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What Unity Is Getting Wrong

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Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#241

Post by winrid »

fxtentacle wrote: post #139
switch11 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is very interesting -When Unreal 4 swapped out UnrealScript for C++ it went into overdrive in terms of performance and clean. why do you think this happened? why was C++ so much better

Because there is excellent tooling for C++, while they had to reinvent all the tools from scratch for UnrealScript. I believe that ReSharper C++ alone makes me 10-20% more productive. Their refactorings and inferred constants are amazing and produce real-world performance benefits. Plus having const wherever it is warranted makes code easier to read and easier to debug.

Why ReSharper and not CLion?

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#242

Post by flukus »

santoshalper wrote: post #185
dahfizz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LTS is only supported for two years. That doesn't really solve this problem.

I think it is telling that in Unity world, 2 years is "Long Term". I wonder what cutting edge is? Building your entire game on the unstable weekly branch and crossing your fingers?

Not just unity unfortunately. .net core LTS is 3 years, Firefox "extended support" is 12 months, some random library from cargo/npm/nuget probably not at all. "Long Term" is becoming a meaningless buzzword.

Companies cling to 40 year old COBOL because there's nothing stable enough to migrate to.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#243

Post by kbenson »

Jasper_ wrote: post #233
cpeterso wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla cross-compiles Firefox's macOS (and Windows) builds on Linux. Build times are much faster on Linux and build scripts for macOS, Windows, and Linux can share more common code. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=921040

This doesn't account for all the Mac-specific graphics tooling like the Metal compiler, metal-al, metallib and such.

Firefox for Mac OS uses GPU acceleration though, so are they doing something fundamentally different than a game would? They need to expose WebGL, and they hardware accelerate page rendering too if I'm not mistaken.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#244

Post by soylentgraham »

GuiA wrote: post #224
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…

Building your own thing is fine if you're solo. When you start having to collaborate with e.g. artists who expect their assets to render the same way they do in their editor, or a game designer who needs to edit levels in the engine, etc., then you introduce a bottleneck due to the fact that some people are working on the engine, and others on the game that depends on the engine.

This is the big bottleneck, plus, for shipping jobs (say I've been doing an engine on the side (c++ underneath, javascript on top) for pc,Hololens,magic leap,Mac, android, we , pi/Linux (finally) for about 4 years now. I can churn out tools (editors, daemons that run for months, hot-reloading remote-assets, vr apps&overlays, ML tools, streaming point clouds) and demos, but it's still missing rigid body physics and a lighting engine (outside ray marching)

I still have to resort to unity or unreal to get jobs out, because there's too much to do for one person. (Although this is finally starting to change :)

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#245

Post by rasz »

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…

Escape from Tarkov might be the biggest Unity game on Twitch right now. Thanks to Unity you get game stutter and freezes during tense action. Escape from Tarkov devs keep promising every year that thanks to the close cooperation with Unity team 'this next update' is totally going to solve the problem! year after year it doesnt.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#246

Post by TeMPOraL »

username90 wrote: post #105
machisuji wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always ruling out Unreal as an option due to C++ because I'm no good with C++ and it seems scary. But in the end I got so frustrated with Unity that we did do the switch to Unreal. So far I actually had to do a lot less coding in Unreal than in Unity. There's almost nothing you can't do in blueprints. The only thing I had to write C++ for is some JSON parsing because the existing JSON blueprint libraries (from…

How much C++ you need depends on what kind of game you are making. You probably wont make a game like Civilization in blueprints.

Which Civilization?

