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OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

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Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#101

Post by teamonkey »

thelastparadise wrote: post #54
qwytw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> approachable language like python Python doesn't really scale though and it's fine only for simple games/scripting (on top of a game mainly built with another language). If you're serious about game development you'll have to switch to C# or C++ eventually. Also I don't see how C# is not "approachable" (C++ is another manner). If you're serious about programming you'll have to figure out static typing at some point…

This is often said, but is it really true? Im thinking of libraries like torch, tensor flow, or pandas. I'm not sure rewriting torch client code from python to c++ would typically be that much faster as most of the work is already being done on the GPU and is highly optimized (much like a game).

Gamedev - at least engine dev - bears some relation to the embedded & performance-critial world. You have this conflict between needing extremely performant code, as close to the metal as practical, but also needing rapid iteration and to represent high-level logic cleanly. This is why you almost always end up with the juxtaposition of a C++ core and an embedded scripting language like Lua.

Python isn't really performant enough, or at least hasn't been in the past. Performance still matters, even for a scripting language.

In general, if your engine does what you want right out of the box with no modifications, you can go a long way to writing a game in the scripting language and - if you're not pushing it hard - not suffer any real performance issues. But as soon as you want to chase framerates, or do something unique or time-critical or computationally difficult, which is often, you 100% need that low-level language.

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#102

Post by danaris »

gmerc wrote: post #14

Missteps implies accidents. This was not accidental, it was an attempt at extracting rent - retroactively.

That's not true—"misstep" only implies that something was a bad idea, not that it wasn't intentional and calculated.

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#103

Post by gnramires »

Aurornis wrote: post #95
courseofaction wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely conjecture, but somehow I suspect that private equity has crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry.

> but somehow I suspect that private equity Unity is publicly traded: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/U Can’t blame private equity for this one. > crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry. More realistically, they crunched the numbers and saw that they aren’t making enough money to keep the company going forever. It’s not a secret, because it’s a public company: They need to make more money to…

Sure, but thinking just because it's a publicly traded company "anything goes" is equally deeply misguided. Whoever owns your company or organization, we should always respect and try to do the best for our customers and everyone involved -- we don't get to destroy things in the name of profit.

This behavior is not only destructive of their legacy, the promises they kept, but of course of their own reputation as a game company... I don't see any independent developer choosing Unity from now on (without a radical change for the company) in their right minds.

I'm pretty sure this wasn't the only solution to the situation. If they're going to ruin the company anyway... might as well make it open source. Start charging a large amount for a license. Cut the company size (maybe competition for other open source software is too great, and they couldn't survive at that size!). We have the choice to do the right thing, although many times that isn't the easy thing to do.

This goes even to society at large. No social or economic system can exist without ethics -- to believe so is delusional. Not communism, capitalism, social democracy, or something else(and I think we need some other ideas in the mix... but that's another story!) can function well when individuals don't have a good grasp of ethics. Governments are made of people making decisions, and companies likewise. No matter how much structure you impose on top, if people don't generally cooperate, a good outcome is impossible (garbage in, garbage out). So, like a friend says, "Be excellent to each other, or else..." :)

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#104

Post by Macha »

chess_horse_L wrote: post #82
catapart wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone cares, this commenter is absolutely incorrect; Unreal does support mobile development, and it obviously uses a more lithe package than its full GPU stack. Using only the UI objects, 2D is pretty simple and I haven't had any major package size issues. Using a 3D context to render 2D as planes in the scene, I can still get a package down around 70MB with optimizations left on the table. It's harder to wo…

[flagged]

A sample of apps larger than 70mb on my android device:

- The built in Contacts app

- Degiro (investment management)

- Doubletwist (music player)

- Sony Headphones

Some apps above 150mb:

- Element (chat)

- Kindle reader

- Pocket Casts (podcast player)

I don't have too many games installed but layton and the curious village, a point and click DS port, is 700mb (10x larger than on its original platform of the DS). I guess a lot of that increase is replacing 200p backgrounds with 1080p and midis with audio recordings.

Filesize is a weird one to complain about - that ship has long sailed.

