Eve: Valkyrie moves from Unity to Unreal Engine 4.

[cyberheater]

The devs have moved from Unity to Unreal Engine 4.

The company announced at Fanfest that the game has moved from the Unity engine and will now run on Unreal Engine 4, and has in fact been completely rebuilt from the ground up to use the engine. Nothing has been kept from the original version of the game except for a better idea of what Valkyrie is and some place-holder assets.

“It gives us familiarity. It gives us a great engine, I’ve worked in Unreal before. It gives us ready made accessibility into the market,” Chris Smith, the lead game designer, told Polygon. "I’m not a business person, so for me it’s just a great engine that renders a great game. It allows me to express what I need to express on a tool I’m familiar with. On the code side, everyone seems to be adapting very quick. What you’re seeing today is from nothing in January to now.

Eve: Valkyrie moves to Unreal Engine 4, adds Starbuck

[chingwa]

(…wind in the trees…)

[Arowx]

I think it was looking good in Unity. I’m surprised they went for an engine change as it looked as though they were well on the way to releasing one of the first VR space games and one made with Unity?!

Would love to know why they changed over, any more info, I get the impression that Unity was not giving them the AAA umph they wanted?

Update - Ability to release to PS4 with Unreal a major factor - http://www.destructoid.com/eve-valkyrie-s-moved-to-unreal-4-and-is-looking-amazing-274079.phtml

[cyberheater]

@Arowx

I think it was looking good in Unity. I’m surprised they went for an engine change as it looked as though they were well on the way to releasing one of the first VR space games and one made with Unity?!

Would love to know why they changed over, any more info, I get the impression that Unity was not giving them the AAA umph they wanted?

Update - Ability to release to PS4 with Unreal a major factor - http://www.destructoid.com/eve-valkyrie-s-moved-to-unreal-4-and-is-looking-amazing-274079.phtml

Yes. I think the ability to release on PS4 was a major factor. They also say it looks better. I thought it looked pretty good in Unity.

[lmbarns]

From that article ^^

The biggest move to hit Valkyrie was the switch from Unity to Unreal Engine 4. According to senior programmer Sigurdur Gunnarsson, the reason for this hinged largely upon the console scene, specifically because it’s easier and a more certain prospect to publish on PlayStation 4 in Unreal right now. Apart from that, Unreal gives them the ability to add assets more quickly and generally speeds up development time.

If it sounds like a lot of work to completely rebuild a game, it is. CCP Newcastle has a team of about 23 people currently assigned to Valkyrie, and it took three to four months to make the transition. But, Gunnarsson remarked that the benefits of Unreal Engine 4 at this point are too great to ignore. Besides, it’s not like Valkyrie’s in a finished state right now, anyway; it’s still constantly being changed.

Would have been a great game to have in Unity’s gallery…lost to competition.

[jcarpay]

@lmbarns

From that article ^^

Would have been a great game to have in Unity’s gallery…lost to competition.

Yeah, and I’m sure more will follow if UT decides not to change their strategy soon…

[lmbarns]

I wonder how much value in marketing they lose from something like that (AAA studio bailing for a different engine). Like if Eve used Unity, a huge number of people would be exposed to unity and think wow, what an amazing game/engine/etc.

[Ippokratis]

It seems that on the marketing side, Unreal did one more good move.

[lazygunn]

This is pretty lame, only one thing for it… make a better looking game!

Dunno what Unity have to do to change their strategy or anything, to be honest anything ive read as comments from them they seem somewhat confident. Somethings going on there. Anyways maybe U4 just favors larger teams if the lead guys are more familiar with it, c’est la vie

[system]

@lazygunn

This is pretty lame, only one thing for it… make a better looking game!

Dunno what Unity have to do to change their strategy or anything, to be honest anything ive read as comments from them they seem somewhat confident. Somethings going on there. Anyways maybe U4 just favors larger teams if the lead guys are more familiar with it, c’est la vie

There is a lot more to it when you get into the AA / AAA sector bud… Give it a try, come back to us with your thoughts.

