What Unity Is Getting Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#301

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 8:45 AM UTC

rasz wrote: post #245

kbenson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Game stutters and freezes during tense action sound like GC related problems. In theory it is solvable but I doubt that anyone is going to bother and actually put in the work. Lots of popular games have known flaws and unless there is a direct competitor nobody is going to switch games.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#302

Post by johnfn » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

sloopy543 wrote: post #289

johnfn wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what is meant by 'Herculean'. Once you know how to do it, you don't lose that knowledge. You literally have the code to use on the next project. No big deal The problem with this is that even if your code is 100% bug free and works perfectly, new platforms are created all the time. The PS5 is coming out in a couple of months - does your crossplatform code target that? Unity does. How about the Switch? How…

I would encourage you to check out Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero. I believe he does a nice job of separating platform-specific code from non-platform specific code. My engine is based on his. It has a cross-platform library that only handles the game logic itself. Each platform has its own thing called a platform layer that handles the platform specific aspects of the game (things like setting up a window, setting u…

I have watched quite a bit of handmade hero. As a fun hobby, it looks great, but using that strategy to make an actual game... well, let's just say it doesn't surprise me he's multiple years in and hasn't even gotten to gameplay yet.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#303

Post by sloopy543 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #302

sloopy543 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage you to check out Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero. I believe he does a nice job of separating platform-specific code from non-platform specific code. My engine is based on his. It has a cross-platform library that only handles the game logic itself. Each platform has its own thing called a platform layer that handles the platform specific aspects of the game (things like setting up a window, setting u…

I have watched quite a bit of handmade hero. As a fun hobby, it looks great, but using that strategy to make an actual game... well, let's just say it doesn't surprise me he's multiple years in and hasn't even gotten to gameplay yet.

He hasn't gotten to gameplay because it is meant to be an educational series, which means skipping the parts that don't serve the educational purpose.

I've followed Casey's approach but taken a different path. Instead of focusing on covering anything an engine could do, I started making my own game.

And I discovered that once you get the basics of a platform layer and some GPU communication down, it's pretty easy to start throwing together a real game.

I'm doing it. I've got a real game with real gameplay, actual levels, real things you can do. All of this after a year or learning.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#304

Post by sloopy543 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

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.

I've found that making a custom engine is more amenable to teamwork, not less.

I can build a simpler level editor that I can give to a totally nontechnical person (a.k.a. my spouse), and they can go to town making levels.

They don't need to know anything about Unity/Unreal. They just need to know about my game.

My game already includes levels my friends have designed using tools I made for them.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#305

Post by sloopy543 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #291

sloopy543 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, it took me about a year of learning in my spare time to get to place where I could do my own cross-platform game engine, and some of that time was spent doing the code for the game itself. What exactly is the expectation here? Would it have taken that much less time to learn the little nuances of Unity that folks here are complaining about? Also for context, my full-time job is demanding, and I have a lo…

big difference is teams. If you're fine working by yourself, then an engine where you have 100% knowledge scope is great. The moment you introduce another dev or artist or any individual that needs source access to work on your game, you'll probably have them hitting every pain point mentioned in the article and more. Why's your UI buggy (or does it even exist?), why's rendering this thing slow? So time is spent teac…

It's funny because I have the same mantra. Make games not engines.

I focus on making the game, and the engine is the thing left over at the end.

But in so many ways, I have learned that a really productive game engine programmer should be spending his/her time building tools for the team. That's kind of the point.

You're making these tools that unlock the creativity of others, so they can help you with the team's creative vision.

I would expect any programmer I hire to be a problem solver, first and foremost, the kind of person who wouldn't need hand holding to modify the engine. I would hire people who I expect to make sensible decisions.

That's going to rule out a lot of people, and that's fine. When it comes to hiring, I select. I don't instruct.

Re: What Unity Is Getting Wrong

#306

Post by sloopy543 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

xsmasher wrote: post #278

hn_acc_2 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely support making your own game engine if you enjoy it as a programmer. But it shouldn't be a surprise that it's not the best choice for the most developers. Every moment you're debugging and improving the engine is another moment you could have been working on the game itself, because almost all engine improvements are orthogonal to improving the game experience. So given a limited amount of time, you will…

Making your own game engine requires experience as well. If you've already used other engines, you'll have some idea of the "shape" that a UI library or texture loading system should take.

I had pretty much no experience when I started mine. "Shape" is an arbitrary thing. The shape of the tool should match the shape of your problem, and if you don't know what your problem is yet, you don't know what the best tool for it will look like.