I am new to unity3d and have been wondering about what a resourceful and equipped team can accomplish with unity3d pro version.So, I have following questions about the capabilities of unity3d:
a) Unity 3d is a portable set of game engine and dev. tools.Does this portability take away some degree of performance and “what can be done” capabilities?If so, is the sacrifice significant in today’s game industry and on modern hardware and consoles?
b) Comparing Unreal with Unity, does unreal provide significantly more performance benefits compared with unity?And which of the two engines have been used to build better and more successful games?
c) Can Unity 3d be used to build games as good as modern high performance graphics and rich gameplay games(like say tomb raider 2013,or Hitman:Absolution)?If so, why don’t large and successful studios with equipped and skilled staff do so?Is it because of some kind of industry trend for developing one’s own game engine(and only taking part of it from previously developed physics ,rendering and collision detection engines)?If so, is the trend changing?(Isn’t it profitable to reduce number of game engine programmers and use unity instead?)
d) If this is not the right place to discuss these questions(or even if this is),which (else) forums should i go to,so as to get more opinions?
a) Everything in game development is a balance and trade offs on many levels. So, yes and no. Skill and a great game will mitgate perceived limitations. A great game can be built and successful using much more limiting tools than Unity, and a crappy game can built using every cutting edge piece of tech available.
b) try both UDK and Unity (Unreal != UDK), see which works better for your needs.
c) Unity is designed to provide a wide range of tools with easy access to allow teams/individuals with limited resources to achieve their goals of building a high quality game within their means. (and multi-platform support) It isn’t a AAA engine because it isn’t designed that way. AAA games have different requirements and needs, and have the ability to build an engine to meet their specific needs. Additionally, AAA games often need to break new ground and create new tech to achieve their goals. A typical AAA “engine” is not like Unity, they are designed to fit different needs. GTA5/Battlefront/whatever can’t be built in Unity without so much modification that is more cost effective and practical to use a custom internal engine.
d) this is the right place, but it has been discussed to death. I would search for past threads and read them through. The interwebs are full of opinions on this subject. But you will find no “answers”. Ultimately, it comes down to your needs and abilities.
Short answer is yes. You can make great games with Unity, even with AAA quality. But, usually AAA quality means highest budget.
To achieve this AAA quality you need a team of skilled people that really know what they are doing, skilled 3D artists and skilled developers.
Applying correct lightning, shaders and effects can lead a game from poor to awesome, most indie games fails on this leaving an overall quality below average.
Hire the right people and you can make any AAA game despite the engine used.
Main problem is most people comes here expecting one-click to make a MMORPG or one-click to make AAA game. These people will never do nothing, no pain no gain.
The big-budget engines (CryEngine and UDK) can go a tad further in cutting edge graphics stuff (global illumination, sub-surface scattering and such, I believe) but generally, a skilled artist has a bigger effect on the end result than using crazily advanced rendering techniques - imho.
I can’t say for sure what the reasons are that Unity isn’t all over the AAA playing field yet, but I can imagine several:
CryEngine and Unreal have made a name for themselves. So there’s a bit of developer ideology involved and using the big names tells gaming review sites and pro gamers that you’re serious.
Justify to your publisher / accounting department switching to a $1500 per seat engine after you’ve paid a hundred times that in licensing fees and training courses to form a team of CryEngine or Unreal experts. Questions will be asked.
Believing you need those theoretical cutting edge graphics - then targeting 8 year old gaming consoles. Like paying a $200 premium on your CPU to get the 0.3 GHz faster model, then running Word on it…
“Everyone else uses it”
But Unity is popping up more and more often. For example Space Hulk, Call of Duty: Strike Team, Deus Ex: The Fall, Garriot’s “Shroud of the Avatar”, Endless Space, Dragons of Elanthia.
AAA engines has these big budget in-house developed games which show off capabilities of their tech. Unity doesn’t really have anything like that. And whenever there are popular Unity games like Blizzard’s Hearthstone those games often sort of hide their Unity origins (perhaps a more impressive Unity splash screen for the pro version would help?)
We don’t really know Unity’s real potential. KSP is kinda pushing Unity to it’s breaking point but I don’t know if that really counts. It would be really cool to see what an eight (or nine!) figure budget Unity game with over hundred industry veterals working on it would be like.
But luckily you don’t need high fidelity to make a great game.
a) Well,unity does not specialize in anything,so you can create any type of game,like UE4
b) Unreal has produced much better games,no question (Outlast,Batman:Arkham city and origins,Bioshock franchise,borderlands,dishonored…)
Unreal WILL give you better graphics,i don’t know about performance.
c) Unity is currently not able to create games that match with Unreal AAA titles,sorry
UDK != Unreal. The AAA games used the Unreal 3 Engine which is very expensive, not UDK, which is cheaper but much more limited. The new UE4 is closer to bringing the indie version of their engine in line with the pro version, but it’s apparently still missing a lot of middleware (like Enlighten) which will only be available to AAA’s for millions of dollars.
UE4 uses blueprint and c++. So that will be something you will have to look into.
Out of the box UE4 demos looks AAA IMO. Also models imported and setup look terrific with little additional effort as well.
Actually, I’d disagree with the “UE” in B, unless you mean Unreal Engine 3. There are a lot more succesful Unity games than UDK games. There aren’t any UE4 games at all yet.
I guess I kind of assumed he wasnt referring to UDK, since theres only a handful of good released games. In hindsight that doesn’t really seem like a fair comparison considering price and accessibility, so its b) No. Unity.
If you needed a finished game to decide if you can or can’t do something then nothing would ever get done. You can look at the games that have been made with Unity historically and come to the conclusion that its quite possible. I think your question is more along the lines of “has a AAA company used Unity in one of their huge IP’s?”.
Sorry, no. I have seen so many “cool” video demos but nothing actually finished that I don’t care or get excited anymore. Either its released or it didn’t work. Until someone does that we don’t know.
No because the limitations of the engine are too large, you ideally want access to source code so you can upgrade the version of OpenGL. Secondly you’d want to re-create the editor to be 64-bit, next you’d want to improve the lighting system and hook in something like Enlighten. Next you’d want some cinematic tools like matinee in there, next you’d have to re-do all the shaders. For your artists you’d want something like Blueprint in it…
What’ would be the point? If you’re a AAA developer instead of spending $1500.00 on 50+ engineers that will be using it and have to pay upgrade costs. Why not just build one better yourself, focused on what you want it to do?
Now Unity 5, that’s a whole different ball game and I’m quietly optimistic that it could actually be worth using in the AA or AAA sector.
