Official Introducing Gigaya: Unity's upcoming sample game

Even if I don't care anymore about unity right now, I've spent some time on this forums from 2019 till now. Thank You for helping keep this place a safe place for the rest of us.

If it helps, know that higher ups in any corporation don't care or give two cents on the community that is created around their products. they may say they care but they don't. exactly as they have treated their workers till a few days ago they just throw out to the trash, any asset they have, including the community, when they don't need them anymore.

now unity decided is the time to destroy the community, well as said above, nothing unexpected for me but is hard when one finds out about it the first.

You have done your moderator job for yourself and for the community, not for the unity corporation. I mean technically you did and there is some truth in your words. But is not your fault. You are not the idiot.

 

Yep, Bronson was also in the Internal Games Production team with Ciro and I! Awesome guy; ill miss our chats!

 

My long term plan was to build the CC for Gigaya (with all the game specific stuff) and then after shipping Gigaya, split it out and boil it down to a more generic Rigidbody CC intended for 3D platformers.

 

What about a character controller where everytime you jump an ad plays?

Character controller gets completed in a day

 

It runs on my tablet's browser!

 

I'm willing to pay for it as someone who was looking forward to Gigaya's CC.

Of course, I know that Gigaya's CC cannot be sold for a fee or opened for free. (for legal reasons)

But not Gigaya's CC,
(Not using the resources of the Gigaya)
Can't Andy's "personal" 3D platform character controller be sold on the Asset Store?
(Andy's long term plan / If andy want it)
To be honest.... I know it's ridiculous.
But it's too bad Andy's CC is being abandoned. I hope Unity will allow it to be used.....

I saw in your previous article that you were waiting for Unity's approval
to disclose part of the Gigaya project for portfolio purposes.
(English is not my first language, so I may have misunderstood the context.
- Andy asked Unity
- Unity is considering it
- Andy is waiting for unity's answer
Did I get it right?)


I think it's a sensitive and rude topic, but there's no bad intention.
I think unity just wants to bury Gigaya....
It's such a pity that a nice well-made project is abandoned.


The employees involved are no longer in the company.
It doesn't make money right away.
Who in Unity can care about this sensitive thing?

I hope someone cares about it though.

 

Yeah, just left to it I guess. All this time I've just made it up as I went along, generally just common sense. Spoke to a few well meaning staff members but they aren't representing Unity in those cases.

 

This is just my opinion (usually taken as wrong) if there is something i hate more then programming is visual scripting -.-
I'm an artist (mostly 3d) i hate to code but i prefer writing the code over visual scripting in any case, visual scripting is slow as hell and is always a mess, i think unity give the users this visual scripting tool just to follow the trend in that time, just to give what users want but i don't think unity devs believe in that at all -.-"

EDIT: and BTW this is not sarcasm -.-"

 

That's a valid opinion to have, but you can't expect all artists, animators and other creative types to just learn how to code in C#. Especially when that coding will increasingly involve DOTS as the ecosystem matures.

Visual Scripting enables rapid iteration without taxing the programming resource. If programmers have to implement every single change designer, artist, >insert other creative role< requests, the process is very slow, so it's bottlenecked at the engineering department. And in game development, nothing is ever final on the first try. So you have a few options - throw money and people at the bottleneck if you have spare money to burn, kill creativity and go for the first few prototypes, or let creatives be creative in Visual Scripting and only port to code when design is final.

Furthermore, even if Unity are chasing a trend with VS, they are consulting the folks at large studios who have implemented their own proprietary VS solutions for Unity. So what ever they are cooking up for the next major version of UnityVS, it should at least scale for large projects and should adhere to requirements of AAA.

The current UnityVS version is just reskinned Bolt 1 from the asset store. A talented guy in his early twenties wrote it solo while working in a co-op space in Montreal. Besides a few bug fixes, a new coat of paint and a couple breaking changes, it's effectively identical to Bolt 1 from late 2018 in usage and workflow. They've implemented 0 new features besides a very basic Input System support. And while it's great for Unity newbies for which the tool was designed for, it's absolutely terrible for actual video game production.

They've pretty much abandoned the current version of UnityVS. It's in maintenance mode. All hands on deck are on the next major iteration. Hopefully, 2023 is when VS in Unity stops being bad. Time will tell.

