A different perspective on Unity development.!

They may very well know what is actually missing but threads like the following don't leave me very confident.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/help-me-define-which-features-have-been-abandoned.397552/

 

Do you really think features have been abandoned on a whim? Maybe they exist under other forms, combinations, etc.

 

What other explanations can be given for major features being abandoned? Terrain is a major aspect to games after all.

 

Yes.

Basically, I do not expect developers to know what they're doing because of Murphy's Law and I do not expect their interests to match mine.

Also there are threads like this:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/when-is-mixed-mode-lighting-going-to-be-fixed.332250/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/po...atedepthtexture-why-is-it-even-needed.197455/

It is a big product, with a lot of code, many features, and a large number of developers. Things can be forgotten or just silently removed from the project.

 

Okay, if it's that bad, why do you use Unity? I'm sure there are game engines around that fit your tastes and requirements. Or are you just here for the bashing?

 

Unity has always said they are mobile first. Mobile games still don't need exceptional terrain and thus its not a priority relative to the focus, features and current issues related to that focus / feature set of the engine.

Consequently, that's why it makes sense that they are leaving the terrain stuff to third parties instead, most of which can be found in the Asset Store.

 

I don't for main projects, but have a vested interest in Unity I did use it for years and pay a fair amount of money.. Also love the community here..! So I stick about. Also Unity is great for competition, they keep the likes of Epic in check.. Gotta remember, Epic were happy to charge 25% royalties at one point.

@rnakrani

Where did Unity say they are "mobile first"? Got a link? Kind of goes against them doing stuff like the Adam Demo..!

 

They have said it over and over again. Its common knowledge. When they explain it to you, the general line of reasoning is that if it can run on mobile it can run on anything.

 

It meets our requirements.

Every engine has its own faults. That said you seem to have the impression that a game developer can only use one engine at a time. I have multiple engines on my computer. Each one is ideal in certain situations. If I feel like a game benefits better from one than the others I use it.

Unity asks for feedback, both positive and negative, in order to better improve their engine.

 

Source(s) please.

 

You can begin a project with one engine, carry it on with another and finish it with a third one?

 

You must be purposefully misunderstanding. You can have one project in Unity, one project in Unreal, etc. A game developer is not restricted to one engine... or at least a competent one isn't.

 

I'm not going to waste my time hunting down articles and YouTube videos of speeches by Unity representatives just because some people missed the memo . John Riccitiello has said it and if Unity representatives have ever visited your studio they say it too. Its common knowledge.

 

NOPE. Every single engine will have a critical flaw. No software is perfect. And with enough bashing someone might actually fix an issue that has remained broken for a few years.

It is not a common knowledge if "people that missed a memo" don't know about it.
So. Source?

 

John Riccitiello and any number of Unity representatives. You can hunt down and watch official Unite videos yourself. Each one is about 1 hour in length so grab some popcorn and pay attention this time.

 

If there are so many sources, it would take less time to post a link than keep replying every single time.. Instead of us routing through hours of Unite videos, in which I'd rather do anything else..!

 

If you think I'm joking ask then yourself if their focus is mobile first.

http://unity3d.com/contact

 

Unity is not mobile focused. If anything, the 5.x releases are all trying to bring more high end features in. Example : http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/03/15...-and-more-the-unity-5-4-public-beta-is-ready/

The end.

 

Alright, you don't have a source. Got it.

 

Pretty sure the bulk of Unity's income stream is indirectly from mobile.

 

So many small companies making mobile content right now for so many mobile consumers.

This group of people in this forum tend to be:
A) Older than 30.
B) Working Professionals.
C) Science fiction fans.
D) Interested in AI learning and robotics.
E) Nostalgic about the early days of gaming.

If you take a look around, the main platform for the majority of people is their cell phone. Console gaming is pretty popular, but when you consider that there's game consoles in almost every household, but that there is a cellphone in almost every person's hand at this very moment, many people sleep next to their phones are virtually tethered to them; everything becomes clear.

I don't like phone games, but I don't allow that to influence my judgement on how many people do.

