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What Unity Is Getting Wrong

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Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#211

Post by thrower123 »

cableshaft wrote: post #115
_bxg1 wrote: post #12

I'm so frustrated that Unity and Unreal are the only two real options. And it's all because of console vendors. Unreal is just way too inaccessible, as an individual, non-C++-veteran (used it a bunch in college, but modern C++ looks nothing like what I've seen), non-games-industry-veteran. It's also fairly opinionated towards first person/third person action games. And then Unity is of course a dumpster fire. It's mu…

While it might not be a good fit for a some people, Monogame is still active, still ports to most systems, and it's totally free. I ported my old XNA/Xbox 360 game to that pretty much in one night (since it's based on XNA) and have been working on remaking it for desktop/mobile/eventually console. It's still being used for some pretty mainstream Indie games, like just-released Streets of Rage 4, Flinthook, Celeste, B…

Monogame is really nice as a hobbyist.

I also like that you actually have near full control of what is happening, rather than poking at a black box engine and hoping the bits you plug into it work correctly. Of course, I'm of the age where you had to write your own Windows message loop and wrangle OpenGL or DirectX yourself to do much of anything.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#212

Post by caribousoup »

mpartel wrote: post #60

As a Unity user emphatically sharing these frustrations, I'd be really curious to hear from long-time Unreal devs whether the grass really is greener on the other side. How's Unreal's - API stability? - Editor stability? (I have some old experiences of it being quite crashy too, and you know, C++ ...) - Backwards compatibility and upgradeability?

Unity editor is more stable. Unity editor is more performant.

UE4 is easier to work with in the long run. I find that Unity is just missing stuff, or has half-baked solutions that change. UE4 already has this stuff included as core product.

Unity is more approachable, has better docs, but slowly falls apart. UE4 is less approachable, has worse docs, but becomes better to work with over time.

But, it all depends on your use case, and what you need out of which tool. I have worked in Unity 4/5, UE4, Source, and Source 2 as of recently with the HL:Alyx tools.

Unrelated side not: Source 2 tools are pretty slick! But they don't have general licensing yet... if they announce that, my next project might be in Source 2 instead of UE4. Something about that Quake/HL legacy code that is always more comfortable than Unreal.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#213

Post by fxtentacle »

gentleman11 wrote: post #172
fxtentacle wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest grief with Unity is that they only made the C#, but not the C++ part of the engine open source. So there can be release-blocking bugs that you cannot fix yourself, due to lack of source code. And when I tried to purchase Unity source code access, I was just ignored. Unreal Engine on the other hand has source code available for everything, so you can be sure that if such a bug hits, you can just patch it yo…

None of that is open source

That is correct. But since I'm in the business of selling my source code, I don't find that problematic. Actually, it kind of helps me that my customers know that the engine is not free.

I need access to the source code to understand hidden magic and fix bugs, but I don't need a license that would allow me to redistribute the modified source code.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#214

Post by Impossible »

gfxgirl wrote: post #117
mpartel wrote: post #60

As a Unity user emphatically sharing these frustrations, I'd be really curious to hear from long-time Unreal devs whether the grass really is greener on the other side. How's Unreal's - API stability? - Editor stability? (I have some old experiences of it being quite crashy too, and you know, C++ ...) - Backwards compatibility and upgradeability?

I am also curious to know. I have no Unreal experience but some Unity experience. Have only made a few hackathon level games and plugins. Unity seems amazing to me. It's like a game engine editor creation system. Every game needs custom tools and they are relatively trivial to create in Unity from small, just create a struct and get a UI in the inspector, to add a few lines of code and get a custom control for your d…

I think when people say they use what's built in, they mean they don't have to purchase anything from an asset store, and possibly mean they don't have to use any external free or open source libraries. Writting tools specific to your game probably counts as using what is built in.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#215

Post by OmarIsmail »

hashamali wrote: post #197

Unity does miss on a lot of things, but I'd like to point out one of its best qualities: the pricing model. Compared to Unreal, Unity is a steal. Despite Unreal's recent changes to not collect royalties on the first $1m of gross revenue, its license can get quite expensive if you have a successful game. * Unity: $1800 / year, no royalties. (Unity Pro) * Unreal: 5% of gross revenue.

Recently changed so it only kicks in after $1M in revenue. For the vast majority of game developers Unreal is 100% free now.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#216

Post by an_opabinia »

kbenson wrote: post #147
bluescrn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really do need that reminder. The people making money from Unity-based games are primarily mobile/F2P devs, and smaller indie developers. They need stability and ease-of-use/very-rapid-development much more than they need performance or the latest shiny high-end graphics features.

I thought I remembered there being some bigger games, but looking at a list[1], they are all pretty indie, or at least small. Not sure I saw a AAA game on the list (which doesn't mean there aren't any, but they seem rare). The equivalent list for Unreal Engine[2] does contain quite a few big titles (along with a plethora of less well known ones). I'm not sure if that's cause, effect or marketing. It could be that usi…

Unreal is for people who get games financed. The demos looks great and the execs don’t play games anyhow so what do they know. That’s why it’s all FPSes, it’s stuff non-game-playing adults can understand just by looking at it. They will fund the most photoreal looking pitch for the Star Wars IP.

