Official: How Can We Serve You Better?

Watermark is never okay, it turns stuff into demo. Your users may vote with their feet then ...

Could you add the Treemaker here please?

Bugs is a special chapter since i have still open bugs in my tracker that dates back to Unity 2.6. Maybe time to clean up a bit. Or fix the one or another old bug.

I can in general just suggest what was already suggested by others here. Create a bigger project with your own product, up to finished. Not just a demo project. That way you will stumble across lots of issues that you would have never catched by "normal" beta testing.

 

Thats a bit better, just so long as you realise even at that price you are still nowhere near as competitive to UE for the small team or individual not making much money!

 

this , more stuff like UMA. This community has experienced people that want to contribute.For example the user WhydoIdoit(Mike Talbot) has a excellent serialization asset for free in the asset store. he even offers it to unity. see for statement http://whydoidoit.com/unityserializer/
I am pretty sure there are more people wanting contribute to get the tools they need into unity. for bug fixes and features.
I would even go so far that you could have official engine features as "assets" . as many projects wont be needing streaming/networking or even terrain
Then you would have a lean core product with features added as needed. build your engine like lego.
this is how I view the Asset Store,

I firmly believe that a lot of good could come out of cooperating more directly with Asset Store developers as done with the UMA project.

 

Since so many folks are requesting features, I may as well.

• Some solution for the GC nightmares. I would love if there was a way to budget how much time GC can spend per frame to do its thing.
• Allow native plugins on all versions. I don't think anyone is really buying pro for that feature.
• Make render texture available on free. This only limits what features I can add to my Assets if I want free users to be able to purchase from the Store.
• Block support for SetPixel32() ... Actually please optimize texture creation.
• More per vertex streams (I realize some of that is coming in 5.0 but haven't seen any details)
• Visual Studio debugging
• Go through NavMesh and Lightprobes and other systems to make them more friendly for dynamic level creation. For instance, make lightprobe.position R/W. Allow us to assign new navmesh solution / pre-bake different ones, etc...
• Add CHAR type to the list of serializable primitives. Can't believe String is but not char.

I made this comment in my larger post but please have R&D focus on the deep engine / system stuff (ie. the things that we can't touch). Continue to work with your asset developers to find out what functionality we need to keep improving and creating better assets that in turn make Unity better for all users. Unity has an incredible user base, solid asset developer community connecting it all through the asset store. Your competition doesn't have that (yet). Leverage this ecosystem and feed it. I said it before but these Asset developers are essentially R&D resources at Unity's disposal. Don't spend R&D resources replicating what they can do instead increase your support for them as the more successful they become the better is it for Unity and all of its user base.


P.S Saw Gozilla tonight ... nothing beats giants monsters fighting and blowing up cities

 

I'm OK with them.

 

Exactly my point ! but written more clearly

 

I totally agree with you here.

I also noticed @bibbinator skill to avoid any direct comparation with UE4 pricing model.

Unity should take very seriously UE4 licensing model and how they handle the development. Since last month was 4.0.-4.1-.4.2 and every patch brings lots of new stuff and fixes.

 

I think it's fantastic that you guys are trying to reach out and communicate with the us users, really it's a great gesture, and hopefully more good things will result from it then bad.

However, I do think there must be a better method of communication(I don't know of one, yet nor do I know what resources you guys have to make something work). One that would be more...organized for you Unity developers, because I believe your time is very precious. A single thread with tons of suggestions, questions, follow ups from Unity devs to users vice versa, theres bound to be redundancies and wasted time. Naturally one would think the issue/feedback section, but it seems that people don't feel they get a direct as an answer if they were speaking on forums and getting replies etc. So I just wanted to put this out there that perhaps you guys should have a few brains over there to think of a neater method.

I don't know if anything that I've said is true but, given the fact that I didn't read all 26 pages....it may very well be someone mentioned what I just said, and same as other users mentioning other things.

Perhaps you should have a category for this if you intend on keeping an open line with us, perhaps have it somehow moderated so the questions are relevent, I don't know if it'll make things worse or better for Unity developers or us but...just a possibility to think over.

Anyways, thank you Unity team.

