Hi all. I've recently been playing with Unreal 4. I thought I'd share my thoughts on this in comparison with GG.

Unreal first. It's a little unfair in one regard, I've been using GG for years and Unreal for days so I am very, very green with it in comparison.

Pro's

Unreal is way faster. No surprise there. I have yet to actually find a performance limit :0 Everything I have tried has run smooth as butter.

Unreal supports many different game types out of the box. I've literally only played with it for 3 days and have a fairly playable driving game running with a spline based track. I've always wanted to make a driving game and I found this awesome! I've found no other language or tool that has allowed me to do this in all my years of game making and that's a lot!

Testing. Unreal is really fast at this. Click test and often you are in instantly, no reloading the level you see, it's already loaded.

Graphics. Unreal has some seriously wicked visuals. GG isn't even close in this regard. The Mobile demo (for phones) is better than any GG demo or game I have ever seen, and it can run on a phone apparently!


You can add basic geometry and simply drag a material onto it. This is very, very useful. Especially as there is little to no actual meshes by default.

Con's

Unreal's coding is awful. The blueprints system does not compute for me. It looks like Blenders node editor for materials (which is confusing as well, but Unreal trumps it easily). I am too used to old fashioned coding. I can't comment on the C++ side, it may well suit me a lot better.

Unreal has gigantic file sizes. You want to load a few free media packs, prepare for insane download times and also insane setup times!

Building lighting and such takes a long time. You can continue while it's working which is great, but if you do, then the build will likely be invalid anyway and you will have to rebuild it afterwards regardless. This is fairly minor in all fairness to Unreal.

Generally slow at loading up and getting started. If you think GG is bad, try Unreal. You will be amazed at the time it can take to get started.

Unreal is a bit of a nightmare (it seems to me) with adding media. You can add custom stuff obviously, but the included media is very wasteful in this regard. I have to add entire media packages to a project in order to use even one object from it. This may be just me, I am new to it of course. I find this nasty as the media packs take up a lot of HDD space and i am fairly limited in this regard. Having to copy entire media packs for each project takes it's toll on space needed.

If you ever manage to make a game to sell it's going to cost 10% of your profits, or something like that I haven't really looked into it massively.

Game Guru

Pro's

Easy to use. Obviously.

Less demanding on HDD space. All your media is there, any projects you create can make use of it. You only need duplicates with a standalone.

Easy to add media. I find GG a lot easier to add media in general. Unreal seems overly complex in this area.

GG has default NPC's. Add them and they work, albeit with ropey AI, but they work with no effort on your part. Unreal has no such luxury without buying off the store and as I have never done that, I could be completely wrong. You may STILL need to code your own.

GG has loads of default media included. Unreal does not. You can download free stuff, but as said above it is nowhere near as easy as GG and can take many hours to get AND install.

Scripting is fairly straightforward. Again I have used GG for years, so I am at an advantage. However, Unreal's blueprint system to me, looks like something I will never get into. Ever. Dragging nodes in for variables and such is just not programming for me. I hate it.

If you make a game you have no fee's to pay. It's also far more likely you will actually get to finish a game in GG than Unreal due to it's complexity.

Con's

Speed. GG is slow. I can cripple it in seconds. I haven't managed that in Unreal at all. That being said, I haven't really tried as such. I just see it running smooth as silk no matter what I have tried so far.

Buggy. GG is a little buggy on occasion. Unreal is too, I have crashed it, but overall, it has had less issues than I get using GG for similar amounts of time.

Memory. GG is limited to being a 32bit app and therefore 4 gig max memory limit. I'm pretty sure Unreal has no such issues.

Graphics are nowhere close as said above. A default Unreal terrain looks pretty nice, a GG one looks like a tiled carpet in comparison. Pretty sure unreal has lots of filtering effects as well, which GG doesn't.


So, there you have it. As unbiased as I can be considering I have been using GG a long time. Unreal is surely powerful and looks awesome overall. It has some great features and I can see why it is so well loved by professionals. Game Guru is not as impressive, but is way easier to use. You get a LOT of media by default to get you going and you don't have to search for hours on the store as you do in Unreal.

