Unity is basically a broken game editor that comes without a core game.

News & General Discussion
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Recently bought Starcraft 2 just for the editor. The game is cool and all, but there’s nothing like altering marines to shoot a grenade launcher. Blizzard’s editor is a fucking mess, you can see how ideas cascaded over time, multiple methods of achieving the same results are tried (simultaneously in some cases).

It gets me thinking… Unity is just like that.

And why wouldn’t it be?

Unity, StarCraft 2 editor… They’re both the same sort of animal. They attempt to do everything, or at least be able to let developers do anything they want, within a finite set of commands and controls.

It sure is weird.

In Starcraft 2’s editor, I can’t see the code that drives the things I’m doing. But in Unity, I can’t either.

In Starcraft 2 built-in Blizzard TM spells cause console errors, but that happens in Unity, too.

One time I found a bug in Unity where after traversing a few dynamically generated rooms, I would just fall through the floor and only randomly. I had a hard time replicating the error, but it was enough to know I had to use the RigidBody character controller instead of the default, even though it is glitchy and slides all over.

(Takes a breath)

Unity tries to do everything, and in so doing, sucks at everything it does. Everything about every process, from importing models to editing terrain, kinda sucks.

Glitch, ugly, unreliable.

Annoying. Frustrating. Broken.

Can you make a game in Unity? Well, yeah. You can also balance a coin on it’s side or juggle chainsaws… If you work long and hard at it and can endure suffering.

And like that balanced coin can just fall right over, your game can just break. And when you go to Unity HQ to ask for help… You will be referred to the community, which is users like you.

You will be told to help yourself.

Yes, there is a lot of community support… But, I mean, so what? That’s what you need at minimum for a product. That’s not above and beyond.

I am having more fun modding SC2 than I ever had in Unity. SC2 comes with a coherent data structure, even though I can’t see the code I am able to do more of the things I am interested in doing without having to deal with the dumb shit I am not.

In a world saturated with games, nobody needs more made-from-scratch new games. New game modes are nice. New ideas are great. At this point everything is a tweak of an old idea, even if it has a fresh cost of paint on it.

Big game studios can buy Unity and just use it as their games editor, plugging in functionality as needed to get shit done. But for the average joe looking to make games… Unless you’re basically a tech-illiterate who dislikes learning or lazy, there’s no reason not to use more basic tools to get done what you’re doing.

Ultimately, if you can’t learn to code low level and figure stuff out, you’re stuck paying thousands to shitty companies who don’t care that you can’t import your animation, and aren’t interested in fixing that bug.

In a way, if you’re not willing to code, you’re just a Modder. And in the gaming world, I guess that makes you a delinquent.

Such are the ramblings of the pseudo sage.

Let those who can decipher these truths hear them and be enriched.

Everyone else can suck eggs.

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Maybe your a modder nothing wrong with that, I started off modding with startcraft1. The only problem is once you hit the constraints of what the engine could do your kind of fucked. Some of the best custom campaigns were made with the original shitty startcraft 1 editor checkout, RCX is still making custom campaigns 20 years later

Look at DOTA (made in the original warcraft 3 engine) where Eul, and Icefrog never made a cent off it compared to DOTA 2 that was made by Vavle.

http://www.campaigncreations.org/

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https://d1z4o56rleaq4j.cloudfront.net/downloads/assets/GDC2017_Sumaili_VanDerSteen_CreatingAToolsPipelineForHorizonZeroDawn.pdf?mtime=20170307154855

If you want to read about an engine that was used for Horizon you can see it in the link. It looks very useful and very much supports an artist workflow. you can already see that the next game from Hideo Kojima will be using the same engine. I do agree that is good to make a real project so that the tools that are developed are there for a practical reason.

Thats how unity started after all as an engine for a project.

It’s nice that unity can do more now, and thats why we are using it.
Now is a matter of modernising unity to be more stable and at the same time more artist friendly.
More tools for level design etc.

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Quite a ‘loaded’ thread name and topic, but ill take the bait.

How does the importing model process suck? How is Unity unreliable and ugly? These are big and blunt descriptions; and i’m curious to know exactly why. :slight_smile:

That can be said for just about any process of building something; I’ve never built a house before and have no idea where to begin if I wanted to do such a thing, but i’m sure the construction workflow would require me to work long and hard at it to achieve my goal. The majority of games that people aim to make are not ‘easy’ or ‘straightforward’ and even those people who know what they are doing have to work long and hard at it for various reasons (technology evolves, skills need to adapt, new things need to be learned, etc). Millions of people who have made and shipped millions of games with Unity all do so by working really bloody hard to achieve their goal! Partly because the Unity editor is designed to be broad and open to what you want to create, and thus not a specialist in one specific area, genre or style. I’m a big fan of this broadness as it allows people to create all kinds of incredibly varied games such as GoNNER, 80 Days, Hearthstone, Night In The Woods, Device 6, Snipper Clips, Manifold Garden, and more!

