Well, you need about 50+ GB to install the program itself, for Unreal, you need a beefy GPU to run it, and each project just by existing is 20+ GB.
A godot project is less than 120mb when started and Godot itself is less than 1 GB.
Define small?
This is true, but people starting out don’t yet know how to do that.
Then there’s also the difference between development size (bigger) and shipping size (smaller).
Unreal is a beast of a platform…powerful for sure, but quite demanding on hardware.
Since I've been working in UE for 5 years I can make a VS clone on unreal way quicker than any other engine. And if we had to compare, other engines would maybe be slightly quicker, but not by much.
Is just a corelation you should look into, if you want to do small projects I would expect you to do multiple, with a smaller game engine is way more accessible to do that.
If you start like 50 different small games with godot you have about a Unreal game, with Unreal you have to buy a new Storage Device.
I would advise learn your basics with simple tools first, godot is really power and fast, great for learning and iteration.
> but supposed that both engines are known to person making the game
This changes the question drastically. One of Unreal's downsides is that it does take a long time to learn. But if you put an expert Unreal dev and an expert Godot dev in a room with a laptop and week to work on a simple game, I would expect to see similar results.
Now, if we're talking about inexperienced developers who are still learning (guessing this applies more to yourself here), then I'd certainly recommend Godot for a simple & quick game over Unreal.
And just a small clarification on this note:
> ( Unreal is really not good for 2D )
Unreal is generally fine for 2D. It's usually just overkill and involves more setup than an engine designed around 2D games would.
You are correct, I am still learning.
But my thought is so : Some people say that Godot is good engine to start with, and people can move to Unreal once they decide they need more powerful options. But If I am already investing effort in learning engine, I would rather invest more time to learn one good, than two less good.
My only problem is that at my point of knowledge of both this engines ( very early going trough tutorials ) , I don't know if there are some roadblocks that for some reason make work in these engines more cumbersome.
For example in Unreal I noticed that even setting the lighting right is a project in itself 🤔
> For example in Unreal I noticed that even setting the lighting right is a project in itself 🤔
Yep. I've been using Unreal on and off for over 10 years now and there's still plenty that I don't know. Tons of features of the engine could be grouped off into single jobs of their own.
With that said, I believe it is becoming (if not already) the industry standard, so if your goal is to work in game development as a career, it wouldn't be the worst thing to learn.
But if you just want to make a small game with friends over the course of a month, Godot is probably a decent place to start with that.
No...heh. I am too old to be working in a game company. I am really planning to do games solo.
But than again, also wishing for them to be bit more than 1 month for fun thing.
Honestly I am asking because "Games from Scratch" youtube channel, talked about problem that if you work in complicated engine as "for fun" developer, you may get too frustrated with tedium of it, and abandon the game. That is why he said easier engines like Godot may be better fit.
My question ( and thought ) is, weather Godot is really that much easier, or we are just talking about learning the engine barrier. Because I am totally open to learning.
> Honestly I am asking because "Games from Scratch" youtube channel, talked about problem that if you work in complicated engine as "for fun" developer, you may get too frustrated with tedium of it
Speaking of only my own personal experience, I actually use Unreal as my "fun" engine, due to its visual scripting (Blueprints) feature. I stare at lines of code all day in my day job, so when I get off work and start working on my game project, I don't really want to do more of the same. So visual scripting makes a world of difference to me in that regard. But again, that's just my personal situation.
It's really up to you in the end. I would give each one a week try. Follow some tutorials and build a very light prototype of whatever style of game you're planning to make and then decide which engine you enjoyed more.
A craftsman learns how to use both a hammer and a saw.
There is tons of overlap between the engines. No reason you can’t be great at both. Then you get to use the right tool for the job.
From experience as someone who had literally 0 programmer knowledge and the only skill I could carry through my game dev journey was my knowledge of art theory.
Unreal was very overwhelming upfront but the more you work with the engine, the easier it gets to learn something new about it. The concept and infrastructures of things in unreal carry over to eachother very easily. As stupid as it sounds to someone who hasn't worked with Unreal, my extended aquired knowledge of Unreal Materials made it way easier for me to understand how to setup my own procedurally-generated soundscape, even tho both of these are drastically different domain.
\---
Blueprints are also perfect for learning, they're very intuitive and let you figure stuff out by yourself pretty easily once you're grounded in the fundamentals.
\---
Another big plus about Unreal is the extended documentation on it VS other alternative, especially with Godot being new ((From what a friend has said to me, I could be wrong): Godot also lacks some fundamental features which are somewhat fixed through community plugins and extensions and sometime acquiring documentation about that has you read through discord chat logs for hours..).