For the majority of people, Game Guru is the clear winner for the fact you are much more likely to finish a game than in Unreal. Unreal wins in the sense it is way more powerful, but I can't see many GG users jumping ship any time soon. It is just too complicated. Anyone who does, will probably be back to GG quite quickly. I was impressed with it and will dabble every now and then to see if I can get into the coding side more. For now though, I will carry on using GG as my main dev platform, I just find most things easier in it. The race game I made though, that, will keep me looking. I was really impressed with it, curving, windy tracks, fantastic! A shame the coding is like Chinese! The physics can be a little crazy as well, when it goes wrong it sends the car spinning like a crazy thing!

I hope this gives you an idea of the differences between the two engines. I'm impressed with what I have achieved with Unreal in a few days, but getting an actual game made is a different story and would require a LOT of time and work. Game Guru in comparison is a complete doddle and far easier to understand. I've possibly missed pro's and cons for both, but you get the general gist I imagine!

I have also had a look at UnReal 4 and yes it has things in it that are better than GG (at the moment), but I beleive that the UnReal engine started in 1998 and has been developing its gaming software ever since.

GameGuru has only been around for a few years and has already got pretty good. I would love to see how good it will be in 18 years time.

All though there is nothing wrong with comparing the Unreal gaming engine with the GameGuru gaming engine, it is a bit like comparing a 5 year old with an 18 year old and expecting them both to have the same level of expertise in the world.

I also think that GameGuru has come along in the very few years that it has been around.

premise... I love Gameguru, i was a gold pledger and loved fpsc x9 too but in these last months i left a bit from it since I'm using and create gaming with unity5 since GG has too many limitations ( water and fluids, npc, AI, ect) right now,
Used UE4 and in the past and sincerly I think UE4 and GG could not be compared at all

is like comparing the gold with the stone...

no offense , like as i previuosly said i love GG , Lee , TGC and especially the GG community ..maybe the best ever meet online..I learned really too much about game creation thaks to fpsc x9 , GG and i think they are great products

but no comparision can be done between UE4, Unity, and GG

these are professional game engines ..GG is for hobbiest, learning pourposes etc

In unity I realiaized in few weeks a project that in GG it would take months o maybe years to be accomplished due to the lack of some foundamental features.

btw long life to Gameguru

my two cents

Is it possible Unreal uses multicore, this explain the speed of Unreal? Unless GG is a little bit slow the "easy to use" wins everytime

Unreal Engine is 64 bits multicore, Game Guru is 34bits.
Its ridiculous to compate GG to an High End engine like UE4

It is the speed of getting a visual on screen and a working idea/demo to visualize the interactions, game play fluidity and UI that GG is the best in the world at doing. I have never found anything that can allow me to get a working demo with ideas and player interactions to work through the main game story and design in a few hours. Try doing that with any other kit and it is not possible.

As GG develops it will eventually get a rework to allow for 64 bit access, but what it can do now is brilliant.

I don't really think it's that ridiculous. There were some great points raised by DVader, both for and against, both products.

Besides, DVader is a long term user and knows the difference between both the engines; I believe this was more a fun comparison, in the same way that a younger brother can compare himself to their older siblings. There are pro's and con's for both parties.

UE4 will always be the more powerful engine, due to the level of experience and sheer size of the team involved. Keep in mind that GG is only Lee and a handful of other freelance chaps that step in every now and again to help out if the workload is too much. Don't take this as me saying that it's 'JUST' Lee. Lee is a very experienced developer and really knows his stuff. You don't get the guys from Intel excited if you don't know what you are doing! However, there is only one Lee. (that's the point I was trying to say)

Cheers

Jay.

post removed by author

FPSC X9 was started not so long after. Game Guru is really just a revision of that, so I can't agree entirely here. DB of course is the start of all things FPSC. You can't really say Game Guru is only a few years old when most of what it is based on is from early 2000's. Yes it's different and has moved on, but much of the backbone of GG is from FPSC and most of that is from DB. Also, you can't really compare the original Unreal with todays version, it's completely changed. So both have had a reasonable history as such. I agree with you that GG has come a long way since launch though.



Well you can, I just did In my post you will notice I do say that Unreal is far superior in many ways. That doesn't stop me comparing the two. I didn't make this post to knock GG, I did it to show the differences I have seen. I have used Unreal before, but it's been awhile and I didn't give it much of a go last time.



