Open letter to Unity...

??? Do you browse their forums often? You'll find an Epic employee in nearly every thread.

 

Thats not true. Not only are people/companies sharing bug fixes but in Tim Sweenys interview at Gamasutra he talks about Microsofts studio contributing a big piece to the UE4 GI system:

"Microsoft's Lionhead studio "has been a big contributor" to Unreal Engine 4, says Sweeney. "They built the new system for realtime global illumination with light propagation values, and contributed that to Epic -- and we merged it. And now you're seeing it in this version of the engine that we released.""

 

Oh, I shared bug fixes with a company that the company I was working for was paying several million a year for a site licenses and tech support for an entire suite of CAD SW (not Autodesk BTW); not that their tech support was much better than trying to get tech support from Facebook.

 

The above is spin, and Lionhead have huge punch (despite not having made an outstanding game yet imo) thanks to Pete, that lovely man

My opinion doesnt matter and is of no consequence but lack of communication is the big problem I think. Just to be personable, not have an answer all the time. Ive read a bunch of the forum over time and back in yesteryear Aras used to post a lot and it was good reading his posts cause he knew his S***. Thats why it's good for Unity employees to pipe in, to show Unity is in competent hands, and that they're actually acknowledging the community and the ongoing asset store efforts and discussion - Shader Forge is a nice example, great product and Aras even mentions it in some talk he gave some weeks back

I honesty just use Unity cause it's just.. pleasant. When it's not repeatedly crashing because of the unfathomable fact that it's still only a 32bit editor it feels like i'm being hugged by a piece of software, everythings very nice to someone like me, who typically works on his own on stuff that will never make money and has only the vaguest handle on programming - pals have said they get annoyed by the component system and the inspector and wotnot when they just want to type away, but for me, i like smooshing assets together and love dragging and dropping everything everywhere. I code like glacial drift anyways. I'm pretty fast at dragging stuff about

So with a system so personable, it would be nice to have some personable representatives, especially out of it's indie nature. Obviously it seems they're aiming for primetime, i only started with it in 3.4 i think, previously thinking (like a lot of people sadly) that its an engine kids make S***ty games on that jam up kongregate and suchlike. Obviously Unity don't want that image, I don't think it deserves that image and while i can't see the pyrotechnics of battlefield 4 or somesuch being made with it, it's still perfectly capable of great beauty, and despite a mute staff, with forum moderators having to advocate constantly (This absolutely should never happen, even on a site as large as deviantart i can get hold of one of the core staff very easily and not listen to what sometimes feels like brainwashed opposition to any valid concerns given by the community volunteers or staff)

I can understand the Unity staff feeling a little burnt by previous perception of the engine and the steady progression of wankers particularly in this forum just coming to troll or S***-talk and any representation backfiring because said wankers are sociopaths and don't care, but yeah, them just giving some personality to the whole thing is nice (Although big respect to the community guys and a couple of other Unity guys i see around like Unlogick (I think you spell it that way) leaving a very good impression

Shouldn't be down to community/asset store efforts like Shader Forge or Lux etc to show how great Unity can be

 

over the last 3 weeks I have (again, the learning curve is steep) and no, they are not.... They are on threads more than Unity staff is however Unity gets way more volume in their forums than UE4 so it may seem they are on every thread.

 

This is not true. Many of the COD games are all the same engine base. The studio purchases a license for the engine which comes with the contributions of the previous COD game, they squeeze out what optimizations they can, publish their game, and resubmit the source back into the mix. Many of the studios share source base. Having a better Raycasting function doesn't make AAA game A better than AAA game B. They don't share media.

 

Another one of these dumbass threads. You'd think other people couldn't think for themselves. You'd think Unity needed some other idiots 2 cents worth. Like if you're an Indie you somehow have the money to compete with AAA games or that every game needs realistic looking graphics. Minecraft anyone? Anti-chamber anyone? World of Goo anyone? I guess the subscription model isn't working for UE4 then. Did they expect hundreds of thousands as was suggested on some other toxic UE4 thread? Well there are just over 5 K members on the forum. So even if one is generous and say this does not follow the usual stats of 5 X non-members of the forums as there are members, and there are actually 10 x the number. Still not a staggering amount. Probably why they dropped the 5% for indies, probably why were still getting these stupid threads to poach more Unity members with spurious claims. If only I could think for myself? Really, these threads should be removed. BTW usually when one begins with 'I don't mean to be offensive' you actually do mean to be offensive. And no it's not a get out of jail free card, you're still offensive.

 

sicga123, that's pretty vague, why not say how you really feel? just come out with it man!

