A switch to Unreal Engine.

Discussion in 'Fire Lotus Tavern' started by Lathiari, May 18, 2020.

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  1. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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  2. Burzmali

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    Maybe, while working with the prior iteration I ran into so many bizarre "why would it work that way" issues that folks assured me are fixed in 4.0, that is it either a massive improvement or at least their fans believe it is.
     
  3. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    Similar negative criticisms were made about Blender but here we are.
     
  4. Burzmali

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    It's less design decision and more implementation that I ran across. Things like not being able to change the order of tiles in a tileset without recreating the order of tiles and tool tooltips anchoring to the absolute location of the mouse in the scene and not the relative position.
     
  5. Barugon

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    You should give Godot 4 a try. The tileset editor was completely rewritten. From what I understand, it was also backported to 3.5.
     
  6. FBohler

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    Let's rename this thread to Unity 2021 when.
     
  7. Seggallion

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    This is a massive oversimplification but let's say you want to draw a 2D circle on the screen. Unity uses C# and Unreal uses C++. In Unity, you might have a method like this:

    void DrawCircle(int steps, float radius)
    {
    circleRenderer.positionCount = steps;​

    for(int currentStep=0; currentStep<steps; currentStep++)
    {
    float circumferenceProgress = (float)currentStep/(steps-1);
    float currentRadian = circumferenceProgress * 2 * Mathf.PI;
    float xScaled = Mathf.Cos(currentRadian);
    float yScaled = Mathf.Sin(currentRadian);
    float x = radius * xScaled;
    float y = radius * yScaled;
    float z = 0;​

    Vector3 currentPosition = new Vector3(x,y,z);
    circleRenderer.SetPosition(currentStep,currentPosition);
    }​
    }

    In Unreal, you would create the method like this:

    void DrawCircle
    (
    class FPrimitiveDrawInterface * PDI,
    const FVector & Base,
    const FVector & X,
    const FVector & Y,
    const FLinearColor & Color,
    float Radius,
    int32 NumSides,
    uint8 DepthPriority,
    float Thickness,
    float DepthBias,
    bool bScreenSpace
    )

    You can see a lot of similarities such as setting the radius, defining where the circle is on the screen, setting the color, etc. They do the same things, in different ways. You might have to change hundreds or thousands of instances of circles. But imagine most things being coded differently such as the canvas/scene, camera implementation, loading models, player input, saving states, networking, etc. And then you have the custom-made systems such as skills, crafting, housing, etc. The 2 years seems awfully short, but I am guess the $6 million would include support from Epic to help do the conversion. There usually are some conversion tools that can help you convert parts of the code. But as with Google translate, there would be lots of little things that would need to be corrected. ​
     
  8. Tahru

    Tahru Avatar

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    It is wonderful to see people so passionate in seeing this game grow. My personal opinion is that if it is growth is the goal, the question should be how to get the most value out of the dollar spent in achieving growth. I completely agree that Unreal is a better platform, but will the cost of migration lead to feature and quality of life improvements worth the cost of it? Or are there other ways to grow the player base that can be done both more frugally and effectively?
     
  9. Burzmali

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    Essentially, if a new engine would mean telekinetic enemies and slide show party combat were solved issues, the game might be actually be considered by the wider MMORPG audience.
     
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  10. Ravalox

    Ravalox Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    Migrating the game to another engine (any other engine) would be impractical and note feasible to finance. This was actually discussed (briefly) when Catnip took the game over, but it was quickly determined that it would not be possible.

    This thread is 2 years old and has been necroed a number of times. The definitive answer is that SotA will remain on Unity and will maintain our IDE environment within the supported version of Unity going forward. Updates on the Migration to Unity 2021 should be forthcoming with R112 during the stream.
    (Please note that it is our plan going forward to have a continuous IDE update/upgrade schedule once we are live on Unity 2021. At this time, my plan is to keep us within the LTS range of versions. Updating the game to the Bleeding Edge GA version of Unity should not be required, unless there is a significant suite of fixes in the engine, and even still I would prefer to see our target Unity version soaked in the wild for at least six months before we consider putting it on QA.)

    With that said, the OP question has been answered, and I am closing the thread. (please look for our updates on this topic as I noted here. There is no need to speculation on this as we have made it clear what our intentions are)

    Thanks!
     
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