I fixed Unity's home page :P

I can't wait to explaint to the wife that I'm not really complaining about having to mow the yard, it just my way of letting the yard know that future versions should include a slow grow feature.

 

Because the grass in your yard is totally something that took 15 years of work and few hundreds of people.

It doesn't matter if unity loves complaints or not.

While gathering complaints is useful for unity, actually complaining is useless for developer. Because you need the feature NOW, complaining about missing feature won't make it available for current project. Now, few years from now it might become available, but at this point your project will be either long finished or long dead.

 

And here's a practical example.

You're working on a project. You want material editor, svogi, better terrain editor, "proper" particle editor (whatever it is supposed to mean), character generation, free mocap service and make a mmo button. So you complain about it.

Few months happen, and guess what? You still don't have any of the features you requested. So, you wasted your time complaining and got nothing.

Individual opinions and individual complaints has nearly zero value, because they're essentually data points related to keywords that can identify new feature. When there are thousands or millions of them, they can be used to identify trends and features people want, but weight of an individual feedback message is essentually zero, and so is its value. Well, it might also make people feel better themselves, and make them thing that they're "contributing", but essentially you're "contributing" one data point. If writing complaints makes you feel better, write one off, and expect it not to matter.

And for practical purposes - for the project you're working on right now, it is a waste of time, because it does not improve project you need to fix NOW, and instead maybe increases chances (by 0.0001%) of something maybe improving someday at some uncertain point in distant future that may or may not happen.

 

But you're wrong and I happen to know Unity IS working on things as a direct result of customers "complaining". Just because it isn't here when you snap your fingers, it doesn't mean you will not use it.

To use a direct example, I complained about things a couple of years ago. Unity added this stuff. I now use it and my life is much easier. I am not making this up.

This happens quite a lot. And people will not change. People will just complain. This is how the world is. You can't change 7 billion people's natural behaviour (complaining about something they want or can't have). You can work with them and extract some decent data.

 

It's impossible to stay ahead of the curve because after adding the features that people want there will always be more features they want just around the curve. The stupid thing is that people think that these features are standard just because they exist either in other applications or conceptually.

A lot of things are also taken for granted and given that Unity does a lot of things for you so you don't have to, its pretty easy to think that it should have all the things when those things are actually nonstandard. Unity kind of defines what is standard in a lot of ways.

This seems to be the minority, but also stirs up the most noise because beginners feel like without said features they're prevented from reaching their dreams. Well, sorry, you're just going to have to do work.

 

I'm not wrong. In most cases complaining does nothing and only has any effect when a LOT of people experience the same problem. See my previous post about datapoints.

I don't see how this is supposed to be relevant.

 

Except it might improve your project immediately, if someone points out a solution or a hack out of the blue to whatever you're complaining about. And even if there isn't a solution, unfortunately 0.0001% is still better than 0%. If the same complaint is heard enough, hopefully unity will react. I would hope that most of us don't complain just out of anger and frustration, but hope that our voice will be heard and make a difference eventually.

And getting a lot of people complain about the same thing takes time and always starts out as just a few people "whining".

 

Or you're an experienced developer who looks at other free engines who have X feature and you want Unity to succeed. Missing features won't prevent you from reaching your dreams, but they can seriously delay your dreams
I mean technically notepad + compiler isn't preventing you from reaching your dreams, you're just going to have to do work... A lot of it

 

Then clearly notepad + compiler isn't for you and you should move on to find a different tool instead of finding the nearest notepad community and whining about how notepad isn't visual studio.

 

Except visual studio is a huge leap from notepad. Unity and all the other major engines are pretty close to each other, it's a much closer race and they all know they're competing against each other. Notepad is not trying to compete with visual studio. Plus all the other mentions in this thread on how 'whining' is our only way to make a difference. If people just complain cause they need to let out some anger then yeah that's useless.

 

While I agree that complaining is an important way to gauge how your users react / interact with your product, I'm quite sure that Unity implemented features from constructive criticism and directed requests and not forum posts "unity sucks", "Unity should learn from Unreal" etc etc.

 

There is a big difference between whining and feedback. This thread is more or less whining.

 

Not really, many were vested and spent years with Unity so they want to continue to do so as the market becomes flooded and competition gets tougher.. Quite a bit of that is due to other engines with a lot more "stuff" allowing you to iterate quicker and it's not just about what tools you can get your hands on, it's about the quality of said tools as well.