Tell that to the people who have released GG games on Steam. Yes, most are not great, but that's not really all down to GG.



Yes it is, but that is not the only reason for extra speed, but it certainly helps. Unreal is always wanting you to build lighting and such everytime you add an item or move one. This says to me much of it is precalculated. Obviously a big help. Also it is more optimised, if you have a house behind a hill it will not render the house at all, GG will be although as it's behind the hill you can't see it. Being a proffesional engine, it is optimised as much as possible. GG has a long way to go in that area. it will never be as fast. Not unless TGC suddenly get a huge team of staff to work on it.



Game Guru is actually 32bit Again, I don't think so as such. It's ridiculous to use Unreal as a way to point out Game Guru's flaws as I've seen done in the past, but simply comparing them as I have is not the same. I often see Unreal questions and comments. I just thought as I'd spent a bit of time in it, I'd share my thoughts on it in comparison to GG. Nothing ridiculous about it. I have said similar myself in the past :/ but in fairness, it was to people moaning about GG and using Unreal to say why GG was so awful etc.

Again I stress this is not supposed to be a dig at GG. I did state as far as most people are concerned GG is the only way to go. If you are an expert C++ coder and have the time, Unreal would be more useful. Most people aren't, have limited time and frankly would get nowhere in Unreal. Perhaps people who aren't into coding may find the blueprint system easier to get into, for me, it is horror. Anything that can start me thinking of getting Visual Studio and learning a bit about C++ has to be pretty horrible!

This was really to help show people who have never used Unreal what it's like and how it really compares. Many people voice their opinions about Unreal and have never even used it. As I said I don't think many people will be jumping ship. I'm still here, even after using it. Although it's impressive, unless I can get to grips with the coding side, I have no interest. I may check out the C++ side of it at some point, but at the moment I really can't be doing with another programming app on my computer, I have enough already!

hello

Personally I feel that game guru can be as powerful as unreal but lee just needs to be smart about how he designs game guru. To me there are a lot of things unreal does right and there's a lot it doesn't do right. If lee really wan'ts to make game guru the best it can be , he need to be able to give game makers the things that are necessary for good game creation and then stream line it to make it fast and easy. To quote a famous person if you can't explain it to a six year old then you don't understand it your self. And I can say , I have yet to have a game making software , including game guru that can boast that. Sure there are people that can use game guru very effectively but most of them are good with game guru and can do things that most of the users can't do. For instance I have had game guru for a long time and still can't animate models make my own deals and all kinds of other stuff , all because I just don't understand the process. I have watched all kinds of videos and they never work for me . So seems to me that how easy something is depends on your understanding of the product and your experience in the field. To me this is where game guru is coming up short it seems that lee just takes for granted that people understand all of this and all you do is just turn it on and go. Well I would like him to take a look at this from a position that, its the first time any one has purchased game guru or any software what kind of game can they make how long will it take them. I think if you put unreal and game against each other you would be in the same place no game made. I have all three unreal , unity 5 , game guru and I love them all but I doubt I'll ever have a complete game from any of them but I keep hoping.

I had to chuckle when I read the title of this post but DVader actually wrote a fair comparison. I was expecting something else.

To me its all about time and possibility. I can make a game like my "Shavra" in GG but can not do it in UE4. Sure, the UE4 version would be visually superior but I won't be able to get all too riveting gameplay working. Combat, Characters, Traps....I'm too used to the way GG works and its infinitely more complex and "fiddely" in UE4.

If you are working on your own and for fun, I recommend GG over UE4 but if you manage to get a bunch of folks together and are willing to invest way more time than 2-3 hours a week in your project...go with the Unreal.

'been using Unreal since UE3/UDK. It lures you in with the slick look and feel and the endless possibilities but always gets me to leave after I realize just how long I was working on not all too great results and what kind of work would still be ahead of me.

GG feels smoother to me as well. UE4 keeps loading packages, calculating things, importing stuff ... not my cup of tea.

I remember this kind of discussion being way more vitriolic when GG was new and still FPSCR... and am happy to see that this has changed.



-Wolf

I am going to be honest. I feel as if FPSC with HD on can look better than GameGuru in some places.
I just played Phobia 1.5, and that game looked beautiful.

