Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 319 posts

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#281

Post by yAak »

mycall wrote: post #88
dogles wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to +1 that Rider for Unreal [1] is GREAT. It's also totally useable for non-Unreal C++ projects. Things like code inspection (e.g. goto definition/find usage/etc) and refactoring are actually fast, unlike Visual Studio. I've got a few quibbles about low-level (think asm) debugging, but I've pretty much moved exclusively to Rider at this point. The Unreal-specific stuff is nice as well: being able to see wha…

Do you think it is possible to use IL2CPP within Rider for Unreal? Then C# could be used in RFU.

No, IL2CPP is proprietary Unity tech.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#282

Post by mbesto »

ratww wrote: post #251
mbesto wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the reason that Unity/UE have crap performance because of the capabilities they offer? For example, you can run the app on multiple platforms. This is the Electron or Hybrid app argument all over again. For 95% of the applications built, the ability to launch on Win, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS far outweighs the bloat and performance hit you have. But for the few AAA titles out there, then yes supporting native…

> Isn't the reason that Unity/UE have crap performance because of the capabilities they offer? For example, you can run the app on multiple platforms. Is anyone, Casey or someone in this thread, complaining that Unity or Unreal have low performance? I don’t think so. Casey Muratori’s performance rants of the past were almost always about specific pieces of software and in the most public of those he managed to show h…

> or someone in this thread, complaining that Unity or Unreal have low performance? I don’t think so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31069502

> That's extremely reductionist. He's saying that modern software is crap regarding performance. And whenever he does complain, he manages to demonstrate it.

Did you even read the thread I was responding to?

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#283

Post by imtringued »

andrewallbright wrote: post #208

In this critique of unity they say that the back half of making a game is the half of suffering. In my experience, it highlights something else that is a massive problem in the game dev space. The game dev community is stuck in software practices of 2005, leading to naive implementation patterns. As a hobbyist game developer of ~1year, one thing that struck me was how I have not found many good sources of teaching th…

Game companies don't care about "correctness" (aka bugfree games). Bethesda releases buggy garbage all the time and it didn't stop them from being successful.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#284

Post by Ygg2 »

ratww wrote: post #277
Ygg2 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a gross simplification Sure it's a simplification. But it is the truth. AAA are generally that way now, because people don't want to bet a lot of money without it being a sure fire bet. And it's same for game mills in mobile land. > Not to mention that very often good gameplay also requires appropriate performance. Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When i…

> Sure it's a simplification Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land, despite your opinions on current gaming trends. There are people working hard on it, including the Unreal and Unity teams. > Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in realit…

> Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land,

I beg to differ it's not an incorrect one.

AAA Titles (+ if I did play them):

Destiny - Review say perf OK.

Elden Ring(+) - Performance Ok on consoles on release it was a slideshow. It ran like garbage. Personally I think it's a clusterfuck

GTA V(+) - Had a huge performance blunder. Released for n-thienth time. Good performance today for game that was released in 2013.

FIFA/NFL/Sports game - Runs ok. It's the same game as year X-1 except with some tweaks (like microtransactions and ads).

Call of Duty - Review while perf is Ok, it's not something

Battlefield - They were Ok, they went too loose with optimization resulting in the shitfest that was 2042. They got punished for it.

Fortnite - Sure stellar work from the guys making Unreal engine no complaints.

According to revenue PUBG belongs on this list. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - Barely holding itself at the seams this game made mad money while being a buggy and lice infested mess. It

Pokemon - It's Ok, but nothing to write home about.

Resident Evil: Village(+) - Played it. It ran like shite. Had to crack it to get decent performance.

Far Cry 6 - Ok performance, but essentially Farcry X-1. With more content.

---------

From examples given, while performance is usually critical for online multiplayer shooters, it's not so much being faster as being less slow than the guy next to you. E.g. PUBG was fine and dandy, even though it was really, really badly optimized.

> Again, this is a bit of a misrepresentation, and probably a bit of projection. His rants are often about specific issues he finds, and mostly about low-hanging-fruit issues that cause real usability problems for end users.