Little bit insulting to say it's just "beginners" complaining, when someone says that it just seems to me they've never engaged in a project large or complex enough to warrant "feedback" or they lack experience with other workflows / engines. Which is fine, a lot of devs are happy in the mobile / small game domain and it's obviously the most popular (and generally most logical) avenue.

Therefore of course it will be a minority as again the market for specific games is somewhat niche, which if I'm being honest today there's far better options out there anyway and there's no point in waiting around for features. Issue is that wasn't the case even three / four years ago..

Finally a lot of the things Unity "does" might not actually be that helpful to specific projects, most of their middleware can be counter intuitive on certain projects, the others are too outdated / locked in and if you're only aim is PC and maybe console multi-platform isn't the biggest hurdle either.

Unity is a great engine which has served many succesful dev's and will continue to do so, it has improved a lot over the years.. I've made some cool little projects in it at a rapid pace although it's not for everything and anything..

One last thing:

"Well, sorry, you're just going to have to do work."

You try and re-create every feature (bar VS, from UE / LY) in Unity within a reasonable time frame, tell me how it goes.. I understand at least on at a basic level how to do most of it, I just don't have X years to do it.. It's obvious as day Unity can't keep up even with en mass engineers (even though yes more manpower isn't always the solution) so why do you seem to believe indie dev's can AND make a game at the same time?

Prudent just to use the right tool, no?

 

So this is a bit contradictory. "There are better tools", but "Unity does too many things" but "We want xyz feature because it is pertinent to me specifically".

If you need to drill a hole in a mountain, don't use a swiss army knife and tell the manufacturer to add a pneumatic drill because you need it.

Yes it is prudent to use the right tool. You realize I'm saying exactly that, right? However, in the event that no tool exists, you have to expect to make the tool. It is a modern phenomenon that developers expect to be handed tools instead of create them.

 

Doesn't seem that contradictory to me, I don't want to get wrapped up in semantics but niche doesn't mean "pertinent to me specifically" something like an openworld game is a popular game to develop, compared to the mobile market making infinite runners and quick games they are a small percentage "niche".. Not even sure what you mean about "too many things" I believe I'm saying the exact opposite.

"You realize I'm saying exactly that, right?"

Can't say it came across that way, but I do agree you shouldn't be afraid to get your hands dirty although where's the line? What level of expectations should you have? E.g. deferred decals wouldn't take me long to implement, so if it doesn't take long and it's been on one of the highest requested feature lists of the last decade, Why hasn't Unity already implemented it like every other major engine out there? It's not like it's project specific.

Also I use pre-made engines to mainly avoid getting caught up in so many technicalities that I don't end up working on the game, if they start to work against me then they're instantly pointless. I'd rather make my own solution from scratch because I'll move faster knowing how every component works and I'm free to fix / upgrade it whenever I like (even though this is the worst possible outcome, e.g. no other choice (which there are plenty)). Sure if it's a very niche "project specific" / non generic solution it is 100% on you to sort it out (no matter what you use)..

I've always wondered if Unity are that bothered about PC / Console, as in is it high priority? Like Epic kinda shunts mobile to the back of the list..

One last thing, Epic and Amazon are very supportive if you show promise.. I asked LY team for a component based workflow with "entities", .FBX import pipeline, Allegorithmic support and SpeedTree integration.. I'm four for four so far and it was done relatively quickly, this is from a service where if you do a single player game they earn zero out of it. It's very impressive.

 

Haaa. No........more like almost 100 years and 4 people.
I just liked the way your rationalization of complaining sounded and thought I might use it.

In all fairness I think complaints can be useful. They can also be an excuse to not get anything accomplished. It all depends on the person complaining, who they are complaining to, what they expect to achive with their complaint and most of all whether they want to complain as an excuse or to actually effect the way things will work in the future. In the case of my yard it's an excuse but I still want to use your clear rational reason to complain as I do it.

 

Dude, 100 years is enough to create a thick layer (1 meter, I think) of fertile soil if you just let it sit there. What the heck happened in your backyard so it took 100 years for grass to grow and it required help of 4 people to make it happen?

 

Epic is actually focusing more and more on mobile stuff. Although Unity is still in the lead in that department I would say.

 

Exactly what I was thinking but was too scared to say

 

My house was built almost 100 years ago. I am the 4th owner to curate the several acre yard. If you dig the dirt looks like black potting soil for the first 2 feet. My area is notoriously bad for thin topsoil.

 

It's available if you are willing to switch to artificial turf. The unreal stuff doesn't grow at all, and requires very little maintenance.