 

I hope UT will consider this though. It would definitely simplify things for both UT and its users. While I expect there would be some complaints from the Free user base in the beginning, a fully featured (Pro) Unity version with a reasonable 'indie' price tag would appeal to most users.

The benefit of offering a single (Pro) version only is that it removes fragmentation from the asset store (there are currently assets that are labeled Pro only), improve user generated content (users have better tools with Pro). Also UT can narrow its focus to a single version. A huge win from both a development and marketing perspective.

 

• Mono, MonoDevelop upgrade or replacement

Specifically:

• Watch is not working correctly.
• Debug. Setting break points cause MonoDevelop to freeze. Severe issue
• Debug the second time causes Unity to freeze or MonoDevelop to freeze.

• Replace Asset Server, better support for collaboration

Specifically:

• Upgrade Asset Server PostGreSQL to latest version.
• Put back the PostGreSQL repair and dump back to the builds you redistribute.
• Increase speed. Once the thing goes above 30GB, it slows down so dramatically that we stopped using it.

• More multi-core, multi-threaded, parallelization enhancements and optimizations across all platforms

Give a method to do network baking, or put the cache server as part of Pro version.



.Meta files = put back the filename on it. Sometimes you have a stray .meta file and no idea where the .meta file belongs to which filename.

Give an ability to export the nav-mesh back to compatible Recast.

Allow 3rd party EXEs to hook or have back-links to UntyEngine.dll without invoking the whole Mono kitchen sink. We've been doing a huge effort replicating many Unity functions to run Unity code on server without UnityEngine.dll.

 

The pricing of Unity in comparison to other engines has been one of the main points brought up in this thread and is certainly something they will be taking seriously. It is quite clearly not going to be bibbinators place to make direct comments about - that's a discussion for the higher ups, and one that is most definitely happening (or going to happen as I saw from another post that David wasn't at the main office at the minute). When they decide something, we will know.

To be complaining that there's no response on the subject, or that they are dodging the question after this thread has been open for just over a day, is willful ignorance.

 

@the_motionblur

Noted - you're not the only one.

Cheers..
/Jakob

 

Hey - thanks.

 

Well, I'm part of that Free user base, naturally I'd say, Please always keep the free version. So....

Please always keep the free version available.

Now I know this only applies to certain types of people, call them cheap, uncertain, indecisive, poor, not serious, a noob, or people like me. I don't really care. However, Unity Free really helped me want to get into Game development, theres no hesitation of investment, you just download, play around for weeks, months or even years, you then start getting into the groove of game development, and realize the things you can do and want to do. It let me marinate in the possibilities, and there are many possibilities with Unity free. I'm sure this point alone will and has helped the game industry and Unity's popularity.

Would the time spent on releasing a Unity free version really outweigh the effect it has on Unity's growth, development, and popularity? Isn't Unity free just a lighter version of pro? Literally and in features. It's not like they have to tweak that much code for Unity free to exist, right?

 

What gave me that impression is that you describe increasing customer interaction as something that has a cost and comes at a price and involves having to answer loads of questions and things like that, rather than in terms of something you consider really important to do because it helps make the product better. But, if you say you don't think it is a waste of time I'll take your word for it.

The point still stands however that the way Epic does it makes a vastly better impression. I've never heard anyone complain that they spend too much time talking to their customers. It wouldn't be a terrible plan for Unity to try just closely studying the way they do things and emulating it.

Did you know they do regular live video broadcasts on Twitch where they chat about what they're working on and answer questions from their forums? There was one just yesterday in fact. You can watch the replays of them here: http://www.twitch.tv/UnrealEngine

 

I understand a free version is appealing. However I think the only way to truly move forward and compete against UE is to drop the 'crippled' free version and offer AAA for everybody at a reasonable price. At best they could substitute free for a watermarked pro version.

 

The dissatisfaction isn't about having developers taking on the role of technical support people, or spending all day on the forums answering "How do I make an MMORPG?" questions. It's more a matter of understanding when there are issues of critical importance to the userbase and responding to those important cases in a meaningful way.

