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Official: How Can We Serve You Better?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by bibbinator, May 14, 2014.

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  1. Teo

    Teo

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    Disagree by my math. I am super sure the plans for Unite in August is to show and make available Unity5.
     
  2. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    This sounds very right to me. :)
    Requoting for visibility ;)
     
  3. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    i would pay 3000$ for only Unity Pro -Desktop- , if they had:

    * Opened there roadmap.
    * Visual logic editor.
    * An actual terrain system (I dont want to call the current one a TERRAIN SYSTEM.)
    * Material Editor. like (ShaderForge, but Material-Based)
    * Native Cutscene Recorder.
    * Improved Visuals. like( ImageEffects, WaterSystem, ^Lightning Enlighten may do this one.)
    * Kept-Updated PhysX and Mono.
    ^ 64 Bit Editor (its coming in 5.0).

    and I'd be pretty sure that triple-A studios would actually use Unity instead of just indies. and i would never actually argue about the price, I think every one here is talking about price and subscriptions, I'm pretty sure if the Engine was visually better, nobody (Studios) would argue about the price.
     
  4. dbryson

    dbryson

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    One thing I think many are forgetting or not understanding with regards to updates is that Epic and UT are in very different situations. UE4 is in beta and U4 (Unity 4.x) is in stable production mode. Epic can make daily (or even multiple daily) updates that may break various things, but UT cannot do this. UT has to thoroughly test each update to make sure it doesn't break things while Epic can make whatever updates it wants without regard for what it breaks (up to a point, of course). Certainly the Epic developers are doing their best not be break things, but since it is still beta bugs and changes are expected and accepted. For UT and Unity, bugs are not expected and are not acceptable. We cannot expect UT to develop and support the Unity engine in the same way as the UE4 developers, the UE4 developers don't have the same constraints.
     
  5. Teo

    Teo

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    You just described a part of what UE4 do right now, except Mono part (wich i doubt is needed for UE4, but thats another discussion).

    Sadly, almost all feature you want in Unity, are already in assets store for more money. Maybe that's why Unity do no think to develop those, because, everybody will get them free, but if they are in assets store, anyone who needs them and pay, and Unity will still get 30% share from vendors. So 30% is better that nothing.

    I start to think Unity free + asset store was one of the biggest mistake made by Unity.
     
  6. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    I would even be fine if a unity Pro Core License is required for the Pro features of all the other Plattforms to be enabled.
    Just keep in mind how many people never get to the point where they are actually going to release their games. The problem would be: How do you track which project is enabled for Pro export? What does this mean for the team-size Would the sum increase for the number of licenses in the team? What if you need to change the Project over to a new folder or use a backup because something terribly unexpected happened? Would you need to choose between Pro and Free on Startup or would Free be gone forever? Also - what about the actual editor enhancements that are part of the development process? Pro export does not mean only that there's eye candy it also means set up of various other things. Culling, Baking, Aniations ... do these get enabled to use from the start and cannot be changed afterwards (if I decided that I don't want Pro down the line...)? How do I see from within the editor which features will get me a watermark and which features will run on basic?

    don't get me wrong here - I really like the core of the idea and I could see it be profitable for unity as well because quite a few people who just develop for mobile "along the way" realize that it would be cool to have this specific game in Pro in the stores.

    Then again all these special cases are really starting to bloat up the licensing model and bloat is never a good thing. Personally I would also not want to be reminded in Unity all the time that I might want to pay for extra features. And as simple as it looks at a glance - it might really be much more complicated in reality. And I am not sure that everybody who likes the idea now still does when all the complications kick in.

    Again - I am not against this idea at all. I actually really like it if it's an option for Unity. Yet I think there might be a little more to it that needs to be discussed and thought of beforehand.
     
  7. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    I've been asking for these stuff since Unity's 4.x cycle, and they didn't listen, and now UE4 has done it. and they are UNREAL.
    as fot the store, the Asset Store products don't count on engine's core, do they?
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  8. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    If you're right about Unity 5 and August launch, you deserve a cookie :D
     
  9. resequenced

    resequenced

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    Yep, agreed. It's all speculation, but hey, speculation is fun. :)

    They'll probably announce Unity 5 (and 4.6) as "available from today" during the August keynote. That would make it the same as Unity 4 - it would be 5 months from announcement to availability.
     