I'd say a lot depends on how much stuff you're doing every frame. From what I've seen, Epic is emphasizing you should avoid running blueprints every tick, and instead use event-driven programming heavily (or "steal" ticks from input handling), and then flip appropriate switches to remove anything that doesn't need updating every frame from even being issued a tick by the engine.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#247

Post by Impossible »

antiuniverse wrote: post #207
Impossible wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on your code base and project. Unreal upgrades can be painful if you're using APIs that can or are rewritten, and if you have made engine level changes. Unity often feels like rolling the dice with upgrades, basic things can break from version to version, but I've done many Unity upgrades with no or minimal issues, and seen extremely painful Unreal upgrades

It’s true that you really, really want to avoid making changes to the engine. Even for AAA studio source licensees in prior UE generations this was widely agreed upon. The good news is, you really shouldn’t have to. In my mind, the big win from having the Unreal source code is understandability. But also, in contrast to Unity, if you should for some reason need to—say a critical bug that’s stopping your game from shi…

Every AAA source licensee that I worked at made large changes to the engine source. There are many AAA titles both shipped and in development that change fundamental things about how the engine works. Look at the GDC presentation about Mortal Kombat rollback network, or its predecessor about running UE3 at 60 fps on console for some good examples. Completely avoiding engine changed isn't the reality for AAA, and I imagine it's only true for small indies. Good news is it's pretty easy to merge small engine changes.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#248

Post by drawkbox »

kbenson wrote: post #181
drawkbox wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP article is written by Garry Newman the developer that did Rust in the Unity list from 2013. Previously he was the developer of Garry's Mod on Valve Source engine.

I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate. That Rust is a AAA title? It's not, as I understand it. AAA is not a designation of quality or popularity, it's a designation of resources that go into it. Large company with lots of resources putting lots of money behind it means AAA. It's less a designation of the end product than of the process going into that product.

Just mentioned that it was on the list of games in terms of popularity, never said it was AAA.

However, Garry has lots of pull in games including towards AAA developers. I did not say that game was AAA but on the notable Unity list that everyone knows about.

Rust is much bigger than most Unity games, so Garry's opinion on this is highly relevant and influential. Facepunch studios and their forums were also a gamedev spot for a long time.

Garry Newman is also someone speaking from shipping experience in another engine that is for AAA studios, Valve Source Engine. Eventhough that was a mod, and yes not a massive budget or team, it has pull at the AAA level in terms of influence as well.

Rust competes with AAA titles on Steam in terms of playtime/playercount all the time, was top 10 for a while and quite often. [1]

The point is Garry's opinion is more valid than most, even at AAA probably about Unity. A developer of a top 10 Steam game has some pull and is someone to listen to, hopefully Unity hears it. Rust is clearly one of the biggest games in terms of playtime/playercount than most Unity games at least on Steam with the popularity only rising since release in 2013.

Rust is AAA level in terms of playtime/playercount with a small team, that is exactly the market Unity wants, in fact it highlights the benefits of Unity clearly. They should listen.

[1] https://steamcharts.com/app/252490#All

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#249

Post by TeMPOraL »

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've made a bunch of half-finished engines in C++ and Common Lisp over the years, my problem is that I always end up bikeshedding the architecture instead of writing a game. And since I do it in my time off, life eventually intervenes.

E.g. this time around, between a new job and a pandemic, I don't have the headspace to think about my little experimental Roguelike I've been developing over the past year (which BTW. mostly took the form it has from me bikeshedding the ECS pattern).

So when the other day I thought it's time to test out the few things I wanted to test about VR, I eventually decided to screw writing my own code, and now I'm just poking around UE4 and doing everything in blueprints.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#250

Post by antiuniverse »

Impossible wrote: post #247
antiuniverse wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s true that you really, really want to avoid making changes to the engine. Even for AAA studio source licensees in prior UE generations this was widely agreed upon. The good news is, you really shouldn’t have to. In my mind, the big win from having the Unreal source code is understandability. But also, in contrast to Unity, if you should for some reason need to—say a critical bug that’s stopping your game from shi…

Every AAA source licensee that I worked at made large changes to the engine source. There are many AAA titles both shipped and in development that change fundamental things about how the engine works. Look at the GDC presentation about Mortal Kombat rollback network, or its predecessor about running UE3 at 60 fps on console for some good examples. Completely avoiding engine changed isn't the reality for AAA, and I im…

Sure, I didn’t say changes don’t happen. Plenty of teams gutted UE and made it into something unrecognizable. But it shouldn’t be your first choice.

How about this... stick to small changes, freeze your engine upstream version, or hate your life: pick one? ;)

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