If you have the knowledge to make tech for AAA games, you would be worth your weight in gold. Hence why there are generally teams of 50+ working on decent engines.

[Silly_Rollo_1]

Considering what a mess Unity collaboration is (merging scenes, svn, dodgy prefabs, etc) I’m not surprised a team of 23 is way more productive in UE4. I’m sure Unity is still better for solo and tiny teams but I wonder if with all the graphical glitz in Unity 5 if they are improving any of that workflow.

[lazygunn]

@system

There is a lot more to it when you get into the AA / AAA sector bud… Give it a try, come back to us with your thoughts.

If you have the knowledge to make tech for AAA games, you would be worth your weight in gold. Hence why there are generally teams of 50+ working on decent engines.

I dunno how that relates to my post! First comment was a silly joke, second comment was… pretty much what you said

[Kend]

this is a Unity forum, you should be publish news about companies than moves from UE4 to Unity.

[Arowx]

@Kend

this is a Unity forum, you should be publish news about companies than migrate from UE4 to Unity.

This is relevant to Unity and the Unity community as it should help Unity improve it’s game, now that the big boys are all stepping down to battle for developers in it’s space.

Unity Alpha Version

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

Unreal Alpha Version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfSiNIlnY0

[Zaladur]

Companies leaving Unity is just as relevant, if not more relevant, than companies joining it.

[dogzerx2]

With such a big experienced team, and a graphics focused game, it’s not a shocker they go for UE4.
It’s like if Hawken had started with unity, would make more sense to use UDK and make their brute force and experience work with more graphic features.

As they didn’t have ue4 at first, and maybe weren’t confident with udk… they went for unity. It is yet to see if ue4 workflow suits them. And if unity 5 doesn’t just step ahead graphically… I mean, guys the videos look promising or what?

[zombiegorilla]

@Silly_Rollo_1

Considering what a mess Unity collaboration is (merging scenes, svn, dodgy prefabs, etc) I’m not surprised a team of 23 is way more productive in UE4. I’m sure Unity is still better for solo and tiny teams but I wonder if with all the graphical glitz in Unity 5 if they are improving any of that workflow.

It also depends heavily on your production flow/pipeline. I would have agreed that Unity was a problem for large teams about a year ago, but being on a Unity project with 40-50 people working on it (about 10-15 are engineers, the rest ui/art/design), we have had very little problems at all. We use git, and there are no “scenes”, so that would improve the experience. With using bundles and a structured pipeline, it all runs very smooth.

[JamesLeeNZ]

doesnt surprise me.

the unreal one looks heaps better.

[lmbarns]

@zombiegorilla

It also depends heavily on your production flow/pipeline. I would have agreed that Unity was a problem for large teams about a year ago, but being on a Unity project with 40-50 people working on it (about 10-15 are engineers, the rest ui/art/design), we have had very little problems at all. We use git, and there are no “scenes”, so that would improve the experience. With using bundles and a structured pipeline, it all runs very smooth.

We found git to be terrible when we were using it a year ago, uploading large files 2gb+ took forever and would randomly freeze 90% uploaded. Having no scenes would make a big difference…but not everyone likes to work like that. And at some point you’re going to have scenes in your game, so you just haven’t crossed that bridge yet…

[Rico21745_1]

@zombiegorilla

It also depends heavily on your production flow/pipeline. I would have agreed that Unity was a problem for large teams about a year ago, but being on a Unity project with 40-50 people working on it (about 10-15 are engineers, the rest ui/art/design), we have had very little problems at all. We use git, and there are no “scenes”, so that would improve the experience. With using bundles and a structured pipeline, it all runs very smooth.

The problem being that Unity uses scenes heavily and it’s a big part of the workflow. Baked lighting? Culling? Etc? All part of the scene.

It’s a pain for my small team, I can’t even begin to imagine how bad it would be for AAA.

The problem isn’t really git, it’s Unity.