Unity and unreal are the most common engines for game development in the market. As a game developer, making a decision regarding which engine to use is critical in the success of your project. The ideal engine varies depending on your needs and the nature of your project. Here is a quick comparison between the two engines.
Unity
Unity was founded in 2004 by Apple, with the main objective of increasing the accessibility of game development. Since its launch, unity has spread and penetrated the game development market to become a leading engine for android development. As a service provider, Apple ensured that unity has all the tools that a developer needs. Some of the notable games designed using unity engine include:
- Inside
- Kerbal space program
- Firewatch
- Subnautica
- Hollow knight
- Arizona sunshine
- Cuphead
Pros of unity in game development
Some features that make unity outstanding in game development include:
- Unity has excellent capabilities in cross-platform development. Thus, as a developer, you can use a single script for developing various games.
- Unity has great technical support. The assets store has a huge community of users who can give feedback, ideas and mentorship while developing your game.
- Unity has a great visual platform which can increase your app’s application and usage.
- Unity is exceptionally simple to use compared to most available engines.
Unreal
The unreal search was introduced in 1998 by epic games as an ideal platform for game development. Unreal was first developed mainly as a first-person shooters platform, but today it has penetrated the market to become the leading and award-winning engine in android game development. The codes in unreal are written in C+++, thus making it highly user-friendly.
Pros of unreal in game development
- Unreal has unique characteristics for different graphic varieties, hence making unreal the ideal search for the development of triple-A class games.
- The tools in unreal are highly user-friendly, making it easy for anyone, even those who are not tech-savvy to use unreal.
- The unreal search has more tools compared to other platforms. This makes unreal more efficient and faster compared to other platforms.
- Unreal comes with a visual debugging, making it easy to manage the expansion process and the quality of the time spent on creating a game.
Some of the best games created using unreal search include:
- Unreal tournament
- Odyssey to the west
- Bonderlands 2
- Spec Ops; The line
- Gear of war
- Batman
- XCOM; Enemy unknown
- Bioshock
Comparison between unity and unreal in game development
Performance
In terms of performance, unreal takes the day. Unreal is more powerful in terms of delivering the best graphical performance. This is because unreal uses C++ as the major programming language. C++ gives developers more control over the quality, sound, graphics, and visuals in game development. Hence a developer can create powerful triple AAA titles. The unity which uses a lower level language C is limited in terms of flexibility. Note that games created using unreal are more complex and require higher systems to run.
Ease of use
Unity is the simplest search to use in game development. As a developer, all you have to do is to pick, drag and drop assets in the screen to create the script. This process is simple and straightforward, even for someone with limited IT knowledge. Further, learning unity is simple to learn. A developer can use blueprints and graphs which are simple to use, to add complex behaviour.
Community
The community is a great resource for developers to get ideas, mentorship and resources needed to complete their projects. In terms of community, both unreal and unity have a huge community of assets, but unity has more assets than unreal. Further, unity has a larger asset store compared to unreal. Thus you can save time and money needed to get animations, special effects and sprites. Thus, instead of developing these assets from scratch, a developer can easily get them from the store.
Flexibility
Unity is the ideal engine in terms of flexibility. It is mainly applicable to the creation of mobile-first experiences since it can support a big number of consoles. Further, unity has great mobile support.
While it can be complex, unreal has its advantages in terms of flexibility. Since it is an open-source platform, a specialised developer can make changes to the platform. Hence you can influence the way the game operates. This can lead to improved performance.
Which engine should you choose?
The choice of the best engine for android game development depends on your needs as a developer. Some of the questions which you must ask include:
- What is the device that your project is aiming? If you want to create a low-powered device, then unity is the ideal search for you.
- What is the team size? Unreal is ideal for you if you have a large team of specialised developers. However, if your team is composed of newbies, then unity is the ideal search?
- What is your desired visual level? If you desire high quality visual, then choose unreal.
- Whether you are a developer of a visual artist, if you are a developer, use unreal but if you are a visual artist choose unity.
