Switching from unity to unreal engine?

Question

Unity

Hello. A little about myself, if you do not want to read my sayings about self-determination and my life path, feel free to skip and move on to questions.

Student, graduating from university (computer science). At one time, I could not figure out what I wanted to do in IT for a long time: at first I thought about going to the web, but after trying, I was disappointed. As a result, I tried gamedev: c ++, opengl with shaders, multithreading, I understand how physics, lighting, shadows (and rendering in general) work, in fact, I wrote my primitive engine from scratch (but here I just spent more time on it, and I wanted gameplay too).

University was hellish stress for me, although there were useful and interesting subjects, a lot of mathematics, now it’s much easier. Until the last, I delayed the search for a job, because selling a third of my life seemed to me a depressing affair. In any case, the time has come (you have to start working + we have 2 years of work in our country if I entered the budget. So you need to find it yourself in order to work in a normal place) and I began to evaluate my options: unity, unreal engine, proprietary engines. The last option immediately disappeared due to the lack of vacancies, there were few on the unreal engine and they asked for 6+ work experience each (I didn’t know then that there was even a chance to get to such vacancies). As a result, I decided to study unity. I got a job two months ago, and I have a strong feeling that I have embarked on the wrong path. Good office, colleagues, free schedule, you can work remotely,
I realized late that 99% of the work on the unit is mobile, most of them are hyper-casual (it's not interesting to do this at all). I am working on a middle-class project, this is a network game for mobile phones, legacy code, there are interesting tasks, but I also have to deal with the UI (I didn’t like the web either), I feel that I’m wasting time doing ui. I do not like aggressive monetization policies that bring the game closer to pay to win, and this is the basis of making money in mobile games. I want to write for PC / consoles, work with cool graphics, squeeze performance out of hardware, giving out a cool picture, and not by cutting graphonia to a minimum, I don’t want to mess around in ui (unless some kind of inventory system, not advertising and purchase buttons currencies). I am interested in both the work of engines and writing gameplay.

My friend has been working with image analysis in c++ for 2 years, recently he was invited to a social work and took a c++ developer without knowledge of gamedeva and, accordingly (unreal engine), now he is taking courses within the company on this engine. Despite the change in direction, he received a large increase in salary. Outsourcing company, will write projects for Ubisoft, EA. I have sincere white envy, I also want to try myself on such projects

YOUR QUESTIONS

1. Are recruiters looking for people with commercial experience in unity for the position of unreal engine / proprietary engines (indicating knowledge of the pluses in the resume), have you encountered such situations?
   
2. How difficult is it to change jobs to unreal engine / proprietary engines (I will write projects in unreal, having projects in pure c ++ and opengl)?
   