 

I have considered it. I have 2 problems though. 4 acres of fake grass is quite a bit to be replacing every few years, and the rabbits that hop through the yard every morning would quit showing up. I might could take the cost but I dont want to loose my rabbits. They are one of the things I like best about my yard. I live a few miles from civilization so I harvest a bunny for the table once in a while.

 

Seems like the perfect opportunity to graze something? Four acres seems quite wasteful to mow.

 

Deer, rabbits, other assorted wildlife graze at will. I have dealt with cattle in the past and am not fond of it. I have alot of big trees, plum grove, grape arbor, flowers and other stuff besides just wide open field. I have a wisteria with a base or trunk at this point 10 inches in diameter. I have a holly bush that covers a circle around 12 feet/4 meters wide thats around 10 feet/3 meters tall. Thankfully a good portion of yard is taken up with other non mowed things that it only takes about 6 hours to cut the grass. I wouldn't fence it in mostly because the animals in the woods around me are used to my yard and house to the point they dont even run from me if I dont move fast. I really like nature and have nothing but that for miles around which I would feel in someway selfish or wrong about stretching an ugly manmade fence around. I mow the grass and tend the plants but I try to let nature run as much as possible. My house sits 1/4 mile away from the gravel road that leads to it and cannot be seen from said road. That is one of the reasons I bought it. I am free here to do as I please.

 

It seems nice where you live

 

I like it very much though its not ideal for everyone. 15 miles to the nearest store of any kind and 50 miles to the nearest social hangout. I buy in bulk and am not very social so it works for me. I work the 2000 acres of farm ground in the immediate area so I dont commute at all. My internet connection is atrocious. I would gladly accept all of the drawbacks because I love the fact that it actually gets dark at night, I hear coyotes howl, I can do what I want without neigbors complaining, and most of all I don't have to deal with silly municipal/neigborhood ordinances that prevent me from building a storage shed or another dirtbike ramp....freedom from the bs.


I think I successfully derailed this whinefest. My work is done here.

 

I know we tend to go off topic when we talk about this stuff, but grass is definatley a new one ..

 

Mostly bremuda with some of the more open sunny areas covered in fescue.

Is there a thread or subforum for just random stuff that in no way pertains to anything at all, a place to chit chat about whatever strikes your fancy at the moment. I feel like I am holding up more important conversation like why unity sux or when its ok to complain about unity being substandard....these are important issues.

 

I've always wanted an off-topic thread

 

There isn't no, I'm not sure if you're being facetious or you're new to games dev but I don't believe anyone thinks Unity sucks (well not on the Unity forums anyway). Every major engine has it's fair share of problems, they've just gone about it in different ways.. Quick summary:

Unity is the most barebones tech limited engine (out the box), but it's also the easiest / quickest to iterate / beginner friendly and most stable of the major three, it's extremely scalable and works well with most things (it's a jack of all trades, master of none)..

Unreal is the one in the middle, a lot more stuff in it than Unity by default / focussed mainly on 3D games and far more scalable (for bigger projects) with access to source. It has many tried and tested methodologies created by a company who make games and it shows.. Solutions and architecture (for the most part) is very logical.

On the flip side it's also not the most feature complete engine out there, it's somewhat difficult to use (some Unity users who tried it didn't get past some of the basics) as it assumes you're at least an intermediate level developer (otherwise it's blueprints (visual scripting) and a lot of learning) and C++ documentation is lacking, plus it is slow to create with (comparitively).. It also constantly changes (in major ways) and has a habbit of invalidating previous workflows. Although it's a well rounded solution on the whole capable of near enough anything..

CryEngine / Lumberyard is the most advanced / feature complete / performant engine I've ever used in terms of 3D games. It's also the most rigid, difficult to work with blackbox out there and assumes your an advanced developer.. It doesn't much care for 2D or mobile and making other games like RTS's can be somewhat perplexing.. Although Amazon are doing a lot to rectify this (full .FBX pipeline, component based systems, mobile support etc. etc.)..

When I mean it's more difficult to use, I'm not saying the difference between Unity / Unreal (like a step up) I'm talking you need to be near enough an experienced multiple discipline engine developer level dev to really gel with it..

They are merging together, slowly but surely and in time I don't think there will be that much difference. Even at this point I'd say unless your specific project needs something go for whatever is easiest (that's usually Unity).

 

Yes I am new to the game dev scene and new to Unity. I have some schooling in pascal and basic but obviously that was years ago and not of use other than already having knowledge of how programming works in general. Not even a good help there since things are so different, at least I came into it knowing the difference between a for and while loop, kind of. I have nothing against Unity at all. I did choose Unity afterall because going in blind is a bad idea in any endeavor.