You have done exactly that with this thread but things typically haven't been that way in the past. What will really matter is if the feedback gathered in this thread results in any actual change or not.

 

I really believe that a watermarked pro version as a substitute for "free" is almost useless...

 

While it is true that these forums see more action, the actual comparison is, Unity devs was spending an order of magnitude less effort than Unreal devs, in pretty much everything area of communication. Be it forums, blogs or other methods of dev interaction, like irc or twitch.

This thread is a step in the right direction, but it is still just 1 thread.

 

I strongly disagree that losing the free version would help compete against UE. If anything, it would level the playing field, and then Unity would lose out. To a new user, unaware of how easy to use and productive UT is, they'll presumably gravitate towards the flashier UE, and to be honest, Unity won't be matching/exceeding UE's visuals out-of-the-box for a good long while. Getting rid of the free version would merely cause Unity to lose out on new users, as well as those hobbyists who can't afford/won't spend anything on their hobby. And it would be less likely to be ubiquitous in schools and game-jams as it is now.

UE is cheap, but free is free.

The solution I see is to keep the free version as it is, but allow the use of PRO features in development. However, if a PRO-feature is in the final build (not including the profiler) then watermark the build. Otherwise don't watermark it, so that people releasing basic games can still make money - which I'm sure they'll use to buy the PRO version. Also give an option to strip PRO features from a build. Obviously, the workflow parts that are currently just in unity PRO (eg. the profiler) should not be included in the criteria to watermark a build - but then they shouldn't be, as the workflow shouldn't really change from free to PRO, because free should be a learning tool *for* PRO.

For a hobbyist/student like myself, if I ever earn money from something I make in Unity free, the first $1500 is ear-marked to buy PRO with, and I'm sure others will share my view.

 

Speaking of...all of this, are all of this feedback mean Unity 5 is delayed?

 

Geometrically, triangles absolutely have normals. We're getting closer here but your solution doesn't work. Unity's default setting for "Normals" is set to "Import", but if I set it to "None", now I get 14(?!) vertexes and 12 triangles.

 

There are two things I've noticed in this and other threads:
1) most people saying to get rid of the free version already have pro
2) most people forget that with the ability to cancel and keep (disregarding royalties) UE4 is essentially free.

So UT getting rid of free would make it less appealing than the competition, especially to new users. Users not using Unity = no conversion for those users from free to pro, ever (because they would not be using Unity).

 

I guess you missed my earlier reply explaining why this happens, at least to my knowledge, Aras can of course be more specific to exactly how Unity deals with this and if i've got anything wrong.

However I just tried importing a cube made in blender and setting normals to none and I did get 8 vertices 12 traingles as expected. If you are not then that suggests either

a. the file format you are using is being messing up by Unity - report a bug.
b. that the cube you are importing has additional per vertex data that is forcing duplicate vertices (e.g uv, colors)


This is what I posted earlier in the thread and hopefully it will give you some greater understanding as to why this happens. Depending upon your exact needs you may be better off writing your own obj importer so that you can extract the exact vertex level data you need to build your edge lists and then build a mesh from that or alternatively write some code to parse an existing mesh to find duplicates and build an edgelist from that data.

 

Loved this price structure.
I'd insta buy the indie version on this terms.

 

It's the other way round. My statistics say 14 Tris and 12 Verts for a scene with a simple imported cube.
Keep in mind that you already have 1 drawcall and 2 Tris and 4 Vertices "wasted" for the "behind-the-scenes" blue screen-sized quad, that the unity camera uses to clean the screen and buffers.
subtract that from the reported 14 tris and 12 verts and we get our expected cube with 12 Tris and 8 verts...

 

I didn't miss your post but I did disagree with the principle of it and chose not to respond. Even though what I'm doing is runtime, the Unity editor is absolutely not a "runtime" context. These kinds of optimizations should be applied at build/runtime, not in the editor and even then, I think the raw data should still be available at runtime in some form if you ask for it(even if that means writing an editor script to store it). My life would be even more difficult if I actually did need access to this for an editor plugin or something. "Write your own obj importer" is laughable in the face of the costs of integrating that back into Unity's structure and all the edge cases that would result.

