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Unity Software Inc S-1

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Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#161

Post by johnfn »

DonHopkins wrote: post #150
johnfn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but I've always thought that removing components at runtime is such a rare thing to do, and the cost of allowing it on an engine level - inability to statically verify components - is such a high price to pay that the tradeoff just doesn't make sense. If I was czar of Unity (ha!) I would never have allowed AddComponent and RemoveComponent to be a thing - I would have required the user to add all of the c…

Well so much for dynamic and procedural and data driven content, under your reign as Unity Czar. People use Unity for a lot more than Flappy Bird clones, you know. Components do have an enabled flag. https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Behaviour-enabled.h...

Well, I would certainly hope that as my reign as Unity Czar would include guidelines for storing procedural content somewhere other than in Components :)

I mean, if you're adding a new component to a GameObject for every room in your dungeon or something, you're doing something very wrong. At least in my opinion!

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#162

Post by nshm »

Audio recording API in Unity is awful, you can only record a short clip on button press and thats it. No continuous listening, no sample rate configuration, no realtime. And processing thread changes from version to version. We had big trouble implementing speech recognition with Vosk in Unity.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#163

Post by tikhonj »

xex70 wrote: post #116
johnfn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not as much of a stretch as you might think. Let's put aside everything that the two libraries actually do for a second, and just think about them in the abstract. React very clearly tries to guide the developer towards correct patterns and abstractions. It's clear that React developers have thought very deeply about how to lead engineers towards the happy path of code with fewer bugs in it. It throws lou…

AAA here. Actually, it is a stretch, because you’re expecting an entirely different discipline of software development to reflect the trends, knowledge, and assumptions of your discipline. We are a CryEngine shop but I’ve used Unity extensively for MVP pitches, spec work, and side projects. I also left the Web vertical to do this so I still have context from your side as well. I took the time to read what you’ve writ…

Game programming isn't—or at least shouldn't be—so different from other fields that fundamental software engineering principles do not apply. It seems like discarding criticism just because it comes from outside the immediate industry is going to lead to an insular culture and get in the way of any real change or progress.

Doubly so for an industry that still has high-profile, highly funded projects (Battlefield V, Anthem... etc) flounder because of technical debt and poor tooling. (And yes, these issues are all downstream of awful management for those particular projects, but that doesn't change the technical side of things!)

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#164

Post by weaksauce »

MrLeap wrote: post #19

I use Unity every day at work. This is a mixed bag for me. Unity gives google a run for their money when it comes to abandoning old features / letting them rot. The editor is kind of crashy, launch times get unwieldy fast. Sometimes there's subtle differences between build version and running in the editor, and solving the disparity is a death march. All that said, it's still one of my favorite environments to work i…

yeah the version control aspect of unity made me cool off on it because version control is so very important.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#166

Post by m0guz »

jarsin wrote: post #109
_mkef wrote: post #93

Ehh. I really hope Unity raises tons of money , and inspires some decent competition here. Unity is the worst game engine, aside from all others. UE4 is a convoluted mess. I've tired several times , but even getting it setup with the C++ build chain is a pain. Godot ( which epic funded recently ) isn't done yet. I'm going to stick with Unity until someone else can build an easy to use game engine. Ultimately Unity do…

I think unreal is easier to use than Unity because Unreal comes with batteries included. Unity you have to fill all the gaps with 3rd party asset store plugins and deal with all their weirdness etc. Unity's recent changes into everything is a package is a total mess and reminds me of how Rails became a mess after it tried to move everything out of core and into gems.

