollar projects need all those levers and knobs, then go on to make even more.

If you can't be bothered with something made for the real world, go get something simpler. Maybe go look at GameMaker:Studio, PyGame, Phaser, Cocos2D, Construct, or the hundreds of other systems designed with less options and fewer choices, but easier for beginners and non-game-developers.

Agreeing with the others, quit whining and grow up. Hopefully it genuinely is because you're young and immature, in which case, just stop whining and pay attention to how the world actually is, instead of what you imagine it ought to be. Dream all you want, be creative all you want, but quit whining about it.

frob said:
Unreal has thousands of levers and knobs because massive game studios developing multi-million dollar projects need all those levers and knobs, then go on to make even more.

Besides, Unreal is very well suited for Indies and Hobbiest, still.

Many projects we made while on University were made in Unreal, despite us not being explicitely thaught in it - all of which were completed, in the span of months/less than a year.

In the small indie-company I work at, we also use Unreal for certain types of projects. We primarily use Unity, but once you know Unreal it's no harder to use it eigther - I'm personally always fighting to get more projects done with Unreal, as I enjoy it more.

So it's not like you need to be a genius, or work for a big studio to use Unreal. But if you can't be bothered to learn it, and just expect to open it up and get things working in a few minutes… tough.

It's very easy to load up unreal engine and be overwhelmed by what you find. Even with years of experience, I still can feel like this. It is how you overcome these hurdles and develop yourself as a person, professionally and personally that matters.

Remember, Unreal Engine is designed for use by larger teams. Each section of Unreal Engine is designed so that it feels “right” for people experienced in that field. The C++ parts for example feel comfortable to anyone experienced in C++ (their butchering of the standards notwithstanding). The sections for animation feel a lot like cut-down animation parts of dedicated animation/3D modeling programs. In short, if a section of unreal engine doesnt feel familiar and right to you, it's probably because its not tailored towards your field. You arent expected to know everything, and solve every problem, and produce every part of the game if youre using Unreal Engine.

Alternatively, last time I touched unity, it was designed with the idea of a very small team of mostly-programmers in mind. Everything was done by editing C#, defining classes, and a bit of data. Admittedly, this may have changed, as I havent touched unity for about 5 years, but, the point remains; different engines are designed for different use cases with different team sizes and development practices in mind. Learn what you can of Unreal, it would help you if you ever wanted to move into working as part of a much larger team.

I have another theory why modern games suck. It is not just because of corporations and clueless devs, something more interesting. my theory is more like a physical fact of nature, for example, in another dimension with better devs it would still apply there.

For example… graphics are getting better and better. This means its closer and closer to uncanny valley. So they can't just put empty rooms in games anymore, because it looks strange and people notice the uncanny valley. So they have to put clutter everywhere to distract you from the empty room. And clutter makes the game feel lower quality.

Besides that, it changes the game design also, because of the clutter everywhere they can't have games where you actually have to explore, finding landmarks switches and knobs. Now everything needs a 3d to 2d waypoint on the hud and glowing outlines around everything. They have no choice but to do this, because of the next-gen gfx making everything harder to navigate.

Another example: Classic racing games did not take the gfx seriously, in arcade games ur car just started magically flashing when spawning. Nowadays car games the gfx are supposed to be realistic, but then has obvious magical flashing in it, contradicting the graphics design. So then they change it to nanotechnology, which is shader expensive and also not immersive either. Mario kart 64 used a trick where Lakitu ignored the zbuffer so he could just spawn you into caves. And because it was lowpoly, people didn't notice or care that the zbuffer was ignored. But in realistic games they have to use the nanotechnology effect, they have no choice in the matter, because they cannot use a helicopter to spawn you in a cave. And Mario Kart 8 does it better than its contemporaries, but Mario Kart 8's lakitu effect doesn't seem as good as the Mario Kart 64 one.

Besides, Unreal is very well suited for Indies and Hobbiest, still.

Many projects we made while on University were made in Unreal, despite us not being explicitely thaught in it - all of which were completed, in the span of months/less than a year.

In the small indie-company I work at, we also use Unreal for certain types of projects. We primarily use Unity, but once you know Unreal it's no harder to use it eigther - I'm personally always fighting to get more projects done with Unreal, as I enjoy it more.

So it's not like you need to be a genius, or work for a big studio to use Unreal. But if you can't be bothered to learn it, and just expect to open it up and get things working in a few minutes… tough.

May I have a link to those games? I can give you a review in a PM

It's very easy to load up unreal engine and be overwhelmed by what you find. Even with years of experience, I still can feel like this. It is how you overcome these hurdles and develop yourself as a person, professionally and personally that matters.