There is no HD to switch on in FPSC. That game looks so good because JonezGames knows how to design a level!
Keep in mind that the size of his levels are also the total scope of what is reasonably doable in FPSC and that we have some good looking GG work in progress on here.



-Wolf

Here is a car that was manufactured to be used by people who for some reason are unable to obtain driver's license.
This car has limited benefits, develops a limited speed, and obviously can not be compared to a Mercedes or a BMW.
But cheap, spent little fuel, and you can park anywhere.

I can not imagine this car in the hands of a Formula 1 driver.

and in this case, we can not have the best of both worlds, in other words, there is no "Unreal easy game maker".

I've never used Unreal / Unity or something different than fps / Reloaded / gg; so I can not establish any objective comparison, what I can say is what I read here sometimes, about the difficulty of creating a game in these engines.

GG is that car that I mentioned earlier, and loses some of its usefulness when he is in expert hands; however they continue here for that in a way, just like a Formula 1 driver, they feel they can do something with and for GG, something that could don't for Unreal / Unity where everything is almost done, while here (in GG) does not.
Just my thoughts.

I agree if we try some of these engines, may help us to know how easy GG can be.

3com

This could be done in GG if they just added vehicle physics. When Reloaded turned into GG they said it would not be limited
to FPS. I think GG stagnated when they neglected finishing the basic physics that are expected today. Before anyone posts and says it is on the voting list let me say that physics is and should be the core of the engine and should have taken priority
over other features. If there were example videos of space and vehicle games they would see more sales on steam.
Yes, I know that Lee is the only one working on it. I developed the ragdoll physics that GG uses before Lee announced that
Reloaded would use the Bullet Physics Engine. After he added my ragdoll physics code I continued to develop core physics
features that I felt GG would have benefited from. Just to name a few I developed a really sweet Fracture /destruction physics for any object, a very fast real time CSG algorithm, a very fast convex hull decomposition algorithm to create
fast accurate physics collision shapes for concave objects and vehicle physics. Not sure why they decided that it was not needed as part of the core of the engine but it would have brought GG to a better standing against other software.
I had really wanted the GG community to benefit from and enjoy these features.

Just so you know what you are missing.

I love the destruction physics vid, always find that sort of thing impressive! Most impressive!

I don't think it is fair to compare GG to Unreal or Unity, but the way you went about doing it is cool. The two latter engines are light years ahead in certain/most aspects. Because they have dozens of devs working on the Engines. If TGC had 40 or 50 Lee Bambers I'm certain we'd see GG on the same plane as the latter mentioned engines.

I too started playing around with Unity5 at the beginning of this year and currently sitting on a project which could be considered a AAA game (graphically) from the year 2013. Which is not bad for a 1 man band spanning over 7 months. I would have originally used GG for this specific project, but lighting and performance was a key requirement.

With all that said, GG is in it's own league. It's a super fun and easy to use game creator. With a bit more effort you can get a decent looking game and with some scripting skills you can get extremely creative and put together an excellent quality game. GG has the best community I've come across in any online forum. And us, as a community, influence the development of GG.

Started a lively discussion though Helps keep us entertained while we await the next update, which I am looking forward to getting hold of! Always good to see what other engines are up to as well

So this is a pretty interesting thread. It should have included Unity 5 for a more complete comparison.

There is only 1 factor which is really holding GG back compared with other engines which is the fact we are not able to work on the source ourselves. One of the biggest decisions the big guns made in recent years was not only making the core engine free but also opening up the source code.

Unreal source is now available and even though Unity requires a paid source code license, the editor is so flexible you can essentially build a completely unique set of tools which simply plug-in. If you look at FPSC we saw huge strides being made after TGC made the source available to the community.

To Lee's credit to have come this far with GG in a relatively small period of time is remarkable and he is an Intel black belt after all. However the only way to compete with larger products if you don't have the manpower is to open everything up and let the community do this.

I would have personally liked to see Reloaded live on because that would have narrowed the scope and much more progress could have been made in core areas such as physics, lighting, AI and so on. However I can also see why people like the more generic game maker too.

I've made a commercial game using Unity 4 and it was a very useful project in a lot of ways but it took 12 months to learn C#, design the features, implement a game and package it all up. You can make a game much faster in GG but there is a trade off in quality.

I say use whatever gets the job done. If you only need to release for Windows and don't need cutting edge technology then stick with GG but don't expect it to become Unity or Unreal until TGC really open the platform up for those who want to contribute on a more technical level.

