Could Unity have made Skyrim?

You are crazy. The Spitwad Duel series is known for it's amazing holographic graphics and neuron stimulating feedback. There is no way a plain illumination based glourogram engine like BAngBangDuck can ever achieve those results!

:3

 

Yeah, but Zynga Googleplex is making a MNMOS on the XBOX 1080 so I think that proves it is capable of making something good.

P.S. I had to actually look up glourogram to make sure it wasn't a real word.

 

Considering modern warfare 3 is still using quake 3 engine as a base, it should lend credence to what justin is saying about trying to move an entrenched developer over to a different engine.

The only reason why I can't recommend a shift to unity (if I was in the position of recommending) is that I would actually want unity staff (paid or otherwise) to guarantee being on hand for any problems that might crop up. If unity have such a service available (regardless of expense) then you can probably expect me to recommend unity.

That sort of hand-holding is vital for bigger teams. It's not about difficulty, its about results.

 

I haven't read any of the other posts:

So basically you are asking a question that is similar to. Can a person tie there shoe laces. If you really want to, if you are willing to put in the practice, if your willing to make extra modules, anything is possible. It's rather a stupid question because an engine doesn't limit you to anything, just change code in the engine and your set.

 

Here's some quality work in Unity. There's potential for great beauty right now!

Word?

 

Skyrim is alot bigger then those scenes and has to run on the aged hardware of the consoles. Still dose show that unity can look amazing though

@hippo, isent that exactly what the folk at Unity Studios do? although i dont think its actualy part of Unity.

 

Unity studios what, whatever. It's not very publicised is it?

 

Right you are but if i was looking to put 40million dolars into a project i would most likely click the suport button wich i would then see it, it isent made clear but if that is how much i had to work with i would check every part of everything todo with unity

I personaly thing in say 2-3 years unity and unreal engine will be the only engines to consider as ios and android will get stronger hardware making it one of the best platforms, Unreal will likely never suport the wii due to the wii-u comming soon making unity have one more platform then it.

Most likely other quality engines will start to target IOS and android but unity and unreal will already have years to perfect those platforms, and even if there is like a new phone or tablet that takes the spotlight from apple its most likely similar so unity will still have an advancement.

 

/me pinches your cheek... "You are so cute when you're naive."

I know of at least a half-dozen large-scale developments that I can name (though I won't) for big corporations, that during the due diligence research process dismissed at least one possible technical solution or vendor for incredibly minor reasons.

"Yeah, we didn't look at that one because they wanted me to register and actually wait for a human to get back in contact with me and I didn't have time."

"They wanted my email address."

"Their main website was written using Drupal 4 and the world is already switching over to Drupal 6 so how good can they be if their own website doesn't use the latest technology."

"Their website required that I upgrade my Flash player."

These are actual reasons senior level people have used as excuses for not pursuing a particular technology option. It might be an excuse hiding the real truth of "I fear this new fangled technology" or "I hate any company that uses orange in their logo" but these are the decision makers. They have to produce a result, they are going to pull the trigger on a huge amount of funding, they want the answer spoon fed to them. They don't want to and will not crawl all over a website looking to see if a vendor has some service they haven't thought they needed yet.

These past weeks I was implementing some video DRM on one of our products. I went through probably a dozen vendors websites until I settled on just two choices, and I probably dismissed many of those vendors for the very same reasons I hear. "I don't have time to read all this crap. Just tell me what I need to know so I can make a purchase decision. And if I cannot get the info I need immediately, and without jumping through even the most minor of hoops, I've got five other vendors I need to check out that might have just what I want."

It's the reality of doing business and being in business. You might not like it. You might not agree with it. But that's what it is. People in business want results and they want answers. The in-the-trenches technical people rarely, if ever, get to decide on the actual technology that will be used, whether they believe they have the smarts and knowledge to make the right decision or not.

As a programmer this genuinely pisses me off. As a businessman I say "Tough cheese."

 

I am no game making guru but realy for the website wanting to update there flash player.... maby its folk like that that are the reson AAA games are so similar, if they wont even take a chance of upgrading to flash player 11 there is no way they would make an out there game

 

/me reaches out to pinch your cheek and then thinks better of it... "****ing insightful kids. Need to get off my damn lawn."

I never said it was the right decision, merely a decision.