3. In the event of a job change (say, a year or two of experience), do I become a junior again with a starting salary?
   
4. If so, is commercial experience in c++ really more relevant than commercial experience in gamedev + knowledge of c++?
   
5. Have you been in a similar situation, share your experience? What do you think of my struggles?
   

Answer 1

Hello. My thoughts about the 5th question will be placed at the beginning of the answer.
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If you are interested in cool graphics and hardcore optimization, then you have a direct path to render programmers. This is a separate subject area that can be used not only in game development. These people just develop / modify the graphics engine, take care of a stable frame rate on different platforms, know a lot about optimization, GPU operation, know how to program the GPU, write shaders, know GLSL / HLSL shader languages, in short, they run out of hardware. Unfortunately, this is a very narrow area and there are even fewer vacancies for such positions than at UE in the CIS, but they do exist.
Requirements:
- C/C++
- Computer architecture
- Ability to program GPU
- Good math background | Linear algebra first
- Knowledge of OpenGL/DirectX/Vulkan/Metal
- A plus if you have experience in UE/Unity
Pros:
+ Horse salary compared to other professions in gamedev | 3+ years of experience - salary from $5000 guaranteed
+ In a game studio, such programmers, so to speak, are more respected They are few, hard to find, and impossible to forget. Getting into AAA studios like Rockstar/Naughty Dog/CDPR ​​will be easier than other programmers.
+ Crunches in game development are a separate issue, but this problem is less acute for these specialists.
+ Opportunity to work not only in the gaming industry. Hardware companies need such specialists and they pay decently, at least more than in game development. There are jobs in mobile development too (google the Prisma app in the AppStore), even on the web you can find jobs (see WebGL).
If we talk about the minuses, then this is only a high entry threshold and there are almost no vacancies for starting positions.
If you decide to develop in the future according to this profile, then there are several good books:
- Game Engine Architecture | Bible for game developer. Written by Jason Gregory.
- Physically Based Rendering | A good book for a graphics programmer. Written by Matt Pharr.
- Real-Time Rendering | Another good book. Written by Eric Haines.
After studying, write a simple demo using the API and you can try to get settled.
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There are more vacancies on Unity compared to UE, not to mention companies that have custom engines. Yes it is. The market for mobile games dominates in the CIS, they are easier and faster to make, the income is higher, they are made mainly on Unity. The entry threshold, both in C# and in Unity itself, is much simpler. Mobile games are practically not made on UE, because the out-of-the-box engine is not very suitable for such purposes for many reasons. It is advisable to use it only for large projects with cool graphics. It is much more difficult to find a groping plus sign than a sharpist, so the plus signs will be a level higher, so to speak. From this it follows that UE mainly makes AAA games, which are almost non-existent in the Russian Federation, C ++ development is more expensive, and in general the costs for business are disproportionately higher. There are very few companies that write their own C++ engines for mobile games.
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1. Are recruiters looking for people with commercial experience in unity for the position of unreal engine / proprietary engines (indicating knowledge of the pluses in the resume), have you encountered such situations?

Rather, on the contrary, Unity developers trade in similar things, so yes, this is a rather popular case, because, often, Unity-devs, so to speak, have trained a skill, understood how a certain pipeline works and already wanted to engage in serious game development (mostly they jump into UE, in companies, where there are custom engines - making the jump is more difficult). If you know the C ++ base, know and know how to put vector/map/list into practice - not bad, you know how they work under the hood - also not bad.
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In this regard:
1. You need to learn the basics of UE (reflection system, events / delegates, UMG, life cycle, etc.)
2. Understand the specifics of C ++ in the engine, since there is no STL, there are a lot of macros, in short, their own features.
3. Make a simple project, for example, an inventory system, or even better, participate in some kind of open source project, since they exist (you can google it).

2. How difficult is it to change jobs to unreal engine / proprietary engines (I will write projects in unreal, having projects in pure c ++ and opengl)?

In fact, despite the small demand for UE developers compared to Unity, there are enough vacancies in the capital cities of the Russian Federation, the competition for a vacancy is much less, so changing the stack and getting a job is not difficult. You have a base on the language, you have experience with the graphical API, you have experience working in a team, you have the main git. It remains only to learn the basics of the engine and put your knowledge into practice. After uploading the project to github. On the strength it will take 2-3 months, if you throw in a few hours every day.

3. In the event of a job change (say, a year or two of experience), do I become a junior again with a starting salary?

Unfortunately, there is no other way. The language is different, the engine is different, the development specifics are somewhat different. Considering your experience, it will be faster to make up for a salary drop than someone who just knows Unity / C # and has no knowledge of the pros at all.

4. If so, is commercial experience in c++ really more relevant than commercial experience in gamedev + knowledge of c++?

Yes, more relevant. You just have a base on the language that you used only for pet projects, and commercial experience on real tasks was with C#. And by "knowledge of C ++" in vacancies it is meant that you have worked with the language in commercial development and you have experience with this language, at least not lower than the term of commercial development.

Answer 2

Programmers are needed everywhere, both in mobile phones and in the enterprise.
But in principle, it was initially clear that the unity is an engine for quick entry, and most of the work will be simple applications, and in order to earn money on them it will be tons of casual games with aggressive monetization.
But there are other projects, more difficult. There are fewer positions for such projects, the requirements are higher, but with your experience you can try to search and break through.
You can also write simple applications with less monetization.
For children, developmental games, in principle, are in demand, there is more monetization for opening additional functionality.
It is clear that everything is quite simple there in terms of programming, and more goes into design and content.
Therefore, no one here will tell you. If you want to jump to another engine, start looking for vacancies, read about what they expect when you find it.
Doing something like "I've studied a new engine, now I'll study the market, who needs it" - at your stage it's not so useful