What can Unity do?

News & General Discussion
1

Hi, i want to ask this question to understand how powerful unity is and see what you can do with it, i just want to know if you can compare the power that’s in Unity to other game engines.

Can you replicate an existing game with unity if you wanted to or something simmilar?
Games
Entropia Universe (If you really wanted to could you create a clone of entropia universe or something simmilar?)
(Unity may not be able to support alot of physics and objects which is why i’m asking this)
(I don’t mean an exact clone as in graphics, i mean the stuff that’s in the game excluding all of the trees and leaf as it maybe difficult to render)

Fallout 3 (I believe the engine they used in that game is a tough cookie, the mass physics, explosions and many NPCs on screen at once, but could you create a clone of this aswell?)

Grand Theft Auto 4 (The RAGE engine really showed it’s true colours with GTA 4 and RDR, could you create a clone of this to excluding the use of Euphoria)
The reason for adding this is because of the large amount of physics and the good graphics)

World of Warcraft (The graphics are kind of outdated but because of the style the game is in you would think different, but what made me add this was the amount of objects in the game onscreen and the amount of players and npcs or enemies)

Thanks for reading, i just want to know or have an idea of how powerful unity can be and see if i can really create the game of my dreams.

2

Lol. Fallout3 doens’t have a great engine. It doesn’t have mass physics. explosions are very simple. The game is made to have as few NPCs as possible on screen. It isn’t pretty, it doesn’t run well, modding it is a pain. Thankfully bethesda is devoloping a new engine - hopefully it’s better than gamebryo…

Grand Theft Auto 4 (The RAGE engine really showed it’s true colours with GTA 4 and RDR, could you create a clone of this to excluding the use of Euphoria)
Grand theft auto 4 may be possible, but there is a reason why it cost so much to develope. Lots of very special technologies and AI. Also I don’t remember it having much physics.

Aside from performance memory there isn’t anything unity can’t do. However game engines dedicated to a game tend to run better, unity will likely suite your needs quite well.

In the future try to google your questions. This has been answered several times. I know it isn’t nice to hear “unity can do anything” but it’s the bare truth.

3

Among the games you mentioned, Fallout 3 is the only one I’m familiar with, and yes, I do believe Unity can do a first person/third person shooter like that (check out the Bootcamp demo).

The quest system, skills and perks system, inventory system, even the VATS system, can all be replicated in Unity to a certain extent, though you have to do coding to do that.

Having a big massive world without loading times though, I think is possible by chopping up the massive world into chunks and using LoadLevelAdditive() to load only the chunks that the player can see, and unloading the ones that can’t be seen anymore. Though I can’t imagine how a 3d artist would go about building a massive world like that as it would need an unrealistically expensive beefy PC.

I do have to say though, the inventory GUI is a pain to use in that game.

I think its nice to have questions like these as I have yet to see a Unity game with AAA quality like Fallout 3 (please do correct me if I’m wrong).

4

I don’t understand what you people refer to as “mass physics” but saying “explosions are simple” or “it isn’t pretty” are subjective opinions so let’s not get there (what’s pretty/simple for you may not be pretty/simple for me). Let’s talk about the technical capabilities of the game and whether Unity can replicate that.

One thing I didn’t like about the gamebryo engine was jumping didn’t feel realistic compared to jumping in Source engine fps games or fps games using id’s engine. In gamebryo it was like you’re on the moon or something.

That’s a valid point, I don’t understand why they can’t put more characters in the towns, even if they don’t serve any more purpose than eyecandy. There are mods in Oblivion to put more NPCs in that game so it proves the engine can handle it.

I don’t know if, say, a PS3 Unity game can handle a large amount of characters on screen the same way Assassin’s Creed does.

5

Remember, how good the art of the game is largely depends on the skill of the 3d artist, not the engine.

Special effects, lighting, and shadows though, are in the domain of the engine, and I do believe Unity can deliver on that adequately.

6

I couldnt put it better myself! The main things that make a game so great is models, effects, shaders, physics, and gameplay.

Models - All depends on what your using, either free software such as blender, or 4 thousand dollar software such as maya, unity has nothing to do with it, it can export it all.

