• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Games made in UNITY

EightBit Man said:
There are great games made in Unity...Atom RPG, Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, the recent Shadowrun titles, Satellite Reign, ...among others. However I don't like this trend of "accessibility", because not only does it attract people who shouldn't be developing games, it also creates games that look or feel similar. Do we even have true geniuses left? Because all I see is games developed in the same development environments, and Unity ain't the only engine that developers rely faaaaaaaaaar too much on.

Develop your own engine as much as possible people, preferably open source so that other can learn from it, or build further upon it (maybe beyond the point of recognition).
Click to expand...
I get where you are coming from but I don't agree with your post as you've written it.
Many game developers want to make games, not tech. While some games require advanced additional tech that doesn't come with an engine build, many games do not.

Creating an engine that takes years and in the end will only be worse than what is currently available is a task that only, and I mean only, engine programmers and related should do. There are tons of game developers who aren't engine programmers and don't need to be to create relatively good games. Being a programmer means solving problems, and if you are creating a game your problem is shipping that game, not solving something that has already been solved.

In do agree in the sense that many devs I know don't ever get into the proper mindset to develop their own abilities properly, however.
The accessibility creates a space for the not-so-inclined devs to pollute the game dev spheres. This is more of an issue for devs rather than consumers, however, because networking becomes so much harder and amateurs are able to compete due to nepotism and charisma rather than on skills. It becomes hard to find people who:

a) work efficiently
b) produce quality work
c) are constructive in their social conduct

Most young devs I know fail at at least one of those criteria, and that is due to them celebrating their mediocrity in their echo chambers of reaffirmation. It's easier to create a nice looking walking simulator than trying to have a well designed game, so many will just stop trying to improve. Chances are, if you are giving up trying to design and create neat mechanics and content when you are younger, you will become invested in your ways. Trying to do things out of your reach is a duty of any serious dev imo. You learn much more by failing with your ambitions than succeeding with what you are already capable of.
It's the primary reason I have abandoned game dev for now and am focussing on tools dev.
 
People don't realize the Unity engine itself has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years.

And yeah, most people want to make games, not engines. That's why Unreal Engine is so successful. Some big publishers think they can use in-house engines to save licensing costs, that's why EA forced their internal studios to switch to EA-owned DICE's Frostbite engine and the result was the disasters of Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem. Then there's Square-Enix. Yeah. Internal engine development is a huge boondoggle, even to giant publishers and studios.
 
Herr Edgy said:
Creating an engine that takes years and in the end will only be worse than what is currently available is a task that only, and I mean only, engine programmers and related should do.
Click to expand...
One major misconception is exactly what an engine is and role in game development and how that gets mixed up with tools.

The renderer (what most people call an 'engine') can be swapped and replaced and tons of UE and Unity games have had the default renderer replaced for something that fits the needs of the game (BioShock, Borderlands, etc). You put a graphics programmer and lock them into a room, you will end up with a renderer.

How you create content for that is where the real hard work comes into play. Building the tools and pipeline to allow people to create content in an easy way is where the real investment comes into play.

A renderer is only as good as its tools. A toolset is as only as good as the user's talent. A user's talent is only as good as their vision and drive.
 
Last edited:
element said:
One major misconception is exactly what an engine is and role in game development and how that gets mixed up with tools.

The renderer (what most people call an 'engine') can be swapped and replaced and tons of UE and Unity games have had the default renderer replaced for something that fits the needs of the game (BioShock, Borderlands, etc). You put a graphics programmer and lock them into a room, you will end up with a renderer.

How you create content for that is where the real hardware comes into play. Building the tools and pipeline to allow people to create content in an easy way is where the real investment comes into play.

A renderer is only as good as its tools. A toolset is as only as good as the user's talent. A user's talent is only as good as their vision and drive.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Not entirely sure how you positioned yourself regarding the line you quoted.
That's why I'm interested in tools/engine dev. It's arguably the only proper programming field in game dev.
I'm not interested in hacking together barely functional mechanics that stop working the next time I tweak something. Most code a gameplay programmer creates a tools programmer can abstract, generalize and make available in an accessible user interface.