Thats not really fair on our Technical Evangelists, Field Engineers, Developer Relations Engineers, Support Technicians etc who work around the clock to help people with their projects! Although, admittedly, about half the questions I get asked I do loop back to the community as the issue is usually already solved and shared by a fellow Unity user/developer. :slight_smile:

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i think this kind of criticism is kind of unfair

unity isnt really focused on a special kind of game, so it needs to offer tools that can be used for all kind of games or applications

if you want to create mods, just do it
no one is stopping you, so i don’t really understand your ranting

i mean, there are engines, like game maker, where you can create your game with minimal effort
unity decided to create a platform where you CAN create every game you want to create, but in exchange for that freedom you need to get your hands dirty
if you don’t want to fiddle with all the complex stuff, go ahead, do mods or maps for starcraft or whatever your heart desires
but i don’t really see the problem with unity at this point

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Life is hell, and then you die. If you don’t want to work long and hard you should probably try using a more simple development tool for more simple games, or develop your patience… cause all things considered, I’ve fiddled with a few other engines aswell and in my opinion Unity is the most user-friendly I’ve encountered this far.

(Also, keep in mind that Unity is first and foremost an engine, not a point and click editor.)

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Considering one can do just about anything they want with the unity engine I would have to say the original poster doesn’t know JS what he’s talking about.

Back in the olden days direct x5 I picked up a book on how to make a 3d game. I was already a decent programmer. But trying to manager all the 3d and gui handles and calls was overwhelming for me as a single developer and you had to master all that before even beginning to make the game. Unity handles all the tedious overhead and let’s you jump right into making whatever game you want. So nah, unity rocks, just try making a 3d game from scratch by yourself.

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Unity is a blank canvas that you can paint any picture you want. A built-in game editor is paint-by-numbers. Don’t blame Unity if you can’t paint.

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I’m sorry, I have to ask.

Did you forget to put the 420 in your username, or are frogs the new 420?

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There are literally many thousands of games made in unity. Many fantastic games. It is also by far the most popular choice for game development. It has lead many people to make games and become developers who wouldn’t have but for unity.

While I would never say it is perfect or doesn’t have room to improve, there is very clear empirical evidence that it isn’t broken and very useable for all levels of skill. Since that is the undisputed reality, personal struggles are mostly just that personal. Whether is just not giving it enough time, or having unrealistic expectations of either the tool or yourself, those are things that need to change to improve.

Or put another way, other developers aren’t limited by the same challenges you are, what do you need to change about your approach to get better results?

My perspective on achieving things was instilled in me very young by my father. He basically said if other people can do something, so can you. It applies even more so to game development. Today, we all pretty much have access to, and use the same tools. Large and small teams use unity, blender, etc. some personal (and even ue4) it’s all the same tool set. The only difference is the developer. The tools are clearly good enough. If you take that perspective on things, it makes your path clear.

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Few problems here.
First, nothing “just breaks”. You wrote the code, you created something that breaks. You need to find out what you did that is breaking. There may be a unity bug, but if you don’t what is breaking, it’s a pretty safe bet that isn’t the case. You need to learn your tools.

Second, and this one is a big annoyance for me, people often say/feel that unity is directing them to the community tools as a way of passing them off. This is very much the opposite. Unity built, manages and maintains a huge set of community tools and resources as a solution. Forums, blogs , wiki, answers, collaborate and learning all for capturing a wide range of knowledge and shared experiences to cover as much ground as possible. It is the best way to solve problems, not the second choice. You will find most successful developers rely on these community tools as the first and best place to find knowledge, and that is by design. On more than one occasion, Unity staff has provided assistance to me by pointing to a post in the forums or answers. It is a power collection of knowledge, and should always be your first stop.

And lastly:

That is almost never the case. Users here are have wildly diverse sets of knowledge and skills. You will be able to engage with them and even better than simply “finding a solution”, you may learn a better approach in the first place. There are very advanced developers here, but more importantly, because of the diversity of creating games, it is just a possible to find a solution from a developer that may be less advanced that you in general, but may have more knowledge in an area that you haven’t spent much time in.

It is very similar to the how unity created a broad editor tool set. Rather than handle every little thing that users may want that others don’t, they put the effort into making the tool extendable. Support is the same, they created a very strong and robust community tools and knowledge base that is much deeper and more effective that hiring a ton of call center support staff.

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I took the time to read all their talks from gdc a few days ago, really enlightening stuff, a lot over the top of my head but many fascinating tidbits. What kinda gets me is the realization that around the time Unity posted a topic for overhauling the terrain tool, guerilla rebuilt their tools and terrain pipeline amongst other things, while releasing several AAA games, and unity has well uh done nothing area?
I partially don’t understand the point of “Adam” if the tools built for it don’t end up filtering down into unity in an official capacity. Sure you can go toss in those experimental volumetric lights into a project now, but in a years time with unity 2017 will we be looking back thinking, “Boy, remember when that volumetric light package worked with unity? Yeah those were good times”.