  10. peterdeghaim

    peterdeghaim

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    I'd really really really really really really REEEAAAALLLYYY like an option to keep the "free" version of Unity but pay a small fee to get that splash screen out of the way.

    As a person who makes 2D games with squares and circles (I can't art for s**t), I don't need the pro features and nor can I afford it.

    Such system would be REALLY welcome and would really complete the Unity experience for me <3
     
  11. Trigve

    Trigve

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    Regrding price, maybe they could charge for base editor 1000$ (that is no export - maybe only devel build which couldn't run as release standalone (only to be able to profile)?) and for each "export" 500$ or more. That is for desktop you would pay 1500+$, for mobile 1500+$, etc. Then you pay for what you use.
    If someone has already proposed the scheme than sorry for polluting the space.
     
  12. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    I'm really surprised that the Unity Team are not describing what we're going to get in UT5, the only thing we know is the titles of the Improvements, like The new Asset Bundles feature, I found out the every asset has an AssetBundle label/tag/name attached to them but we don't have nothing more on it, will it support in-game patches? are updates pre-integrated? we don't know, so can unity team please tell us something about the new stuff in UT5.
     
  13. Teo

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    Woow guys... don't you think what Unity DO NOT need right now is to complicate even more the licensing option?

    In other order of ideas, lets take the next scenario:

    Studio A - pay 1500 for pro and produce nothing.

    Studio B - pay 1500 for pro and produce 2000.

    Studio C - pay 1500 for pro and produce 500k+

    So, you think is fair for Studio A-B to pay 1500, but you don't think is not fair for Studio C to pay only 1500 and gets a lot of money.

    And Unity should take all the money from A-B who barely survive but touch the big dude C only with 1500? How fair is that?


    Instead of thinking of super complicated licensing models, just think how to beat UE4 licensing model = 5% if you make more that 3k per quarter.

    Beat this or make a contra-offer and you are in business. How long you think peoples will don't start switching? Sure, must be a big internal problem for Unity to re-configure the company spending and employment etc.., but this will be require in order to survive as company, sooner or later. That's a problem, but even that can be solved, the big problem as far I can see right now is that will be very hard to get back peoples who left for UE4 to come back to Unity. So basically, make a move as fast as possible in the right direction, else will cost you more later.
     
  14. Devil_Inside

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    I said this in another thread and I'll say it here.
    Epic's main license is the $19+5%. To get rid of the royalties you have to pay them a S***load of money.
    If you want Unity to match their subscription, they'll have to increase their perpetual license cost A LOT. Otherwise everyone will use the subscription, and as soon as they reach $1500 in profits, they'll just purchase the perpetual license.
     
  15. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    I can totally understand that this model might suit you and probably many others in a similar or in exactly your current situation and I agree that too many pricing models are a bad thing. They really are. For everybody - Unity and customers alike. Yet it seems that many people here still argue for a pricing model that suites them in their own situation and in the price range they desire is the best there is.

    Personally I think that a 5% royalty model is super complicated to maintain and I don't want it. It's easy on paper but it can get really annoying in practice.
    Maybe the best and easiest solution would really to just lower the monthly fee for everybody who wants to use software rentals. Or add 2 more steps: 50$ for 24 month lock in and 35$ for 36 month lock in.

    Believe it or not - those "pay percentage (X) above income (Y)" systems are really one of the things that actually rather keep me away from UE4 than attract me to it. Especially since Epic apparently want to see my complete numbers and transactions above a certain threshhold.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  16. Teo

    Teo

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    So that's % model don't suit you, because you want to hide your income and you want to pay less but have huge income in the same time. I get it. You think is fair? I don't. Is like tax avoid.

    PS. I don't try to force/beg Unity with anything (and i am really not in the position to can do that) , I will stay with them as long as it's profitable for me.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  17. griden

    griden

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    I'd sign under this :) .
    The splash screen is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Unity Free cons.

