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It's time to stop hating on Unity

B

BurritoBushido

Member
Over the years, I've seen a growing amount of hate from gamers and members of this forum regarding Unity as an engine. Seems the conversation blew up on twitter this morning after a tweet encapsulated the sentiment:

0Qm7v1v.png


I highly recommend this Jimquisition video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQtW4Fzizw). I don't even usually care for Jim Sterling but this video is spot on.
The engine's biggest blessing is simply something of a curse for the market overall, as it is, by its own design, completely open, simple to use, and offers pre-developed assets for amateur and professional developers alike to purchase and utilize entire systems, worlds, and mechanics before building whatever game they like on top of that.
Click to expand...

Unity can be tough to optimize for consoles, but it is up to the developer to understand their tool and their constraints when shipping a product. It is not unity's fault if they ship a busted game.

It is 100% undeniable what Unity's capabilities are when you look at games like Ori and the Blind forest, one of the most beautiful and tightest platformers made in years, released on consoles.

I searched and didn't see a thread for this on the GAF so I figured I'd make one. Punt into the sun if old.

edit: for what it's worth, I don't agree that this is Journalism's fault but I think that is entirely separate conversation
 
A

Abilidebob

Member
There are people right now, on GAF, that hates any game that can be called "indie" or has "retro graphics". Finding a group that hates Unity games here is as easy as a pie.
 
U

Undrey

Member
I don't get the hate for Unity, it's a cheaper way to make games. I mean sure, there are drawbacks here and there that might be apparent in most Unity games, but they're not very noticeable.

The two Unity games I can think of off the top of my head are Yooka-Laylee and Gang Beasts, both of which I've had very few issues with in terms of the engine.
 
F

funkystudent

Member
Yet to play a console game that runs on Untiy that isnt kinda of a mess or so basic it could run on a PSP.


The engine earned its shitty reputation. It should earn peoples trust too.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Well it's a shame but the fact of the matter is that Unity games are known for being stuttery, having framepacing issues or problems holding 60fps. Or have been in the past anyway.

Ori and Inside are exceptions, based on what I've played.

I personally don't hate it, but I am weary about it, same way I'm weary about idTech games running on my AMD gpu.
 
T

Tain

Member
Being skeptical about console performance based on an engine's track record is fair, assuming it isn't just some bombastic post about how Unity means the performance will be garbage.

Thoughtful criticism is good. There has been thoughtful criticism of Unity (even here on GAF) that does, in fact, account for the console games that run well!
 
GavinUK86

GavinUK86

Member
Speaking of the Unity engine, anyone played Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles yet? It's goddamn beautiful and runs like a dream, on PC at least. In the right hands, Unity is a fine engine.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Unity's performance issues on consoles are far too common for me to stop criticizing that aspect of it. I understand the other benefits to developers but when it consistently impacts the end user experience it's hard to not be bummed out when a game uses the engine. I love a lot of Unity games but performance is almost always less than ideal.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
Saw this floating around and I have to take issues with some things.

Namely, that the original thesis is that it blames game journalists. Like, that consumers didn't just notice a trend of issues with Unity games. Unity has, over the years, handed me games that universally have had issues with certain controllers, capped my framerate at 1/4 of my refresh because I have a gsync monitor, and have been among the poorest performing games on many platforms. Some of these issues were either patched on an engine level eventually or by the developers, but often took forever. And these weren't like "Babby's first Asset Flip" game, they were developed by long time developers.

The engine spoke for itself. Even a lot of the best games on the engine have had issues with stuttering. So yes if I see a hugely ambitious game like Satellite Reign or Dreamfall in the future, I'm going to be wary given how poorly those games run (and that's just on PC).

Game journalists don't talk ENOUGH about technical aspects, they certainly aren't to fucking blame for this trend.
 
G

Glass Shark

Banned
Tain said:
Thoughtful criticism is good.

Being skeptical about console performance based on an engine's track record is fair, assuming it isn't just some bombastic post about how Unity means the performance will be garbage.
Click to expand...
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that enthusiast thinking on Unity's "track record" is totally misguided.