Effects - Unity has an intense particle system and i’ve never really seen anything like it, not comparing unreal or cryengine particles, these are one of the best (from a side of a million dollars)

Physics - Again, unity has one of the best physics ive ever seen.

Gameplay - Unity isnt incharge of gameplay, the programmer is, so if you know good java / c# / boo, then your all set.

Shaders - Unity has insane shaders built in, and able to program your own, so thats set and done.

Conclusion - Unity is in charge of putting everything together, adding physics, shaders, compiling, and doing effects like water, fire, and weather. Its up to the developer to see whether they can invest time and money in 3d modeling software from autodesk (because its the very best), and ofcoarse to get unity pro because thats where all the image effects and advanced water and shaders are at, not to mention occlusion culling and beast lightmapping.

7

By “it isn’t pretty” I meant more along the lines of the very noticeable graphics quality. Poor shading. Poor vision distance. Very poor textures. Poor animation. And it also runs poorly. For what it’s trying to do there are better engines out there. But it’s my opinion so I’ll keep quite about it after this.

8

Hmmm, yes, I understand. I’ve never played an Xbox 360 or PS3 game though, so my standard expectations of quality may be lower than yours. I found Fallout 3 to be pretty acceptable with regards to overall look and feel (shading, vision distance, textures, animation), and even at medium graphics settings (my pc is not very powerful). I also get an average of 30 fps so I also have no problem with that.

9

Yeah, it thought fallout had great graphic, if anything Prototype doesn’t look very pretty, the textures are quite poor, overall the game is very good and awesomely fun.

PS:I agree windexglow on the poor animations in fallout 3.

10

Unity is quite capable for the price you pay no doubt about that. It is very easy to work with and getting productive in which is a huge advantage, especially if you are one person or a smaller team. With that it isn’t as flexible and powerful as some of the higher end engines. The tool set is quite small which requires alot of effort and know how if you want to do anything that isn’t the way Unity was “made for”. But users are building tools that Unity doesn’t provide and the community is very invested so it gets better all time. But the phrase “Unity can do anything” is kinda like saying “You can be president”. You can be but there are lots of people with a bigger head start.

But if you are a small indie developer I don’t know anything that is better suited for you than Unity at the moment. If you get to a point where you have the possibilities to create anything like the games you mentioned (time, money and skill) you would probably choose another engine though.

If you want streamed 3D though you might choose Unity even if you are a larger team (Like tiger Woods online by EA) cause thats where unity has one of its biggest USP. Unity isn’t about raw power and spectacular graphics, it looses out against other engines in that area no doubt about it. Unity is about broadening the possibilities of producing 3D games beyond the AAA industry (which is a horrible industry in many ways) and thats where the greatness of Unity lies.

11

Might I add, that again, was because of the skill of the 3d artist, not the engine they used.

But with technical capabilities regarding animations, Unity has some good features: it can fade between two or more animations, so for example, the character can play a run animation, then slowly transition to a walk animation.

If you’re looking for some good quality ready-made animations there are free ones at http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Free_Animations and for paid ones I recommend http://www.mixamo.com/

Also, you might want to check out Interstellar Marines, its a browser sci-fi fps game made in Unity, their quality of graphics are quite good.

I’m going to have to disagree with this one.

Raw power: Unity’s internals are coded in C++ so they’re fast. You code your game logic in scripts, but the low-level stuff like rendering, occlusion, and physics were coded in C++. The only problem is Unity’s PhysX does not utilize hardware acceleration, unlike other physics libraries (Bullet), then again, other physics libraries likewise don’t use hardware acceleration (Havok).

Spectacular Graphics: Unity can make use of normal maps, realtime/baked shadows, realtime/baked ambient occlusion, sun shafts, bloom, color correction, lens flares, depth of field, anisotropic filtering, all that jazz (Some guy even made parallax mapping for the terrain). The engine is capable, the burden is now on the 3d artist’s skill to prove Unity can show spectacular graphics.

I’m pretty sure if only UT invested in hiring a really good 3d artist they can make a good tech demo the likes of which you can see in Unreal engine games. But for now, just check out the Bootcamp demo and Interstellar Marines. Both are made in Unity.