Sounds like maybe I'm hitting a bug, there's no additional vertex data that would cause this. I haven't re-tried it with an FBX but it definitely does this with OBJ so that sounds like a bug. 14 is a very strange number for a cube to be getting, regardless.

View attachment 100259

 

@Obsurveyor From the documentation:

EDIT: I should add that from your screenshot, the UV channel is probably causing those additional vertices (UV seams).

 

The thing is that a lot of Pro users complain the full mobile package is too expensive (US$4500,-) compared to UE. In some way the Pro (paying) users are keeping the Free version alive. I don't think it's sustainable for UT to significantly lower the price of Pro while at the same time offering a Free version, they would loose too much revenue.

 

Um, ok, thats quite the most bizarre thing i've heard, at least phrased like that since it is a fact of life with real-time rendering not a principle that can be agreed or disagreed with.

Except that the editor isn't some seperate entity, it needs to compile meshes into the necessary format in order to render them in your scene and game views.

Whilst I can appriracte your need here, it is such an edge-case in itself that it really wouldn't make sense to support it in the editor, not to mention that it brings up issues with how one might want to use that data, since to display it you'd need to convert it into the correct format anyway. More so if you then wanted to use that data to manipulate an actual mesh you'd run into more problems as meshes can often further be optimised or its data rearrange to be more optimal. So the order of vertices in the file will no longer correlate to that in the mesh, certainly this happens regardless if vertices get duplicate.

As for writing an OBJ importer its really quite easy, its one of the most straight forward 3d formats out there and really wouldn't take long. Though i'm not sure about what you are trying to do here. My suggestion for an obj importer was to access the data in a format you wanted, you seem to be suggesting it should replace the default Unity importer. That is possible, but only if you resign yourself to having meshes with no normals, no uv, no colours, nothing that could cause the requirement to split and duplicate vertices.

I'm sorry to say but this is just one of those areas where you need to create a workaround.

Interesting, it might well be, what is the format of your OBJ file? I did a second test from blender, exporting its default cube as OBJ file and checking the data it actually exported faces as quads not triangles. SO i'm wondering if in your case the OBJ has exported as triangles and that might be responsible for the differences we are seeing?

If you want to continue this aspect of the discussion I suggest taking into PM since its not really on-topic any more.

 

I agree. Assuming it's commercially viable, I'd upgrade in an instant. (wouldn't even have to drop the price for upgrades).

 

@Obsurveyor
Thanks for the screenshot. I apologize for assuming you misinterpreted the statistics screen, since the numbers 12 and 14 are odd for a cube and they seemed to match my statistics screen.
Can you upload your cube for us to check?
uvs of copurse will create extra verts and tris, because the data cant beshared between multiple vertices

My cube is here
View attachment 100261

edit:
of course, if you use UVs, Unity has to duplicate vertices with different data. That's how the graphics hardware works. Your cube would look unfolded something like this to unity with uvs.
View attachment 100268

 

Nice thread, looking forward to see more of that kind.

Background :
Junior dev, I've been working with unity for 2+years. The studio I work for has been using Unity exclusively since the 1.x cycle, for games, serious games or just interactve applications.

Pricing :
The mobile add-ons price tag is quite heavy, and makes upgrade painfull. Pricing isn't such a concern for the pro version only.
Subscription model is fine as long as it's not mandatory. Current pricing for subs is just not interesting.

Communication :
Seems communication slipped yeah. According to my bosses, they miss the contact they could have in the early days, and feel neglected, with your attention only being for bigger fishes (we're a 6-10 man studio).

For my part, I stumble on some dev posts here and there on the forums, but it's almost all the time on some weird bug or undocumented part of the API. So exactly where I'd like to see dev posts, but not where your usual forum member would go and see, so maybe that's part of the problem as well.
for a forum that huge, to show the community you're present, I think it could be good to take some inspiration from the blizzard forums : official member posts clearly stand out (different border background), and you can see at a glance where some official people posted, and jump from offical post to official post within the thread.

that said, having a trello board with updates on what each of your global teams are on would be great. Some sort of roadmap, anyway.