Unity is a tool that can be used to make good or bad games. No more sense in attributing blame or praise to it than there is to a wrench or a hammer.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Maybe Unity should do something about it then. They didn't get this reputation for nothing. Single threaded VM and garbage collection hickups have plagued it since its inception basically.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that Unity seems to require a truly highly skilled programmer to get around all the performance quirks the engine is known for. Thing is, Unity is billed as an engine "for the rest of us", and by its nature does not attract those kind of genius types.

antitrop said:
Assault Android Cactus.
Click to expand...
And Inside. That's literally the only two games I can think of that don't have that special kind of performance jankiness that Unity games tend to have (and especially on consoles).
 
B

butzopower

proud of his butz
I hate to say this, but I think this is an actual case where we should blame game devs. The customer should not be exposed to the tools behind the shipped artifact.

Glass Shark said:
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that enthusiast thinking on Unity's "track record" is totally misguided.

Unity is a tool that can be used to make good or bad games. No more sense in attributing blame or praise to it than there is to a wrench or a hammer.
Click to expand...

Basically this. If you make a shit house with a shit hammer it's not the hammer manufactures fault you used a shit hammer (not that I think Unity is even a shit engine)
 
C

CertifiedFP

Member
Honestly Unity IS a pretty garbage engine. So much stuff substandard compared to Unreal 4's feature set. System Shock remake and Squad didn't switch from Unity to Unreal for the hell of it.

Especially pre-5 versions. Yandere Simulator's development over the past six months have been spent solely on porting it from 4 to 5 because Unity 4 was literally becoming a barrier getting in the way of the game's development with constant engine crashes and 2 minute+ compile times for small code changes.
 
Darklor01

Darklor01

Might need to stop sniffing glue
LOL, I thought this was an Assassin's Creed Unity thread. Happy to read about the positives on the engine though.
 
T

Tain

Member
Glass Shark said:
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that enthusiast thinking on Unity's "track record" is totally misguided.

Unity is a tool that can be used to make good or bad games. No more sense in attributing blame or praise to it any more than there is to a wrench or a hammer.
Click to expand...

If we have the knowledge to drill down into specific use cases of wrenches and hammers we can find scenarios where one is a better fit than the other. Some posters have the knowledge to talk about issues they've run into with Unity. Some developers have the knowledge to give GDC talks over what they've had to do with Unity.

"Unity sucks" and "don't criticize engines" are similarly meaningless.
 
S

Sami+

Member
Blame the developers that didn't optimize their games, not the journalists reporting on the end result.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
tkscz said:
Unity is not a flaw, it's a legit good engine. The problem is it's free and open, and thus a lot of half-assed "developers" buy pre-made assets and try to flip them.
Click to expand...

This isn't it. Tons of well regarded developers and publishers release shoddily running games.

People don't dislike Unity because of some piece of shit Jim Sterling made a video about that barely functions, most people don't play those games. They dislike it because of things like Broforce on PS4 or Dreamfall Chapters needing a nearly year long engine transition because it ran so poorly.
 
LordRaptor

LordRaptor

Member
Welp, I don't know why I expected any different from this thread than any other thread on GAF where Unity even gets mentioned.
 
Shifty

Shifty

Member
Lord Error said:
Maybe Unity should do something about it then. They didn't get this reputation for nothing. Single threaded VM and garbage collection hickups have plagued it since its inception basically.
Click to expand...

This. They need to make a clean break from the garbage outdated Mono implementation they've been stacking stuff on top of. There are young WebGL-driven Unity-like engines out there that actively outclass it in some fields.
Lack of source code access is a mark against it as well. If something fails engine-side due to some edge case, debugging it is an absolute nightmare.

(Still sore over the time I tried to write multi-threaded code and had half my jobs consistently and silently fail for no apparent reason.)
 
M

Mooreberg

Member
Perfectly reasonable to have questions about certain engines on certain hardware. Of all the things journalists don't need to ask (Is this game which recommends an i7 coming to Switch?), this is not one of them.
 
