Why I can no longer recommend Unity

So, a while back I started playing with the new UI in 4.6 beta, which was a nice UI implementation, so I started converting my project to use it after an eval period. Few weeks later, the editor just started crashing in weird places, then crashed when loading a scene. Even after rolling back to previous version of my project, I met the same results. On other machines, crashed differently, but almost as cripplingly. When the official 4.6 version was released, same problem.

So I decided to try to convert to 5.0, as my bug submissions were met with the sound of crickets. Of course, 5 is a beta version, and has bugs as you'd expect of a beta version. Today's bug was, after 6 or so hours of shifting crap around, I found that some prefabs, for no apparent reason, now have to be loaded AND within camera frustum in my loading screen or else Unity will destroy the material, turning my object black in subsequent instantiates. All told I've lost well over a man week of time on just pure unity bugs, and without U5 beta being available, I'd be unable to do anything at all (without rolling back lots of work and hoping it doesn't happen again). It's not only highly frustrating for me since it's very tough for me to get the available time to work on personal projects these days, it's likely an easy to fix unhandled null deference that has cost me a week.

As a professional game developer, I only use closed source software when I have no other reasonable choice, because if I have the source to an application, no bug is a show stopper. When I started using Unity, there was no open source option, now there is, and it's at the very least a comparable product. I will no longer recommend Unity until it's fully open source. Sadly at the company I work at I'm likely the most knowledgeable Unity user there, and was asked to do a presentation on the technology, but my honest recommendation right now is not to use it, even though in most regards it's the model of a top quality engine.

 

Unless we know what the crash was related to (this is all one project, right?) we have no idea if what you're taking about is relevant to anyone else.

 

What is the open source alternative?

 

lol.. blender?? (its open source) ... uhh... maybe? .. i read they now added the ability to compile the game as an .exe .. it was possible before, but work was needed.. now i guess the ability is built in... lol but blender really isnt for making games, but its possible... lol.. interestingly, in blender you can use mesh colliders on moving object.. i guess you cant in Unity? .. and blender has soft body physics, and other things like that... but yeaah.. i wouldnt recommend blender for game making, (at least from when i used it) but its a possibility i guess?
.. oh and unity has "prefabs" system .. but i guess in blender youd have to code your own solution to that... but i guess i dont totally know entirely...
i had looked at blender and started learning it to make a game with before i looked at unity, but i didnt get very far
blender has code blocks though.. so it might be better for some that cant code...
but really, all you can make easily in blender is small games.. and unless they made major improvements, its ALOT slower than unity... like you have to make less polys and stuff

 

Most likely it's that other game engine that also starts with the letter U that made a big splash a little while ago.

 

oh unreal is open source? .. i assumed it wasnt.. i didnt really care for it.. its best for FPS isnt it? .. i guess i dunno.. i heard it takes alot more effort to use so i didnt care to look into it much
but yeah.. i was looking into comparisons like.. uh.. 2-3 years ago?

oooh yeah and it has a percentage from your profits they want.. that i didnt like the idea of

 

Without telling us more specifically what the bugs are, we can't help.

Actually, I don't even know what kind of reaction you're expecting. I read what you posted twice, and all I can recall from it is, "I used beta software and I came across bugs", which is.. uhm.. yeah.

 

Yes, Blender has a game engine and you can build an exe. However, it's not a serious game engine - it's used more for physics simulations (or used to be) than for games in Blender. There isn't much reason to use Blender when a certain other (real) engine is free.

 

Sshhh!

Mods don't like the U-word around here.

 

In so far as the source is available to all licensees, yes. It's not an FOS license.

 

- Test your project on your machine, problem
- Test your project on other machines, problem
- Other people are using Unity right now without this issue

Your deduction?

Nothing wrong with your code, Unity is broken.

Top of my head:
- Unity will crash if any editor script has a non-terminating loop.

Right there, I just provided more useful information about solving your problem than you have in three paragraphs.

Edit: Also, seriously man. It's game development, not a mass grave.

 

It doesn't have to be an editor script. Any MonoBehaviour can do it, especially if you're using ExecuteInEditMode, OnDrawGizmos, or playing with serialization, and probably a few things I haven't thought of just now.

There are plenty of ways to crash Unity if you're not careful.

 

But to crash it in the editor, you need skill.

 

Assuming you're capable and knowledgeable enough to open the source and make the necessary modification to get beyond the supposed bug that exists.

Not that Unity doesn't have bugs, but it is quite possible to crash Unity without it being at fault.

