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Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

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Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#291

Post by johnnyanmac »

syntheweave wrote: post #289
johnnyanmac wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 begin…

I'm mixed on it. Because while I do agree that the content is worth its weight in gold (there really is no other source where you'll find a seasoned developer struggling in real time to solve a problem that has arisen. You don't see that in tightly edited turorials until you are that developer) it also does make filtering through to what you may specifically need a challenge. It can be difficult enough in a curated course to find the nuggets you need and Casey's videos are basically the equivalent of searching years of security footage for that one moment where you swear you saw a yeti pass by.

> 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.

that's fair. I did consider that factor in a later comment, and I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt (never shame someone for genuinely trying to learn). But I guess I do also find it surprising that someone as long standing in the industry and with as much of an internet presence as Casey wouldn't realize what kind of can of worms are being opened why stepping into the "engine wars".

Again, not his fault (he didn't start the fire). Just one of those moments where someone like me shakes his head and goes "here we go again...".

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#292

Post by binarynate »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #112
binarynate wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity is currently working to make Unity compatible with .NET 6 / CoreCLR, but they don't yet have a release date for that yet. The progress is being tracked in this megathread: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-future-net-development...

That's interesting. I think it will take quite some time though, it's going to be a monumental task.

I agree, it seems like a huge effort. But if they reach their ultimate goal of shipping an unmodified version of .NET, it seems like that work would pay off:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-future-net-development...

It's also encouraging that they expect it to be less than two years out:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-future-net-development...

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#293

Post by johnnyanmac »

werner1886 wrote: post #137
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…

You clearly have no idea what's he is all about. His message is very clear: Modern software is crap. It's orders of magnitude slower than it should be, it's buggy, and,yes, bloated. And if you ever used any piece of software today I don't see how you can you not agree with it... He is never advocating NOT using engines, but rather that one can be much better and more efficient developer with just a little bit knowled…

Doesn't it strike you as ironic to shoot out a claim as reductionist as "Modern software is crap." and defend the subtleties. But also call out (what I felt was) an obviously hyperbolic statement in response to another hyperbolic statement without regarding the underlying message?

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#294

Post by johnnyanmac »

dogleash wrote: post #269
leshow wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The path to faster software involves actual hard work, rather than attempting to publicly shame people who offer solutions. Again, what solutions? Until you can define what these are I'm not sure what his position is or what he's advocating for. No offense but I've exhausted my interest in the topic, take care

>Again, what solutions? The solution is to git gud. There certainly was actionable advice in the couple of his videos I've seen (I haven't watched many, he's a wandering talker). But the underlying theme is about development process and frame of mind. Just adopting a list of techniques would miss the "greater than the sum of it's parts" value.

>The solution is to git gud.

someone unironically espousing this as a "solution" to a struggling creator will never understand why other frameworks become popular when they cater to helping them out instead of throwing a book at them. That's why Unity is more popular among small creators. They don't necessarily want to be an engineer, they want to create art.

This mentality spreads outside of programming to other software as well. Gimp, Blender (which is fortunately making changes towards accessibility), etc.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#295

Post by johnnyanmac »

Ygg2 wrote: post #213
ratww wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial in achieving new breakthroughs, from Mario's side scrolling, to Carmack's advances in FPSs, to... FFS, we're talking about Unreal 5, this version's selling point is mainly being able to do in realtime what was previously on…

> Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial In that domain speed is pretty important, but even there it's not as crucial as you might assume. I'm not saying discount it altogether, just good gameplay will trump good performance. They aren't completely unrelated, but there are diminishing returns. What are the titles that need to be that much performant? AAA titles are j…

>AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning

ehhh. I agree with most of your sentiment, but this is starting to be the gamer version of this topic. Replace "modern software is crap" with "modern AAA games are crap". The industry is too varied to lump it all into one box, especially when several of the largest games this year came out with your normal "buy one get everything" monetization.

Back on topic: I'd say optimization is still an important and under aprreciated factor of development. One where you don't notice it when it's done right but is all that's talked about when done wrong. I want to hope UE5 solves some of those problems, but the proof will be in the pudding as always.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#296

Post by johnnyanmac »

wtetzner wrote: post #288
Ygg2 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

>So often performance improvements are needed simply to make room for more "features"

absolutely. I'm an engine programmer and this has to be my train of thought, otherwise I'd be out of a job (you know, until the 11th hour where I break a lot of work just to get something out).

