What is the most pointless feature in Unity?

I'm not talking about things that are poorly implemented or awkward, but things that are completely pointless and have no real place in the workflow at all. Recently while working on my game, I rediscovered something that seems to have no actual point whatsoever. That something?



The "create -> prefab" dialogue option. Nothing about this fits into the way Unity works. Once you create a prefab, you're left with, well, an empty prefab. You're unable to add anything to it through any means I've found and it doesn't even come with a zeroed out transform. You can't even drag it into the scene.

Maybe there's something I'm missing about this, but this feature seems to be entirely pointless. What other pointless features does Unity have?

 

Clearly the splash screen toggle. If you're on Personal you haven't a choice and if you're on Pro it'll always be off.

 

Oddworld: New n Tasty Developers chose to leave the unity splash screen in

 

You just drag something from the hierarchy onto the empty prefab. For quite a while this was the only way to create prefabs; the other method of dragging something from the hierarchy into the project view wasn't added until later, and while it can be more convenient, it's not obvious at all. Having an explicit way to do something isn't pointless. Actually this is how the docs tell you to make prefabs; the alternate method isn't mentioned.

--Eric

 

The forums

On a serious note there are plenty of features I don't use. But none I'd call straight out pointless.

UnityScript is probably the closest.

 

Pretty much. I don't know of anything that is outright pointless. There have been plenty of things that have made me wonder how in the hell it took this long to finally be implemented though (like the create asset attribute).

 

Actually it was a requested feature by many after the new animated splash screen was added. Without the toggle you cant get it included in the project and can only manually show static screen.

 

I believe the earthling known as Ryiah was making what is observably, a "funny"!

Most pointless feature for me would probably be Unity script as well... And the lensflare feature: which I judged painfully dated around 6-7 years ago when I first started.

 

Dark skin. Seriously, it's just cosmetics, unneeded at all.

 

Can't think of one. Lots of broken and buggy features, but I can't think of even one that is pointless.

 

She beat me to it. And @darkhog too. The community members all rushed in to make splash screen and editor dark skin jokes.

I think I agree with @Murgilod . In what scenario do you create an empty prefab by itself with nothing on it?

 

Moderators shouldn't write religious offensive things.

 

You create the prefab and then you need to drag something from your scene into the prefab. Once you have done that, you can drag the prefab into the scene or instantiate the clone of the prefab from code. The prefab stuff in Unity is awesome, once you get used to it. I do agree that creating the prefab and then dragging a scene object into it feels a bit counter intuitive relative to the other workflow, but I would not call it pointless.

The support for Boo as a scripting option is probably the most pointless feature. Almost nobody uses Boo.

 

Lens flares are stupid regardless.

 

Yeah, a lens flare should actually break immersion in most games. A lens flare occurs in movies because a camera lens does that. Unless it is a game about shooting a movie, then the the player's camera in the game should not pick up a lens flare. By definition, a lens flare is simply a movie artifact that should not occur in a game. Yet people want to see a lens flare because it gives a fake Hollywood feel to the game.

 

Yes! Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one out there that felt like a lens flare was an immersion breaking addition.

 

But eyes have lenses

 

...that should occur in games where people want "cinematic experience".

 

Yes, cinematic, like having your framerate locked at 30

 

Or a JJ does that.

 

Cinematic is dev code for "our framerate sucks".

 

hippocoder

 

"UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)" in the Console.

If nothing else, that line of text wins due to the sheer volume of worthless information generated.

 

The true cinematic framerate is 24 frames per second!

Spoiler

Either way I think that people will compare the game visuals with movies, not with real life, simply because they will never see most of the stuff depicted in movies and games in reality. That's why games have lensflares, raindrops on the screen, etc.

 

Now give us the natural motion blur (akin to frame interpolation) that true cinematic film gets and I'll be totally happy with that!

 

@Tim C and @Chman seem to be rocking post hard at the moment!

 

Or we could just get higher frame rate so that there would be no need for motion blur...

 

But motion blur is actually artistic choice to have. When used well, it adds a lot as it can imply something is moving quite fast without the impracticality and infeasibility of actually moving it too fast to see the result.

Lets say the game runs at 120fps. You have an attack that is really fast. It would get seen, but the overall effect is insubstantial. It doesn't FEEL fast. Motion blur is fantastic for that, in a similar way sword trail effects are exciting at 60fps.

It's a clear artistic choice, not an evil.

 

Trails are a much better effect to cement motion than blur to me. If motion blur is done well, it can add something for sure, but most of the time, it's throwing garbage in my eyes so I turn it off.

 

Lazy, or practical? Perhaps an editor script could do this?

 

The OpenGL ES 2.0 emulation, it fails to emulate the visual artifacts, broken/non-compiled shaders, and poor texture quality often experienced on actual mobile devices.

 

Nope, not pointless. Just not working as well as it should.

--Eric

 

Yeah anything above 30 FPS is a waste of time.

 

And let's throw in that whole menu while we're at it.

Spoiler: But in a more sincere tone...

Has anyone actually used this button?

And by that, I mean, have they actually initiated the upgrade process with this button? Not just by going to the site directly.

 

If you can't manage with 8 then you're just not trying hard enough.

 

Getting a bug fixed is hard enough, letting alone anyone actually reading or voting on feedback

j

 

..... this thread was completely pointless up until that post was made lol

 

Boo.

Oh, wait.

 

I was really taken off guard that Unity now does DS builds.

The system is so close to the end of its life cycle and is almost certainly incompatible with the NX. AND it just seems like an massive hassle to go through Nintendo (who I love, btw) to publish.

I will be very surprised if there's more than a couple games made for the system.

 

Most platforms Unity supports building for are useless; the players use only 1~5 of them.
They could invest their time on tools intead of adding more and more platforms without any significant audience to play the games built on them; but the platforms are where they make their monies thus this will never change.

 

You do realize that people who work with platforms aren't the same people who are adding tools. There's no need to choose between them; they do both. The platforms wouldn't exist if there weren't demand for them. And they go away if the demand goes away. So, once again, not pointless.

--Eric

 

Speaking of this, I actually used this button yesterday. Turned out it suited the workflow I was using. No harm in allowing plenty of work flow options.

 

As someone who wears glasses, lens flares are very real.
I don't necessarily accept their use in many cases (Ahem, Star Trek), but there are certain situations that make sense from my perspective. Car headlights at night are a notable use case where lens flares make sense. Bokeh is also something that I come across in real life that many accuse of being unrealistic. So I guess it really just depends on how you look at the world.

 

... the missing big, red "make awesome game!" button.
That this is still not included is the most pointless feature. This is a feature, right? Right?

 

Unity doesn't have pointless features.
At most they're features you haven't found the right use for, yet!

 

You have to upgrade to the AAA $5 million license.

 

I can't find that one on the store page. Or is this one of those where you have to contact sales directly?

 

You have to submit a letter of recommendation from the CEO of Activision, Ubisoft, or EA.

 

Funny. You have switched to another Game Engine (Unreal I think) and you come here when it comes to something negative to say about Unity.