 

no

 

Needless to say unity would have made skyrim his biatch!! X)

 

Without source code licence NO. You would never reach same visual quality and perfomance. Unity is not good idea for seamless worlds, lots of necessary features is missing. And in case of source code licence there is question, how much work you have to do and if some other engine wouldnt be better (less work).

 

Yes we established Demostene's expertise with:
- I mass place over 70.000 trees with colliders on a terrain and unity crashes - BUG and
- I make a huge world using LoadAdditiveScene and expect Umbra to work with the added scenes - BUG and
- my project is 25GB, i use Asset Server and it crashes a lot - BUG

these are akin to:
- I tried to stay under water with one breath for 30 minutes, I died - BUG
- I tried to cut my self 70.000 with a paper, I died - BUG
- I ate 25 kilos of meat in one go, I died - BUG

fun aside:
- do you think Skyrim was made with an unmodified engine? (I don't - I read about what they did)
- How many years do you think it took a dedicated team working on this very aspect of the game to reach that level? (I know)
- Why would you think the unity terrain system - originally an extension - would be enough for a massive world beyond what it is capable to create in one scene? (I didn't)

- do you really think that Unity can't handle massive worlds just because you can't make a world that takes 4 hours to go through from one side to the other out of the box.

As i have explained before the simple Unity terrain takes 8 minutes of straight walking on a flat surface without obstacles or enemies to go through.

I would consider that huge, your definition of huge is different.

You obviously think you should be able to make Skyrim Online (MMO Edition) with Unity and Unity should provide everything for this task that not even Bethesda did (they made singleplayer, again, why? so they could actually finish)

If you want more than that you obviously need to put in the man hours and it is obvious that if a feature is really important you need the SDK with any engine (and you have to pay for it). That is how Bethesda did it (and it wasn't even an MMO).

Finally visit the SWTOR forum and see what they are dealing with. They are using an engine developed for MMOs and they have low-poly assets and still they have issues with quality of textures and quality in general. A company with massive resources and experience and they have over 4 threads of over 1000 posts each complaining about texture quality.

Just saying.

 

Haha laughed my ass off. I have to say that koyima is here right on the point with very good methaphore

Those numbers are big and exception there is barelly any AAA game out there using that big number of trees in world, or has 20+GB size.
This by no means true rules why Unity is not AAA engine, but i have to say that i still think Unity is no AAA engine, but ofcourse not becouse of those numbers that were pointed out by Demostenes.

 

Nope, built-in terrain is pretty S***ty. If they'd get a source license, though, that would be different. Probably much better than Gamebryo as well.

 

I'm missing the logic jump from "Built-in terrain is S***ty" to "100 man team with prior experience in that field could not produce seamless, dynamically loading terrain using the Unity APIs".

There are a number of people in this thread who are under the impression that if Unity didn't do it for you already, you can't achieve it. There is nothing stopping you from implementing your own Terrain class with it's own optimizations and capabilities.

You can also create all sorts of new features without a source license. For example, it's a different Tech, but there is currently a Virtual Texturing plugin that does not use a source license (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvq-Z7LWSAg). Browse around the Showcase section/Asset Store and you'll see plenty more technologies (even new terrain technologies) done without a source license.

 

Again that's talking around the flaw in the question.
The question "is it possible" regardless of time and money needed should pretty much always have the answer yes.
On the other hand, the question of if it's a good idea or the best approach must always take account of real-world issues.

 

Yeah man, we know that, we are just entertaining ourselves...Although that question is not a real case scenario, you always have limits.

Exactly.

I think a number of people understand this.The start point would be modifying the terrain already included to allow for larger areas and adding optimisations bassed on the final size of the world you intend to create. That would be my idea of takling the issue and I'm not even a coder (re-writing would be done if there were some serious flaws).

Using the LoadAdditiveScene might be the fastest implementation, but it's not the wisest with the datasets discussed above - very short-sighted imo.

Also if the Asset Server can't handle your load, then investigate other solutions. It might be that you hit some limits, that doesn't mean you flood a thread accussing devs and beta testers and if push comes to shove, send an email, not just a crash report. Explain your unique situation and see what happens.

Anyway I still have to see the Skyrim equivalents coming from other engines from indie teams. It's not the engine, but simply the real life limits of a smaller team.

 

A long time ago, in a AAA studio far, far away:

M: "Hello, this is Mr M over at AAA studio, we're currently looking at making a game for both PC and PSX, my colleague talked to your company at GDC and said you might be able to help."

