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Unity Software Inc S-1

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Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#211

Post by dmurray »

johnfn wrote: post #148
andybak wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmmm. Is it possible that a tutorial is deprecated without the actual feature itself being deprecated? i.e. there's no intent to get rid of AssetBundles in the near future but they don't want people who are just starting out to go down that path? I can see that's a gray area (you are kinda deprecating it by doing this) but the strict definition of deprecation probably involves a pledge to remove that feature in a ce…

Maybe we're talking about two different things? To me, once you add a new feature intended to replace an old one, the old feature should be deprecated and should eventually be removed. Even if you can use AssetBundles, there's no reason you ever should because they've been superseded. I've always thought that that is deprecation, but I could see your argument that it's not. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with the…

> Even if you can use AssetBundles, there's no reason you ever should because they've been superseded.

You might have to use a superseded feature because you're maintaining old code. If Unity cares about backwards compatibility (admittedly, I'm not convinced they do), they need to keep supporting and documenting the old features even as they nudge you away from them.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#212

Post by johnfn »

danbolt wrote: post #200
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…

My biggest thought about game programming not necessarily having the same engineering culture as the web is due to the financial/business incentives for various engineering practices. I think React and a lot of other web tools are designed for programmers creating services that continually operate and generate revenue. Meanwhile, a video game's development is closer to a theatre production or a film. Traditionally, a…

That's a really interesting thought. It makes a lot of sense.

Here's another one I've had that I'll throw on the pile: video games are generally highly demanding of the CPU. They'll use every cycle they can get their hands on. Web apps, on the other hand, have a ton of downtime and generally don't need to hit 60FPS (with rare exceptions). This means that they can spend their extra cycles on better abstraction layers, like React and Redux. Using React to render a bunch of game entities would make no sense because just running the reconciliation step can take 16ms, which is your entire rendering budget.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#213

Post by johnfn »

erlend_sh wrote: post #206
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…

If you’re interested in Rust, you might like Bevy: https://bevyengine.org/news/introducing-bevy/ A lot of people with experience in React are influencing the UI design.

Very excited about Bevy. Course, if Godot is young, then Bevy is practically a newborn. :-) Still, I resonate very strongly with a lot of things that the Bevy authors care about.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#214

Post by stevofolife »

tikhonj wrote: post #163
xex70 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Your first paragraph is like saying ship building, plane building or car building isn't or shouldn't be so different from one another. Wait what?

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#215

Post by johnfn »

dmurray wrote: post #211
johnfn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we're talking about two different things? To me, once you add a new feature intended to replace an old one, the old feature should be deprecated and should eventually be removed. Even if you can use AssetBundles, there's no reason you ever should because they've been superseded. I've always thought that that is deprecation, but I could see your argument that it's not. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with the…

> Even if you can use AssetBundles, there's no reason you ever should because they've been superseded. You might have to use a superseded feature because you're maintaining old code. If Unity cares about backwards compatibility (admittedly, I'm not convinced they do), they need to keep supporting and documenting the old features even as they nudge you away from them.

Sure, but if that's the case, you should really be pushing new developers away from using the old thing and towards the new thing. Mark it obsolete in the editor. Update your docstrings to point towards the new thing. Maybe even give me a warning in my console if it's really serious.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#216

Post by chaostheory »

hobofan wrote: post #184
chaostheory wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important question is how does it compare to Unreal in terms of bugs, problems, and usability?

Not only Unreal. I think the even bigger question is how does it compare to all the incumbent tools of the industries they are trying to replace.

Well, who are the other leaders in the industry? Is there any other major player besides Unity and Unreal? (I'm not overly familiar myself?) What's their respective market share?

EDIT: Never mind, I found it.

Unity and Unreal are the market leaders with approximately 15% & 25% market share respectively. Nothing else including Havok, Godot, Cryengine or Source even come close.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#217

Post by johnfn »

ezconnect wrote: post #201
johnfn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally and completely agree with everything you've said, but the fact that Rider - a 3rd party IDE - has to ensure all these things rather than them being baked into Unity is part of the problem.

Unity is a game engine first, the quality of their product will suffer if they have to teach all their user to program properly.

I can't understand how this is the case. Unity is a game engine which keeps users mostly by instilling goodwill that it's a productive environment and is saving them time over using another engine or homebrewing one. It would therefore seem to be in its best interest to prevent them from creating bugs where possible.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#218

Post by madrox »

Unity's done great things in its space. I worry about its long term prospects against the likes of Epic, who are going to be able to vertically integrate Unreal Engine with the epic games store and thus compete in ways Unity can't. I think a better business strategy would've been acquisition that could've given them that synergy, but I can also understand that, for the owners, the biggest cash out may not be what they're going for.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#219

Post by tiborsaas »

_mkef wrote: post #147
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't UE4 free for all use cases under a million dollar of revenue ?

My joke was it takes a much larger team to get anything done in UE4 . I couldn't imagine solo dev on an Unreal Project .

We tried it for a hackathon and after a day or so we got some stuff going. Of course it's a monster engine, but you can learn it as a side project, then after a month you can start building something. I don't see why a solo dev couldn't handle it.

Re: Unity Software Inc S-1

#220

Post by zemo »

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…

the old tutorials were better. Roll-a-Ball is still the best intro.

honestly just think of the scene as being analogous to a browser DOM and learn which methods the game engine invokes on the objects and in which order. That's described here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ExecutionOrder.html

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