Unreal Game Prototype
I stopped working on a Unity game prototype quite a while back for a game idea I really wanted to make. One of the reasons I stopped development was because I was becoming dissatisfied with the direction Unity was being taken in. I had always wanted to sink my teeth into an Unreal game project and develop those skills, and the pinch point was the Unity licensing debacle. After that I had decided I wouldn’t focus my energy on Unity anymore and any new personal projects I develop would be using the Unreal Engine. However, I’m not going to turn my back on over 10 years of Unity experience, that would be very shortsighted and naive. I still love the Unity Engine. It is incredibly easy to use, quick to prototype with and (as I would come to learn and understand) much easier to navigate than Unreal Engine.
C++ Terrain Generation
Now that I have working hex terrain generation prototype working in Unreal’s Blueprint system, it is time to throw it all in the bin and start over in C++. Why you ask? For a few reasons I answer. I like the Blueprint system a lot and it does seem pretty fast but ultimately I’m looking to build an infinite procedural world using hex-based chunks. I’m certain Blueprints can do it… and I’m pretty sure C++ can do it a lot faster. Additionally I want as much control over the procedural generation of the mesh, the subdividing and calculation of the height data as I can get and C++ will guarantee this too. Besides, with the complexity of the system I’m sure a Blueprint to handle what I want to do will end up looking like a lot of spaghetti and difficult to maintain. It’ll be much easier to handle things like caching of vertices and meshes in code. So why Blueprints in the first place? Mostly quick prototyping, feeling out the style and deciding if Unreal was actually the engine to do this in rather than Unity (I had already started on this project in Unity but had abandoned it for hopefully greener pastures).