 

Jeez

 

Custom real-time shadows or baked shadows with unity’s real-time shadows or baked shadows? In any combination is possible to mix it given you have the correct input data (meshes lightmaps uvs or lights depthmaps to compute shadows). You don’t need sources for that. You can even create your own shadow system and replace unitys one.

 

Since you are here and you are on the VideoPlayer team: video playback on Android Vulkan skips and crashes if you try to play a video frame by frame or play a video on loop for a long time (rendering to a rendertexture). It works perfectly fine doing the same on GLES3.
I don't know if it's happening on Vulkan desktop too, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
I don't really care personally, but since you're here I may as well say it.

-EDIT: it's fixed on Unity 2021.3.6f1 LTS !

 

I just wanted to say that your game looks AMAZING and that I can't wait to play it!

 

if that helps, unreal editor crashes consistently when you set it to use vulkan, and you want to use wireframe mode. these game engines can't figure out this vulkan thing. Maybe they add vulkan support just to say it has been added, and is not something they are focusing on.

 

Vulkan on android was a mess for me in general. My game would crash if the ram exceeded 1GB. The performance was slightly better but else it just wasn't worth the trouble.

 

Also: https://www.execpay.org/news/unity-software-inc-2020-compensation-4536
"John Riccitiello, Chief Executive Officer, received $22M in total, which increased by 160% compared to 2019. 51% of Riccitiello's compensation, or $11M, was in stock awards. Riccitiello also received $484K in non-equity incentive plan, $9.9M in option awards, as well as $360K in salary."

 

Usually their contract also includes food, a house or flat and a company car.
Not kidding.

 

Kind of weird that Unity upper management cast those things in a bad light. Having Unity led by a real game, is exactly, exactly what we want, and the exact opposite of what management wants.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-17-picking-the-right-door-with-the-future-of-unity

This isn't the first time. I remember that blog post where CEO says that Games will be the smallest part of Unity's future. All of this writing on the wall and I didn't want to read it.

I wanted this community to be the best in game dev and I wanted this community to have a real shot at AAA game making. Worked every day to make that happen, for free. Only so much I can do. Did you know that upper management thought I was against Unity? They didn't even understand what constructive criticism was and Aurore had to fight my corner and explain to them to prevent them kicking me. I never knew that happened til much later as I don't pry.

They tried to remove me as a mod. Fancy that, removing someone who really cares about their community and business. Wild. Thanks, I guess?

Thank you Aurore, for still caring about the community. And thank you all the staff that did their best regardless of management not wanting to know.

 

As If removing you as a mod would magically make unity's problems disappear, the proverb don't shoot the messenger seems fitting.

 

That just seems like the new corporate culture clashing with old Unity values. Either you stay silent or toe the line by presenting a happy-go-lucky everything's all-right attitude, or you lose your job. Unthinkable just a few years ago, but Unity's changed. The leadership is as far removed from us they can be.

 

Thanks. It's been quite an adventure to get HDRP working on my side Every update has improved something and broken something else. TAA was tragic, then it was amazing, and now it's broken again. It's currently in good shape imho but I won't admit how many nights I spent on rendering and how many custom tools we built to make it work (and few asset store solutions for lightmaping etc.).
I'm still waiting for dx12 and cool stuf like vrs.

I really like Unity, but I hope my next project will be in that other engine

Wait! They wanted to fire you from a job you do for free? That's ridiculous.

 

When this happened, now?

 

Ages back, but I don't really want this thread to be about me. I'm just using what value I have left to ensure community is heard, and how management must change to listen to their own staff. That's all.

 

I remember watching a ton of Unreal vs Unity videos 8 years back and the then me decided that Unity was it, for me, forever! .. In some video someone compared both the engines as one being built by engineers (Unity) and the other being built by business men who only cared about money. I took real pride in my decision. But look how the tables have turned now.

I'm definitely late into this thread but if it makes any difference, I would like to vote for making Gigaya available as a git project and letting the community work on it. I personally was looking forward to the first Unity built game! Now I'm just sad.

I read through almost all the replies here and I must say love @hippocoder for being an awesome mod. Lots of love to the layed off Unity guys! And a ton of good luck to everyone here reading this. We will make it through!