I'm with Nomad on this. Lee has done a spectacular job on this, exceedingly well done...but giving our splendid community the power to mod and the freedom to release such mods here could lead to immense benefits. (Just imagine FPSC without airslide's gun commands )



-Wolf

It does get pretty dry around here in the time between updates. I "play" with UE4 from time to time and have used it's predecessor a little bit. I too like the way you compared the two. I think it was a fair assessment without really bashing one or the other. They are what they are, and both still evolve. I hate blueprint too!!! It's supposed to be for non-coders, so one would think someone who has at least a minimal level of proficiency with programming would have an easy time with it. Perhaps some do, but I've watched their tutorial videos on blueprint many times over, and beyond turning a light on and off, I am completely lost!

Usually something like this would have to be in off topic but this is slightly different as its not specifically talking about another engine and its pretty constructive

My take on it is anyone who learns the other engines inside out should be able or expect to make a pretty good high quality graphical game.

The challenge for me is to make something in GG that looks impressive using the limited tools I have and have fun doing it
Ye I could spend 6 months in Unity reading all the complex documentation ..watching complex user videos ...I did look at Unitys Character creator and it seemed to be a good 6 month course on its own .... That's not fun for me ....

I watch all you guys work wonders with GameGuru and that impresses me .... Not a game built in a AAA engine where those results are expected .. Anyone can do that if you put the time in .... Just my thoughts

I think we really could produce comparable AAA quality games, if the required "features" by us (for the past couple years) are met. I'd like to say we are getting there. Slow and steady now.

@Stab In The Dark Software- loved the destruction physics video-I did breaking glass using rigid bodies and the grease pencil in Blender and got the following first attempt result which is far from perfect but wanted to see if it could be done in GameGuru, would love to see destruction physics in GG :



Anyway, I've been playing around with S2Engine which has some stunning features/effects, but I reverted back to GG as it's easier to use and comes with a lot more media. I tried going through some of the S2Engine video tutorials but couldn't understand the guy doing them and video quality wasn't great in places. I may try out Unreal again as it has C++. But on the whole I prefer GG for quicker results and starting to quite like LUA scripting.

You can actually script swimming, I can' remember who did it, but there was a guy on here who did it ages ago.

To be fair these things aren't actually GameGuru problems, these are modelling problems, and you would have the same issue whether you used Unreal, Unity, or any other engine. It's actually a lot less of an issue in GameGuru because of the huge amount of media given away free and available in the store for GameGuru.

That last bit is an odd statement. Anyone could make a game in a AAA engine given the time? I would think not in general, I know people who fail to understand Google or seem to, as they constantly ask me to find stuff, when a simple Google search is all that is required The reason most people are put off by Unreal and such is because they are so complex! Even GG is tough for someone jumping in with no experience. I agree that many push GG to make some good stuff though

Boolean and demolition would be a nice features for EBE, even can help to remove unwanted faces via union feature, or something like that.

3com

If GG was x64 and was given 6 months to a year it would in my opinion compete with both UE4 and Unity i have used both and both have + and - both neither compare when it comes to making a nice quick fp game on a 1 man time scale, the only reason they are quicker is because of this Memory utilization and DX10,11,12 support. Ive said this before and i stick by it when GG is on that level it'll scare people because its nice and easy to use. I just think given the time these things will come, until then i'll plod on because i like GG's Structure and I recon DVader's evaluation was pretty fair. On a side note Biowares aurora Engine is worth looking at for Ideas as it made a real nice fantasy 3rd/first person game/mod and was really easy to use, also Torque now open source is worth a looksee just for the volumetric stuff and multiplayer, plus a few other nice bits it had.

LOL .. I didn't exactly say that .... And what I meant was ...If you learn an AAA engine correctly and all its features then you can make a great game and you would expect great results with the tools given ... Which would come as no surprise to me .

What users do with GameGuru impresses me more because they go beyond the mechanics of what we think the engine can do
As you have done yourself

The 32-bit vs 64-bit argument has been stamped to death. Yes, I do agree with you that 64-bit will really benefit GG and you are correct but there are many engines out there that are 32-bit and are able to produce fascinating visuals and give top notch performance. I would say the most prime example is the RV engine that powers Arma 3. It's built on top of a 15 year old code base.

