Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 25: The Case For (and Against) More UE4 Challenges

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 25: The Case For (and Against) More UE4 Challenges

So far, nearly every competition on the Automation forums has used the Kee engine version in which the game was first launched. Recently, however, there have been a pair of challenges which use the more feature-rich UE4 release. This represents a considerable step up in realism and complexity from what was found in the earlier Kee version. However, this has left me wondering why the UE4 version is not being utilized for challenges as often as it should be, and there are three major reasons for this.

The first and foremost problem with UE4 is stability. Most users have already found out that even after several rounds of bugfixes, the game still crashes occasionally, although not as often as it once did. On top of that, a few minor bugs remain, but they are now less numerous and/or annoying than before considering how much development has been done with the UE4 release up to now. Even so, this reason alone is enough to make most challenges use the Kee engine release exclusively.

Performance issues are another reason why UE4 has not been widely adopted for challenges yet. The system requirements for this version are more demanding than the Kee engine version it supersedes, but this was to be expected given that UE4 allows for more detailed audio and visual effects. Not all machines are capable of running the UE4 release smoothly even on more moderate graphical settings, though. As such, the mere possibility of reduced performance has already precluded some users from using UE4 Automation as often as they originally intended, if at all.

The third and final issue with UE4 is the relative lack of content compared with the Kee Version. So far, a considerable number of UE4-specific mods have already been made, with many more being converted from Kee, but there is still a long way to go before UE4 will finally overtake Kee in terms of additional content, let alone approach it. Naturally, this has made remaking many Kee designs difficult or even impossible, but there will be a time when this glaring weakness is rectified once and for all. Still, the sheer amount of time and effort required to convert Kee mods for UE4 has resulted in many users waiting until this work has been undertaken for most of these mods.

So overall, even though the UE4 remake of Automation is getting better over time, there is still a lot of work for developers and modders to do before it is widely used for challenges. Even so, the day will come when the UE4 version closely approaches, matches or even surpasses the older Kee version in terms of stability, content and performance. When it does, expect the UE4 release to be more popular for forum challenges - it should be well worth the wait.