For my bachelor's thesis I researched available dialogue systems for UE4 and noticed that department was severely lacking. Most of them require you to fill in tables manually...
so I decided to create a plugin that integrates the dialogue created in articy draft (let's be honest, some random dialogue system plugin won't be as good as a commercial product developed by a proper company over years, so why reinvent the wheel). One issue with external programs is lack of engine-functionality integration. While the importer lets you import and use the data, combining said data with engine functions such as manipulating the camera or playing a particle effect is something you can't properly do in the external program.
My plugin takes the dialogue data, visualizes it and adds additional functionality on top, effectively eliminating that issue.
While it's not finished yet due to not finding the time, gaining the experience to create custom functionality and tools UI for various game design purposes is, imo, much more sensible than trying to establish myself as a 'game dev' by creating some mediocre games. More satisfying too because once your tools work, you are left creating content instead of fighting technical hurdles all the time.
 
Herr Edgy said:
Agreed. Not entirely sure how you positioned yourself regarding the line you quoted.
Click to expand...
It was a quote in agreement.

You can quickly find teams that value tool development and others that just take whatever will work, even if that means having to keep it together with tape.
 
If only one game could be used to show that Unity is capable of great game creation when in the hands of a truly talented team, Hollow Knight would be my choice.

The game is a masterpiece. ❤

Z1R9EFN.png

 
So, I glanced on GOG's storefront to see if there was something interesting released. I saw this game called Niffelheim, checked out how it looked, and I immediately thought that the game was made in Unity. Turned out it indeed was. How utterly generic 90+% of the games look.
 
People like to complain when they do not like something, Everyone to his taste. Yes, there are really bad games made with unity, there are also bad games made with unreal, Godot, and any other game engine.

I am learning game dev for some time now, and I am working on my projects, will they be any good? who knows, they could be shovelware, but at least won't be asset flipping.
 
I was actually planning to start building a game, and was looking into Unity. Isn't this the easiest tool to just start? Play around with ideas, built something, focus on gameplay before going all out on visuals
 
X-Fighter said:
I was actually planning to start building a game, and was looking into Unity. Isn't this the easiest tool to just start? Play around with ideas, built something, focus on gameplay before going all out on visuals
Click to expand...

I am still learning to code, it is not as difficult as some people made it be, but no so easy. I hear GoDot is easier to use, but I have yet to use it for a long period. I like Unity and due to this, I decided to learn it first. I will also learn to use Unreal later. There are programs/assets, that let you build games without coding, but I recommend learning to code first (c# or C++) because you will need to understand why/how something was done.
 
stranno said:
Do you have experience with consoles?

I'm curious about the performance of Unity on the Switch's Tegra T210 vs Playstation 4's AMD APU. I have seen a few games performing far better on Switch, like Broforce: It peforms fairly well on Switch while it has long loading times and it struggles like hell in the last levels on Playstation 4 Pro + Boost Mode.

It could be a resolution thing, i havent measured them.
Click to expand...

Broforce on PS4 released near 5 years ago. The unity version used on that build is ancient compared to the switch version.
 
I was never able to play any Unity games on my PC, they'd crash 100% of the time. Then I found out it was because I had Citrix Receiver installed for work, it apparently crashes Unity games. What a weird fucking side effect.
 
NoLootBoxDev said:
I am still learning to code, it is not as difficult as some people made it be, but no so easy. I hear GoDot is easier to use, but I have yet to use it for a long period. I like Unity and due to this, I decided to learn it first. I will also learn to use Unreal later. There are programs/assets, that let you build games without coding, but I recommend learning to code first (c# or C++) because you will need to understand why/how something was done.
Click to expand...
Luckily I can already code. I studied computer science and work as a machine learning engineer, but C# has been a while
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Unity and Epic Games announce partnership to bring Unity games into Fortnite, add Unreal support to Unity commerce tools
2
55
1K
Loomy replied
Unity AI Open Beta | Launch Trailer
Trailer Platform 
6
151
Imtjnotu replied
Ultima Underworld got a Unity port
News 
0
178
TintoConCasera replied
I wish they made a third Overlord game
11
254
MrTroubleMaker replied
I wish they made a sequel to Ghostbusters The Video Game
26
416
Stafford replied
Top Bottom