Arma 3 probably has the biggest maps you would find in any game today. The visuals are super crisp and shadows are realtime and super sharp, yet it can only address 4Gb of memory. It gets around the memory issues by only streaming/loading what's needed. Bumping GG up to 64-bit will only allow us to load more data/assets/entities at a time into the memory. BUT this will not resolve all performance issues.

They recently announced this little baby, Arma 3 Apex:



Massive performance improvements have been made since GG's initial release, but I still find when comparing GG and other engines, 99% of the time the discussions will boil down to performance and lighting. 64-bit won't be the answer to all our problems because even if you get rid of that 4Gb memory cap, we'll still run into performance issues if the current ones go unresolved. And I do have full faith that performance will improve over time.

Honestly, all I ask is that we please have the basic fundamental foundations. Glad the building editor is coming around, as I believe that will come with the AI improvements to follow. As I cannot get my characters to properly roam multiple floors. I cannot make the games I thought I'd be able to make by now with GG. I didn't expect the multiplayer and 3rd person to come out of no where, so early on when we were originally trying to develop a more advanced version of FPSC. That's where I put my money and support into. Crazy to think how long its been since I've waited for a complete FPSC.

We asked for a terrain editor, bigger map and no 2GB limitation. That's where the inception of this engine came out of. Those 3 requests. We got all that. But lost everything else in the process as the community voted to start from scratch. Perhaps I've been around too long. But as a long time user of TGC products I did get both excited and worried.

I find other engines to be too intimidating and I have a lot of trust in Lee. I do intent to poke around with Unreal now that I have a professor and game developer in the field working with me each week. I'll still check in on updates regularly for GG and offer my support where ever I can. I just am unsure if I'll ever be able to create the games I desire with it. I tend to dream pretty big and I no longer have the time anymore to invest heavily in scriptable workarounds. I just tend to be heavily focused on details and gameplay. Probably one of my biggest problems when it comes to game development.

Just to say 64bit, multi-core would give a nice speed increase pretty much instantly, seeing as most steam game users seem to be using 64bit systems now.

Surely speed optimisation should be very important now, we have good visuals in GG i think, now the speed is its only real serious problem.

Hello,

it is really interesting to follow what is written here =)

About a month ago, I installed CryEngine 5 at my Computer.
With just a little of work, I just set up a tropical Island with very neat visuals and performace.
Importing one asset of my own libary got kind of difficult (...) finally I got one Plant of my assets imported (Textures converted, Materials set up,etc.).

What I think is, that the really big Engines Like Unreal, CryEngine or Unity, it is not so difficult, to set up neat TechDemos with neat Visuals and Performance.
But when it come to creating a Game, does it has to be this last standart to become a good game?
I think, the important thing is, that the Person, who comtrolls the Player, somehow has to accept the shown environment and experience it for the time of the Playing somehow as the Reality. To do this adaption - in my oppinion - it doesnt have to be fotorealistic /hyperrealitic like some very big engines do.

I do agree, that for some features of GG it would be great to be improoved, like mentioned earlier (64bit, lighting,...).

I think, GG is really great, when it comes to the point of setting up a Game: There are several Functions for a Game avilable (f.e. Riddels, Driving a Boat, doing objectives), that You really need, when You want to set them up. Also the variety and amout of avilable assets (Models, Sounds, Script-Code,...) at the GG Store is really great. (Thank You to the artists, that do such a great work !!! =) ).

Through the Years, I have worked with different Engines. I must say, I did learn all the time something of them and their community.
Before GG I did use the Leadwerks Game Engine.

I think, You can find a lot of contend and put it together in GG to create a great athmosphere for a Game.

If You start out with one Engine like Like Unreal, CryEngine or Unity, You have to code alot by Yourself. For me, that wouldn't work.
At the time when using the Leadwerks Game Engine, I did create a TechDemo by myself, where You could walk around inside a Scifi-Level, but not a whole working Game (with a story, Quests, etc).

GG brings, I do think, a lot of functions and contend to make a great playable Game.
I have Great respect for LeeBamber and his work and the Team around him.
And I am also very thankful to the GG Community, where I received a lot of help and support.
That is really nice and great =)

C.U. R.E.Z.