The comment was most definatley sarcastic and I thought it was obvious, sorry. That comment came from me reading the forums and seeing alot of people posting about a way some other engine is better or how Unity is broken. I dont understand that logic really. If the other engine is better use it. If Unity is broken fix it or don't use it. Anything that can be done in Unity can be done without Unity so if its not working for you do something else.

I chose Unity over Unreal because it looked easier to learn and like there was more help available and already answered questions. I decided I liked the asset store and really liked the idea of free untill you make money then pay for a liscense no royalty. I dont expect to ever need to pay for a liscense. I never even looked at cry engine.

In summary : Yes I'm new....Yes that was sarcastic....I agree with your engine breakdown, thats pretty much how I felt about it.

 

I kinda got that feeling, it's always hard to tell in text ..

It's always project specific, some engines for specific games are simply better.. Unity 4.X you could flip over like a stack of domino's but with Unity 5.X if you're in a small team / solo dev you have to be punching well above your weight before it starts to crumble. Unless you're very new it takes some doing..

It takes a long time to learn an engine, if you're new it can be anything between 1-3 years or if you're an intermediate / advanced developer I'd expect anything from 3 - 6 months. Then over the years you build pipelines / efficiency workflows and tools, on top of that you probably will buy and use a select amount of tools from the asset store.. After that amount of investment and time it's not quite as simple as saying, don't like it? Switch.

So I understand why some dev's have done smaller projects and now want to take on the bigger / more challenging project, then get frustrated when hitting walls. It would in the long run probably be a better idea to switch than either wait for tools to come to you or even take the time to develop the tools, as some may take you months (and the rest).. If you need a solution like a modern realtime GI (like in CE / LY) (due to lightmaps / GI cache / TOD's etc.) then be prepared to chuck your game project to the side for maybe a year or so (that's after you've spent X years learning).. This is only one system of many..

Why you'd do that when you're already at the level to pull this sort of game off and / or have solutions available is perplexing but I won't deny I've resisted change even if I'm really 1000% sure it's the type of project I want to do.. It would be fantastic if Unity could be the do all mega engine, in reality even if they started right now and even if they moved 10X faster it would still take years for it to get there at a quality accessible for a wide range of projects.

TLDR; You're right but it never seems that simple..

 

I have just looked at it from a standpoint of unity can do it, I need to learn more so unity can do it, I need to learn more so I can help unity do it, or its not worth it to make unity do it but something else will.

I should probably put an I give up clause in there but I haven't needed it yet.

 

Its possible to ship games without any of those features; and im sure hundreds and hundreds have shipped without needing them.

Also, what exactly do you mean by 'Particle Editor'?

 

"Games" is a bit of a wide statement Andy, it's like Justin Timberlake walking up to Slipknot and saying "hey guys, you can make music.. Tons of it has been released but you don't really need electric guitars and drums".. They reply "you do understand we make metal music? Right?"

That should be a saturday night live sketch.

Although the OP's specific requirements aren't quite err, yeah.! Particle editor? Err, I gather maybe something like Cascade? Although Unity's particle engine does something very similar..

 

Probably the best and most honest comparisson I've read so far. So far I've had no stability problems with unreal what so ever, only been using it on and off for a few months now so it's a bit hard to compare with the years I have with Unity. Documentation is my main problem with unreal, compiling is a bit slower and you have to write a bit more code. The reward in my eyes is the superior performance and the proven methodologies that you mentioned.

That's scary. I worked with the source engine for a couple of years also, and unreal 4 is user friendly heaven compared to that mess... There was no documentation either when I used it, I guess people don't have the patience anymore.

 

I'm guessing you didn't read any of the other comments in the thread

And yes I mean something like cascade. I haven't tried cascade in unreal 4 yet but I used the one in UDK for years and that was already much better than Unity's. Luckily Particle Playground closes the gap a bit.... But that's a plugin you have to buy, and it isn't cheap either

 

Many apologies, I don't really understand your Justin Timberlake/Slipknot metaphor and not sure how it applies here. Both musicians make music; albeit in different ways. And both have been incredibly successful in making music. Same logic can be applied to any engine, tool or framework for creating games.

 

Yes, I did read the comments in the thread.

Unity has a 'Particle Editor'. You can create a Particle System, tweak values in it's Inspector, and have live results. Thus, I don't understand OP's request for a Particle Editor.