    I don't even need the Profiler that much - I think I already have a pretty good idea (learned the hard way) what hinders Unity's performance.

    So yes, the option to purchase certain Pro features would be most welcome.
     
  18. Essential

    Essential

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    After thinking over my inital suggestion, you're right, the_motionblur, there are some issues with it in regards to team size, with what happens to functionality in certain situations, and then the added confusion of too many license options.

    Here's a good example: What would happen with the Profiler, arguably one of the best features of Pro, if a user used the watermarked Pro version to debug their game, then reverted to Free to publish? Could such abuse be prevented? Perhaps once you've enabled the watermark, you can no longer revert back to free? It doesn't feel right and it raises a lot of issues.

    Teo mentions another point that I've considered: Why does a small studio pay the same as a large studio? Is this fair? If I were using Unity as part of a larger studio, I would want to pay Unity more than a couple thousand. Again it seems to indicate royalties are a good idea... yet I still dislike the idea of royalties and having a long term accounting agreement with a game engine. One of the reasons I like Unity is its avoidance of such a system to date.

    In terms of both Unity's interests and also its users, I'd be happy with a tiered subscription model that's based on your company revenue and number of Unity seats you need:
    • Individual with annual revenue under $50,000 — $49 per month
    • Team size of 1-5 with annual revenue under $100,000 — $99 per month
    • Team size of 1-10 with annual revenue under $500,000 — $199 per month
    • Team size of 1-Unlimited with annual revenue of $500,000 and above — $499 per month
    I'm assuming these prices would include all add-ons. Perpetual license option would no longer exist but Free would stay around. Such a model would give a single person access to a very reasonable Pro price of $600 per year, with larger studios (or very successful indies) paying a very reasonable price for them as well, and yet Unity could stand to make a lot more money (and therefore more support and better features.) Owning a subscription instead of a perpetual license means that you can adjust your subscription rate as your team and revenue changes in size. Should there be a minimum length subscription 'lock-in'? While some people may switch off their subscriptions after publishing in order to try and save a few bucks, I think they would find it impossible to provide post-release support and the hassle of switching back and forth ultimately wouldn't be worthwhile. In fact, I think for the same reasons, Unity should ditch the 12-month requirement on current subscriptions. I think it makes little sense why anyone would try and game the system.
     
  19. HavocX

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    UE4 is not in beta. Epic don't do daily updates breaking stuff. They do monthly stable dot releases and then dot-dot releases if there are critical bugs. Exactly like with Unity, just much faster.

    There are several specific features that are still in beta, but that is just the way they do their development.
     
  20. Deleted User

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    UE4 is still in Beta, they said clear as day on the release statement if you want production ready check back in six months. For me as far as production engines go, it has a couple of quirks but apart from that it's nearly as ready as it's ever going to be.

    I'm not sure why Unity don't give the option to download Beta or RC's, I get the whole bug finding thing to a select few then again I don't actually think it helps much.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2014
  21. seitor

    seitor

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    This. I am willing to pay $100 to remove Unity free splash screen.
     
  22. HavocX

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    Nothing about beta in this release statement (maybe there is another one):
    https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4

    No mention of beta anywhere else on the website either that I can find. UE4 had a long beta phase before the 4.0 release. I'm 100% sure we will never get an update from Epic that "UE4 is now out of beta", as that has already happened.

    Of course it will be more stable in a couple of months, as I'm sure Unity 5 will be six months after its release.

    The important part is that UT don't have any additional constraints in developing Unity compared to Epic working on UE4.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  23. Deleted User

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    I'm sure I saw it somewhere, well it doesn't matter anyway. It works fine..
     
  24. Corbal

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    Out of curiosity, why do so many users complain about the splash screen ?
    As a gamer I hate unskippable splash screen when I launch a game, so I'd understand if that was the reason. Or do you realy hate this logo (it's not that ugly, is it?)

    But heh, the "Powered by Unity" splash screen is like and advertisement, at least that's how I see it. And Unity Free is ... free.
    Since Unity allow us free users to develop and sell our stuff (and earn money), a splash screen with their logo at the begining of these games seems like a pretty honest deal.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  25. arkon

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    Me too, the splash screen is the only feature of pro I use. Cost me $3000 plus $1500 every update to be rid of it, and for me that is just a huge con.