 

I agree.
But us as users we must claim stuff, otherwise it will be fine on Unity side even when they know this is missing basic features. Stupid "Personanl edition " logo will change because lot of users needed some change.

 

Bought the "Hero" game mentioned earlier in the thread on itch.io a little while ago after watching the videos. Haven't played it yet but, based on the videos, it isn't AAA level, but it certainly has heart. Also, I was really impressed by the size of the crowds. I don't recall having seen so many people in a town area of a game before. Impressive. A nice sense of overall scale, too. Looking forward to playing it later today (playing Half Life mainly today). Anyway, the videos really made me smile. That's the spirit of game development right there. Love it.

 

Who says it's the dev's that get to decide what gets put in and what doesn't? Between major engines, UE / CE / Lumberyard and Stingray they mainly have the same feature sets (or variations of them)..

 

Depends on the game. Ours is completely dynamic, and content heavy. So, scenes served us no purpose, and all content is loaded via assetbundles. [/QUOTE]

Actually that is Unity's opinion on them. But, again, depends on the game. There are no assets in our project, so no assets to load.

 

Worth noting: if you aren't having real problems with scenes - don't worry about it. It's not like scenes are inherently bad. Some games and some teams need very specific workflows and scenes may not work for them quite so well. If you aren't running into real problems with scenes then keep using them.

If your game isn't largely dynamic then scenes will very much be your friend. If your game is heavily dynamic then you can probably figure out how to build a different workflow.

Don't overreact guys.

 

We used one scene with dynamically loaded content (levels, etc.) for a game released in 2010, made with Unity 3. I got all that working before I even fully knew how to use Unity (came from different engine). It's not to hard to come up with alternate ways of doing things that otherwise might seem difficult, especially given how much better Unity v5 is compared to v3.

 

Correct, there is nothing wrong with scenes. On the topic of large teams, they can be a pinch point if multiple prople need to work in them. Since there are many ways to develop,tailoring your aproach to your team is critical. The op claimed that collision and lost data in scenes was a failure with the engine and large teams. It's not. It's a failure in planning.

One of my favorite stories of dealing with multiple developer was several years ago, I if I recall, it was some Unity staff working on a game. They had a big stuffed animal the passed around. You couldn't work in the main scene unless you had it on your desk. A creative file locking system.

 

Hopefully there's nothing wrong with using scenes in odd ways either

I've experimented with having a base scene, and additional scenes being nothing but simplified asset bundles which register which monster waves they have. The previous wave-scene would then hopefully unload, making it somewhat mobile-friendly.

The good, old PlushVCS system

 

That's brilliant!

 

It's an interesting discussion, the issue is some don't seem to understand it's a "WIP" and just slag it off. So I tend to not give any clue as to what I'm actually doing, not sure ultimatley if this is the correct "approach".. Because I also believe feedback is invaluable? Maybe I should open things up and just ignore people who make daft comments.

 

Well I have mixed views on it too. From what I have seen if you post around here you will probably get a lot of critiques. I am sure it is meant to be helpful but "everyone" has their dev hat on so they are looking at it from perspective of artist, programmer, etc. Yet I've seen so many folks release publicly and the gamers seem to really love it.

So I think it can go both ways really. If you post it on a dev oriented forum such as these I think you'll get more comments like "that one shadow in the lower left corner about 1/3 of the way up doesn't look right". And publicly on Steam workshop you will probably get "holy crap this looks awesome looking forward to release!". That is just my opinion based on what I see happening here and elsewhere.

A good example may be to check out the Steam comments for the "Hero" game:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626632835

The negative comments I see there seem entirely reasonable. Concerned about it being another "epic rpg" that goes nowhere (never finished) and concerned about the game being too repetitive and boring. Yet most comments are like "really cool!" and "looks great!". And it was Greenlit. I don't think any game will be all positive comments. There will always be some people who feel the need to post even if they should have stayed away from the game to begin with (because they don't like the genre or play style or presentation style). So I'd just look at it like those aren't the target market.

If that game was in the WIP here I expect we'd see different comments. Things about colors and other visual stuff for example.

@BoredMormon recently put Pond Wars up on Steam as a WIP. May be good to hear his views on public feedback from a gaming community.

