
Mono for Unreal Engine - stesch
http://mono-ue.github.io/
======
shadowmint
You realize this is officially abandoned right?

[https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?54595-I-want-...](https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?54595-I-want-
Feedback-from-Epic-about-Mono-for-Unreal-Engine&highlight=xamarin)

&tldr; Epic saw the Unity thing and went 'nope; not unless you make it free
forever'.

(Also, don't bother. It doesn't work with the most recent version of the
engine either)

~~~
TillE
What's the "Unity thing"?

I'm disappointed that the semi-official Lua integration seems to have gone
nowhere for the past six months or so. I think that's a much better
intermediate step between C++ and Blueprints.

~~~
shadowmint
Unity licensed mono, with a very special license, for that specific version of
mono. Then there was what, 4 or 5 years of wrangling and no C# version updates
because of licensing and royalty disagreements with 'whoever owns mono at the
moment'. I can't honestly be bothered digging the threads up, but search the
unity forums and you'll get the whole story.

Unity is now officially pursuing the 'compiles C# to C++' thing. They say it's
because its 5-10x faster (and it is... compared to the specific C# runtime
they're using...). I'd guess that lets them do some legal loop hole things.

Licensing. Devil's in the details.

Unreal just nipped the whole thing in the bud by saying; make it free and open
source, or don't come to the party.

~~~
tormeh
According to the Mono project's website they are open source:
[http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/](http://www.mono-
project.com/docs/about-mono/)

It's all MIT and GPL: [http://www.mono-
project.com/docs/faq/licensing/](http://www.mono-
project.com/docs/faq/licensing/)

~~~
shadowmint
Devils in the details huh?
[https://store.xamarin.com/](https://store.xamarin.com/)

Doesn't look free to me.

(and I'm not being narky. _This_ is the point I'm making; it's only
superficially free. Then you have to say, ship a game, and woa~ wait, it has
to be GPL now if you bundle the runtime, or you have to pay a licensing fee?)

~~~
tormeh
" _When do I need to obtain a license from Xamarin to the Mono Runtime?_ We
only require licensing for uses of Mono and Moonlight on embedded systems, or
systems where you are unable to fulfill the obligations of the GNU LGPL.

For example, if you manufacture a device where the end user is not able to do
an upgrade of the Mono virtual machine or the Moonlight runtime from the
source code, you will need a commercial license of Mono and Moonlight.

Or if you ship an application that requires to statically link the Mono
runtime and you are not able to provide the object code to relink Mono, you
must obtain a commercial license from Xamarin."

You can bundle as much as you want, as long as you adhere to the rules.

~~~
shadowmint
I don't even know what point you're making.

'as long as you adhere to the rules.'

Yes, by 'obtain a commercial license from Xamarin', they mean, 'pay a license
fee'.

Like say, if you ship a mobile game. The only reason Unity gets away with it
is because they have a _licensing deal_ that permits them to ship mono.

If _you_ want to write a mobile game, you pay for it.

That's not freedom.

~~~
carussell
> I don't even know what point you're making.

Then read again.

The fact is the runtime and libraries are MIT and LGPL. Your statement that
your game has to be GPL if you use them is totally wrong. Least of all,
because the GPL is neither of those two licenses, but most importantly, those
licenses allow you to release a game under a license that's not even MIT or
the LGPL, _because that 's the nature of those two licenses_.

Unity is required to pay a custom license because they didn't want to accept
the terms that are available to everyone. (I almost wrote "everyone else"
there, but that would have been wrong because the terms were available even to
Unity.)

~~~
carussell
You mind explaining that downvote there, buddy?

------
baldfat
Mono and C# are now being used by both Unity and Unreal. This certainly gives
further momentum to the language for game developers. With all the past
license changes and the cross platform nature of Unreal and Unity this makes
it a lot more pursading to learn C#\Mono for game development.

Personally I have a few educational games I would like to write and still
can't decide what tool would be best, certainly Unreal will be to over the top
for my ideas, but Unity keeps seeming like it would get me out the door
quicker. The issue always was writing in Java Script or C# with C# always
looking like a much better option.

~~~
Narishma
Unreal doesn't use Mono or C#.

~~~
baldfat
> Unreal doesn't use Mono or C#

FROM THE READING "With Mono for Unreal Engine, you can now use the latest
version of C# to write your gameplay code, AI behaviors, UI elements, and
more."

~~~
Narishma
As someone already said, project is dead and doesn't work with the latest
versions of UE.

~~~
stesch
There's current traffic on the mailing list. Everybody talks about it like
it's alive.