J: "Great to hear from you Mr M. I'm Mr J at RenderWare. We can certainly help. Our graphics engine doesn't run on PSX, but we plan on porting it over eventually. It works great on PC though and Windows 95, especially with the new Game SDK from Microsoft. We require $40,000 for a single title license and you have to put our logo on the front of the box and mention us in the credits."

M: "Yeah, I don't think so. Ciao!"

J: "Everything is negotiable. How about we let you have it for free, and just the logo on the box?"

M: "Nah!"

J: "How about we let you have it for free, no logo on the box, and just a credit in the manual?"

M: "Don't think so."

J: "How about we let you have it for free, no logo on the box, no credit in the manual, and we have some of our engineers help integrate it in to your project?"

M: "I'm listening but I'm still not sold."

J: "How about we let you have it for free, no logo on the box, no credit in the manual, and we have some of our engineers help integrate it in to your project, and I will personally come over to your office with a set of knee pads."

M: "I guess that will work, but you have to bring your own mouth wash too."

Five years later...

L: "Hello, this is Mr L, we're starting development on our new PS2 and XBOX title, we're interested in licensing your RenderWare graphics technology."

M: "Yes, that will be $100,000, payable up front, in small bills, a logo on the back of the box, a credit in the manual and on an in-game screen, and it's non-negotiable."

L: "Fine..." *scowls*

I'm not saying SE didn't pay for the source license, but... I would guess they either paid nothing, or near nothing. And UT probably has engineers at the account executive's beck and call should SE need anything, anything at all**.

**Even knee pads.

 

Well compared to other engines, Unity is "nothing" anyway, price-wize, the SDK of course could be a sizable chunk, but nowhere near what Unreal or CryEngine I would imagine, so basically "nothing" (in game studio budget terms)

 

Why is everyone saying you can't have large enough terrain to do something like skyrim? Has anyone messed with the Construction Kit for Oblivion or Morrowind? Not even Morrowind has a single large terrain object. It's all dynamically loaded in as you navigate the cells. If I'm not mistaken there's three or four plugins in the Showcase right now that can do that for you. If the terrain engine is what's holding you back from thinking about a large game, then I think you're doing it wrong. Even Skyrim's actual terrain is a heightmap based field, they just have lots and lots of 3d assets augmenting that to make it look good. Those of you without the PC copies can take any character in Oblivion with high enough Acrobatics and jump outside the walls of Anvil to get a sneak peak at how they organize things.

Sure Unity can be used to make a game like Skyrim. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about any of the gameplay or technology they have there that any of us with a couple hours couldn't prototype.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic game, but it's reputation isn't in the gameplay. It's in the world they create. For that, you need artists and writers. Any dedicated programmer could replicate the gameplay. If you want to make Skyrim, you need talented dreamers to create you a universe. If you want to make the gameplay, you just need a good eye and quick fingers to script that out.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgX7zvTw0E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhBlMRIEPXE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

please....

i cant find the thread for theses vids here on unity... kind of lazy also

 

a) You obviously know nothing about AAA games. Very old Oblivion had cca 700K of trees. And this is number of trees and bushes we have in the world too. Having 70k in scene can easilly happen, when you are on the border of 4 terrain tiles.

btw, from Unity website:

Unity's terrain engine combines extreme ease of use with incredible performance. Paint hundreds of thousands of trees, millions of ground debris, and billions of blades of grass

Indeed, for big world it is must. So ability to have hundreds of thousands of trees is even claimed ability.

b) You know nothing about Unity, 20GB+ project size mean cca 3-4GB game. Have you ever heard about Unity cache? We are in the middle of the project, and we have 23GB project. I expect 40-50 at the end. Big AAA game would have MUCH, MUCH more. Double the number in case of using SVN or similar.

Again, from Unity website (asset server section):

Optimized for Big Projects - Multi-gigabyte projects with thousands of multi-megabyte files are handled with ease.

So still no bug when it DOES NOT handle big projects?

Obviously nobody from you is doing here any serious game, so be quiet. Your opinion has no value, because you really dont know, what are you talking about.

Did you try to implement seamless world in Unity? Yes? I am listening. No? So be quiet.
Do you know what is Umbra good for? Do you use it in any game? Do you understand, that this technology is MEANT for big games? Yes? I am listening. No? So be quiet.
Do you have 20+GB project? Have you experienced troubles with asset server beacuse of this? Did you EVER used asset server ? I bet that nobody from you did. Do you understand, that such technology is essential for any bigger project? Yes? I am listening. No? So be quiet.