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#105

Post by 0xAFFFF »

Aurornis wrote: post #95
courseofaction wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely conjecture, but somehow I suspect that private equity has crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry.

> but somehow I suspect that private equity Unity is publicly traded: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/U Can’t blame private equity for this one. > crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry. More realistically, they crunched the numbers and saw that they aren’t making enough money to keep the company going forever. It’s not a secret, because it’s a public company: They need to make more money to…

I don't think that people realistically oppose monetization going up. The main complaint is adding retroactively a new form of monetization with a unverifiable metric that is not bound to revenue.

Sure people wouldn't have been happy with higher fees, but current clusterfuck is an order of magnitude worse.

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#106

Post by danaris »

master-lincoln wrote: post #67
Drakim wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to have a clause that you could use the old terms of service from when you published your game. But it was removed in favor of even games developed under those terms of services needing to pay. That is very much a retroactive change.

I still don't see how that is retroactive. The TOS changed, but I only accepted the TOS how they were when I paid my license. So the new TOS do not apply until my contract ends. That is the law (at least here in Europe)

"Murder? No, they can't do that! That's illegal!"

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#107

Post by delfinom »

dzonga wrote: post #12

quick qn for game dev's ? why was C# adopted for game dev ? compared to java given that they're both similar langauges which use a vm. I do understand that C# has a better native interop story. than java. and probably the only notable jvm based game was minecraft

C# has had mono which was open source and designed to be embedded, and now we have coreclr, which is also designed to be embedded, very easily. Meaning you can write critical parts of your engine in C/C++ but run C# for core gameplay logic and plugins/extensions.

The JVM isn't/wasn't the greatest to embed and it's kind of a lumbering beast even today.

Also you aren't embedding C#, but dotnet, with which you open yourself up to an entire ecosystem of languages (if you really want to write plugins in VB.NET or F# or IronPython), and a ecosystem of libraries and even Microsoft tooling that's way more polished than Oracle/Sun ever put out.

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#108

Post by SXX »

Aurornis wrote: post #95
courseofaction wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely conjecture, but somehow I suspect that private equity has crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry.

> but somehow I suspect that private equity Unity is publicly traded: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/U Can’t blame private equity for this one. > crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry. More realistically, they crunched the numbers and saw that they aren’t making enough money to keep the company going forever. It’s not a secret, because it’s a public company: They need to make more money to…

They tried to take sustainable B2B middleware business and make new Google out of it. And they keep failing, but still paying exorbitant amounts to their execs.

According to their SEC fillings their staff almost tripled in just 4 years

> Dec 31, 2022 7,703

> Dec 31, 2021 5,245

> Dec 31, 2020 4,001

> Dec 31, 2019 2,715

Development of game engine is costly and take a lot of resources, but they already had a successful product back in 2019 and long before that. With all that hiring quality of their software was more or less constant (and not too high as always) which means all recent growth was not in their core business.

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#109

Post by gnramires »

gnramires wrote: post #103
Aurornis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but somehow I suspect that private equity Unity is publicly traded: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/U Can’t blame private equity for this one. > crunched the numbers and decided it's time to milk this one dry. More realistically, they crunched the numbers and saw that they aren’t making enough money to keep the company going forever. It’s not a secret, because it’s a public company: They need to make more money to…

Sure, but thinking just because it's a publicly traded company "anything goes" is equally deeply misguided. Whoever owns your company or organization, we should always respect and try to do the best for our customers and everyone involved -- we don't get to destroy things in the name of profit. This behavior is not only destructive of their legacy, the promises they kept, but of course of their own reputation as a ga…

All that said... Free Software is just a great idea. Why would you not use an engine open to collaboration, an engine that's a public resource, an engine that could never truly pull the rug on you? An engine that can be forked, go in different directions, copied, redistributed.

And we need to support free software too. If you use it, please donate :)

Re: OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps

#110

Post by badRNG »

rajamaka wrote: post #100
chess_horse_L wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I highly doubt a 70mb download for a game is upsetting anyone outside of HN.

Just a reference point, Genshin Impact is 21GB on Android, COD:Mobile is now 15GB, and even Hearthstone is 4GB,
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