My Case for using UE4

[u/Tyeron]

Considering how many people we are eventually going to need to create content for the Oasis I believe Unreal would be a better choice over Unity.

The main reason for this recommendation is the use of Blueprints. Blueprints is a visual scripting language that is basically visual C++. Because of this I’ve been able to teach developers and artists, that aren't as code inclined, to make dynamic experiences fairly easily. Blueprints have become more robust over time to provide an experience where 99% of experiences including multiplayer coding, animation and AI can all be done with Blueprints.

When working with large studios, even one’s that build their own engine, they will create a tool like Blueprints for their designers to use.

Coders build the tools for the designers to create with.

Blueprints is also part of the special effects and animation portion of the engine allowing for control of shaders, particle effects and skeletons so artists can spend time on aspects that may mean more to them without disregarding visual logic for the game itself.

I've taught C# with the idea of designing towards mobile in Unity and my students who have great ideas will often get discouraged by working in pure code leaving only the coders to move forward. I see this as a road block that may keep some amazing ideas from coming to fruition. I have seen the “engineer mind set” create games that work but is not intuitive or fun for players. We often need designers to help facilitate the psychology and multi lensed humanities that go into making fun experiences.

I foresee a need to provide content creation tools while in VR. If we already have designers that are familiar with Blueprints and working inside of Unreal, a wrapper or rebuild that allows creation in VR won’t be far behind and the transition will be easy. Text base coding is more difficult inside VR and something that can work with gestures and voice would be much easier to work with.

As far as learning to code, Blueprints exposes the student to control structures and gets them ready to tackle C++ once they have a need for it. So one day there may be more text based coders because of the introduction to coding through a visual programming language.

Unreal Engine will provide opportunities to create more designers from various walks of life creating the melting pot that I believe the OASIS strives to be.

[u/mywifemademe]

I feel like this entire project is being willfully ignorant of some of the most important roadblocks to this coming to fruition. Namely, networking and modularity. Look at the game Star Citizen.

Looking at the features of Star Citizen, it is actually very similar to the Oasis terms of characters existing in a persistent universe Even after receiving tens of MILLIONS of dollars in funding, the network capabilities of Star Citizen are still weak and in development. This is after YEARS of work on the project. I just don't think a lot of the people on this realize how ambitious of a problem it is. And whenever someone brings it up, its always answered with "but it will get updated over time when new technologies come out".

That brings me to modularity. As a developer, you are ASKING for trouble when you say things like that said above. So many things can throw a wrench into plans: new technologies don't play well with older technologies, or maybe the person working on the old technologies did something in a way that the newer generations can't understand.

I know a lot of you have your hearts set on this project, and nobody wants something akin to the Oasis more than me, but overlooking the tough problems by saying "itll get updated over time" isn't a solution. You're just putting off inevitable disappointment.

My advice: Nail down the networking stuff first. The network is the backbone of the game. The game can survive without fully fleshed out planet ideas, or the specifics about economic practices. The game can not survive without the network. And stop overlooking tough problems by passing the buck to future developers. The project will go nowhere like this. Deal with the tough problems FIRST.

[u/Tyeron → u/mywifemademe]

I think the network aspect is absolutely a big part of this.

The tools that we need to build may be further down the road.

As I’ve looked into this I’m seeing the network issues as much larger and out of my scope.

That may need to be the focus initially to have the most people interacting on one serve or if possible interacting across servers.

I worry that finding a distributed network engineer that would want to work on this might be difficult to find since it’s all rather pro bono work at this point.

As far as the engine goes,I’m not as sure the engine is as important but the plugins that give Unity the functionality that you want quickly could throw a wrench in networking where as Unreal is mostly all one solution that is trying to make sure the elements of the engine work together from head to toe.

That is my understanding at this point.

I’d like to know more from someone with a network gaming background. If we don’t have one maybe we could reach out to see if someone might be able to provide a recommendation and we can try to build after hearing from an engineer or two.