It's not. He compares Visual Studio 2019 to Visual Studio 6 and concludes that MSFT is staffed by idiots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U

Does he compare OS support? Features present? Libs used? No. It's bad and it sucks an MSFT doesn't know to do fast software.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#285

Post by johnnyanmac »

ashkankiani wrote: post #140
rtpg wrote: post #74

Not to tone police that much but I really don't get people like Casey. Like his whole thing is spending a billion years writing his game engine, and then whining about all these "bloated" tools. Just completely dismissive of everything that doesn't align directly with his values (which don't include actually shipping game!) I like people who write their own engines and make bespoke things for fun. Just really dislike…

Roughly 600 episodes translates to roughly 600 work hours. That's 15 weeks. And now it's a full 3D game engine. Because he's not doing it contiguously and instead doing it once a week or so (there are breaks sometimes), it's continued over many years. So by episode 40, he's done about 1 normal work-weeks worth of work (and in truth, constantly starting and stopping affects the productivity, as does doing it live and…

>His point stands up completely. You can follow handmade hero and have your own 2D game engine up and running in roughly 1 week's time.

No, Casey can follow Handmade hero and have his own 2d game engine up and running in roughly a week, at least in "get it done" mode instead of educational mode. I'm an engine programmer myself and I sure wouldn't have my own engine spun up that fast because I'm 20 years behind Casey in that regards (as well as any other non=professional years he's spent tinkering with low level code... where I learned what programming was at 16 years).

And even then, like most education these lessons don't take into account the time needed to go back and either expand on features or maintain bugs that pop up during game development.

>it's pretty disgusting to call an educational project that's had hundreds of hours poured into it "spending a billion years writing his game engine, and then whining about all these 'bloated' tools."

To be fair, this is a result of Casey himself dissing on the most popular engine and suggesting an ultimatim that it's either UE5 or make your own engine. I'm sure Casey's been around long enough to know that his words would spark yet another unnecessary "debate" on what tools are the best for the job. When the answer should be "whatever you and your team is comfortable with".

>Do you know how many people his educational videos have helped?

To be honest, no. That's the tricky thing about edTech. It feels like they help a lot in the beginning, but many people outside of a govt. sanctioned school environment will drop off quickly. That's not Casey's fault, but it does make me doubt that his videos will bring about an era of homespun engines.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#286

Post by johnnyanmac »

jessermeyer wrote: post #206
127 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is that he has some really spicy takes that one can not call balanced or objective by any measure, while not doing anything that's impressive enough to actually deserve to be taken seriously when it comes to such sweeping claims.

Can you provide an example of that?

you mean this topic in general? The tweet this response came from is Casey's:

https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1514420516286709760

>Having looked at UE5's promotional content, I'm honestly just wondering: what is the point of Unity, now? Either you don't want to deal with a big unwieldy engine, in which case you roll/mod your own, or you do, and you would just use UE5, right? What am I missing?

>It seems like it is so far ahead of Unity at this point on all fronts, including asset provision (megascans + metahuman), I'm honestly just not sure what Unity's value proposition would be. Maybe devs who are sticking with Unity could fill me in?

Maybe he was truly just curious on an engine he never worked in and was genuinely impressed with the car sticker UE5 was showing (another engine he almost never worked in, so getting the information purely from PR. Point for Epic's PR team). But anyone who's seen the "debates" on those engines know he just sparked another war.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#287

Post by sombremesa »

Unreal vs. Unity is pretty much the 'spaces vs. tabs' or the 'emacs vs. vim' debate at this point. Nobody who makes a living from gamedev is dropping their engine of choice thanks to a flashy demo or even a killer feature unless they're facing some kind of existential threat. Thus, the most knowledgeable folks can't fairly compare the engines, and the only people really making noise in this debate are amateurs with little to no skin in the game.

