Unity announce their new sample game…
Based on the trailer, I don’t know if it will adressed any concern people have with unity so far. Very unlike Unreal demo, it’s mostly just a visual skin on old gameplay trope. Don’t seem to bring any benefit.
Nioce.
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A decently sized team, with an appropriate scope and goals with the end product delivered this year. And it looks rather good. I’m looking forward to diving into the project.
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My favorite part is how when they show the game in the editor’s scene view at the end, it’s performing like ass.
Props for honest marketing.
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- It looks a lot more graphically pleasing, like an actual game would, and runs on URP. I’d like to glean in on some best URP practices.
- The old 3rd person character controller was incredibly basic and didn’t feel good. This new one seems rather competent and decently featured.
- This new project uses all the latest bells and whistles - Input System, Shadergraph, etc. Basically packs the last 4 years of progress into this. Surely it’s not the same as a demo from 2018?
- Description claims the demo uses best C# practices in Unity for a scalable video game architecture. I’d like to learn from it.
- Looks like there’s a conscious effort to support and even further develop this project long term, unlike what has happened with previous Unity demo projects.
- There’s also a conscious effort in using their default engine tooling to identify main pain points, which are then communicated back to the relevant teams. Exactly what people asked for in the recently popular and controversial thread asking Unity to make a game. This is exactly what the community asked and Unity are delivering.
- They are publishing the demo to Steam so they can experience the full development cycle from concept stage to a full launch.
There’s plenty to look forward to, and this project is way larger in scope than any previous demo so far, which is great. Unity are actually using their own tools in a real-world scenario. Love to see it.
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Their old samples were barely designed to be built into standalone players. They are actually publishing this on Steam, for free, and will experience things Unity employees are likely to never have had to do while working there, including:
- Implement achievements.
- Write a minimal save system that can work with cloud sync (PlayerPrefs doesn’t).
- Troubleshoot issues borne from a wide range of player’s PC setups.
- Having to publish updates (even if Steam is one of easiest platforms in that regard).
I hope they plan to publish this on consoles as well, there are several pain points there that everyone has to make their own workarounds to but Unity never bothered to address.
The benefit this bring is having people inside Unity put their tech to test holistically.
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My guess:
There is only one stage, the island.
Made that way so there is no need for streaming of assets.
They might have used addressables, but more as an example than real need, since there is no unloading non visible objects.
No bright to dark passages.
So no underground or basements.
Probably no entering buildings.
Probably no lightmap.
Obviously no save system.
You will be master of optimization in no time.
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is it supposed to be encouraging that unity are still investigating what it’s like to make a real game? well it would be if they did that by starting an actual separate studio or three that made actual games with their engine.
i think what this should have been, is a project basis for 1st party multiplayer & large scale high fidelity levels. Happy with URP as a choice but it needed to also be a demonstration that their big talk about DOTS MP and DOTS for large, detailed worlds is panning out. instead it’s a bunch of Creators exploring what it is to make games.
not encouraging is it?
it is not impressive to me that they hired more artists or better artists for a typical video game level scene and a character controller. i am the artist. give me the things i need to not have to make all the technology from scratch to do things with my art. or have to buy crap assets that half the time dont work.
honestly reading the blogpost left me feeling like the team’s job was to learn multi-scene themselves, and learn this, and learn that, and basically for once road test it themselves… as opposed to give me something of any real value in and of this project itself. it’s really backward facing not forward facing, in this way.
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well there’s a character controller! and a water shader! well that’s game dev guys, what your customers do with it. what we want from you is the engine bit, and the engine bit we’ve been waiting on for a few years now is what i expected this artsy environment to be sitting on.
the fact you’re telling me about multi-scene like its something new is just bad breath in my face guys
THIS IS SICK Unity finally will get usable character controller.
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q_q people here will never be happy, will they?
Think I’ll not look much more into the general subforum. A lot is just nagging around…
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Well, they at least spent a couple million dollars on this, so people who cannot be satisfied can write on the forum that they aren’t satisfied. I really don’t know what did they expect.
I mean some unity guy TOLD in another bitching thread that the sample would answer question raised in that thread, he raised expectation too high, and we bit the bait.
I mean the presentation can still overturn thing, but I learned, I won’t raise my hope anymore. I mean they just put some good asset in unity, good job, that’s entry level tutorial, it wasn’t even livestreamed so we don’t know if pro builder exploded on them like that guy who tried to do a city with half the shader fidelity, which is the problem, we know unity can look good artistically, the problem is predictability, productivity and flexibility, ie removing pain point. So far the demo teaser isn’t primed in showing that. How far the engine bend to our will is more important than doing predictable things with predictable looks.
As someone who uses Unity since a long time, I’d say: Finally. This seems to go into the right direction by listening to those of us who were quite vocal about Unity using their own product.
If it really uses the “basic” Unity features and does not include access to source code, it might really push the usability of the engine. Looking forward how far they take this.
NB: I don’t know what people expected from Unity when they said they want Unity to produce a game for themselves. It doesn’t really matter if this is through a separate company. It doesn’t really matter if they are working on a game type which they already have tackled in the past. It’s about pushing the engine and validating the tools at hand.
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Currently yes, but we are discussing expansion.
We are evaluating Addressables. 
There are some dark indoor areas! But most is outdoors.
There is both of these.
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Do you have an actual source that this cost a couple of million dollars? 
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There is an internal test build to Switch. It just needs a LOT more optimization.
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There is way more in the project than the trailer shows: save and load system, quest system, embedded cutscene system, dialogue, NPCs, enemies with AI, etc. and more other typical things planned!
For this project we wanted to use current public versions of Unity, existing tools and features and only public APIs. No alpha/beta/preview/experimental features. No source code modifications. Saw countless feedback that Unity should ‘use their current tools and give feedback on them’ so that’s what we are doing.
However we will have potential opportunity to evaluate new/future technologies like DOTS in context of Gigaya in the future and get feedback on upgrade woes, performance numbers (better or worse), experiences, etc. IE: If we moved from PhysX to DOTS Physics what broke? What is better? Why is it better? How is it worse? etc then gives that feedback internally directly to R&D. If we started fresh with something like DOTS then it misses out that important feedback loop of taking a project forward through Unity releases and new systems.
I apologies if the project didn’t align with your needs and expectations.
Honestly and personally, I wanted us to make a racing game like F Zero or Wipeout but then we would get the inevitable ‘but what about XYZ? Im not making a racing game!’ 
Its impossible to make a project that fits every scenario! The one we settled on atleast fits a fair amount of typical situations.
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