Here's to the end times. Cheers everyone!

 

Keep up the good work sir we do recognize your passion and drive is something hard to find

the subject reminds me of a phrase used in a more regulated industry “management creating a chilling environment” in that everyone becomes worry to speak up and or even give advice with fear they will be subject to punishment.

looking from a outside view it seams the entire management structure is based on a silo type system limiting lower-level communication internally to only within each silo. I really have no idea if this organization structure is set up this way but it is a common practice with larger corporations.

without driven people such as yourself we would be lost

cheers

 

Yet another 50p.

If Gigaya wasn't built using DOTS stack, then maybe it's for the best, because it wouldn't show anything new and outstanding in comparison to other engines. Maxed out performance in physics, animations and the net code - that's what we need. The game object approach is just the same old stone from which you cannot squeeze anymore blood...

Hopefully, managment will see their mistakes and redirect their priorities in the right direction.

 

I'm extremely frustrated to say the least.
Gigaya was the ONLY thing keeping me invested in unity, I was planning to religiously comb over the project once it got released and learn best practices from it.
Now I don't know what I'll do.
Maybe just add more to a certain engine starting with G's patreon and hope for the best

 

If not in Unity, in any other alternative but...

We will be REBORN!

 

Meanwhile unreal is funding Godot and is helping on o3de, you know, direct competitor, later one being back by big company name. They know how to lit the fire.

 

That's to keep it under control, not because they care about the community.
If anything, this kind of corporate interference with FOSS projects is a poisoned apple: they soon become dependent of the corporate funds and fall under their control.
Not good news.

 

I would say is more to harm Unity than anything else. By helping other engines, Epic fragments Unity marketshare. This give Epic time so smartphones are strong enough to run a future optimized version of nanite and lumen. Because, lets be realistic, even if mobile has the worse kind of games, is also a hume market that Unity clearly dominates and Epic still has interest in that market. Not only for themselves as tech/game devs but also for anyone using Unreal Engine cause you know, if you use unreal and make tons of cash, it also benefits Epic.

 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend!

 

It's important to realise that Epic, and especially Tim Sweeney aren't evil. In fact, as CEOs go, I don't see a better one in tech. That's also a CEO who has spent time making games from scratch and understands all our struggles.

I have it on very good accord from someone who visits these forums often (a very respected community member) that they're actually the good guys. I believe them, and think it's pretty easy to see a bogeyman under every rock. Maybe too easy after you have been treated like this by Unity. Where are your freebies? Things you deserve?

Unity didn't even think you deserved Gigaya. Didn't even think those devs deserved their jobs.

 

Maybe one of the reason it was cancelled? Dint serve DOTS pourpose and Unity only future now is basically DOTS, nothing else.

 

Hes also a huge advocate for open source software, Fortnite is a good example of how to make f2p right without depraving or exploiting kids. Not to mention he owns more than 50% of Epic, he can do whatever he wants with the company and keep it on track for the next ten years with fortnite cash.

 

We didn't use DOTS in Gigaya so far for a variety of reasons:
- We wanted to build the core game on 'current' Unity using LTS; aligning with our users. Not some experimental custom build (feedback was community doesn't like it when unity does this)
- We wanted to have a solid foundation across common features and systems of today, demonstrating a variety of current workflows and best practices. Basically making the project more useful for the community using today's tooling and to demonstrate internally current issues and workflow problems to factor in to future designs.
- DOTS roadmap is hard to predict. A variety of systems coming in over the next X number of releases and its difficult to figure out how they fit together. We didn't want to wait x years just for some basic DOTS tooling for an important system like Audio or UI.

And most importantly:
- We wanted to use the project as a testbed for upgrading systems and mechanics from 'current Unity' to DOTS: identifying the workflows, feature gaps, hopeful performance gains, API requirements, benefits, experiences, content pipelines etc. And document the learnings for internal and external. There was already active investigation work for upgrading the main character's animation setup (a combo of Mecanim, Runtime Rigging and Timeline) to DOTS Animation.

Hopefully the half finished project is of use in some of these scenarios still. I have no more visibility.

 

I fired up Unreal Engine for the first time in 10 years and my project from 10 years ago not only opened, it runs just fine in UE5 with no manual changes from me. It had to upgrade a few things but it was so quick I didn't even realise.

