Ever heard the saying “Everything looks like a nail when you have a hammer”? Basically, just because you have a tool, it doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for every job. UE5 is great for making games, cinematics and loads of other stuff. But why use it to effectively behave as a browser like Chrome or Firefox, but worse, when there are alternatives made specifically for that?
steakmeoutt@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
That’s not really a valid response. Please accurately clarify why UE5 is inefficient at running a store. Benchmarks and other evidence is required.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t think benchmarks are really needed to explain this. The whole game engine part is an unnecessary step.
To initialize a web browser component within UE5, you first need to initialize UE5 and then the web browser within it. Or, you could initialize a web browser directly, saving the memory and time needed to start up UE5.
They clearly have developers who know how to use CEF or whatever web view framework since they added it to Unreal Engine, so it’s not like they don’t know how to just add it to a standalone application.
steakmeoutt@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
You have provided absolutely no proof that using UE5 to run EGS is a waste of resources nor that your idea of using a browser directly would be more performant. Just saying things isn’t proof and the burden sits with you.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m not about to install EGS to prove something that can be deduced using common sense and critical thinking.
Abstractions are not free. The more of them you add, the more resources will be consumed by the application. Unreal Engine is an extra layer of abstraction sitting above some web view framework. Ergo, using the same web view framework without the Unreal Engine component abstraction would be cheaper.
steakmeoutt@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Wait, wait. Do you think that “the whole engine” is loaded for every UE5 executable? I can tell you that’s not at all how this works. The point of a scalable engine is that it loads whatever relevant libraries or portions of the engine that would be needed, including swapping for custom code where appropriate. The idea that the storefront is unoptimised purely because it uses a game engine is just as ignorant as saying that you should measure all computers purely by a single metric. Maybe you could also compare EGS to other stores and measure only the executable’s size? By your reasoning there’s no need for benchmarks, so surely the store with the smallest exe wins, right?
pivot_root@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The whole engine obviously isn’t loaded, but there’s further abstractions and initialization code compared to using CEF or the Edge web view directly. I’m just saying that it’s a waste of resources to require loading or initializing any other part of Unreal Engine (including the component loading code!) when they’re only using it as web view.
I’m also not saying any other storefront is better. Steam is a bloated pig that half uses CEF and half uses Valve’s own proprietary GUI library, and the various other Electron-based publishers’ launchers suffer from different but equally stupid problems.