 

All major engines crash. All of them It's the nature of the beast as engines tend to tax everything and (with your code especially) be vulnerable to all manner of memory leaks, plus pressure on cpu, gpu, drivers, etc...

OP answered his own question: if you want total security you'll need to write everything open source. If you're submitting valid test cases as bug reports these things won't be met with the sound of crickets. If you didn't send a repro, it's likely crickets are possible since they can't reproduce it.

 

Ogre was always open source and it existed before. Did you try rebuilding your project using reimport all. It seems me like your data got corrupted.

 

yeah.. i just mentioned blender cause only thing that came to mind for open source game engine

 

I understand what you are saying, I think this is not a long term issue..
Recent builds of Unity have been buggy for both 4.6 and 5 beta, but they do warn us so you cannot complain.

Only bad thing is 4.6.1 is buggy also, the amount of Android issues, QA fell asleep on this one big time.

 

I suppose it depends what the issue is, in TETWNBN (The engine that will not be named), some bugs you think seriously? How could anyone miss something so silly? Also there is a difference between alpha and beta, you'd expect at least a useable product with some "odd" behaviour due to some strange bugs.

But then again you should be backing up work like no tomorrow and keep old versions hanging about if you're using beta, literally you should duplicate the project and leave one completely intact with the old version of Unity. Because there will be some bad bugs that can cause horrific issues.

But I can see the OP's point, if you had the source with a team you might be able to sit down and fix it. Then send the fix back to Unity to include into the main branch.

 

What do you expect when you're using a beta version?

 

Even if I switched to another engine, I'd likely still use Unity for rapid prototyping and benchmarking.

 

UE4 is a crash machine and a clunky CPU/GPU hog. You need a much better rig than for Unity just to run it as normal.

 

That would be Unreal, their direct competition.

I don't either, but many people feel the licenses terms are comparable, for me I definitely prefer Unity's. My recommendations would be related to what the technology gives and doesn't give you, license terms are more subjective.

That's actually not my deduction, that was your assumption. My deduction is that I could find/fix the problem FAR more efficiently and get back to work if I had the ability to debug the relevant code. I honestly don't give a crap who's bug it is, I've been developing software a long time and know bugs happen, I just want to fix it. Your suggestion of blindly removing my code until the problem goes away and pray it never comes back is the best option in Unity. It's also, however, FAR from ideal.

It's discouraging when fans defend things in this way, as if every element of a product's current state is golden. Listen, it'd be better for us if Unity was open source, are you seriously arguing otherwise? If not, then the question is how much it matters, and in my mind it matters enough to tip the balance towards Unreal. It's that simple.

And comments about beta, please read and try to understand what I'm saying. I said it's a beta version and I expect bugs, my problem is not with that, my problem is the best path for me is to use the beta version because the official versions are broken for me and Unity's not offering the kind of help their direct competition offers.

Well, all of this is true except the can't complain part. The quality of a product is based on comparison, it does not exist in a vacuum. A big part of why Unreal made their code open source is this, so that their customers aren't as frequently blocked by bugs, which are inevitable. Things a company does to support their customers win points in their favor, and Unreal's concern for my time in this respect, and Unity's lack of comparable concern lost them too many points.

 

You sure about that? You are assuming they're diligent about it, which they were not (I sent test case). Frankly, I could mark this up as QA that is otherwise great, and I was just unlucky, S*** happens, such is life. However, doesn't change the basic truth that I am technically NEVER blocked if I have the source code, period, end of story.

 

That makes a massive assumption about the quality of the editor. In fact, if you assume systems have bugs, which large systems pretty much always do in the real world, then what you really need is bad luck to crash it. I always assume I have sufficient bad luck .

 

Sorry for your unfortunate opinion. I hope your UE5 experience and C++ talent proves to be a more productive and problem-free development environment.

Now, please stop feeding this thread. Leave, or do not. There isn't any need for drawn out complaints and ominous warnings about mysterious crashes.

 

Perhaps leave the case numbers of your unresolved issues here in the thread and I'll poke QA team to take a peek just on the off chance it's been missed.

 

Your politically correct mock-corporate tone is unhelpful -- especially since you're not even a Unity employee.

 

I don't think I'm a fanboy of Unity. I just do this thing where I commit to a process and stick to it. If you rage quit every time you encounter an error this will result regardless of what tools you use. You seem focused on the problem rather than a solution.

 

I made par!