Remember, Unreal Engine is designed for use by larger teams. Each section of Unreal Engine is designed so that it feels “right” for people experienced in that field. The C++ parts for example feel comfortable to anyone experienced in C++ (their butchering of the standards notwithstanding). The sections for animation feel a lot like cut-down animation parts of dedicated animation/3D modeling programs. In short, if a section of unreal engine doesnt feel familiar and right to you, it's probably because its not tailored towards your field. You arent expected to know everything, and solve every problem, and produce every part of the game if youre using Unreal Engine.

i am a solo dev

Alternatively, last time I touched unity, it was designed with the idea of a very small team of mostly-programmers in mind. Everything was done by editing C#, defining classes, and a bit of data. Admittedly, this may have changed, as I havent touched unity for about 5 years, but, the point remains; different engines are designed for different use cases with different team sizes and development practices in mind. Learn what you can of Unreal, it would help you if you ever wanted to move into working as part of a much larger team.

unity is good. it has a lot of flaws but its better than anything else.

unity #1 game engine for indie 3d. game maker #2 game engine, but it is good only for simplistic 2d. i dont know what the number #3 game engine is but its not unreal. I give unreal 4 an honorable mention because i like the gui but i dislike how blueprints will fail because of esoteric hidden buttons and settings. i do not have a fair review yet for godot, but my initial impression is that it sucks. will have to give it another go though to get a fair review of it

Another example: Classic racing games did not take the gfx seriously, in arcade games ur car just started magically flashing when spawning.

Your account is looking more and more like a troll account.

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

ReignOnU said:
For example… graphics are getting better and better. This means its closer and closer to uncanny valley. So they can't just put empty rooms in games anymore, because it looks strange and people notice the uncanny valley. So they have to put clutter everywhere to distract you from the empty room. And clutter makes the game feel lower quality.

I'll give you some backing for the trolling…

I think the observation is in parts correct. But do not use it to self confirm that ‘low detail is enough, so i'm good to compete AAA as a single dev’. Because they can fix their flaws in any moment if they want to.

Here's the good example, a painting:

A masterpiece. If that's not a landmark then idk.
But it has detail. Nanite rocks with insane detail if we zoom in. Reflections. Foliage. It's all there.
Notice: The smaller the scale of the detail, the lower it's contrast. It's all about subtlety.
I can scale the image down to a post stamp and still see what it is.

The bad example:

This is actually a really good looking game (if i can ignore the silly hairstyles for a moment).
It's lots of details variety in both shapes and color. Saturated artstyle, but still an realistic impression.
However - the small scale details dominate and are not subtle. Millions of leafs amplified by AO contrast, little rocks everywhere, braid hair where i can see every knot, etc. If i scale the image down, it becomes worse and i can't see anything.
I agree with calling this clutter. That's what it is. High contrast in high frequencies is still the major art mistake of the video game industry.

But: The issue was much worse in the 2000s than it is now. They're improving overall. Most games get it right already i would say.

The solution is not to go back to low poly Quake levels (which looked just dull), but to distribute contrast wisely. High contrast in low frequencies, low contrast in high frequencies. It really is that simple, and games move in the right direction.
It's possible to achieve the clarity of Quake levels with modern detail. Just make the detail ‘subtle’ instead 'impressive'. And that's what they'll do as soon as the high detail is no longer a ‘next gen feature to show off’, but the norm.

ReignOnU said:
Now everything needs a 3d to 2d waypoint on the hud and glowing outlines around everything.

Yeah, that's a problem.
I think it's actually caused a lot from technical limitation. Games are large but storage and memory is limited, so we compose using instances of modular building blocks. This means, to compose a landscape from awesome Nanite rocks, the rocks have to look all the same. Otherwise we could not compose at all. They have to be compatible with each other to enable composition, having matching colors and materials.
The only modeling primitive we currently have that is unique everywhere across a world is heightmaps, which are restricted to a deformed plane and thus can't show much. They can't do landmarks.
As a result from those limits, one place looks like the other, so waypoints help with orientation.

Personally i work on this problem, but unique detail for large games is quite a crazy idea.
So far the only attempt was Rage, but the technology was discontinued and thus a failure.

About the glowing outlines, well that's the modern replacement for your flashing Super Mario cart car.
I don't want either. I hate those glowing outlines so much it's often a reason to ignore a game. Currently, Dragons Dogma 2 for example. Looks bad to me. Dull scene with flashing outlines everywhere.

Ofc., the better way should be to have the player so involved he does not need those visual hints. He should be motivated and patient enough to find interactive items without highlights. And to give feedback of hitting an enemy, i'd rather like to see his pain instead a flash over his 3D model.
But that's what everybody thinks for sure. It's just easier said then done.