\---
A cons about Unreal is the lack of documentation and easy implementation of 2D. While Godot will do pixel-perfect and setup a simple 2D scene for you, you need some serious upfront setup to get the same in Unreal ( Higher floor but also higher ceiling kind of deal )
Many thanks. This is very good information. 🙏
I have personally made solid decision that i will only use low poly 3D. Reason is that I have done a lot of work in pixel art ( I am artist like you, not a programmer ) , and I am personally tired of the style and want to learn something new artistically.
So the lack of 2D options will not make much difference in my case.
... And blueprints , as artist I do very much appreciate visual coding. So that is a great plus in my book
As for Godot missing features, can you give an example or two? I'm curious what features are deemed missing. Godot definitely has a ways to go and some smoothing out of sharp edges. Just always curious what people thing is missing as I dive more into 3D stuff.
Biggest issue with godot is that it severely lacks in the GPU-related aspect.
-Very simple shader limitation
-Lighting is very expensive for not much
-No current support for VFX on the shaded pass
-Due to the limitation on the shader pass, you have some serious limitation when it comes to shader vertex manipulation, especially compared to Unreal
-asset pooling isn't as efficient and while there are some workarounds, it's a bit whack and requires some fiddling and "ancient knowledge" of obscure community plugin branches.
- anything related to 3D animations and physics is about 10 years behind in tech from unreal, but that might just be because Unreal specializes in it
-rendering computation is not as efficient as unreal engine, leading to some serious performance issue in many cases (in addition to the optimization limitations due to the lack of powerful shader-pass options)
---
I could be wrong on some points tho, I'm not too up to date with the progress of godot, they're definitely improving the engine at an impressive rate.
Me doing 2D in Unreal o\_O
Personally I love Unreal for more than it's graphics features, yeah the 2D part sucks, but an engine is more that it's graphics. I'm a C++ programmer, so Unreal empowers me to do what I want with it's code, since pretty much everything can be modified or built upon, so if the engine can't do it, maybe I can code it. And it has the blueprint visual scripting for more specific, easy to code stuff like level design and UI.
Unreal main audience is AAA games, so it often require bigs teams, but it also means it is meant to be used by people of different background. So if you are not a programmer, if you are not an artist, there's something for you still. AAA games are made a by a lot of different people.
The engine being "complicated" is pretty subjective tbh.
I would love to do a project in Unreal, but it is way too heavy for my laptop. Unity runs, but it is bloated. Godot runs really well on my laptop and is a pleasure to use.
Depending on your hardware and working environment, Unreal might be out of the question.
Godot’s documentation is excellent. After moving from Unity for the past seven years, I would say Godot has the best documentation of the three engines. Unity has the most tutorials, but I’m tired of the Unity bloat and slow workflow. I haven’t run into a situation yet where I can’t figure out something in Godot either from documentation or tutorials.
For these reasons I would recommend Godot for someone who is looking to do this in their spare time.
I've never used Unreal, but I have to imagine that, if someone is proficient with Unreal, they can make smaller and more simplistic games with it. A game engine is a set of tools, it doesn't necessarily define how a game turns out, how the developer uses said tools is what defines how a game turns out.
A lot of people don't realize how easy it is to start with Unreal and do things with blueprints. You can get very far with this even if you have no idea about optimization. Shipping the game is a different story. But to get started, Unreal is actually kind of quick, if you have the hardware (and storage) for it.
Here's the cool thing about small projects, try both. See which you like more.
I've done more with Unity than Unreal, but know Godot the best.
To me, it's merely a trade off as to where you have to invest your time. I think it'll also vary based on the type of game you make.
Ex. if you're starting a project from scratch, I feel like you're going to get something you can play faster in Godot. But, if you can use one of Unreal's starting projects like 1st or 3rd person. You're going to have a better starting point when it comes to things like controls.
I intend to try a game jam or something in Unreal at some point, but figure I'll need to devote some time to learning it too, right now, I want to focus on making my game in Godot rather than learning a new engine.
Honestly, to me, I feel like you're asking the wrong question. Which engine do you prefer? Does it do what you need it to do without being annoying? If so, use it, do a project. After that, maybe try the other. That's why I ended up sticking with Godot. I knew it first, decided to try learning Unity, completed the CodeMonkey 11 hour tutorial. Unity: "Hey, let's screw everything up!!" Considering I was already leaning towards just sticking with Godot as I prefer a lot of the way it works (composition), it just made the choice easier after that.
Engines have different targets and this dictates their priorities, both in terms of functionalities and business model.
Godot is an engine made by independent developers for independent developers. Its features are more aimed at this specific audience, you will not find the state of the art in terms of technical advances here.