And for rest,

who tried to make custom terrain engine? Can you honestly tell, that you tried? Probably nobody, so be quiet. We did and it is problem. Besides of technical problems it is lots of work. With attitude I will take engine, buy source code and 100 people to do everything what is missing there, or rework half of it is of course everything possible. But it is very bad business case.

There is lots of "experts" on this problematic, but then they tell, that "That would be my idea of takling the issue and I'm not even a coder". Are you serious? You cant code and you are speaking about such pure technical coding issues and telling what is possible or not without having clue what is going on? Dont you feel little bit stupid?

 

And what do you think we are talking about? Hm? You should read more carefually before you start to give advices. Btw, have you tried these solutions? Hm? Do you know limitations? Obviously not.

 

Way to go all absolutist on us

The average poster on this thread, I'll wager, has an opinion of limited value when it comes to the real challenges of a project like Skyrim, in Unity. On the other hand, pretty much every poster has an opinion of some none zero value on anything related to Unity. Hi, discussion forum.

 

I read this whole topic and the fact remains the same with enough time money(or skills) you can create an AAA title with unity, and the reason people do not because the risk is too high. In time unity will grow. Tech will grow. Unity is still a baby and thus it will be used by indies who may eventually get ambitious enough to go big(AAA), until that day it will remain free/cheap indie dev engine with loads of untapped potential.

 

Unity probably would look better than skyrim visually.

Skyrim's graphic tech can be broken down into some basic elements,

Diffuse

Nomal (contains spec in alpha)

Specular

Parallax occasionally.

The models use vertex colors to bake ambient occlusion since the game uses tiling textures on nearly everything.

Sculpting is used heavily on the dwemer ruins models you can see where the texture artist used malletfast/clay tubes.

AFAIK the game uses very little post processing and my guess is unity has more modern post processing and lighting system. But im no programmer and I am just going to take people's word it would not run as fast.

 

Wow i just love how Demostenes replys more angrier every time he posts something. I was just reading book about Genghis Khan and Mongol warfare, and came to read something relaxing on this forum, but guess what....that sounds like a declaration of war, not a reply.

Let me put myself in skin of the great Genghis to reply with same attitude like you do.

Do you think Oblivion and Skyrim are golden rule for AAA game measurement? Do you by any chance think that there are some other games out there that are still AAA and are using MUCH smaller scenes? Yes they BY FAR EXCEED number of similar RPG games such as Oblivion. I (and probably koyima too) was speaking from view where not every game is using absurd number of trees or is using gazzilion terrains welded together to make game world. This are exceptions, and Unity engine does not have to be build arround exceptions.

I do realise that, i admit i was jumping on the gun too soon there as i didnt realised you were talking about project, not game size. (Just that you know---Genghis wouldnt appologize at all).

Wow again what an attitude. You feel like a king in this forums and calling everybody servants of your will. I suggest you to listen to this song: King Nothing - Metallica. You will find yourself in it.

You have no single idea what anyone is doing and calling them noobs before you see any of their work is just awfull. Not to mention that before you can call someone noob at least make sure you have some of your work placed in your signature or showcase, that way people can weight the power of your judgments.

Umbra is not standard just for big games. It can just as well serves in smaller games, especially it comes to great use in FPS indor games and it makes even more sense than in huge world game like you are building. It isnt 1000 terrains and 100000000 trees that make Umbra usefull.

Again Asset server is not essential for bigger project. It is far from word essential. It is handy that is what it is.

 

I think we all know you are full of it by now. As I have explained again if you had this project and it was funded and you have not found a way around these issues (either with unity or switching to another engine) to me you are not a professional.

You haven't even attempted to write your own terrain module/plugin/script (you say you stitch Unity terrains up) so in effect you have done nothing and you think your opinion has value?

Using umbra on a stitched scene is a long-shot if I ever heard of one, you even admit that there is a work-around, which is obviously a work-around since you are using a work-around in the first place. I don't understand why standard features should work with your lazy work-around.

I don't understand why you think 80000 trees shoud be standard on the default terrain when with 70000 it look like you are in tall grass (so dense). If you need more, write a better script, modify it, do whatever it takes.

I don't understand why, if you are such a professional team, you don't have your own dedicated server, with any software you like, we had and it was 2006 and the game wasn't even an MMO, we had 31GB of assets, before finishing (I still have these here on my office NAS).

