Mobile Game Development: Everything You Need To Know About Unreal And Unity Engines

To build mobile games, game engines play a vital role. Sometimes engines are also referred to as game architecture or framework. These platforms assist game designers and several mobile development companies by helping individual elements come to life.

These pieces include the creating characters, game scenes, other visuals, sound, character and environment animation, artificial intelligence, and others.

Both Unity and Unreal engines resemble integrated development environments. These platforms offer a number of preset visual tools and customizable applications that simplify game development. Unity and Unreal handles manual work in the background, allowing designers to focus on the larger task at hand.

As suggested, designers use game engines to create applications. Game engine tools rely on various computer languages that support developers. A combination of the following engine elements makes playing games possible:

Input Device

Any game is about playing. Thus, mobile devices compatible game engines support a variety of inputs from gamepads, touch screens, a mouse and joysticks. There are a number of ways to support input, but polling and events are the two most common methods.

A computer records different input events, for example, right-clicking a mouse or pushing the arrow key up. Then, your selected gaming engine executes a custom code in response. Similarly, polling obtains an accurate position of your input value. As a response, your game allows you to control movement and progress through different tasks.

Audio and Visual Rendering

Audio and graphic rendering engines are sub-components of a game engine. Together, they control sound effects while generating animations on your screen. A game’s fate is entirely determined by the quality of its graphics and sounds.

3D graphics can be created for 2D screens using special applications such as Blender or Maya. Having graphics that integrate the aesthetics of your game smoothly is crucial. Additional tools such as shadows, blending, lighting, and so on are included in various game engine software to help make the different game assets look realistic.

Artificial Intelligence

AI has a massive impact on how well a game performs... and thinks. When a mobile game development company or designer creates a game, the artificial intelligence engine makes automatic recommendations depending on player behavior. Some examples of player actions include knowing which weapon a user might select or using previous responses to predict input.

If you wonder how to build mobile games with AI integrations, using a game engine will make the task easier. This is because artificial intelligence relies on pre-written scripts from various engineers and software professionals. So, rather than writing complicated code for every action, you can depend on the game engine to simulate characters through pre-established behavior connections.

Networking

The internet era ushered in a more interactive experience for gamers based on networking. A networking engine allows multiplayer and social gaming so you can play with other people!

Essentially, a mobile game engine aims to provide each user with a fully functional game. Several video games have already supported social and multiplayer gaming online for several years. However, with additional support and scripts from gaming engines, you don’t have to worry about integrations, traffic, or other things.

Physics Engine

A physics engine is a crucial piece of software, especially for games that involve simulation. Developing games based on real-life movements and activities rely on the physics engine’s subcomponents such as velocity, fluidity, and acceleration kinematics. An excellent example is how vehicle crashes in games create a graphic representation of the scenario in real-time.

Unity Technologies’ game engine is one of the world’s most popular mobile game development software, currently used by over 45% of the world’s developers. Over 25 platforms are supported by Unity, including Windows, Macintosh, PlayStation, Oculus, and Xbox. Many users prefer Unity because it gives them the flexibility of building in 2D, 3D, and virtual reality.

The Unity Mobile Game Engine is free for personal usage and pretty user-friendly. Almost all game developers can quickly create their full-featured, high-quality game with optimized performance through the platform.

If you are a beginner who has never glanced at a gaming engine or line of code before, Unity offers online tutorials to help as well.

Smaller teams from a mobile game development company or novice developers would benefit from the Unity Assets. Everything from 3D visuals to sounds, custom scripts, and AI editors can be found here. While most of the content is community-created, Unity themselves frequently upload free resources to help you out.

Cool Fact: Did you know Unity is not limited to the gaming industry alone? The platform is also used by professionals from the automotive, engineering, architecture, and film industries.

Unreal Engine is a game creation software used to produce 3D films, character animations, and train simulations. It allows creatives to turn their ideas, visuals, and content into games developed to build a cinematic experience. The Unreal Engine creates games for various PCs, virtual or augmented reality, gaming consoles, and mobiles.

In addition to its use in building mobile games, Unreal Engine allows IT professionals to automate assets, user interfaces, data operations, and content management from one platform. Furthermore, it also lets users customize data filtering and save these settings for later usage.

Unreal is presently utilized mainly for RPGs, stealth, and fighting games. It is an easy-to-use, accessible platform that allows users to create many games, live streams, and other visual renders of their game. However, the engine can also track data conversion and other useful analytics.

Unreal is compatible with Android, Microsoft, PlayStation, Macintosh, and Nintendo systems, to name a few. The fact is, Minecraft, one of the world’s best-selling games of all time, has also found its way onto Unreal Engines. Minecraft Dungeons, an action-adventure game, was created on the Unreal Engine.

Unity and Unreal are both award-winning game engines that are not limited to building mobile games. The programs offer comprehensive tools and elements for your games without any subscription fee for the basics. Additionally, Unity and Unreal Engines feature terrain editors, animation tools, virtual reality support, extensive physics simulation, and much more! Their toolkits offer similar functionalities, so you can customize your game framework as desired.

Unity and Unreal can produce high-definition graphics. Together they bridge the gap between most other interfaces and software. Depending on your level of expertise, the software are highly user-friendly and recommended by professionals.

While the two platforms share their purpose, Unity is a cross-platform game engine, while Unreal is open-source. This means that games developed on Unity are automatically available across all platforms they support. However, these games can’t be modified by anyone other than the developer who created them. On the other hand, games assembled on Unity can be downloaded and changed by anyone since the source code is available for download.

Both engines have a significant active user base, but Unity has a more extensive client base. Furthermore, Unity uses C# coding language, which is significantly faster than Unreal that uses C++. Therefore, unity is regarded as more suitable to build mobile games as the C# language is quicker. Unreal features additional multiplayer, animation, and VFX features, but Unity is more limited, focusing on improvements and real-time visuals.

Due to the difference in functionality, the Unreal Engine is more widely used to create games that work across different operating systems. In contrast, Unity is predominantly used to develop game plugins. In terms of assets, Unity offers a larger number of modules and addons than Unreal. While both mobile game engines offer excellent visuals, the Unreal Engine offers almost thrice as many superior graphic options.

Moreover, Unreal supports quicker rendering and project processing than Unity. Perhaps this is why the Unreal Engine costs royalties despite being free to use.

Unity is free to use for mobile game development. However, the free version offers minimal features. The pro version of Unity with added resources can cost anywhere between $399 to $1,800 per year. Their pricing options vary as per your company’s funding and revenues.

Without development tools like Unity and Unreal, game production would be harrowing. Both engines come with their benefits and drawbacks. Therefore, the winner depends on project requirements.

Unity is renowned for its user support and creating 2D and 3D simulations. On the other hand, Unreal is better for large-scale games due to its unparalleled graphic quality.

Which engine would you choose for your next game development project? Still confused? We at Argentics can make it easier for you.