 

There's a lot of stuff here though.

One of the most important things in almost every kind of project is managing people's expectations. If Hero was released by Dice as a XBOX exclusive, people would not be like "so cool!". Gamers approach hard indie work with a different set of expectations.

The same largely applies to discussions here. One of the only time I really saw someone's art get hammered was when Billy posted a very raw, 'I'm still learning' spaceship model in a thread with the title "How to build a AAA game in Unity". That's because people's expectations were being set by the title of the thread and the discussion of AAA graphics. It wasn't helped that he was also claiming to revolutionize game development.

Compare that to the feedback in his asset store thread, where people were like "awesome!" when looking at the models. Again, different context, different expectations.

I think one of the things that we often tend to overlook in discussion is that as you increase the graphical fidelity of a game, you also raise people's expectations in general. Another hidden cost.

Price tag also... I mean, there are a lot of ways that we inform and control expectations. It's a very important thing to keep in mind. In all honestly, I think the community in general is far, far more supportive of games that tend to be very graphically simple. Once things start to get a little fancier I think people tend to get a bit more defensive.

 

@frosted I agree completely. I think that just posting in a dev community or at least this one a lot of folks have that higher expectation just sort of inherently. Because artists and programmers will look at it and hard not to think I'd do that part better or even I could do this whole thing better. And when dealing with the general gaming public (including artists and programmers with their gamer hats on) on places like Steam the folks are more focused on the actual game..... would I enjoy this?

Think of all of the games such as Environmental Station Alpha, Bit Blaster XL and Downwell. What kind of reception would they have got here? What kind of reception did they get on Steam? A lot of sales. lol

 

Spot on. We released most recent game as "early access", though not in the Steam store (not allowed in there!!) and comments from players almost always revolve around gameplay elements and what they want to see in the game. Conversely, the WIP thread I posted here in the forum has comments mostly focused on the visuals, with far less comments asking about gameplay. It definitely helps to get a well rounded view from different groups.

 

Cool, irrelavant of my personal views on quality of games.. It seems there is a major disconnect between the like of Jimquisition, developers and the actual gamer community.. I probably think along the lines of Jimquisition, which as a developer makes things 20X harder than just making a decent quality game and letting people enjoy it..

I'm not here to rip people off, neither am I in it for the money ("really") of course I'd like to have the money to make a follow up and ain't gonna be cheap, although mass profit is nothing that really interests me.

This thread has been awesome for me, I'm too busy fussing because of the ugly side of games development instead of just doing whatever it takes to make a good game..

 

It helps when an effort is made to understand context, especially when said context has been spelled out a million times in the same thread. But three comments down and it would already be forgotten. That said it was far more of a successful thread than I had any reason to expect.

And I would hardly call that a hammering ...

 

@ShadowK Well Jim Sterling is of course going overboard on purpose. It's all part of his "on screen" character to get views. He gets brutal in his coverage of games that he feels are not up to par.

It will be interesting to see if he keeps that up considering he was recently sued for $10 million.

Anyway, in his video Indie Generosity Jim discusses his views of Indie games and how he has different expectations for them than he does for AAA games. I think you'll find the 1-minute segment starting at the 7 minute mark particularly interesting. And I think that is basically how the majority of the gaming community views Indie titles as well. They are smart enough to realize that Indies aren't working on AAA style games (well sure some of the bigger or more well-funded teams are but it's not something to be expected).

 

I would be surprised if it stops him. In any case it will draw more attention to his channel. As a YouTuber more attention is a very good thing.

 

Suing for ten million dollars and they're not even bothering with a lawyer to assist them... this might be fun to watch.

It'll draw more attention to the developer creating those games. Whether it's good attention or not is another matter.

 

I just watched Jim play Galactic Hitman. These guys will never follow through on a whole lawsuit. They'll get three corridors into the courthouse and just drop the whole thing.