12

Just because Unity is written in C++ doesn’t mean it’s just as fast or faster than another specialized game engine that’s also written in C++. Unity’s main focus is on getting as many people making games and as many people playing Unity games as possible. They have a broad focus on end-users, which is why they still make sure Unity content can be played on garbage like the GMA 950 and don’t spend a lot of time chasing the bleeding-edge graphics dragon. Check to see what version of DirectX Unity supports.

13

Anything.

14

I think in terms of looks, it’s 50% dependent on the artists you have, 30% go to the programmer and 20% go to the engine.

There are some shortcomings using Unity, but all in all, it’s really capable and should be considered THE engine to use for smaller teams.

15

I see. The only other game engine I extensively used was an old version of Torque so I can’t say if Unity is faster or slower than other game engines out there right now. I’m curious, do you have hard numbers to prove that Unity is indeed slower than other engines?

You mean to say ease-of-use for developers and broad appeal for end-users. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a decently fast engine at the same time.

Their response was they’ll provide DirectX 10/DirectX 11 specific features someday, when it becomes the norm. But the special effects features Unity gives out right now is, I’d say, enough to make a good AAA quality game.

16

You have to understand what Unity is here.

Unity is not C++, it’s no where near that fast and puts a lot of GUI in your way.

A lot of people here would love to belive they can create the same things that you can with pure C++ but you can’t.

Unity only using one core, really kills it in power.

That being said, what Unity IS

Very powerful, for a game creator like this it’s very strong, I’ve known about unity for quiet a long time, but only just downloaded it, the reason? I excepted it to be much less powerful than it is.

Unity has a very, very fast development time, you can make things in days in Unity that would take months in C++ and say Open GL.

Unity is also a lot of fun to learn, you can get visual results almost instantly.

–

Before coming to Unity I spent months learning C++ and Open GL/Direct X.

I can do more in Unity after 1 day, then months of learning C++.

It’s FUN as well, it’s not mass mathematics and low level concepts, it’s just fun!

If your asking this question actually wanting to make an awesome game, you can come to Unity and make that awesome game with slightly worse graphics in a few months, or go and learn C++, advanced calculus, masses of low level programming concepts and you’ll more than likely give up.

17

Of course its not. Unity is a game engine. C++ is a programming language.

Unity is coded in C++ though.

18

You can do almost anything you want in unity3D, but I wouldn’t attempt making making such big games as the ones you mentioned! It’s a lot of work for mere mortals!
When I started doing silly games with click’n’play i always wanted to move on to more ‘powerful’ game engines… I thought one day I’d move on to C++ and be hardcore, eventually I learned C++ basics and started learning the directx API…(not really, I failed and gave up because I always fell back to blitz3D) but I realized one day I don’t really want to be a hardcore C++ programmer, when I can do what I want with unity3D, so yeah, all I want is something pretty much like unity3D, that optimizes my work, so the trade off is I don’t have the C++ programming skills, but I get to make games 10 times faster! I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I want to focus my energy on the art!

19

Any game creator, or program is pretty much coded in C++, that has no basis on Unity’s own performance at all.

20

Hey Indiedude360 - you are one of the most inquisitive new comers I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s fantastic! The short answer to your question is yes, Unity has few inherent limitations that you cannot over come to create games like the ones you listed. As a tool and engine Unity has some advantages over the tools and engines used in those games (like the breath of platform support for example).

As many have (in previous forum posts), have in this thread, and will (no doubt) point out, at the end of the day the engine isn’t going to make or break your project. My rules of thumb when I look at other’s games come down to:

  1. if it looks good, they had some good artists
  2. if the animations are good, they had good animators (and usually artists :slight_smile: )
  3. if the gameplay is good (flows well, “feels right”, matches the story, levels are well planned, etc…) then they had good game designers
  4. for nearly everything else… if it worked at all, then large parts of many, many coders lives were sacrificed (may their alimony be short, their royality payments be undivided, and may they rest in peace … until the next project (usually starting tomorrow :wink: ). Your sacrifice is appreciated).

Cheers,

Galen

Oh, ps, on the subject of C++… if you wanted it to run fast you’d use assembler, if you want it to run a little slower you’d use C, by the time you’re up to C++ … well performance really wasn’t the focus anyway… hehe