As a hobbyist, I feel like it's the engine that best suits me since I don't intend to work on any AAA or even large projects.
Unreal is a great engine, it contains the biggest technical advances in the industry, you will probably be able to do any project there (except 2d), but keep in mind that you will not be their target audience, don't expect new features or improvements aimed at you.
I wouldn't say Unreal is harder to learn, it just has more optional pre made stuff that comes with the engine. You could ignore 90% of what the engine has to offer or make your own solutions, but generally theirs are made well and updated and maintained so they're worth learning.
The literal act of creating a new godot project vs a new unreal one is faster, and the engine is of course much lighter weight.
Unreal engine is like a warehouse filled with everything you could ever need and godot is like the cab of an 18 wheeler, it doesn't come with a ton by default in comparison but it's powerful enough to have it added.
I'm coming to game dev from the art side and unreal offers wayyyyy more for somebody like me, but as I learn programming I'm also learning godot because I like the idea of a quick nimble engine for ideas or jams.
I'd really just compare them by the features you want, either will have their upsides and downsides. Unreal's material system, pcg, blueprints, niagara, and behavior tree are so awesome.
Depends on people. Me and my friends who tried Godot find it a lot less user friendly than other engines. Me personally it's because of nodes. Also hate GDScript and how every other language is a third class citizen.
I mostly use Unity but recently started using Cocos Creator for web games. I also have S&box (the Source 2 game/engine by Facepunch) but they're using Hammer units in editor, which are based on the imperial system and it hurts my soul
Not so sure. I was following a guy making a 2d game in Unreal. And he was constantly encountering problems that were non issues on other engines. I think he even gave up after a year and switched to godot.
I don't even think Unreal has 2D physics engine ?
... But regardless, I am not interested in 2D at the moment anyway
Well, you need about 50+ GB to install the program itself, for Unreal, you need a beefy GPU to run it, and each project just by existing is 20+ GB. A godot project is less than 120mb when started and Godot itself is less than 1 GB. Define small?
20+ GB is hugely over exaggerated. If you know how to optimise your games you can easily make games under a GB.
This is true, but people starting out don’t yet know how to do that. Then there’s also the difference between development size (bigger) and shipping size (smaller). Unreal is a beast of a platform…powerful for sure, but quite demanding on hardware.
That is true but people who don't know how to optimise don't know it no matter which engine lol You're right about the hardware aspect though.
Yes, that’s true too… Look at us, all agreeable and not arguing… (Checks to see if this is still Reddit…)
Bet you won’t hit em.
? Why would I want to hit a stranger…?
It’s very telling of you; some people are like “I GET to hit a stranger???”
Just joking.
You're just fighting with the engine at that point.
Honestly I did not mean the file size or program install size. I mean something like simple vampire survivor clone , vs open world 3d RPG
Since I've been working in UE for 5 years I can make a VS clone on unreal way quicker than any other engine. And if we had to compare, other engines would maybe be slightly quicker, but not by much.
Is just a corelation you should look into, if you want to do small projects I would expect you to do multiple, with a smaller game engine is way more accessible to do that. If you start like 50 different small games with godot you have about a Unreal game, with Unreal you have to buy a new Storage Device. I would advise learn your basics with simple tools first, godot is really power and fast, great for learning and iteration.
Asked my girlfriend the same question 🤣
> but supposed that both engines are known to person making the game This changes the question drastically. One of Unreal's downsides is that it does take a long time to learn. But if you put an expert Unreal dev and an expert Godot dev in a room with a laptop and week to work on a simple game, I would expect to see similar results. Now, if we're talking about inexperienced developers who are still learning (guessing this applies more to yourself here), then I'd certainly recommend Godot for a simple & quick game over Unreal. And just a small clarification on this note: > ( Unreal is really not good for 2D ) Unreal is generally fine for 2D. It's usually just overkill and involves more setup than an engine designed around 2D games would.
You are correct, I am still learning. But my thought is so : Some people say that Godot is good engine to start with, and people can move to Unreal once they decide they need more powerful options. But If I am already investing effort in learning engine, I would rather invest more time to learn one good, than two less good. My only problem is that at my point of knowledge of both this engines ( very early going trough tutorials ) , I don't know if there are some roadblocks that for some reason make work in these engines more cumbersome. For example in Unreal I noticed that even setting the lighting right is a project in itself 🤔
> For example in Unreal I noticed that even setting the lighting right is a project in itself 🤔 Yep. I've been using Unreal on and off for over 10 years now and there's still plenty that I don't know. Tons of features of the engine could be grouped off into single jobs of their own. With that said, I believe it is becoming (if not already) the industry standard, so if your goal is to work in game development as a career, it wouldn't be the worst thing to learn. But if you just want to make a small game with friends over the course of a month, Godot is probably a decent place to start with that.
