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Amethyst vs Unreal Engine: What are the differences?
Programming Language: Unreal Engine primarily uses C++ for game development, offering more flexibility and control over game mechanics and performance. On the other hand, Amethyst relies on Rust, which focuses on memory safety and concurrency, making it less prone to certain types of bugs and errors in the code.
Community Support: Unreal Engine has a larger user base and an extensive community where developers can find resources, tutorials, and support easily. In contrast, Amethyst, being a newer engine, has a smaller community but is steadily growing as more developers adopt Rust for game development.
Workflow and Architecture: Unreal Engine provides a more visual-oriented workflow with its Blueprint system, allowing developers to create and manipulate game logic without writing code. Amethyst follows a more code-centric approach, emphasizing clean architecture, data-oriented design, and performance optimizations through Rust's borrow-checker.
Performance and Optimization: Due to its memory management model and Rust's emphasis on performance, Amethyst offers more control and predictability over resource management, leading to potentially better performance in certain scenarios compared to Unreal Engine.
Platform Support: Unreal Engine supports a wide range of platforms, including PC, consoles, and mobile devices, making it an attractive choice for multi-platform development. Amethyst, currently in development, aims to provide cross-platform support as well but may have limitations compared to the mature platform support of Unreal Engine.
Licensing and Cost: Unreal Engine follows a royalty-based model, where developers pay royalties on revenue earned from their games. Amethyst, being open-source and under the MIT license, allows developers to use it for commercial projects without any licensing fees, providing a more cost-effective option for indie developers and small studios.
In Summary, Amethyst and Unreal Engine differ in programming language, community support, workflow, performance optimization, platform support, and licensing, providing developers with distinct choices based on their priorities and project requirements.
When I started to learn game development, I've tried to use Unity multiple times because it's the most popular option. But never get it worked because of the clunky UI which is very hard to understand for a new user. After some time, I've decided to try UE4 despite there was a lot of rumors that it's "heavy" or requires an AAA team. And suddenly it clicked, everything works as I expecting, UI is clear and much more powerfull, no need to build custom tools to work on the game itself. Blueprints are very helpful for beginners, C++ has a lot of "syntax-sugar" - macroses, a lot of convenient in-engine types for everything. Later while working with Unreal, I've realized it has very consistent roadmap with constant improvements and adding new features. At the same time, each major version update is painless so you can upgrade your project during development to get new features. UE4 is free to use with the full list of features and you only have to pay royalty after getting your first $1 million from the project (and that's just the default case, you can always discuss custom license with an upfront fee, if you want to).
I chose Unity over Unreal Engine because Unity has a more user friendly UI for beginners looking to learn game development. Additionally, as someone who uses a lot of online resources to learn new languages and tools, I found a lot of tutorials covering game development with Unity as the core engine. This doesn't mean Unreal is not a great choice for game development, I just personally found learning game development much smoother with the amount of resources available with Unity.
Pros of Amethyst
Pros of Unreal Engine
- C++10
- Blueprints6
- PBR5
- Suitable for any projects4
- Source Available4
- Convenient and modern UI3
- Most Popular Game engine1
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Cons of Amethyst
Cons of Unreal Engine
- Heavy6
- A lot of "heaviness" myths around1
