Categories
Personal Interest

Unity VS Unreal

When I think about game development, two companies will come to my mind, Unity, and Unreal, since these are the most popular game engines. When I started to study game development, I had no idea which one I should use because I didn’t know about the two platforms. I ended up using Unity because the project I took over was developed with Unity. So, today I would like to talk about which game engine you should choose.

https://www.gameplaydeveloper.com/unity-vs-unreal-in-the-gaming-industry/

Programming Language

Unreal and Unity are the best game engines obviously. So, in my opinion, the first thing you have to think about is the programming language. Unreal engine is using C++ and Unity is using C#

In case of Unreal, there is blueprint which is a visual script language. So that even though you do not know how to code with C++, you can create a game with a mouse. However, this has very slow execution time. So if yoIn the case of Unreal, there is blueprint which is a visual script language. So that even though you do not know how to code with C++, you can create a game with a mouse. However, this has a very slow execution time. So if you script your game only with blueprint, it is 5 times slower than when you script with C++. So I can say c++ is inevitable for Unreal game development. But, C++ is a pretty complex programming language to learn and get used to it for people who have non-technical backgrounds. Especially when it comes to “pointer”, it is a really difficult concept to understand even for people who have programming experience.

On the other hand, C# used by Unity is a high-level language which means that it is much easier to learn and use. (C++ is an intermediate-level language, close to machine code).

If you don’t have programming experience and learn it from scratch. Unity could be the best option!

Market Places / Assets Store

When you work on game development, it would be good to create all functions from scratch, but you will find yourself using presets or resources because it makes your project much easier.
Of course, the two game engines also provide you presets and resources. You can download it from Market Place for Unreal, or Asset Store for Unity.


Market Place(Unreal): Unreal provides their users with free resource files and it is a really high-quality resource. For example, Epic games share their game sources on Market Place.


Asset Store(Unity): one of the biggest benefits of using Unity is that they have ample amount of presets and resources for their users. Even small team or individual developers check assets store before developing some function to compare the development cost whether it is cheaper when they buy or create themselves. But, unlikely, it is not free.


So, if you have a budget for buying resources, Unity will a good option. Otherwise, if you don’t have allocated budgets, then Unreal will be the best option for you.

Technical Differences

I don’t want to go deep into this topic since it is too difficult to discuss on this blog and with my knowledge. So, simply saying, the biggest differences between two engines are the way of approaching how to make a game.


In order to complete the same task, for example, let’s assume you are creating a game, and you want to change your graphic work. Unity provides you a function that you can make a change (It requires you to do some code works to put changes together). However, the Unreal engine does not provide you a function that you work on the object directly, one way you can do is to put another layer to look like you want.


In this topic, it is up to your preference about how to work on a project. So, if you are looking for a better way of expansion of your work, Unreal would not be the best option for you.

Categories
Personal Interest

The future of VR

After Facebook changed its company name to Meta, Zuckerberg stated β€œTo reflect who we are and the future we hope to build, I’m proud to share that our company is now Meta.” (Meta is a social platform based on metaverse which is 3d virtual world. Since then, VR technology is getting attention more than before.

As a person who is dreaming of becoming a game programmer, this is one of the interesting topics. So, I would like to talk about the current development stage of VR and the future of VR.

VR is a short-term of Virtual Reality. Based on my google search, surprisingly, the first vr machine was released in early-mid 1990, and it commercialized around the 2010s. The most popular machines are Oculus (Rift), HTC (Vive). The first-generation commercial product was okay but there were some drawbacks such as the weight and lack of power of cpu, memory as well as contents. So, it didn’t get popular as much as people expected. But, in late 2017, sony released Playstation with VR machine and game, and it was very successful (The next generation of Sony VR is coming out this year). Now I can say VR ear has come. Because VR machine gets lighter, and it has affordable price and variety of contents.

As you can see from the video, the quality of the graphics and render are fantastic. Powerful graphic cards, memory, and engines make this possible. And, it shows the current status of VR industry.

d VR is getting spread to many fields as well. One good example is the medical industry. They are using VR for medical training.

Lucid Reality Labs | VR education, training and upskilling

Now we can’t separate VR technology from our lives, it will be getting into our life. This is why many people say VR is the future of human society. Then what we can expect from the future VR?

One thing I can expect is that we might live in a borderless world not limited to physical land, we might live in the real world and virtual world at the same time, interchangeably. And, it is happening right now. Now the young generation has another themselves in a virtual world. I can take ZEPETO as an example which is a social platform based on metaverse. They have 2 billion users and they spend money to decorate their avatar and socialize with their friends.

As the thing is getting changed quickly, we might face a fully digitized world shortly and might play a game like full-dive virtual reality game like anime called sword art online. I would like to be a port of the stream as a programmer. πŸ™‚

Categories
Personal Interest

My First Post

This is the first blog post for the OSU Capstone Project. In this post, I would like to talk about my interest and what I like to do after graduation since this term is the last term at OSU.

It has been 3 years since I started the online OSU computer science program. Most of programming classes have a programming project and most of projects are related to simple game.

Here are some of the game projects I have done for OSU courses

-CS162 : Escape Room

-CS325 : Tetris

Those projects were good enough for me to have an interest in a game development. Since then, I took some of my time to study the game development during free time. Thanks to the YouTube, I was able to access to many free online lecture. In order to develop a game, I had to study c# and unity.

Unity is a game engine that allows you run your 2D/3D objects on screen, and C# is the main language for the engine. Now OSU provides most of all programming class with python, but I took those courses with C/C++. So It was relatively easy to learn C# since the syntax of C# is pretty similar to C/C++.

However, I never used the Unity before, so it took some time to understand how to use Unity and its library. The most difficult part of working on unity was to understand it is a frame based program which means your code is looping itself by Unity. Therefore, if you are using for/while loop in Unity you have high chance to have infinity loop error. While I was trying to be a friend with Unity, I had a chance to work on actual game development with people who I met at Networking Event.

This is the first video game I made (this is just sample version). I am getting myself into the game development, and I am actually enjoying the game programming. There are some things that I need to study to be a game programmer. So, I might do more side projects and targeting top game companies for my future career. πŸ™‚