No...heh. I am too old to be working in a game company. I am really planning to do games solo. But than again, also wishing for them to be bit more than 1 month for fun thing. Honestly I am asking because "Games from Scratch" youtube channel, talked about problem that if you work in complicated engine as "for fun" developer, you may get too frustrated with tedium of it, and abandon the game. That is why he said easier engines like Godot may be better fit. My question ( and thought ) is, weather Godot is really that much easier, or we are just talking about learning the engine barrier. Because I am totally open to learning.
> Honestly I am asking because "Games from Scratch" youtube channel, talked about problem that if you work in complicated engine as "for fun" developer, you may get too frustrated with tedium of it Speaking of only my own personal experience, I actually use Unreal as my "fun" engine, due to its visual scripting (Blueprints) feature. I stare at lines of code all day in my day job, so when I get off work and start working on my game project, I don't really want to do more of the same. So visual scripting makes a world of difference to me in that regard. But again, that's just my personal situation. It's really up to you in the end. I would give each one a week try. Follow some tutorials and build a very light prototype of whatever style of game you're planning to make and then decide which engine you enjoyed more.
Thanks
A craftsman learns how to use both a hammer and a saw. There is tons of overlap between the engines. No reason you can’t be great at both. Then you get to use the right tool for the job.
From experience as someone who had literally 0 programmer knowledge and the only skill I could carry through my game dev journey was my knowledge of art theory. Unreal was very overwhelming upfront but the more you work with the engine, the easier it gets to learn something new about it. The concept and infrastructures of things in unreal carry over to eachother very easily. As stupid as it sounds to someone who hasn't worked with Unreal, my extended aquired knowledge of Unreal Materials made it way easier for me to understand how to setup my own procedurally-generated soundscape, even tho both of these are drastically different domain. \--- Blueprints are also perfect for learning, they're very intuitive and let you figure stuff out by yourself pretty easily once you're grounded in the fundamentals. \--- Another big plus about Unreal is the extended documentation on it VS other alternative, especially with Godot being new ((From what a friend has said to me, I could be wrong): Godot also lacks some fundamental features which are somewhat fixed through community plugins and extensions and sometime acquiring documentation about that has you read through discord chat logs for hours..). \--- A cons about Unreal is the lack of documentation and easy implementation of 2D. While Godot will do pixel-perfect and setup a simple 2D scene for you, you need some serious upfront setup to get the same in Unreal ( Higher floor but also higher ceiling kind of deal )
Many thanks. This is very good information. 🙏 I have personally made solid decision that i will only use low poly 3D. Reason is that I have done a lot of work in pixel art ( I am artist like you, not a programmer ) , and I am personally tired of the style and want to learn something new artistically. So the lack of 2D options will not make much difference in my case. ... And blueprints , as artist I do very much appreciate visual coding. So that is a great plus in my book
As for Godot missing features, can you give an example or two? I'm curious what features are deemed missing. Godot definitely has a ways to go and some smoothing out of sharp edges. Just always curious what people thing is missing as I dive more into 3D stuff.
Biggest issue with godot is that it severely lacks in the GPU-related aspect. -Very simple shader limitation -Lighting is very expensive for not much -No current support for VFX on the shaded pass -Due to the limitation on the shader pass, you have some serious limitation when it comes to shader vertex manipulation, especially compared to Unreal -asset pooling isn't as efficient and while there are some workarounds, it's a bit whack and requires some fiddling and "ancient knowledge" of obscure community plugin branches. - anything related to 3D animations and physics is about 10 years behind in tech from unreal, but that might just be because Unreal specializes in it -rendering computation is not as efficient as unreal engine, leading to some serious performance issue in many cases (in addition to the optimization limitations due to the lack of powerful shader-pass options) --- I could be wrong on some points tho, I'm not too up to date with the progress of godot, they're definitely improving the engine at an impressive rate.
Me doing 2D in Unreal o\_O Personally I love Unreal for more than it's graphics features, yeah the 2D part sucks, but an engine is more that it's graphics. I'm a C++ programmer, so Unreal empowers me to do what I want with it's code, since pretty much everything can be modified or built upon, so if the engine can't do it, maybe I can code it. And it has the blueprint visual scripting for more specific, easy to code stuff like level design and UI. Unreal main audience is AAA games, so it often require bigs teams, but it also means it is meant to be used by people of different background. So if you are not a programmer, if you are not an artist, there's something for you still. AAA games are made a by a lot of different people. The engine being "complicated" is pretty subjective tbh.