I'm not saving a few milliseconds on some feature that "only" takes 2 milliseconds because the game needs maximum performance. It's so when the director or designer comes up with some other crazy idea that they have more frame budget to try and fit it in. They may still not be able to, but I don't want my default answer to be "no, we can't spare the time" (not unless it's something absurd).

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#297

Post by johnnyanmac »

TillE wrote: post #244
MattRix wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a game developer, there are two main reasons we don’t write tests: A. because the game design is constantly changing, so any tests would slow down iteration time. B. because the game has so much state it would be very hard to accurately recreate it.

You can do a ton of productive testing just by clearly separating different systems, especially game logic from rendering etc. This is just good code hygiene. Better game-specific tools can also be created, as companies like Larian are doing. It's not really very different from testing other big complex software. Everybody has evolving requirements. But the general culture of game development is to ignore automated t…

This also runs into an issue of scale. AAA games for live service games certainly do have automated testing for some core features like networking or certain simulations. But that kind of testing for an indie title would be overkill unless you're making a game like Factorio (a near deterministic game heavily relying on simulation). It's really hard to unit test "fun" after all.

There isn't as much benefit for a small platformer to test their jump height or physical interaction with the environment, and then change all tests whenever they decide that they need to adjust that height. On the contrary, some beloved glitches/exploits have come from allowing those weird interactions to exist.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#298

Post by rosenjcb »

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…

>The one thing that really is rough for me with _both_ UE and Unity is that they're both very oriented towards teams with dedicated art people who can put out assets to use. BSP-based workflows where you can quickly greybox out levels to playtest (basically giving level designers without art sense a fighting chance) are much nicer with older engines.

That's because the value proposition with most games is in their art direction and gameplay - nobody cares how you get the polygon on the screen. I wrote my own game engine for a bit but then realized that all the work once the scaffolding was complete was in creating a fun game. Turns out that I don't really enjoy level editing and 3D modeling as much, so I stopped developing the project.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#299

Post by ashkankiani »

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…

The point was that for cases where Unreal 5 isn't suitable for your needs, what's the best alternative:

- Using Unity and potentially all the baggage that comes with it

- Making your own engine

Therefore the crux of the argument was to prove that making your engine wasn't as complicated as people are making it out to be.

From my perspective, the question he posed in the tweet is a valid consideration. What actually is the value added by using Unity beyond the initial section of having your engine bootstrapped?

> I sure wouldn't have my own engine spun up that fast

I'm thinking I should do as Casey has done before and put my money where my mouth is and show how long it takes me to make a 2D game engine in that same amount of time just by following HMH, but also with the ability to use existing libraries. I bet it'll be less than a week. And fwiw, I'm a software engineer at a high frequency trading firm with 12 years of self taught experience. I'm not a game developer, just an amateur who learned some things on the side. If I end up doing this, I'll reply to this comment with a link to the VODs.

And let's not forget, his target in the tweet was game developers. If they can't make a 2D game engine in 2 weeks (to be extra generous) full time work with their experience and literally just following HMH as a guide, then that's kind of surprising.

Re: Unreal vs. Unity Opinion

#300

Post by johnnyanmac »

bricemo wrote: post #96
jandrese wrote: post #77

Beyond game engines one of the things that drives me crazy about commercial software is when I find a bug, document it thoroughly, and submit it to the company only to be ignored. Even with a support contract and on rather severe bugs it can be way too hard to get something fixed. I know I'm not the only person being bitten by this bug, it's all over the help forums and Reddit yet the company doesn't seem to care at…

This is frustrating. I’ve been on both sides of it, what’s happening is that the team is likely juggling thousands of bugs in similar or greater severity, as well as their roadmap for new features. Some things just get deprioritzed over and over, even though everyone knows it sucks. It usually takes a rogue engineer in their extra time, or a dedicated “user love” budget (which I always implement on my teams) to fix i…

Yea it sucks. I assure you it's not discarded, it's just marked as Jira ticket #8563, and during some periodic planning it's never the highest priority compared to immediate clients filing ticket #8654, directors filing an epic ranging from #8700-8712, etc.

And it's not always something as easily implemented as the user thinks. Sometimes it goes that smoothly and everyone is happy. Sometimes it clashes with other future features the user isn't aware of yet or simply hit some nasty edge cases in testing. So it's now a low priority bug that is also non-trivial to fix. the worst kind.

All I can say is to try and get other users to file the issue. The more user pain it causes the more it'll get prioritized.

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