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I’ve filed bug reports and I’ve been pretty impressed with the response time. Typically Unity has eyeballs on my bug report and some kind of response in my inbox in a matter of days. Sometimes there have been several exchanges discussing how to reproduce it or asking for more details. This is impressive from the makers of a product on which I’ve spent exactly zero dollars.

I’ve never been referred back to the users.

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Stop complaining, Buckle down and get shit done! Figure it out - Game dev is tough and not for everyone.

Just wrong. I’m not a coder/programmer and never will be, and although my workflow might be unconventional compared to traditional devs who do code, I’m not letting this limitation stop me from developing my own original concepts.
Coding isn’t a requirement to develop games -

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People are different regardless of what the engines or moddable games offer. Sometimes it works for some people and not for others, all based on the same tools. Some people like Unity some don’t. Some like modding some don’t. And usually people will pull up any justifications they can think of to explain why what they choose to prefer is ‘actually better’ or whatever. It’s personal preference. People are subjective. Unity is good for many things, but not all things. You can’t please everyone all the time.

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And that, in a nutshell, is the type of attitude that gets results.

Providing feedback to unity is always a good and valuable thing, but if you feel you are limited or prevented from achieving your goals because of a particular tool you chose, your attitude is going to be your downfall. complaining or blaming the tool isn’t a solution. Its all about attitude. The choice to make games is yours, the tools you use are your choice, the amount of effort you invest in learning is your choice, as is the method you use. All your choices. Ultimately you can choose to build your game, or choose to find reasons to not.

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So Unity does not come with enough game frameworks/working complex moddable examples and the tools to mod them?

If it’s Unity’s lack of a great RTS example you could try my Simple RTS as a simple starting point?

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So here’s the thing.

I want to go build big muscles, so I can impress ladies at the beach. So I buy the Bulkomatic 3000 and when it arrives… I find it’s nothing more than a workout machine. I don’t get any amazing results. So I contact the makers and say, “Hey, this thing isn’t great. Maybe even bad.”

They respond by saying, “Building muscle takes hard work.”

My response to the bulk-o-matic people is the same as my response to you: I can work long and hard without your product, the point was to get better results faster.

For you to tell me I still need to do everything I was going to do before, but with your expensive tools…

For me, that doesn’t make sense.

The only people these tools are made for is people who wouldn’t/couldn’t do it on their own without them, and they will likely fail even with those tools for the same reasons they would fail without them.

the most valuable thing I have gotten from Unity was the lie that if I just learned one more thing… I could make it work. I learned enough to know that I never needed Unity.

I just needed a brain and patience.

As far as someone saying… “write your own engine”… Like its a threat.

I mean . . . 30 years ago that’s all there was, and nobody was whining. Just making cool stuff happily, happy that it was possible.

Now people complain that they have to write even one line of code . . .

Unity is great for companies who don’t want to build their own editor, but it doesn’t do shit for you in terms of making your own game.

I know exactly what most of the people responding here are capable of, in terms of game complexity, etc.

If you make anything more than a mobile casual game, you still have to come up with solutions for data and objects, so the majority of you have no idea what I’m talking about, Unity is just an editor and an engine, too generalized to save you time in developing your own game. Once you’ve sunk countless hours into building your games basic structure and framework, then yeah… Unity is great.

Unless you want nested prefabs.

And Ill leave it at that…

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Have you used Unreal? What about GameMaker? And ever written a game from scratch? Using unity IS DEFINITELY easier than making the same product without it. Unreal is comparable in my opinion (as far as difficulty goes, assuming you know c++ anyway) but the fact is, unity is making our lives easier. Plain and simple.

So… I disagree with your whole point on this thread.

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Spoken like a true, lazy gamer turned wanna be amateur thats not willing to put in the work to reach the lowest level of beginner developer. Maybe this isn’t the case and you just sound like that to get attention. Your post reads like this:

“I’m disappointed using professional tools requires me to learn them before I can use them effectively. Since I’m unwilling to put in the time to learn how to use a robust tool properly, I will simply throw it under the bus since I don’t understand it and am too lazy to hone my skills with this software and become valuable to the industry and myself”.

Unity is a hell of a lot more than a shitty StarCraft Editor, your comparison tells us not to take you seriously until you understand a little better how this industry and the tools that drive it work.

Watch any special on making games, read any paper, there is a common theme - making games takes a lot of time and effort. There really isn’t a fast/effortless way.

Before you throw it under the bus you can at least do the research on the awesome products fueled by Unity. You talk about how all these projects will fail if the people couldn’t do it without Unity. You’re so far off base its almost like you came from the negative zone with an opinion from someone who hasn’t been on earth watching game development for the last 6 years lol. Go take a look at the made with Unity page or do some research online. Look at the Forest - massive success there for 2 fellas using Unity.

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