Unreal as an engine product is competing with Frostbite and Source Engine (the various engines Star Wars appeared recently) not Unity.

However EA and Respawn won those bids for a variety o reasons, mostly related to the mechanics of royalties and their support commitments.

It’s complicated. There are many forces at work, only somewhat related to engineering, that funnels the engines to one kind of game or another.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#217

Post by sloopy543 »

johnfn wrote: post #118
sloopy543 wrote: post #89

I'll just sit back and eat popcorn as I work with my custom handmade game engine. None of this is a concern for me, and it has been refreshing to work directly with the graphics pipeline and in lower level languages that give me direct control. If something is wrong, it's my own damn fault. For those who want to get away from being totally dependent on third-party frameworks and tools, check out Handmade Hero. It was…

> I'm not really sure why more people don't do their own thing. I've certainly considered it, but one thing holds me back: cross-platform targeting. I'd love for my game to eventually run on the Switch, to say nothing of more basic targets like MacOS, Windows and Linux. Targeting those platforms would be a herculean effort.

I don't actually think it's that hard once you know how to do it. You basically make a cross-platform C library that generates the GPU commands and sounds per frame, then you just plug that into whatever platform you're running on.

My Mac Platform code is only like 1500 lines or so. Pretty small considering that it runs a 2D game full-screen on my iMac.

Not sure what is meant by 'Herculean'. Once you know how to do it, you don't lose that knowledge. You literally have the code to use on the next project. No big deal

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#218

Post by sloopy543 »

enumjorge wrote: post #103
sloopy543 wrote: post #89

I'll just sit back and eat popcorn as I work with my custom handmade game engine. None of this is a concern for me, and it has been refreshing to work directly with the graphics pipeline and in lower level languages that give me direct control. If something is wrong, it's my own damn fault. For those who want to get away from being totally dependent on third-party frameworks and tools, check out Handmade Hero. It was…

Once you know how to do something, it’s easy to forget how much time and effort it took to get there. Making your own engine comes at a cost, and if you’re an artist or new to development, it’s a pretty high barrier of entry. Unity initially presented a good value proposition. You lose some control, but the engine will do a lot for you. Even for experienced devs this meant saving time. And I think Unity got this popu…

For context, it took me about a year of learning in my spare time to get to place where I could do my own cross-platform game engine, and some of that time was spent doing the code for the game itself.

What exactly is the expectation here? Would it have taken that much less time to learn the little nuances of Unity that folks here are complaining about?

Also for context, my full-time job is demanding, and I have a lot of outdoor hobbies like snowboarding and mountain biking. I bet if I were even more focused, I would have learned it faster.

It's not a big deal. You're already expending effort learning Unity/Unreal. It's only a little more effort to do your own thing. You might enjoy it

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#219

Post by sloopy543 »

hn_acc_2 wrote: post #204
sloopy543 wrote: post #89

I'll just sit back and eat popcorn as I work with my custom handmade game engine. None of this is a concern for me, and it has been refreshing to work directly with the graphics pipeline and in lower level languages that give me direct control. If something is wrong, it's my own damn fault. For those who want to get away from being totally dependent on third-party frameworks and tools, check out Handmade Hero. It was…

I definitely support making your own game engine if you enjoy it as a programmer. But it shouldn't be a surprise that it's not the best choice for the most developers. Every moment you're debugging and improving the engine is another moment you could have been working on the game itself, because almost all engine improvements are orthogonal to improving the game experience. So given a limited amount of time, you will…

In my experience, it was easy... until I got to the part of my game that makes it unique. Then it went from easy to very very hard.

That's the thing about engines. They'll get you up and running quickly for basic stuff, but you'll be tearing out your hair when you need to do anything non-basic.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#220

Post by pjmlp »

haydenlee wrote: post #100
ortusdux wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my on-boarding tasks at my first tech job was to evaluate the merits of upgrading to a newer version of unity. I installed the new version, imported our code base, fixed a few bugs, and everything worked. We gained a few niceties, we could remove some of the hacks we had to program in to bypass unity weirdness, and we could start keeping our product up to date. I gave a presentation, we went over the pro/con l…

We are a tiny dev team using Unity on a non-gaming project and we basically have to dedicate 2-4 weeks of the year to updating Unity and all the mess that it entails. But if you don't update then you have to spend even more time the next year catching up. Then we end up being too scared to use their new features cause they aren't supported well or cause bugs. Its lose-lose.

Last year's Unreal conference had a couple of talks related to engine migration and how teams managed to do them, which some mentioned they rather do it between projects than jeopardizing an ongoing game development cycle.

Middleware migration headaches are everywhere, regardless of the chosen stack.

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