 

Well that's a rageathon for no apparent reason whatsoever, if you're happy with Unity keep at it. Calling people idiot's and getting all butt hurt over threads ain't going to do you any favors!.

If someone has concerns and wants to express it leave em to it champ.

 

Thread needs more love

 

I wrote publishers, not studios.

Yes, studios under the same publisher share engines. But EA isn't going to give bug fixes to Epic so they can then give the bug fixes to Activision. Smaller publishers are also highly unlikely to share bug fixes that their studios developed. One man indie teams might, but I doubt any serious indie is going to give away their code.

Thanks for the links, masterprompt (he PM'd me).

 

I thought only the hip wrote open letters to politicians to embarrass them into submission or poach votes in the next election cycle. Clearly I'm out of touch with today's world.

In either case Unity or UE4 is enough fumbling on my part to keep my addled mind out of trouble.

 

@willgoldstone: as someone sticking with Unity since before 2.5, I don't care anymore about the announcements they make about a future version of Unity... Why? Because whenever they announced something, it wasn't in a usable state before at least 3-4 minor releases...

People keep saying that v5 will address a lot of our concerns André that we should be patient... What people don't realize: U5 is not released, it will be buggy as any other release they have made and bugfixes will be slow as they have always been. Having a blind confidence that it will be different this time is wrong. V5 will not be usable before end 2015. They have shown it with v3 and with v4. They now have to prove me wrong.

So, to me, the discussion about the price point is very valid for my business. Running a business is a long term commitment to tools. And currently Unity is not up to date, neither with the toolset, nor with the out of the box feature set.

Whatever they are currently relying on is the fact that long term users such as me cannot switch easily. In fact, I have to pay additional 3.000 dollars in the next couple of days because one of my customers requires android and iOS pro features (splash screen removal). There goes my benefit... And I'm pushing back and back because I fear that shortly after I have spent that money, they will announce that those pro packages become part of Unity pro... And I won't get my money back...

 

I really don't want to get involved in this, but I have to back up the statements about Epic's engagement with the community. In the short time I spent evaluating it, I must have exchanged reports, ideas and feedback with a dozen different staff members (including Tim Sweeney), and all but a few more left-field things found their way into 4.1, which was a monster update which suggests they're very actively listening and responding to everyone.

Now there must be some of you who were around in the Early Days of these forums -- masterprompt you say you were here since the 1.x days, so you should recall that UT's engagement was very similar. Lots of dev activity in the forums. Something anyone will discover if they google for solutions a lot, they will find posts by UT devs (and a lot of people, such as Rune, who later became devs themselves) dating back to earlier pre-3.5 days.

The two obvious reasons that come to mind for lack of transparency and engagement from UT in recent times, are 1. the incident with the GUI screwup - Helgason himself popped up and said the only solution to avoid outrage was to drop the transparency policy; 2. too many users / questions / demands. This latter alone might well become Epic's Achilles heel eventually: the price of success is that you easily become stretched thin. Great talent, unlike factory workers, isn't always readily available. I certainly don't think dropping the UDK happened as an afterthought; the opportunity to streamline/defrag their resource management was likely a major (and very sensible) motivator.

Very much agree about Asset Server though. Considering Unity is billed as a collaborative tool, the truth is it doesn't make life easy in a collaborative environment, especially when some team members aren't 'Unity gurus'. *Lock, please.

 

PM sent.

 

GG - do you mean Garage Games? Hippo is not a unity official, afaik, but I doubt he'd be so cruel as to suggest that.

 

Clearly you don't understand what an open letter is for.

 

My point exactly; it's just par for the course. Once they round hole 9, I doubt they will be so Johnny-on-the-spot with communications. As for the 1.x days, I don't sit on the forums and waste time... As you can see, my new account only has like 40-some posts, with many of them being in defense of the trolls on this thread alone...

But of course no one say's it's name around here... It's always he-who-shall-not-be-named around here. But they charge for it and call it "Team License" Why do I buy a pro product when I have to buy all the other pro stuff separately?

 

Yep, definitely can't fault their engagement - I've only asked one tech question on their forums but it was answered by a UE developer 10 minutes later.

 

Hippo,

Did you know I have 2 licenses of Unity, just for me? I have one at work (Alion), and one at home (Gigi). In addition, I manage additional licenses for my team. Being well past the $10K mark, I assumed I would be afforded some small kindness when upgrading to 5.x. Until I contacted Unity and learned that my old sales rep was gone. Four email requests and two messages later, I got a real response. That's when I learned that my years of loyalty, numerous conference presentations promoting unity, and posts guiding younger developers, was worth exactly ZERO discount for my primary licenses. We were too far along to switch, so I upgraded only some of my licenses.