    Why I hate the splash screen? Find me one proper games company with a decent income making game on the App Store with the unity splash screen. The splash screen screams, I'm not a serious developer and I'm using the free version of unity. For me it's the difference between a hobby and a business.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  26. Devil_Inside

    Devil_Inside

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    Do you think your userbase knows what Unity is and what that splash screen means?
     
  27. QA-for-life

    QA-for-life

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    Fair point. Could be achieved easily. However, as you point out, shipstopper bugs occur and we fix those rather than shipping, so delays will occur and people will be disappointed at not getting their update in the time they had wanted. I hope the community will help explain that to the few rather than going into a frenzy.
     
  28. Uttpd

    Uttpd

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  29. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    Of corse the percentage model is an absolute valid model. And on a case to case basis I am not against it. Yet just because UE has this model now does not mean it's actually easy or the best model there is or that Unity should adopt it.

    And ... "tax avoid"? Really?
    These are two entirely different things. Epic will certainly never be in any position to deduct any taxes on my income. ;) :p


    Never said you did - no need to get defensive.
     
  30. seitor

    seitor

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    Reasons:
    1) Clients want to get rid of splash screen, $1500 + $1500 a pop to remove it is too expensive/risky.
    2) Many subpar games released with Unity free, potential branding problem.
     
  31. Xaron

    Xaron

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    +1 from my side and one of my biggest wishes!
     
  32. arkon

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    Yes, I've even had mail on the subject. The irony is I actually wouldn't mind the unreal logo on my games! The unreal one says made with a games engine, the unity one says made by a hobbyist in his bedroom!
     
  33. VicToMeyeZR

    VicToMeyeZR

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    On the flip side of that, it tends to hold companies to a higher standard, so they can't just keep saying its close to release for years.., or create a completely new domain and website, just to say "no", like its some kind of joke.
     
  34. Corbal

    Corbal

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    I don't think that those giant bold red fonts are a good thing for the sake of this thread...
    Could get annoying if everyone did that for their own request / feedback :)

    Thanks for the explanation and I guess I can understand your point.
    I think it's unfair for UT because they helped to democratize indie game developpement and that's a counter part I think they don't realy deserve. Never saw the Unity logo that way tho, maybe that's because I don't realy play mobile games.

    I wonder how could this situation ever change if what you say is true, and if every 'pro' developper (as opposed to hobbyist) remove that logo for that particular reason,
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  35. Grafos

    Grafos

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    I couldn't agree more. There is an extensive discussion on this subject in this thread:
    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/245772-Add-more-welcome-screens-to-Unity-Free
     
  36. LightStriker

    LightStriker

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    I come from a big company (Ubisoft) and I worked with dozen of engine and editor, some huge (Anvil-Scimitar is used for Assassin's Creed).

    And now I'm in a small studio, and I used Unity for almost a year.

    Frankly, Unity feels cheap. I'm used to a complete toolset for making and editing data that Unity doesn't have. When trying to implement something similar, I hit myself to numerous limitation or shortcoming of Unity.

    Unity serialization is poor, at best. 3D handling is quite below average.
    It also lacks lot of very basic feature such as sub-component for behaviour composition.

    I don't think Unity should be open source, however lot of stuff in the managed DLL should not be flagged internal! Lot of Unity's class should not exposed wrapping properties, but should have their own field on the managed side.

    I have that weird feeling that nobody at Unity ever worked with a professional pipeline before working on Unity. That's rather sad. Over a year, my list of thing I would add - basic things - or modify in Unity became so damn long...
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
  37. Teila

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    So would we! In fact, we would buy multiple licenses, giving access to some of our team members to Unity. Unity would get our money when they now only get a portion of what we spend in the Asset Store, which will probably dwindle as more and more assets appear to be geared toward mobile.

    I actually feel a little insulted by this mindset. Yes, including all platforms in the Pro price makes sense to those people who already have pro, but it does nothing for those of us who have difficulty moving up to Unity Pro. UE4 is most attractive to those of us with limited financial investment in Unity, but we are also the ones who are willing to pay more rather than less than we do now. We are the untapped market.


