Why there is way less UE games compared to RenPy ?

[Zhoukwang]

Hi guys im planning to invest myself in porn game dev and i was wondering why ue is far behind in terms of popularity for porn games ?

Is it because Renpy is way easier and effective porn game and visual novel generates the most money as it drags more users since you have few gameplay element and just click with mouse while having the other hand under the desk ?

Is it Because ue5 requires more dev skills, less compatibility with daz models, tedious workflow, games take more disk space, demands more computer ressource from the user ?

Or it is because it has a stigma behind it : "ue games look whacky because of controls, animations, shitty lightning etc when not correctly executed so ue game doesnt initialy drag people" ?




Any idea ?

 

[Dracovian]

We might start this off with a comparison between both engines. Let's start off with their respective system requirements:

	Unreal Engine 5	Ren'Py 8.1.3
Operating Systems	Windows 10 20H2 64-bit macOS Monterrey Linux 3.X or newer	Any OS with Python 3.9 support
CPU	Intel Core i5-12600K AMD Ryzen 5 5600X	Any CPU that can run Python 3.9 scripts
GPU	Any GPU with more than 6 GB VRAM that supports DirectX 11, Metal 1.2, OpenGL 3.2, or Vulkan 1.1	Any GPU that supports DirectX 9, OpenGL 2, and WebGL
RAM	8 GB (16 GB is preferred)	4 GB
Storage	500 GB	300 MB

So you can see that the system requirements for UE5 are far more demanding than Ren'Py but it's not ideal to compare the two so directly because they cater to many different needs. Although it is worth noting that many people might have computers that simply don't meet the minimum requirements to create games in Unreal Engine 5 and so that makes for one potential reason as to why we're seeing so many Ren'Py games versus UE4/UE5 games.

The other potential reason is that the structure of a Visual Novel is far less complicated and takes far less time to make as opposed to a fully fledged 3D game. Of course you could make an asset-flip on UE5 and use the graphical node system to tie everything together and call it a day but that's not going to get you very far when it comes to expectations.

The opposite can also be said with Ren'Py where you have to at least know how to code in Python and where you can make something that is very complex and feature-rich. Though most of what we tend to see could be boiled down to someone scraping hentai images and copying most cliché storylines that we've seen many times before from uninspired novelists.

The other potential reasoning for why we don't see as many games made in UE5 is because of the skill requirements. If you're wanting to make a 3D game without using premade assets then you'll have to learn how to make 3D models, how to set up the rigging for said 3D models to make animations, how to set up textures with UV mapping and normal mapping, how to write shaders, how to optimize the rendering engine with various techniques including LOD, occlusion culling, prebaking lights and textures, simplifying meshes, etc...

If you're wanting to avoid the graphical node editor in UE5 then you'll most likely have to delve into C++ at various points to handle the game's logic and that is far more than what could be said for Ren'Py which requires the ability to code in Python, the ability to generate images (be it from 3D renders or 2D animations either drawn by hand or with vectors made on a computer), and maybe some use of shaders if you're wanting to be extra fancy.

Both engines do require you to know how to work with sound but you can omit sound for the most part if you can't be bothered to record yourself making various noises that might garner some attention from roommates, parents, and neighbors.

Distributing games made with UE5 is far more problematic than with Ren'Py because not everyone has a decent internet connection that can be sat for hours while uploading gigabytes worth of game data, although this could also be an issue with larger and more complex Ren'Py games.

Both engines do allow for you to sell your games as well without having to deal with any restrictive licenses or paying royalties based on calculated income figures that may or may not be accurate (here's looking at you Unity).

Spoiler: tl;dr

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[osanaiko]

It's quite simple: Renpy is the default option for traditional "visual novels" style games.

I haven't attempted any development with UE so I can't say for certain if it is easy or not, but I do know that Renpy is incredibly easy to get started with for beginners.
It also includes so many of the "default" expected functions like hide dialogue, history rollback, config screen, save/load with preview image (and others like debug console, style helper, image clickable zone helper).
Plus Renpy *can* be extended to make quite sophisticated games as the developer skill level increases.
There's also a big culture of existing developers who can help with renpy (like on this forum), many many existing games which can be trivially decrypted to view how they are implemented, and tons of video how-to channels.

The one thing it can't do well is realtime 3D, which presumably is UE's strong point.

Dracovian makes a valid point about computing resource requirements, but I think that is secondary.

 

[Chaotic Neutral]

the gist is generally speaking renpy games have a lower skill requirement to make a decent game and a lower skill celing than unreal engine games meaning you can make better games with UE if you know how to but if you dont they are going to be so much worse

considering the scope of what you want to make it often makes sense to go with the lower skill version if you just want to make a visual novel there is no reason not to use renpy if you want to have a nice fighting system for example it can be done in renpy but it might be worth considering other engines

i am also considering making my own game and when i was looking at engines i was asking myself what do i want it to do and renpy was out of the question because i wanted a high sense of place so i considered using QSP RPGM UE and Unity and in the end i landed on RPGM as it was the easiest engine to do what i wanted to do (which is basically a topdown RPG with manegement and character quests)