 

I appreciate that, I'll send it to you when I get home, although it may be academic now. My project does not crash in U5, so they've likely fixed it, or it's otherwise unpronounceable now, but it'd still be worthwhile for them to actually research it since it may still be a real issue (since it looked like a null deref, I'm betting they just fixed it and it's not in a previous release for whatever reason). I've converted enough of my stuff to U5 that I'd rather not go back unless I had to.

You seem to be not reading my post, so I'll try to make it simpler (and for the last time). I'm not quitting Unity, I've invested too much into it to quit over this, and I really like the engine. However, for someone entering into Unity, someone who has no investment, this is a big deal and Unreal's support has tipped the balance.

If you have no interest in understanding why open source is useful, and think that Unreal devs did it because they're just silly because they aren't as awesome as Unity devs at making bug free software, then you go on thinking that. I think I know why Unreal makes their source open, it's for good reasons, and it matters to me, especially after my personal experiences with Unity. And this is why my recommendation to professionals is what it is. Trust me, Unity is losing ground among professionals because of lack of open source, who knows how much, but they definitely are.

 

I'm glad you aren't crashing in Unity 5. Part of the major problem with Unity 4 is that it has very little memory to actually work with, and Physx (if you used it) was notoriously bad at a lot of things.

So these may have contributed to hard crashes.

 

I don't dispute your claims, it makes sense. I'm just not a big fan of the tone and attitude. I also question whether your experiences are relevant. I have no idea what you're doing or how to avoid the problems you're encountering, so to me it's just a work of fiction. So I don't think it makes sense for anybody to avoid using Unity based on your recommendation. Basically, you're not qualified to give anyone any recommendations either way.

 

Again with the open source.
Unity does have it but you will pay for it due to the third party software they are using. The other one took all 3rd party software out.
Is this a concept that people just don't understand?

 

I think that is likely the case, people simply do not understand as much as they could if their trained response to problems was to study rather than complain. I'm not calling anyone stupid, just saying there's a negative attitude here.

 

The amount of "advice" in threads like these, from people who've never completed or shipped a game in a professional capacity, is always fun to read.

 

What's that? It's hard to hear you up there on your high horse.

 

Indeed it must be. Should I pick you up and set you on my shoulders? Maybe give a little horsey ride?

 

This is weird... Unity crashes are very rare over here. I hope OP's problem is fixed soon... but if you ask me....among other things, stability is one of the reasons to stick to Unity. Not recommend Unity for crashing too much doesn't seem right.

 

Is this still a metaphor?

 

And while I'll admit I've only been using Unity for several months pretty much nonstop, I guess it's possible that more experienced programmers encounter more bugs...? Doesn't seem to make much sense.

I've been doing everything wrong, aabusing most of the systems and I think I've maybe had a dozen crashes with most of them being my fault.

I have been known to destroy and instantiate hundreds of objects per update with no issues.

 

Actually all Unity games I bought crash from time to time, especially if I play for a long time (5+ hours). Not sure if it is the game code or some memory leaks/bugs in Unity, never cared to check.

Of course probably any game can crash. Maybe they just stand out because I know they are Unity so each time they crash I notice more consciously.

 

I wonder if it will ever be realistic to expect responses to all one's bug reports? 50% of my bug reports, which are always painstakingly constructed and unconditionally reproducible, have never gotten past the receipt stage and now live in some endlessly Open limbo. I can empathize with the OP's discouragement.

 

You live in open limbo? -.-

 

Not hard to understand, but even if it were 100% 'We'd give our heart and soul to do it, but we legally can't', I don't see how that would change my recommendation. Your competition either has/had made better or luckier decisions, outcome is unchanged.

 

It is a bit disappointing to see so many narrowminded fanboys in the forums. And the attidute "Unity is great! Every thing is nice! If you don't see it get lost!" makes the forums even worse. Those people should realize that critic is just a way to note how Unity could be improved. For the sake of Unity.

Anyways, I think that source access would be more confortable for some developers (maybe they would share the improvements to UT, like the community from the competitors does), but I think UT should make at least one step by opening up some systems and make them more accessible. See for example Mecanim or the new light class for enlighten (few complainted about this already in the official feedback thread).

 

I don't think you understand what a recommendation is, but it's should always be based on someone's knowledge. I can't change what you feel my attitude is, but from my perspective I just expressed that Unity's competition is doing much better in a significant area, and I, and other professionals feel strongly they should fix it (and frankly, I'm quite sure they're aware, they just should, IMO, kick up the priority).

 

I don't believe I have ever seen a narrow minded unity fanboy. Please, point one out by name.

 

No real point in dragging this out. Locked.