The real slap was the paltry 5% discount she begrudgingly offered for my 2nd personal license. I'm paying twice for the same product (me + me), and all my $10k investment counted for was a $75 discount! Unity's customer service infuriated me! Never mind that Unreal is a fraction of the cost.

So I took your advice and voted with my wallet.

Gigi

 

It has been shown that hording patches is counterproductive. Of course, it "feels" like you'd want to keep every advantage to yourself, but if the only value you produce is patches to the stack, you're in the wrong line of work. And if not, what happens by hording is that your branch will end up conflicting with the trunk or other patches you want to apply and you end up spending effort on branch maintenance that could have gone towards value production. On top of that, your branch becomes effectively dead other than resources you directly put into it, while merging with the trunk means that other people's work will go back towards helping you.

And I think people *severely, severely, severly* underestimate the importance of the source availability of UE4. Go out into the world of software development outside the slums of the gaming industry and you'll see how rapidly open source projects evolve and improve compared to black boxes. Especially best-of-breed projects. Having the source isn't just a benefit for people good enough to change it, it's an ecosystem changing event of *enormous* magnitude.

I've grown fond of C# and prefer a good managed environment with solid APIs, but if Unity's Mono version is going to be stuck where it is forever and I'm going to spend time and effort on not allocating from the heap and on trying to figure out exactly what and doesn't work when using generics, etc (and good luck EVER getting a deep technical question answered on the forums... has it happened even *once* in the last couple years?), then, jeez, I may as well be using C++.

This doesn't even factor in the time I would save by simply being able to *see* the source, let alone modify it.

Unity used to be the engine "for dummies", mac users, and people trying to make commercial games without a lot of money.

Unreal had a higher skill barrier to entry, required windows, and was inflexible without an expensive source license.

This has just changed dramatically.

And while UT has shown that they move incredibly slowly and design buggy, half baked, editor centric APIs that are a major pain in the ass for programmers, UE now comes with source, *a source-available rate of improvement* (I can't stress this enough), and an asset store...

Why would *anyone* who isn't scared of C++ choose Unity for a legitimate reason other than lock-in at this point?

 

What's the deal with Shuriken particle systems not really being modifiable via script? Somehow this thread reminded me of that age-old thorn.
Gigi

 

Perhaps it's worth looking for a new sales rep That is the closest I've ever seen to outrage coming from you, Gigi!

 

It's modifiable... I do quite a bit of shuriken modifying in my projects actually... but the problem is it isn't COMPLETELY modifiable... you run into roadblocks exactly when you don't expect them like a number of other Unity API sections. (hello, windzones anyone??) This aspect is what I find so frustrating with Unity. You start to get the feeling that you can actually do almost anything you want once your Unity skills are up to snuff... until you hit sudden unscalable walls like this. then you're just left on the ground looking up and all frustrated.

With source code, or at least lower level access, a lot of these frustrations could be overcome by those willing to put in the effort.

 

You're not along on that front. I had a pretty good relationship with Marvin and when I tried to contact him about updating to 5 I found out that he was no longer with the company. The new sales reps are completely unresponsive. You would think that they would make it easy for us to hand money to them. I haven't upgraded yet, mostly waiting to hear an official response from Unity. Even an official "no we aren't changing anything" would make me upgrade.

 

Editor API, Editor Design, FBX-Workflow, fast recompiling times... ? I made comparison screenshots with the same models in both engines and, effects like antialiasing or reflections aside, unity looked more like what I was thinking. Putting the models into the level area feels much better in unity. For me. Not for everyone, but you asked for reasons.

 

I would like to say thank you to those of you that made me laugh. And goodbye to others. You can find me on the UE4 forums.

- Jerry Richards

 

Here's my reasons for having a copy of Unreal Engine (yes, I have it):
- I've used it in the past (demo for a shovelware company, animations for a TV pilot, Kinect game)
- I'm considering working freelance and will double my job opportunities
- People think Unreal is magical and will make their dreams come true so it looks sexy on your resume

Can't think of any reason I would choose it over Unity for any of my personal projects. I'm not going to be attempting a AAA fps by myself anytime soon.

 

Er, yeah, people payed the piper because that's what the piper charged (it was not an investmnet). People had to put up with certain parts of the tune sounding like a bag of cats being hit with a hammer. Now a new piper is in town playing an alternative tune and the UT can't get away with not taking requests / improving anymore. To be clear, the angst against Unity was always there, but there was not a lot people could do. Now there is a choice and people are in fact exercising that choice.

