I recently posted this at the Ambrosia forums, but got no response. Thinking perhaps the Unity community might be better equipped to answer the question anyway, and being genuinely curious, I’ve come to pose my questions to you.
So, I recently downloaded Gooball 1.0.2, even though I’m on a PPC Mac. I knew it was pretty much a ground-up recreation on a new engine, so I wanted to know if it felt any different. I also wanted to see if they tweaked anything else.
I was greeted on first launch by a slideshow. Well, I figured they may have added more demanding graphical effects with the transition to the new engine, and my graphics were set on “Beautiful”. So, I went to dial the settings down. I quickly found that the highest usable setting for me (I’m on a 1ghz 12" PowerBook G4) is “Fast”, which runs quite smoothly but looks horrendous. The jump from “Fast” to “Simple” is dramatic, with the latter being a slideshow and completely unplayable. Whereas I used to play most levels on “Beautiful” and only had to dial back to “Good” for levels involving water, I now am presented with ugly graphical serfdom.
Naturally, I’ll be sticking with 1.0.1. This is not really an issue for me, because it doesn’t look like much has changed in the new version, but I am curious about whether my case is unusual. Have others had the same issues? Could something be wrong with my computer to cause such hideous performance?
I’m also curious about what has changed from the early alpha build of Unity on which Gooball was originally created to the latest version. I find it troubling that performance has decreased so dramatically from then to now.
I know the Physics engine used in Unity at the time Gooball was made was ODE. Now Unity uses PhysX. I’m not sure that should decrease performance though.
If anything I’d guess the performance should be better. I can’t imagine that the physics engine would make a noticeable difference either way in this case, since it’s fairly simple in that respect. What OS version are you running?
They have had to make changes to render texture code through the versions, and that game uses a lot of glow. Perhaps that is the issue. I can’t think of what else would have changed enough to kill performance that much… Odd.
In general Unity 1.6.2 is much faster than Unity was back when we created GooBall: we’ve put in a gazillion optimizations since then. But realtime 3D graphics are mercurial beast and perhaps something that was really clever back then isn’t so clever anymore… and since this wasn’t noticed in performance testing back when we updated GooBall to be Universal Binary, perhaps this is just affecting one particular graphics card.
In any case I’m sorry that you’re not getting optimal performance on your computer. I hope the gorgeous artwork and the neat gameplay and the pretty music makes up for it
Well, my computer is four years old. I can understand that it’s not much of a target for 3D engine development.
Nevertheless, I wonder if these issues might affect all games built with Unity? It might be worth investigating. I’d be happy to help with such an effort by being a guinea pig if you need it; just say the word (and say it soon; I’m saving up for a MacBook Pro as we speak. ;).
I just tried Tiki magic mini golf, and it’s completely unplayable. It doesn’t look like it’s doing anything graphics-wise that would slow it down so much. I mean, even when I turn the settings all the way down, it’s still a slideshow. I think this could be a serious issue and affect all games built with Unity.
That sounds really weird, but without the specifics knowing isn’t ever going to help the developers, unfortunately. You should really file a bug report or something, or tell Unity exactly what computer you are using. We’ve done a few Unity games now and honestly haven’t heard of this. The Mac support is rock solid. It must be something strange going on. I’m sure it can be helped.
I’m curious as to the videocards you guys have because if your using a 4 yr old computer… odds are your going to get horrid FPS.
I played the Avert Fate demo on my PC and I understand it was a demo but there were some odd things going on… like if you circle around a pillar in the room you start off in it has a lot of ghosting glitchyness going on. Seems like something is wrong with the way movement is being updated. Standing still looking out the door where you spawn I get 56 FPS at 1280*1040 on Fantastic.
Looking with the mouse is fine, walking is fine, but when you do both at the same time it gets glitchy… like it cant do both operations smoothly.
Interestingly it doesn’t seem to affect the framerate.
I’m sorry, I thought I had already posted the specifics, but I see I’ve only said I’m on a 1ghz 12" Powerbook. My mistake.
1Ghz PowerPC G4
1.25 GB RAM
80 GB HD, ~12 GB free
GeForce Go 5200 fx w/32 MB VRAM
OS X 10.4.10
Honestly, it doesn’t surprise me that nobody’s brought this up before either. If I didn’t have Gooball as a benchmark, I would have put it down to my computer being slow and moved on. But I was frankly astonished at Gooball’s (v1.0.1) performance on this aging beast; it really runs quite well. Comparing what I could see of Tiki magic with Gooball, it doesn’t really look to me like it’s doing anything all that intensive. I should be able to play the game, even if I have to crank the settings down a bit.
And then there is the massive drop in performance I saw with the latest version of Gooball. Same art assets, new engine, horrendous performance.
Like I said, I’m willing to be a guinea pig. I’d run benchmarks, tests, try game demos, provide logs, whatever, because I like what OTEE is doing with Unity and want to support it. But, I’m planning to buy a MacBook Pro as soon as Leopard hits so if you want that help you need to act soon.
EDIT: How does one “file a bug report”? I searched the site but couldn’t find any way for the general public, which is reasonable and not surprising.