I have even worked on a game that featured:"Large seamless game world covering over 400 sq. km" . The game is not awesome, it is though published on Steam. Which is more than I can say for your stuff.

So please calm down, get a grip and and we will gladly help you when you come back to reality.





bye bye

 

Not to dis on people using stitching in order to achieve a larger scene, but if you are attempting to do something stable and huge (as in seamless or mmo) you should invest in a more reliable method: aka make(modify) your own dedicated terrain script/extension.

This should be obvious to anyone even remotely related to the management/production of such a product, but as we have seen above there are people here claiming to be running one of the most extreme projects (by the description it akes to a Skyrim MMO) and they don't have the sense a primarily artist oriented game dev like me has.

Even I would understand the need for a dedicated solution custom tailored to my needs for such an undertaking and I'm not a coder by profession (I haven't been trained). So basically your capacity for problem solving is surpassed by someone not trained, what does that make you and what is your opinion worth then?

You thought:
- world not big enough with one terrain.
- great we will attach all these terrains together, problem solved.
- oh, now Umbra doesn't work.
- bitch about it on Unity Forums

Then you come here and say our opinion doesn't count or isn't worth anything. hahahahahahha

 

You can have hundreds of thousands of trees, just not all of them with colliders and I am still hard-pressed to see the use, see the screenshots above, the whole place is covered with trees, is your game just one big forest?

 

We did. So please, stop spreading lies. Rest of your post is only demagogy without any real value, as I would expect from person, who knows nothing about coding. So be so kind and stop answering to coding problems and technical solutions, you know nothing about.

 

Yeah, right, that's why your answers never have any actual technical details, you don't post your project and you use pre-made assets.

Demostenes if you were who you claim you were (knowledge, project etc) you wouldn't talk like you do, you wouldn't do what you do and you would be getting help here. It is obvious though to everyone I think here that you are not doing what you say you are doing.

One day you are stitching terrains, the other you have wrote your own terrain engine, the other day the problem is the default terrain can't handle over 70K trees, then it's the asset server, then umbra and then you come in here and say we don't know anything .

Which is it then?

What is the exact problem you are having that can't be solved and we should all shut up, because you say so.

The fact is a number of people here have sites and can point to their work. All you have is claims. Claims that you are making an mmo, claims about bug reports, claims, claims, claims.

Cos the truth is in the end whatever the problem be it bug, limits or lack of programming skill the answer is simple when in a professional environment: either solve the problem with the tools/budget at hand or move on to the next software that can handle your issue.
You don't come crying to the forums and ask everyday on the forums (not via support) if they fixed OC or something.

If a terrain engine can be written without the SDK what do you base your previous answer on?

You see the big problem with you is here:

- either you can solve your special case issue with a terrain engine, then you are a liar, because you say it can't be solved or
- you can't solve the issue, but you haven't switched to another engine, which is required when even only thousands of dollars are stake, but you can't deliver and you are hoping that it will magically solve itself.

In both cases you are not professional, because you are not solving your professional problem. Am I right or is there a third option here?

Either you can or you can't? It can't be unsolvable and solvable, can it? A problem is impossible to solve, but possible to solve?

Either you are lying or not smart enough to move on? What is it?

In any case you are not saying the truth about something, be it the project, the problem, the terrain, who you are. It just doesn't add up.

Do you really think we are all out to get you?

Crying in the forums is not what professionals do when faced with delivering a product.

Hypothetical scenario:
If you were using another software like a physics simulation software or crowd simulation software and it crashed at 50.000 people, what would you do? Your boss absolutelly required 500.000 and was willing to pay for it.

Would you
- stay with the software that could do 50K,
- would you buy another software that can do 500K or
- would write your own/extend the first one if possible

From what you are saying you are sticking with option 1, which brings us to the third and final option: you are crazy.



bye bye

 

If it can be solved, why are you posting about it in the first place. I don't know anyone who has solved his problem, but continues to post about his old issue and continues to lie about a product.

Also I didn't spread any lies, you have said all the things I posted and you continue to support them on various threads in this forum.


Finally can we lock this thread? We aren't going to get any exact replies (from anyone on any subject), we are going around in circles and the discussion has already taked a turn for the worse.

 

Again, why are you lying? Why is rest of your post full of other lies, or demagogy? You are just making everything up. Are you OK?

 

As entertaining as this is I'm going to lock it up as it's gotten rather personal.