 

Having a particle editor would be nice because it gives a way to isolate the particle system before using it in a runtime environment, which is super handy for spell effects and the like. As it stands, if I open a particle system in Unity's particle editor, I literally just get what I see in the inspector next to a grid for the animation curves. Having a dedicated editor where you can preview the particle system outside of a scene would be a huge improvement for artist workflows, similar to how a shader editor would be.

 

I don't get it either. Unity has a particle editor. You can click a button and pop it out for a full screen wonder experience too. As for lack of native shader editor, yes unity sucks major ass at that for now, right?

 

I nearly wrote a 20 page presentation on it again (for the who knows how many times at this point) but Andy we've been through this a fair few times and no offence but you never really seem to understand and then we just bicker about it for a bit (usually).. I'm not talking about what the OP was BTW, all those suggestions don't IMO stop you from doing anything.

Although I'll just say this, different games require different "features" / systems and this is obvious as the sun.. Some features that are built into Unity's core and not useful for specific projects (because their static, old, archaic, need improvements). As fringe and complex as these projects are Unity is not up to it and when you start stripping away what little it has by default why would you use it? I haven't seen an example (game) to prove me otherwise and the cost to implement said features / systems (if in some cases possible at all in a closed binary) is simply too much.. Sometimes even for large developers.

What I don't understand at this point, why does it matter? Does Unity want to be the goto for everyone? You seem pretty succesful to me and a lot of dev's are happy with it, so not the end of the world right? I gotta say thank goodness for the asset store, as pot luck as that can be..

If you do want to be king of every hill, I'll be sure to post that presentation your way..!

P.S it's not always about "can you do X", it's sometimes about the level of quality too..

P.P.S "Same logic can be applied to any engine, tool or framework for creating games." Ok, what's the point in using Unity and having to pay for it then? Plenty of free options.

 

What do you know? Stop hiding things from us

 

Well I'm just assuming that Unity has brain cells there. It's impossible the company wouldn't be doing a shader editor.

 

Hmm ... nice save. You're off the hook (for now)

I would be super happy if Unity just had more shaders out the box. Assets -> Import Package -> Lotsa nice shaders

 

Or even just a halfway decent skin shader. That alone would probably make a lot of people happy when making characters with skin.

 

As long as it is not ubisoft skin shader that makes black skin white under harsh light, nintendo has better skin in splatoon now ... and they are from an homogenous society where black people are rare. But time and time gain japan has been shown to be very skilled when they put the effort to make good skin and hair above anything I have seen on the west, it's like they live with black people or something ...

I mean seriously what's wrong with skin shader nowaday?

 

Then I guess you missed this message :

I think most assume an editor to be a separate window with a separate view and tools/unique UI for tweaking whatever you're tweaking. Shuriken is just and extended inspector. It isn't bad, it's just that for me calling it an editor is a bit of a stretch

Actually you can call it an editor if you want, it doesn't matter. What matters is that it lacks features and it's not intuitive from an artist's point of view compared to other particle editors I've played with. And yes these types of things can actually mean that you don't succeed in certain projects. There are deadlines that need to be met, and a budget that slowly gets drained. If you want to create a certain level of quality in X amount of time then missing features can very well mean that you have to look for another engine to succeed. If you have infinite budget with no deadlines then sure you can make any game of any scale and succeed without buying a single plugin.

 

If you hadn't done so already; you should post this in this thread.
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/official-share-your-prefab-workflows.476630/

 

I do understand, and IMO we have never bickered. Discussion is healthy! Its why I post on these forums.

I feel like i'm preaching to the choir and i've said this time and time again (I could probably copy and paste my response from any other number of similar threads); each tool and framework is great for it's different goal and purposes. You say that Unity has so little default in it; yet its used by hundreds of thousands of people (from students to indies/hobbyists to the biggest studios in the industry) to create and ship thousands and thousands of games and non-games. People either extend it themselves (Quite a few studios I have met build their own custom tools for their workflows/games on top of the editor, without source code) or buy additions from the Asset Store (which in turn helps fund other developers and tool creators). Yes, we can always add more and update various features (We updated Video, Lightmapping, Navigation Tools, etc in 5.6 and are about to add Cutscene tools, UI Profiler, new Sprite Atlas system, etc in 2017.1 and have also acquired Cinemachine and TextMesh Pro to improve Camera Rigs and Text Rendering. And we are working on tons of more stuff for future releases) and we are in the active process of doing so (These things take time!).

Again, I feel like im just saying the same things over and over again. So ill probably just quote this post in future similar threads.