Source :

Having the option to get source access would be great, even if of seldom use. We had some proposals for making stuff for weird installations, or wanted to test on like interactive TV. Having to wait on unity for this is making some consider to get another engine instead.

On the same topic, as said earlier, when you have a deadline, if there's a bug you just have to fix it, and if it's on Unity's side, having the possibility to dig in, and do a hugly fix, would be reassuring. Maybe having a paid emergency support would help in that way, too.

Improvements :
- +1 voice more to fix "low hanging fruits"
- same for documentation, especially for the editor part.
- Concerning tools and the Editor, I'd like the editor API to be much more open. The possibility for tools are huge, and it's one of the core points of unity.
- Unity should have at it's core all what is needed to make a decent game, and not rely on the asset store for critical stuff (GUI, shader editor, visual scripting..). the asset store should be here to provide specific tools (tile based editors, support for arduino..) or refreshing takes on what's already there, for users who likes another kind of layouts/workflow (like the "hyperview" extension)

 

Perhaps "principle" was the wrong word to use. I'm coming at this from a geometric point of view and you're describing rendering data structures and optimization. In this example, I'm expecting a cube with 8 vertices, 12 faces(because Unity doesn't do quads), 12 edges and 6 face normals i.e. the data I created(I actually need something more complicated but this is a simple replacement). Unity doesn't provide edge information or, apparently, face normals so I'm happy doing that myself. However, because it seems the only thing available to me is optimized mesh data, even with all import settings having to do with that turned off, it doesn't seem possible at this time.

To keep it short: I need access to the data I create, not just the for-rendering-optimized version. Real geometric data is just as important to game development as the optimized versions for any number of different uses.

I've already described what I'm trying to do here. I need to calculate the area of a rendered mesh on the screen and if it is filling the whole view. Reading back a texture and processing it per frame isn't an option. I can determine the profile vertices of the mesh in view with the real geometric data. I can't determine this profile with the data Unity provides without a lot of effort that I shouldn't have to re-do.

 

Exactly, in my opinion there should be a single offer with a pricing that averages somewhere between free and pro. It would give the most honest value for money and equalize the user base. No more feature parity discussions, no more asset store fragmentation. Triple A for everybody offered at a price that is sustainable for UT and its userbase.

 

This will not work. It was the free version that made Unity big. Cut it away and Unity will suffer.

That's of course out of question. But how can you achieve this when your company is not longer able to compete? And there is a very strong competitor around now. With much better conditions. That's what this discussion is about, isn' t it? To find out what are better conditions for users so that Unity can compete in a better way.

Nobody wants to play or to publish a watermarked demo version really. This would be worse than what we have now. Why not keep the free version as it is now? Splashscreen plus fewer features. What is missing is something to fill the gap between the free and the pro version. A non commercial version for hobbyists would be one solution.

 

I think that is what people aren't understanding. Unity makes a game engine. That is all. And comparing them to Epic is wrong (in terms of how they run a business). Remember Epic made AAA games and the engine is licensed out to other companies making AAA and they have been doing it longer then Unity.
Yes people want to get the best bang for the buck but cut that too low just cause Epic is doing it may not be viable for Unity.
But as usual people want things for free simply because of the mentality of "why not" instead of understanding things.

 

Your $1500 / $75 royalty free cost for me is a major draw to Unity for larger games, but even I'll admit I don't get the pricing logic in areas. Who will have more money to spend? A 3D studio that has to employ staff and buy lots of tools, or a small mobile faction / freelancer / single developer?

Unity pro and mobile addons costs far more than what would be needed per seat in an enterprise environment. Do you not think it's slightly odd charging the most amount of money from a market that generally has the lowest budgets?

Unity has to earn money and lots of it, all I'll say is just have a think about it and make sure it makes sense. Your current pricing model works for us, if the engine remains competitive.

 

There is so much activity in this thread because people want to use Unity, but the new UE4 price is very tempting. UE4 users don't pay Unity staff.

Many users who want to buy Pro for the first time will not be earning significant money from Unity yet, so fall into the camp feeling it is too expensive. They want Pro, they want to pay something, and are giving feedback on what they think is needed to turn themselves into paying users. $1500 for all platforms seems a common suggestion (including by me), which is still not super cheap.