A

Ahasverus

Member
No. No. No no no no.

Trash engine, trash performance, trash visuals, Unreal is a far superior alternative.

Unity must die, and I won't buy any game made on Unity, ever.
 
O

outunderthestars

Banned
GavinUK86 said:
Speaking of the Unity engine, anyone played Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles yet? It's goddamn beautiful and runs like a dream, on PC at least. In the right hands, Unity is a fine engine.
Click to expand...

Funny, while I enjoy the game, I found the visuals to look rather basic and screamed "unity engine game"
 
Necro900

Necro900

Member
Snipperclips was developed in Unity and it tends to stutter briefly (often) and drop frames (sometimes, with a busy scene).. now I'm crossing fingers for Hollow Knight on switch :/

Thing is, I don't really know whether it's the engine's fault or the developers', but reality is multiple unity games on consoles have issues. And that's bad for everyone involved, really.
 
F

funkystudent

Member
Orayn said:
Furi?
Click to expand...

Wobbly framerate and screen tearing last I checked.

antitrop said:
Assault Android Cactus.
Click to expand...

Not exactly a demanding game in any stretch. Same with Ori.


Its real easy to rattle off Unity powered messes on console. Firewatch, Grow / Gone home, ReCore, City Skylines and Kirble console editions.

Heck, remember Bro Force on PS4? A simple 2D platformer with a framerate so bad it would make FROM software blush with embarrassment.

And those are games from developers with experience. Only gets worse if you dip into smaller unknown devs.



I think twice when I see a game is powered by Unity and thats a shame. I just wish Unity was better. I hope they get there eventually.
 
T

Timeaisis

Member
Wow, some of these comments. I thought most of ya'll were smarter than this.

I think it's worth noting that, despite what your opinion of Unity is, games like Firewatch would have been much more difficult and time consuming to be made by such a small team.
 
M

MazeHaze

Banned
It's been like this for a long time. Majority of GAF has no idea what a game engine does, or why a dev might chose one over the other. Hell, most of GAF doesn't even have a basic fundamental understanding of how games are made, but whenever there's a thread quoting a dev about something, dozens of fanboy's pile in to point out that the dev is wrong and/or lazy.
 
F

Fou-Lu

Member
It reminds me of the hate Unreal Engine used to get for all of its games "looking the same." Very few people know what a game engine actually does or what issues it might be the cause of (or not).
 
M

mullet2000

Member
People have noticed a correlation between Unity engine and poor performance on consoles. Can't blame people for noticing a pattern.
 
K

kiguel182

Member
I'm releasing a Unity game next week and it's the main engine I use. It's a pretty great engine with great support.

It's not perfect (the WebGL player is kinda garbage) but it makes development super easy, free and accessible to everyone so it's obviously a good thing overall to the industry.

I've seen great things made with the engine and more will come. Obviously 90 per cent of the people who play games won't know about engines (as they shouldn't, it's secondary) and blaming one for performance is easy altought that's not always the cases.

Anyway, Unity is great because it created tons of new independent devs and it has definetly room to improve but it's a fantastic engine none the less and it's free witch is great.
 
M

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Theorry said:
Should play Ori then. :)
Click to expand...
Orayn said:
Furi?
Click to expand...
antitrop said:
Assault Android Cactus.
Click to expand...
Add Cosmic Star Heroine to the list.

Ahasverus said:
No. No. No no no no.

Trash engine, trash performance, trash visuals, Unreal is a far superior alternative.

Unity must die, and I won't buy any game made on Unity, ever.
Click to expand...
Ori and Cosmic Star Heroine have "trash visuals" and don't deserve a purchase. Yeah, yeah, that's totally a rational take on things.
 
P

Piston Hyundai

Member
my last experience with Unity was the SEGA Forever emulator that couldn't run any single Genesis game at 30FPS, let alone 60

would you settle for "everything I've ever played that was on Unity ran like shit"

is that fair enough for you
 
M

MazeHaze

Banned
Gaffers also seem completely oblivious to the fact that using Unreal is expensive, and they get a percentage of the game's profits.
 
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