trouble following Unity as it is being updated to a different flow

Hey guys, I wanted some thoughts on what everyone thinks of the direction unity is going in. I feel like it is getting harder to understand the work flow that Unity is moving in with the features announced in berlin and other more recent changes including prefab workflow, SRPs, different types of versions depending on the end goal of whether one is targeting, vr, mobile, other variants etc, different node systems, Standard Assets replacement, the hub system, ECS, and on and on.

I feel like everything used to be much easier when there was just one standard build and I imported from the asset store things I was using. Perhaps my simple-minded/orientated brain is the problem. For me even importing the new 3d game kit to minimize programing was very difficult for me to get working and wrap my head around.

I am not criticizing here I just want to know if its just me who is having trouble adjusting to a system that seems to have become a bit too much more complex/advanced so quickly. I'd love to read your thoughts to see where I stand relative to everyone else. Thanks.

 

I hear you. Unity's going through an awkward transitional phase right now. But it's necessary to stay relevant. As a whole there are many more moving parts than before, but ultimately I think it's going to feel like a modular engine that you assemble custom for each project. So maybe in one project you only have the 2D tools and the lightweight render pipeline to create a mobile platformer. And in another project you have the HD pipeline and ECS for a high-end desktop/console RTS. Each of those project setups could be relatively simple to wrap your head around, without having to worry about junk you're not using in the project. And a lot of things are just improved replacements, like the new prefab system. If the new prefab system had been present from the beginning, that would be your normal, and you wouldn't think anything of it. Still, it's a lot to keep up on. I'm glad Unity has adopted LTS releases so you can choose a version of the engine and just get the game done.

 

Just jump on the LTS version. Stay there until the next LTS comes out. That's what I've taken to doing with most of my work lately.

 

I haven't had any trouble picking up the new features that I've looked into but that being said I haven't looked into too many of them and the few that I have I've only looked into them enough to understand what is coming down the pipeline. For the sake of sanity I believe it's important to not look too deeply into new systems until they're ready for use.

Being a programmer I've spent the most time researching ECS. At a glance it may seem very complex but if you've been working with Unity you've already been using an approach that is most of the way there. Unity's default scripting is just entities and components but without the systems part.

In fact if you've ever built your own particle system from scratch you've already had experience working with ECS.

 

Yep. If it wasn't for the fact that I need certain features of 2018 for my game, I'd easily be using 2017 LTS.

 

Thanks guys. I seemed to have overlooked how useful the LTS version would be for me. I'll play around a bit more and let you all know what I thinks. Thanks again~

 

Also until you need them. I too try to stay broadly aware of what's going on with Unity, but it's really so that I can try something out if it might solve a problem I have.

If it doesn't then I'm not going to spend time and energy testing and transitioning my project to a new version, or learning how to use the stuff in that new version.

 

Devils Advocate: Unity being easy to use had catastrophic consequences for the indie games market as a whole, the harder it gets to release a game with it, the better for the devs that are competent enough to still use it.

I was wondering yesterday how Unity might look in 30 years. No one can plan that far and if you look at past future predictions from around 30 years ago, most of them are wildly wrong.
Funnily Star Trek seemed to get some tech predictions right, but with the wrong time of release (flat screens, voice interfaces, neural nets).

 

Reading the OP's post for the first time left me with the impression he's trying to be a jack of all trades and going forward I just don't know how feasible that will continue to be if the engine keeps growing in this manner. I believe that trying to keep up with everything evenly is just going to leave you progressively further.

Worse yet he appears to be trying to keep pace with multiple engines. I can understand evaluating the competition from time to time but trying to keep up with all the new toys across multiple engines feels like a losing battle.

 

Not the way I did it.

 

I felt the same way when switching from Unity 4 to Unity 5. Not only were there a huge amount of new features introduced, but suddenly I also had access to all of those features that used to be pro-version-only. It was like learning a whole new engine.