 

I can't watch this bloated douche. I have watched a couple of his videos posted here. He is a game critic and many underaged kids watch his videos and he will blatantly talk about his proclivity for assorted sexual acts. As an adult it is fine to do what you want in the bedroom but be assured, the great majority of adults don't need the imagery and descriptions injected for no need and prefer the specifics to remain a mystery. He does the game dev community no favors as many parents of minors looking over their shoulder at his leather queen persona describing he would rather gobble a **** may just ban their kids from gaming. Satirical critique and bombasticity is fine..but on the body function things..jeesh..can we get back to having manners about our private bedroom activities in venues where children are involved. To note that I am not a prude I know a particularly saucy game dev here that does games in this realm and I think this person is an awesome individual with good morals. I have no problem with that as it is targeted at adults and for those adults seeking such materials and remains discrete about what they do.

 

That's a good way to up your time versus return investment. Are we trustafarians or entrepreneurs?

 

Well the lawsuit was just a side note sort of thing. Probably should have left that out so it didn't cause a distraction.

Just for the folks who didn't watch the video even the 1-minute segment starting at the 7 minute mark... well basically if you watch videos (well certain videos where they mention it) by the various game reviewers they mention how they have different expectations for an Indie game compared to a AAA game.

It's something I always figured was just common sense. I mean I am sure there are folks who think "well I don't care if the game was made by only 1 or 2 people I expect it to rival AAA" that is certainly not the norm. Most gamers and reviewers have the sense to know they should expect something different from Indie games.

They don't expect AAA style presentation, options, dialog etc. They are just looking for great games and judging the games to be terrible, ok, good and great based on how good the actual game itself is. Going with 2D ultra lowres pixel art is completely acceptable for the game dev to be able to bring their game to the market. Having a small focused game is completely acceptable (and perhaps even expected) instead of trying to make a massive AAA style experience.

It's just good to keep such things in mind I think.

 

My impression is that consumers usually look for a certain "value preposition" that factors in cost, quality of enjoyment, and how long they can enjoy the thing. I think for most gamers they don't judge indies and AAA differently on that scale. Some do though, and go out of their way to support indies by buying games with worse value preposition or buying them at a higher pricepoint instead of waiting for the almost inevitable 80% off sale.
And when comparing value prepositions they usually compare within the respective markets. It's not 5$ game vs 5$ cheeseburger, it's 5$ game vs other games on that plattform. On steam that's a cheap game, on mobile it's probably not perceived that way.

 

@Martin_H Oh yeah many factors come into play. Absolutely no doubt about it.

What I (and these folks like Jim, TotalBiscuit, etc) mean by different expectations is simply you just don't go in with the same mindset that you have for a AAA game period.

Certainly from my own perspective when I hear about an Indie game I don't click over to check it out thinking "oh man I bet this will be as big as [some AAA game] or look as good as [some AAA game]!!" No matter how much the game costs (well okay up to a point). Instead I have the opposite view.

First I am not even checking out the game to judge how it looks or how massive it is. Again see that kind of thing is mainly the realm of artists and programmers. I check it out to see if the game looks fun. And see what other gamers are saying about it. How do they describe it. Does it sound fun to me even if they don't like it? Does it have a lot of bugs that break the game experience? As a gamer that is what I am concerned with.

Beyond that and in general there are of course many factors. Do I like the genre? Does the game look interesting? Does it look different than AAA games (a lot of the appeal of Indie games is simply in them being very different from what is already available in the AAA sector)? How much does it cost (a game that costs a few bucks has to be near complete garbage, full of bugs etc to not be worth it unless I just dislike the genre in general)? And so forth.

Note that when I use term "look" like does the game look good or look interesting it is just a common figure of speech and I am not literally referring to how the game looks graphically. I mean does it look good? (interesting to play, fun).

 

Why did you guys say that "they removed terrain"?

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Is that going to be a mountain with a castle in the center and you have to defend against the invading army (of orcs perhaps)?

 

Nobody said they removed terrain. They said it was abandoned. Unity's terrain is horrible to work with because it hasn't advanced in years. There are tons of assets on the asset store to try and work around it, but other engines have much better terrain built right in. Unity themselves have acknowledged that they need to update terrain, but even that was a long time ago with no word on progress.

 

Oh, okay.

They'll improve it one day then.