Back in March 2015, Epic Games announced that it was dropping the $19 per month subscription fee for Unreal Engine 4 and making the software free for anyone to use. The catch is that when customers ship a game or application, Epic will receive a small 5 percent royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 “per product, per quarter.” Thus, Epic Games will only rake in money if the developer makes money.
“Our goal is to give you absolutely everything, so that you can do anything and be in control of your schedule and your destiny,” Tim Sweeney said. “Whatever you require to build and ship your game, you can find it in UE4, source it in the Marketplace, or build it yourself – and then share it with others.”
Recently several videos have popped up on YouTube showing popular video icons in Unreal Engine 4. The first is Aryoksini who uploaded an awesome video of Mario. “All the environment assets were taken from the Unreal marketplace, all the character actions were scripted using blueprints only, all animations were re-created from scratch as well as the PBR ready textures,” the caption reads.
The Mario video is astonishingly beautiful, showing what our favorite plumber could look like in a next-generation game using the popular engine. The video throws Mario in a number of scenarios ranging from a castle interior to the cartoony world Mario has saved over and over to real-world settings such as a kitchen. All the while he’s collecting coins and jumping about in his usual trademark fashion.
In addition to Mario, CryZENx took to YouTube to upload a video featuring Sonic the Hedgehog. The popular SEGA icon is placed inside Unreal Engine 4’s Kite demo, which contains “miles” of green hills. Like Mario, the hedgehog stays true to the official mascot, blazing through rolling plains of grass and jumping at amazing heights. Not only does the demo show what Sonic will look like, but what Unreal Engine 4 can do, and it’s astonishing.
For more information about obtaining Unreal Engine 4, CLICK HERE
