[akyu]

As a hobbyist I found Unreal to be far better than Unity. The technical debt that Unity has continued to accrue starts impacting you even as a casual user. It's a bit of a mess to be honest.

Unreal on the other hand has a very solid architecture and goes out of its way to be reliable and maintainable. Plus you have the full source available in your project to search through if you want to dig into the code. The code is generally well written enough that you can use the source code over documentation if you prefer. Blueprints are also great if you are prototyping things.

Also if you are interested in doing networked multiplayer, there is no comparison. Unreal's networking is fantastic, while Unity doesn't really have networking built in.

[andrewmcwatters]

I can't take any hobbyist game engine that doesn't implement multiplayer out of the box seriously. It's so stupid. QuakeWorld had it in 1999, and because game devs are too afraid of networking, you get a bunch of people saying "Oh, it's too hard," or "Yeah, but your networking model is dependent on what game you're shipping."

No you dunces, you will always need to serialize something. You will always need some semblance of tickrate, or at least you will always need game events. The more simple features game engine developers don't write increase the risk for users who will inevitably not implement them themselves.

[holografix]

Can you expand on the networking bit?

[Jensson]

Unreal engine has native support for networking. You add some configuration to your objects to determine how they should be replicated over the net and flip a switch in the settings, and now you have a multiplayer game.