People have been complaining about unfixed bugs and lack of response on reported bugs for a VERY long time. Even if you have never touched the Unity engine, a regular attendance in the forums is enough to realise this is what people are saying.

 

I too have been dealing with the new Sales reps as well.

I am not happy I will admit. I will be voting with my wallet on this one.

I would encourage others to do the same.

 

I only know one sales rep when I preordered U5, he was very friendly and responsive. He introduced me to one of the developers, he wasn't any less friendly or helpful..

 

I look at it this way: I basically pay $5 a day (I'm a Pro subscriber) to get the latest and greatest that Unity has to offer. I get my money's worth and then some, there's no question in my mind. When you couple that with the fact that the Asset Store is akin to hiring a professional without needing to a hire a professional, things just get sweeter. Those two points alone make the time I save worth the $5 a day. The fact that I NEVER have to worry about if the next upgrade leaves me behind with all these awesome features that I cannot afford is a pile of cheery's on top. I could go on and on.

My point is that I think you're looking at this all wrong. I'm sure that with some experience you could make the same sort of itemized list of grievances against Unreal as well. What the point you should be focusing on is whether it's worth the money and you're getting a suitable return on your time. Maybe it's because I work solo and you have a team that makes Unreal better suited to your needs, but I would never be able to accomplish what I have if it weren't for Unity and the community.

And one final note; I'm curious as to whether you looked at 'Unreal has a steeper learning curve' under the same financial microscope as you seem to have Unity. Learning curves take time and cost money, especially with a team. Steep learning curves are very expensive, and if you did the math I'm sure you'd have plenty of complaints to post in the Unreal forums as well. For instance, 'why is it taking me so long to learn how to <insert goal here> when it was so easy in Unity'.

It's pretty apparent from your post that you think you've risen above and beyond Unity. The fact that you felt the need to to come back to the Unity community to let us know how their software is holding back your talents is as offensive as it is arrogant.

How soon we forget the softwares and the community that helped get us where we are in the first place...

 

The things is I'm sure they could reduce their costs. Why are they supporting blackberry, what a dead end platform i'm sure not many use. If they cut this and dropped the price to $1500 pro and $1500 all mobile, I would gladly buy it.

 

I gotta add myself to the sales rep issue here (and woah, if the everkind Gigiwoo gets pissed, that means something). I was contacted by a new sales rep for the Unity 5 upgrade, which I suppose means the one I knew is gone too. He told me he had a special limited time offer just for me (which was the actual price on Unity's website: nothing less nothing more) and told me to contact him if I had any questions. I wrote back, with questions. Got an automatic reply that he was in vacation for a couple days. A month and a half went by, still no answer.

 

if UE had C# support I would switch in a second.

 

That's sleazy. I guess sales reps get commissions, otherwise why lie like that?

 

While we are at it...

It's not just the license customers.
As a AssetStore vendor, I also feeling not treated very well, to say it in a friendly way.
UT made more than the cost of several Pro licenses with my Asset revenue in the last year alone.
But that still doesn't mean that they actually care. I've been trying to get one of my packages into a sales campaign since last June. Without any luck. If you write Caitlyn several times, you get no response. If you write to the regular AssetStore e-mail address, you get either canned mails, or vague responses with apologies.

The whole AssetStore is managed in a unfair and biased way. They tell you that sales campaigns are based on a first come first serve basis, and yet they can't give even a rough timeframe, or where you are in the queue.
Instead you see people connected to AssetStore employees (just look at twitter to get an idea.), or bigger companies like Mixamo, getting features and sales events on a regularly basis. While people like me are left in the dust.
You still see stuff like NGUI/Skyshop etc. featured on their AssetStore frontpage. Vendors that already made hundred thousands of dollars. Why they not giving more unseen gems a chance, is beyond me. It would be so easy.

Luckily the AssetStore is just my side business and nothing more than extra cash. But yeah it bugged me how full of nepotism and unfairness it is over there.
Can't wait to sell my newest stuff exclusively in Epic's marketplace, once it's open. UT obviously doesn't need that.

 

They seems to feature the same things over over I mentioned that to a now former worker and he said he didn't know why. It seems most of the things they feature aren't really that good. I guess it's OK by me because I'm not going to buy Musictoons or those minions of Zombie models no matter how long they feature them, discount the price too, and how many different times they're in the featured 4 spots up at the top of the browser.

They're throwing sales out the windows with their current feature scheme.

 

Yeah, I can only repeat what others already said. Vote with your wallet!
As long as they make their sales, they won't reconsider any of their business practices.