I remember one Unity developer was talking about how Package Manager will enable them to deliver smaller install/download size on top of easy to update core functionality. This was like 2-3 years ago. Unity 2017 for Win64 download size is around 500MB today, Unity 2020 with Package Manager is 1.7GB

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#167

Post by boogies »

akersten wrote: post #26
formalsystem wrote: post #22

Out of any software tools I use frequently, Unity is the one that brings me the most joy. Any reasonably complex interface is essentially a game whether it's a music composition app, simulator, MMO or even a basic form. The basic abstractions of entities and components sometimes feel like they could apply to any software project. It's seamless to animate something, add physics, style in ways that would seem mind bogg…

> Any reasonably complex interface is essentially a game whether it's a music composition app, simulator, MMO or even a basic form. I've been out of the game development arena for a while, but I can't help but pause here. Are people really writing DAWs and big desktop app interfaces in Unity ? The last time I played with a game engine, I would have said UI was its weakest aspect. Clunky, slow controls, visually unapp…

> Are people really writing DAWs and big desktop app interfaces in Unity?

I’d love to know if Unity is made in Unity. The Godot game engine’s development environment is made in Godot (which is why it was able to be run in web browsers using WebAssembly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23354286).

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#168

Post by [deleted] »

furyofantares wrote: post #111
_mkef wrote: post #93

Ehh. I really hope Unity raises tons of money , and inspires some decent competition here. Unity is the worst game engine, aside from all others. UE4 is a convoluted mess. I've tired several times , but even getting it setup with the C++ build chain is a pain. Godot ( which epic funded recently ) isn't done yet. I'm going to stick with Unity until someone else can build an easy to use game engine. Ultimately Unity do…

I'm a highly experienced programmer and I can't get started with Unity. Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon now. But I just want to see some code and drive from code. The workflow of starting from objects and scenes in a GUI and attaching scripts is totally foreign to me. And then most of the tutorials seem to be videos, which I have no patience for, with text I can skip around and tailor my learning to my personal need…

[deleted]

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#169

Post by hobofan »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #50
johnfn wrote: post #33

I'm quite bearish on Unity in the long run. Unity to me seems like a team with a fantastic marketing department to contrast with a much weaker engineering department. I've tried to use Unity off and on for years and every time I spend time learning it, I regret it. I'm a full-time React developer, and the difference in engineering culture and best engineering practices between Unity and React is massive. The Unity ex…

After watching how many SaaS companies with "weak" engineering have soared to astronomical valuations, I would say I'm quite bullish on Unity (as a stock), irrespective of what developers think. At the end of the day, fantastic marketing is what gets CXO's and decision makers to buy-in. Look at MongoDB's performance since IPO in 2017 for perspective.

> Look at MongoDB's performance since IPO in 2017 for perspective.

I know that this opinion goes against the hivemind, but I wouldn't call them weak in engineering by a long shot. They obviously made some questionable/bad decisions regarding defaults (write acknowledgements, security) in order to have a lower barrier to entry, but apart from that I've had a pretty good experience with it as a stable product and good timeframes for bug-fixes.

Unity is a stark contrast to that. The few years of using it sporadically for hobby projects has been a wild ride. Bugs/crashes seem to be everywhere, and when/if they are fixed just seem to be replaced with new ones. I don't know how full-time Unity developers can deal with that. Their speed of progress is also meh.

Overall, if they were to stick to their (mobile) gaming niche, that probably wouldn't be a problem. However it seems like they are looking to mainly grow via other industries, and with that shoddy engineering and their development pace, I don't see them making a lot of headway there.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#170

Post by altharaz »

formalsystem wrote: post #22

Out of any software tools I use frequently, Unity is the one that brings me the most joy. Any reasonably complex interface is essentially a game whether it's a music composition app, simulator, MMO or even a basic form. The basic abstractions of entities and components sometimes feel like they could apply to any software project. It's seamless to animate something, add physics, style in ways that would seem mind bogg…

Unity has also a lot of potential in the Cybersecurity industry, for people that wants to train themselves on Industrial Systems.

The only thing that makes industrial Cybersecurity really hard for students is the industrial systems laboratory requirements.

With Unity, some people are trying to build completely virtual pentest labs on industrial systems, such as GRFICS (https://github.com/Fortiphyd/GRFICSv2).

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