There are exceptions, such as where a studio that made the switch for reason X or reason Y is able to clearly articulate what they're doing and why, but these exceptions only serve to prove the rule since they're extremely rare to come across.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#288

Post by wtetzner »

Ygg2 wrote: post #284
ratww wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure it's a simplification Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land, despite your opinions on current gaming trends. There are people working hard on it, including the Unreal and Unity teams. > Yes, but point is good performance. Casey insists performance is thing to optimize for. When in realit…

> Yep, a gross and incorrect one, invented only to advance an argument that doesn't match reality. Performance and ms-per-frame is still highly critical in AAA-land, I beg to differ it's not an incorrect one. AAA Titles (+ if I did play them): Destiny - Review say perf OK. Elden Ring(+) - Performance Ok on consoles on release it was a slideshow. It ran like garbage. Personally I think it's a clusterfuck GTA V(+) - Ha…

I think you're missing the point about performance in games.

More than in other kinds of software, adding new "features" to games tends to slow the game down more (you're trying to do more in the time you have to render a frame). So often performance improvements are needed simply to make room for more "features".

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#289

Post by syntheweave »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #285
ashkankiani wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly 600 episodes translates to roughly 600 work hours. That's 15 weeks. And now it's a full 3D game engine. Because he's not doing it contiguously and instead doing it once a week or so (there are breaks sometimes), it's continued over many years. So by episode 40, he's done about 1 normal work-weeks worth of work (and in truth, constantly starting and stopping affects the productivity, as does doing it live and…

>His point stands up completely. You can follow handmade hero and have your own 2D game engine up and running in roughly 1 week's time. No, Casey can follow Handmade hero and have his own 2d game engine up and running in roughly a week, at least in "get it done" mode instead of educational mode. I'm an engine programmer myself and I sure wouldn't have my own engine spun up that fast because I'm 20 years behind Casey…

What Casey is making is more like a reference guide to "if you encountered a similar problem, here is how I worked through it". Hundreds of hours of live video content is good source material for resolving a certain kind of coding bottleneck where there are no standard solutions. But it does also mean that most people, looking to solve standard problems in standard ways, had their questions answered at the very beginning, and the stuff that he's implemented since then pushes at the boundaries of his own knowledge. He doesn't have an ideal lighting or physics solution that he can clearly articulate step by step, but he also doesn't want to cut it down and leave those things unaddressed for the sake of making a consumable tutorial. So a lot of these later videos are plodding forward, revising, doing something a little hacky, coming back to it to change the approach.

And I think that's valuable in a different sense - for people who want to pursue engine dev in depth, this is ideal content. They want to see that grind taking place and how someone with a lot of experience approaches things. What they should and shouldn't prioritize. It goes well outside of the usual bounds of "education", which tries to package up testable knowledge, and is more akin to seeing a top athlete's workout.

Casey asking "why wouldn't you use UE5" is not being combative or ranty: it's an honest ask of what problems need solving that aren't accommodated by what is clearly the technological leader in most of the traditional metrics(render perf, hardware usage, asset pipelines for high end 3D, source access), but are accommodated by Unity. It does show his blind spot, which is that he isn't able to envision the larger span of production metrics himself - team familiarity and inertia, particular pieces of tooling and UX, etc. - but he's also trying to fill in that blind spot here.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#290

Post by syntheweave »

ratww wrote: post #255
kunos wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except we're talking about video games Not really. Most of the times Casey & Co. (Blow et others) have entire rants bitching about photoshop, visual studio,windows, websites etc. They tend to present videogames as example of "how it should be done". They (again, as Casey&Blow and the rest of the group they seem to belong to) have this weird attitude of automatically dismiss anything that doesn't belong to whatever…

That’s an unfair mischaracterization and generalization, considering that very often those “rants” are often filled with genuine analysis, criticism, comparisons. Or, in specific cases, such as OOP criticism, with very vocal disclaimers that his view deviates from the mainstream. Are those people not entitled to an opinion? The last time one of those happened publicly, Casey was able to provide a proof of concept in…

Casey is much better and more measured on this front than Jon Blow, who has a history of wandering into random comment threads on HN and pronouncing some topic a "solved problem" or "trivial", only to actually work on the problem himself a few months later and remark that it is more complex than he thought.

But because Casey and Jon are friends and frequent collaborators, and generally prioritize the same things, they get interpreted as sharing each other's views about everything. They don't, but the mischaracterization is not easily dispelled.

Post reply on HN