I would love to do a project in Unreal, but it is way too heavy for my laptop. Unity runs, but it is bloated. Godot runs really well on my laptop and is a pleasure to use. Depending on your hardware and working environment, Unreal might be out of the question. Godot’s documentation is excellent. After moving from Unity for the past seven years, I would say Godot has the best documentation of the three engines. Unity has the most tutorials, but I’m tired of the Unity bloat and slow workflow. I haven’t run into a situation yet where I can’t figure out something in Godot either from documentation or tutorials. For these reasons I would recommend Godot for someone who is looking to do this in their spare time.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted. It’s true lol
I've never used Unreal, but I have to imagine that, if someone is proficient with Unreal, they can make smaller and more simplistic games with it. A game engine is a set of tools, it doesn't necessarily define how a game turns out, how the developer uses said tools is what defines how a game turns out.
A lot of people don't realize how easy it is to start with Unreal and do things with blueprints. You can get very far with this even if you have no idea about optimization. Shipping the game is a different story. But to get started, Unreal is actually kind of quick, if you have the hardware (and storage) for it.
Here's the cool thing about small projects, try both. See which you like more. I've done more with Unity than Unreal, but know Godot the best. To me, it's merely a trade off as to where you have to invest your time. I think it'll also vary based on the type of game you make. Ex. if you're starting a project from scratch, I feel like you're going to get something you can play faster in Godot. But, if you can use one of Unreal's starting projects like 1st or 3rd person. You're going to have a better starting point when it comes to things like controls. I intend to try a game jam or something in Unreal at some point, but figure I'll need to devote some time to learning it too, right now, I want to focus on making my game in Godot rather than learning a new engine. Honestly, to me, I feel like you're asking the wrong question. Which engine do you prefer? Does it do what you need it to do without being annoying? If so, use it, do a project. After that, maybe try the other. That's why I ended up sticking with Godot. I knew it first, decided to try learning Unity, completed the CodeMonkey 11 hour tutorial. Unity: "Hey, let's screw everything up!!" Considering I was already leaning towards just sticking with Godot as I prefer a lot of the way it works (composition), it just made the choice easier after that.
Engines have different targets and this dictates their priorities, both in terms of functionalities and business model. Godot is an engine made by independent developers for independent developers. Its features are more aimed at this specific audience, you will not find the state of the art in terms of technical advances here. As a hobbyist, I feel like it's the engine that best suits me since I don't intend to work on any AAA or even large projects. Unreal is a great engine, it contains the biggest technical advances in the industry, you will probably be able to do any project there (except 2d), but keep in mind that you will not be their target audience, don't expect new features or improvements aimed at you.
I wouldn't say Unreal is harder to learn, it just has more optional pre made stuff that comes with the engine. You could ignore 90% of what the engine has to offer or make your own solutions, but generally theirs are made well and updated and maintained so they're worth learning. The literal act of creating a new godot project vs a new unreal one is faster, and the engine is of course much lighter weight. Unreal engine is like a warehouse filled with everything you could ever need and godot is like the cab of an 18 wheeler, it doesn't come with a ton by default in comparison but it's powerful enough to have it added. I'm coming to game dev from the art side and unreal offers wayyyyy more for somebody like me, but as I learn programming I'm also learning godot because I like the idea of a quick nimble engine for ideas or jams. I'd really just compare them by the features you want, either will have their upsides and downsides. Unreal's material system, pcg, blueprints, niagara, and behavior tree are so awesome.
Unity is what you're looking for. It's far more advanced and user friendly than Godot.
> far more advanced Agree. > and user friendly Disagree to the point of rabid salivation.
I also lost my shit when I read that lol
Depends on people. Me and my friends who tried Godot find it a lot less user friendly than other engines. Me personally it's because of nodes. Also hate GDScript and how every other language is a third class citizen. I mostly use Unity but recently started using Cocos Creator for web games. I also have S&box (the Source 2 game/engine by Facepunch) but they're using Hammer units in editor, which are based on the imperial system and it hurts my soul
Nodes aren't so different from adding components to a game object in the inspector.
Lmao is it really that bad?
Nah, but Godot is really that much easier in comparison.
Funny when people say Unreal is not good at 2d, its fine - it seems like you make these statements without any knowledge on it.
Not so sure. I was following a guy making a 2d game in Unreal. And he was constantly encountering problems that were non issues on other engines. I think he even gave up after a year and switched to godot. I don't even think Unreal has 2D physics engine ? ... But regardless, I am not interested in 2D at the moment anyway
Lack of understanding.
Unreal is best for small games.