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Anu Altankhuyag
Anu Altankhuyag

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Switching gears to Unreal Engine

The first game I made was a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" Twine game that had the player choose options to advance the story and every once in a while play a mini-game or clue puzzle to progress. When making this game, I absolutely fell in love with the idea of making more games. I ended up learning Python as a foundation for learning programming language and made a basic terminal game as my final project for my course.

Then it came time to decide what game engine I wanted to learn. After considering between the two big names in the industry, Unity and Unreal Engine. I decided to go with Unity for a few reasons. A few of the games I have really enjoyed were made using Unity and also Unity was better equipped to use for 2D games whereas Unreal Engine was more known for 3D games. At that point in my game dev journey, I wasn't confident to be making 3D games and wanted to make pixel games like Stardew Valley.

I have made a few games as projects with Unity. Ultimately, I had to take a break from my game dev journey as work became overwhelming and I got accepted into graduate school.

Then about two months ago, the whole drama with Unity happened. For anyone who doesn't know, here is a video that I watched that summarises everything pretty well.

Now, I believe that Unity's future is uncertain due to the company losing a lot of game developers' trust and respect. I decided yesterday that I would be moving on from Unity and learning a new game engine instead. I thought about learning Godot because there are some whispers that it might be the next big thing. But ultimately, I decided to go with Unreal Engine. I have become more comfortable with creating 3D objects and environments using Blender and thus, feel more confident in the idea of creating games with it.

It is still heartbreaking to accept that the time I put into learning Unity is put on a shelf. I know it will maybe help me in the future, but it is kind of like saying goodbye to an old relationship and starting a new one. It is bittersweet.

However, the roadmap to learning Unreal Engine feels clouded. I am not sure how this is going to go. But I will be keeping a log on here starting next week after my finals are over. I refuse to let my dream of making games die.

What are your thoughts on the future of Unity? And what are your opinions on other game engines? Will there be a rise in Unreal Engine programmers? Or do you also believe Godot is going to make it big?

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