    Exactly! Several of the kids we work with are interested in making games for phones. They can do this with free, no problem. But the $500 price tag is not insurmountable if one of their games is worth upgrading. Right now, there is no way, even if we saved the money for the Pro licenses at the current price that we would ever consider adding on. It just isn't a good investment for us at that price.

    I also think the poster above who mentioned "raising money for Pro" made a very good point. Kickstarter and Steam are ways for young developers and those of us who are trying to get a leg into the profession to get noticed, maybe get a little development money. While they both have pitfalls as well, they can help us earn a little money to buy a pro license. However, the "shiny stuff" is what gets the attention of people who donate or vote up your project. With a lower cost Pro or a free Pro with a watermark, we could raise the money more easily by making our games look better. This also makes Unity look better!

    Again, an untapped market that is being ignored. Most businesses love those untapped markets. Obviously UE4 does.

    Yes, you absolutely can ignore us. As much as I like Unity (most of the time anyway), I will be watching updates to UE4 and updating our little team. We will start limiting our purchases to ones we can actually port to another engine. Ba
     
  38. Teila

    Teila

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    This is supposed to end with "Back to limbo!" However, I can't seem to edit my posts. I just get a blank box, nothing to edit.

    I wish Unity would fix their forums and make the "search thread" feature useful. :) Not part of this subject, but something that should be fixed. Broken search functions are just unprofessional for a company that has 400 employees.
     
  39. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    If you can't edit (same goes for everybody else) your posts try disabling the WYSISYG editor in the upper left corner of the edit box. That did the trick for me :)
     
  40. NomadKing

    NomadKing

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    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/244953-The-new-Forums-are-real
     
  41. Teila

    Teila

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  42. the_motionblur

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    I somehow get the same feeling - that the Unity dev team lacks the really large projects they worked on themselves. I was actually discussing just that with a colleague at work a few weeks ago when Unity5 was announced. Sure - there might be input into the editor and personally I don't think it's "cheap". Then again I'm more along the lines of what I think Unity's user base is like - smaller to mid-size studios.

    This is something that Epic probably has really going for UE4. The Unreal Tournament games have become more of an elaborate Multiplayer Tech Demo, if you ask me but they are complete, finished and pretty large scale games, nontheless.

    If you have a large list of these "smaller" features and you come from a larger background - by all means: Please post that list!!!!

    This whole "make regular large productions" is what also keeps Blender going so strong over all these years! They create a large production every few years and mostly everything that needs to be developed for these productions directly goes back into blender. And look how feature complete it is in the meantime!
     
  43. UndeadButterKnife

    UndeadButterKnife

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    I agree. Short films were good boosts for Blender workflow. They are now working on project gooseberry for the next 2 years, which is actually a full movie this time around. There is going to be lots of little and big workflow changes to Blender during production of the open movie.
     
  44. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    Actually, that is not a problem at all. Unity would not need to change the price for perpetual licenses in order to make money with $19/month+5% subscriptions. Unity would get paid $19/month for each subscription, and that is a lot more money than Unity Free generates. And then people will pay to switch to the perpetual license once they are ready to make money, which is what already happens. If Unity creates a subscription to match Epic's UE4 pricing and terms, then Unity will make more money than the currently do.
     
  45. griden

    griden

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    That's why we honestly want to pay for the luxury to have our own splash screen :) .
    For branding and user experience purposes. And not that much because I don't like Unity's logo.
     
  46. ivanbozovic

    ivanbozovic

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  47. superpig

    superpig

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    Certainly, but that already happens; and because people don't see what the reasons are for delaying shipping, they assume that there is no good reason, or they assume silly things (like conspiracy-theory stuff). You just get posts going "It's been months and months, where is 4.5? Lazy developers!" If you're better explaining what the reasons are, it puts a stop to all of that nonsense.