I won't comment on the quality of their featured stuff. There is indeed stuff that gets featured and really deserves it.
But when I see that people get obviously favored over others, then this pisses me off.

One example.
There is a girl that made a series of blogposts, called it the "AssetStore Challenge", trying to make a living off of the Assetstore in the shortest time. Link

Now guess what? She got 3 sales campaigns over the course of 4 months, while people like me get not a single sales event in almost a year.
It's nothing against her. I'm happy for her. But that is a slap in the face of every other honest vendor who waits since the blue moon.

I guess it's well calculated, since it gives the AssetStore a good publicity and lures even more people to sell their stuff there.
Albeit it's a completely distorted picture of the reality as AS vendor, because you usually don't get so much sales campaigns in that short amount of time. If ever...
That was the last straw for me. I don't create stuff for that store just to see UT's finger.

But I think people who payed 10K+, or less and get treated like that, deserve even more to be pissed off

 

LOL, anyone's that's followed that link you gave will recognize the icon of the quartz crystals from way, way back when Farmville had them promoting a new Lady Gaga album of all things. If I see them in one more asset I might puke. I downloaded their free Christmas pack but skipped everything else on offer from them as too expensive. There is much better art in the same style and better priced in the asset store. I didn't know that blog existed before the link you gave here.

 

I don't want comment about the quality of her asset packs. It's up to every individual to buy this, or not.
It's just one prime example, how unfair and biased their business practices are, when it comes to the AssetStore.

I can't comment on the licensee side because I never bought Unity Pro, and after that I don't intend to do so. Luckily there are now some better options out there.

 

The character of the asset store has changed a lot in the past two years. I look at my own stuff and realize that from here on out I need to:
1) Make things differently
2) Market things differently

Instead of being bitter, we can thank Unity for showing us that putting the word "SALE" on an icon and dropping the price a bit is very, very important to the majority of people who buy assets.

 

Yep, only reason I'm here.

 

I can because I have one of that artist's assets, I don't sell in the asset store so favoritism doesn't come into play, and I played the Farmville game when that Lady Gaga promotion was going. Nothing complex about my evaluation or about those assets. Nothing bitter about pointing out facts, although some tries to turn it that way. It's simply fact there are better and less expensive assets in the same genre in the asset store.

 

I'd switch just for dictionary serialization

or even just a generic List.
or up to date documentation.
or an editor that doesn't crash every time I close it
or an asset store that loads in under 5 mins.
or a million other little things that destroy my soul every day and lead me to the bottle. The sweet sweet bottle.

I've just given up trying to create a serialized dictionary with a custom property drawer after 8 hours of pushing and poking. I'm a little ragey.

 

You know c# will be available at some point right?

 

well, if and when it does. I'll be there.

 

This thread with all the legitimate complaints is getting serious and the fact no one(even the very activate moderators) haven't replied shows it.
I haven't really had any issues with sale reps, because I've never been contacted by one, I guess all those thousands I spent on my license and the additional thousand give or take I've spent on the Asset Store don't count. I don't really expect much of a deal though, I think half price to upgrade is good enough for me imo, although I won't be deciding to upgrade till I get my hands on Unity 5.


I just have to add that I hope the Unity Editor API is really improved, I run into problems all the time with my windows not redrawing and more. The multi-threading should address a lot my issues with having to use a queue of actions to split the workload up over frames so I can display some sort of progress bar etc, I hope anyway. Too bad that progress bar doesn't even update often enough because for some reason no matter where I put Repaint() or what functions I "override" with the unity magic it doesn't like to update unless I drag the window around(then it magically updates instantly while I'm dragging it). Here's to hoping that the multi-threading comes with a large list of improvements for people that spend a lot of time making custom editor windows. I could go on and on, but I'll stop here.

 

Well that is one way to see it.
I see it differently, and because of that I quit making stuff for the store and heading to new opportunities. Am I bitter? Yes I was, because I can't stand such business practices. But not now. I'm past that.
I just wanted to share a story from a vendors point of view.

Eventually the AssetStore and Unity will suffer from their own business practices and lose more customers and vendors alike. UT operates in a fast moving market, where almost nothing is certain and rock solid. The UE4 surprise gave us a glimpse how fast things can change. And that is just the beginning.

 

Yeah, but then they don't let us put our own "sale" flags on our icons so it's kind of fixed to have people buy whatever the store sticks the sale icon on for the day. They emailed us saying it's against their policy even though it is stated NOWHERE in the Asset Store agreement. The only mention of sale graphics is that they will not "feature" your package if it has sale graphics in the key images. If I was allowed to have a sale graphic on my icon, I wouldn't need to be featured...