 

Guys, guys... let's not fall into "good" vs "evil" here and let's remember that if Unity hadn't completely screwed Epic Games by making Unity dirt cheap first and completely free some time later, none of us would have been able to afford an Unreal Engine license.
Before Unity disrupted the market, a license of Unreal Engine costed hundreds of thousands of dollars. Literally.
Epic refused to make their engine cheaper all the time they could.
They even released a crippled version on Unreal named UDK with a super restrictive license to try to "compete" with Unity.
They only released an affordable subscription to Unreal Engine after much backlash against UDK.
Basically, they did what they did because they didn't have an option anymore.
If Unity hadn't screwed Epic so much, we would still be using Blitz3D, Ogre and Torque!

Also, let's recall the case of Playerunkown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), were they used Unreal but had to massively rewrite all the net code for it to be usable for a Battle Royal FPS game and massive multiplayer online.
Then Epic just straight took the new code, slapped it into Fortnite and proceeded to shamelessly rip off the whole PUBG gameplay, creating the new Battle Royal mode that everyone identifies with Fortnite now.
Bluehole sued them but Epic got away because, as per their license, if you modify the Unreal Engine C++ code, they own everything you coded in there for free, and gameplay isn't copyrightable.
Still a Dick Move if you ask me.
They finally dropped the lawsuit without much explanation, but both companies being partially owned by Tencent could have had something to do with it.

Would you trust a company that does this to you?

No, there are no "good guys" here.
I prefer Tim Sweeney's overall philosophy of doing the best game engine that can be done over Riccitiello's own philosophy of making the most profit that he unhumanly can, that's for sure, but we're seeing a case of Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs here: both assholes, one more useful than the other, but still assholes both.

So let's just keep this in mind before we all become Unreal fanboys, shall we?

 

GOTO:

 

Dude, they did that because they wanted to disrupt the market to replace Steam.
And they sued Apple because it was costing them a lot of money on Fortnite.
It was NEVER about us, poor little devs LOL

Their interests can be aligned with ours NOW, but that can change anytime.
The same there was a time when Unity's interests and ours were aligned, but now they aren't anymore and everybody is F***ed.

 

Because they're obsolete and dead.
They were never open source to begin width, and by the time Blitz3D was open sourced, there were plenty of better alternatives.

(and also because people either have a very short memory, or I am just old LOL)

 

Im not an Unreal fanboy, otherwise I would’ve left Unity longtime ago.
Jobs was a real a*shole, Tim is not an angel but still a humble man with integrity next to him any day. That comparison was kinda silly imho.
I still prefer Tim Sweeney than Jonny cash. And my business model is premium quality games. My business philosophy aligns better with Epic than Unity right now because of the direction Unity is taking and im not a fan of crappoware micro games with constant ads. Im not even a fan of F2P games in general. However, my statement about Fortnite still holds, is not a depraved exploitative F2P game.

 

Yep, at least it's the only rational reasoning I can possibly think of apart from the idiocy or intentional self-sabotage by higher management for some hidden agenda, apart from keeping up during crisis times.
DOTS is truly the thing which will deliver, everybody else will have to adapt when it will come to the game.

My previous message might sound harsh, but it was just a cold observation of the situation. You guys did an amazing job and it is visible even without touching the project.

All your points make sense, the only problem is that your resources and time have been directed wrongly and that's a great pity.

Personally, I see no reason for sharing this half-ready project with the community as it would raise my doubts even more. Guys at the top made a mistake and they have the balls courage (have you, guys? ) to admit it and start a new thing from scratch. Let's see what the future will bring.

 

I'm not saying you are, I just want to convey a general message of:
Curb your enthusiasm: they'll find a way to screw us.

 

I don't think any company is screwing anyone. It is just a matter of your direction aligning with it or not.

 

I've never posted here before, but I had to after the announcement.

Unity ADVERTISED Gigaya as something to HELP developers and committed to releasing it. Then they call it quits, essentially spitting in the face of the same developers they were claiming to support. Really poor choice.

 

Well, yes. It's the same with bad persons: they don't want to hurt you specifically, but if hurting you will give them something good, they will!
Nothing personal.