    I guess the flipside is: you may get some people saying "why are they holding up this release just because of a perf issue on Blackberry? Release it already and then fix that in a point release!" And I think you can see where they're coming from - if I'm not using a platform that has a critical bug in, why can't I be given a build right now so I can get on with my work - it sucks for the people who do use that platform, but, well, sometimes you stop the bug and sometimes the bug stops you. This said, I think you're already getting into a position where you won't need to hold up a build in this kind of way - between the sustained engineering team and the Module Manager it's going to become simpler to do point-releases on things...

    But of course. I've got my Baseball Bat of +4 Explanation right here.
     
  48. PhobicGunner

    PhobicGunner

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    *Wham!*
    It was just swamp gas...
    *Wham!*
    You didn't see anything...
    *Wham!*
    Go back to bed...
     
  49. jonas-echterhoff

    jonas-echterhoff

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    It would be very interesting to see that list. Some of the given criticism ("serialization is poor. 3D handling quite below average") is rather difficult for us to respond or act on, without any details, otherwise.

    Likewise, for stuff being flagged internal in our managed code, what would you like to see public? Quite often these decisions are a trade-off - making some APIs public might help people, but at the same time it would often restrict our ability to refactor the underlying code, because then it has to stay compliant with the public API, thus slowing our development. But, some of those decisions might be wrong, and for some APIs, it might be a good idea to make them public - so, please share that feedback.
     
  50. EmoSaru

    EmoSaru

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    I also come from AAA, where I've been for 15 years. I'm still there actually, but I'm getting closer to going indie all the time. I've spent quite a lot of time in Unity building things over the last few years, and I think Unity has a pretty interesting set of strengths/weaknesses, which I'm happy to detail.

    Strengths

    • Editor customization is amazingly easy - Being able to build custom tool windows and inspectors rapidly is, frankly, a HUGE advantage over the common workflows in other development environments.
    • Most features in the engine "just work" - The default components for things generally allow you to get up and running very quickly, and things like physics can be tweaked incrementally from the defaults without much pain

    Weaknesses

    • Low-level APIs are generally missing entirely or insufficient
    • Unity focuses almost entirely on the high level APIs and experiences, to the detriment of their user base
    • I desperately want a low-level animation API, that allows me to produce a tree of pose operations per object each frame
    • Mecanim is a fine tool, that covers a number of common cases in character animation, but it is woefully incomplete in some areas and for particular styles of games
    • Shipping features in an unusable state is a terrible idea. Mecanim is a good example here - it was unusable at ship. and I'd argue that it is still quite incomplete today.
    • Exposing low-level APIs allows people like me to build assets that replace Mecanim to cover the other cases. Right now, it's impossible for me to do so.
    • Native code plugins need to be able to interact with the rest of Unity through a real API, rather just being a place to drop D3D/OpenGL or c-style platform calls. I want to modify objects, etc.
    • Multi-threading support needs to be far better. I'm hoping that the new task-based job system is applicable to user code in the runtime as well as the editor, but I've seen no information on it.
    • Unity makes far fewer decisions about your game than most engines (e.g. Unreal) actually, but the ones it does make are arbitrary, stupid, and painful
    • Little decisions count for a lot - navmesh apparently requires XZ, but you implemented 2D as XY-only. You need to fix one of these ASAP, and it makes it look like your tech teams don't talk to each other - amateur hour.
    • The systems that work best in Unity are the ones where the level of abstraction is best. Physics is the best example - nothing contentious is out of the user's hands.
    • The ancient Mono implementation and UT's stubbornness on it make it seem like they don't really care that much about making their platform scale. You either need to fix it, give us the ability to write native code instead, or ideally both.
    • Unity does a very poor job of laying out roadmaps for the future of their tech, making the job of anybody trying to plan against it pretty miserable. Transparency is key.
    • Incredibly poor performance against roadmaps/commitments - When Unity DOES layout roadmaps or set expectations, the performance against them has been very poor. The UI is the obvious example.
    • Unity's data formats and common workflows have an effective maximum team size that's pretty small where they start to break down
    • Next to zero support for branching/sandboxing workflows, see above
    • I don't even want to talk about rendering until i get Unity 5 in my hands. It's too big of an upgrade.

    I'm sure I could keep going, but these are my biggest gripes with the engine right now.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2014
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