Only Unity has the full figures available, but any change will still be a step into the unknown. It is Unity's decision on any potential price change. This thread is asking for feedback. We are giving it. You will not like all of it. Not everyone will be right, but I doubt everyone is wrong either.

 

Honestly I'm fine with the present pricing method (including addons as long as you stick to a few number of paid addons and it doesn't become Unity "In App Purchase Edition") and I don't know about Epic staffing but seems fair considering the number of talented people working on Unity.

I don't think you also specifically need to compete on price with UE: different companies, most probably different revenue streams, ... Where you need to stay ahead is the core of Unity: it's the best multiplatform engine. Keep streamlining the multiplatform dev process, services (Unity Cloud, Everplay, ...) and keep implementing multi-platform engine features and middleware. Sure UE post-process looks awesome out of the box, but if you look at their documentation it looks like you have to disable pretty much everything to make it run on high-end mobile device (I haven't tested so I'm just relying on the docs here).

To me it's not about lowering the price. It's about stepping up your game in pretty much every area (faster releases for bugfixes, communication, editor features, ... it's been discussed all over here). Sure adjustements on pricing/subscription can be made to gather a wider audience and allow more flexibility for businesses but in my opinion price is not the answer.

 

My 2cents.

Ref. explanation; http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/24...Better/page9?p=1627217&viewfull=1#post1627217
- Access to the Beta / Alpha testing groups to all paying Pro users by default. ( touches the road map point, as an alternative solution )
- Affordable Web deployment; WebGL publishing as a Pro feature, with no separated license fee.
- Re-evaluate the cost vs benefits of the Team License (a more broad approach to the "Replace Asset Server" point)

Thank you.

 

The exact same applies to us users and our families, so I am sure you'll be understanding when we choose the best offering for our wallets. I sincerely hope you will be able to find the sweet spot where we get a deal as good as the UE4 one and you get enough funds out of us to feed your children and put a roof over their heads at the same time. If for instance, your response will be $1500 all platforms included, it is till miles away more expensive for me and I will have to move away from Unity (I don't want to move away but I will). I am sure many others will too, so you will get less money per paying customer and will still be losing users. Hopefuly you'll offer something of better value, drop free (or make it for personal use only, add watermark, whatever, I don't really care if there's an affordable Pro) and the amount of free users converting to Pro will somehow compensate for the significantly lower price.

 

We all agree with you. But don't forget this is available for us also.

Of course we want to support Unity, else we would not post here. We did it in the past few years, more or less, we did pay for Unity products.

The situation is very simple right now, 4500 / 19 per month / 12 months = 20 years of non-forced permanent subscription. So, with money for Unity Pro/iOS/Android we can pay 20 years of active subscription on UE4. Just numbers. The difference is way to big. Any possible customer, at the end of the day, will judge with the wallet.

 

This has actually been one of the more common criticisms of our docs: there is a lot of information there but it isn't always easy to find it or remember where it was when you need it again. The reason for this has largely been a lack of organisational structure and consistency. For example, some critical pieces of information didn't have a page of their own - they were simply referred to in pages primarily about other subjects.

We've already started to address this with 4.5, as we introduce some significant changes to the structure of the docs. As well as getting the table of contents more organised, we have also tried to give important information an identifiable "home" where it is more easily located. Also, we fully agree about the cluttered appearance of the separate sections of the manual. For 4.5, we have already combined the reference pages into the manual so there is now no separate reference manual. Going forward, we intend to incorporate the script reference material into the manual to remove the distinction between the two. So for example, instead of having separate component reference pages and API pages for the same class, we will eventually put both sets of information in the same place. We believe this will further help to avoid information being scattered around.

 

I think Unity has the best documentation and tutorials I've ever seen for a game engine, that was also another draw to the product. Credit where credit is due..

 

+1

 

@Bibinator :
there some tools in unity that actually kinda forgotten or really outdated just almost like terrain system.
The Lens Flare Tools....it's completely forgotten i guess
Decal system would be cool , Deffered decal or SSDecal