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TL;DR Many people is making money doing Unity games, so I ignore it exists - for $1500 - and I go the hipster way and create my own hundreds of memory corruptio

by ivanca 11y ago

TL;DR Many people is making money doing Unity games, so I ignore it exists - for $1500 - and I go the hipster way and create my own hundreds of memory corruption bugs myself.

scrollaway 11y ago
If you're going to write a TL;DR for others, you should at least read the article yourself, don't you think?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ivanca 11y ago
  I did, it is so abstract to pretend you can do better that there is no way to discern. He didn't even mention "unity" in his post, thats just ridiculous in 2016, but yeah, keep down voting, your implementation of 2d graphics, sound, collision, physics, plugins, marketing, sprites, menus is gonna be so much better than hundreds of engineers at unity withing 10 years straight.
  - vardump 11y ago
    Unity games I've tried seem to stutter often. Any idea why? GC cycles?
    - seanwilson 11y ago
      With C and C++, you have to be careful you release resources yourself to avoid leaks. With GC languages (besides memory leaks from referencing objects you no longer care about) you have to be careful that you preallocate upfront a good portion of the objects you need and reuse them to avoid GC stutters.
    - je42 11y ago
      GC cycles.
  - ketzu 11y ago
    Unity is not a language. They do not discuss frameworks/gameengines. Fürther unity is basically C# and JavaScript, languages mentioned by the article.
    - ivanca 11y ago
      No. First of all Unity doesn't use JavaScript, it is a proprietary language called UnityScript that barely resembles JavaScript. Second, Im talking about the hundreds of tested possible compossibilities of the game you envisioned, regardless if you make it in ensambler or JavaScript. C# is just the language they choosed for their API (unity is written in c++ fwiw)
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    Try and implement http://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/ http://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/ with Unity. My guess is, the author would have taken more time learning Unity than implementing this game.
    - krapp 11y ago
      For that to be a valid comparison, you would have to compare the learning curve for Unity to the amount of time it took him to learn how to implement the original.
      - loup-vaillant 11y ago
        Yeah, this was a wild guess. I stand by my wild guess, though.
    - Jach 11y ago
      I'm looking forward to playing that next time I boot into Windows (couldn't get it to even create a window on my Linux machine after satisfying its dynamic dependencies (really old libpng for one), or even the Windows exe via Wine -- one of the perils of custom engine development) but I know Antichamber (http://www.antichamber-game.com/ http://www.antichamber-game.com/), which has the similar concept of a non-Euclidean world, was built in Unreal. Unreal is pretty different from Unity, and I know neither of them well, but I think it shouldn't be all that difficult once you know Unity. And a lot of what I briefly looked at on Youtube for Knossu looks like shader heavy lifting, rather independent of the core engine.
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        You'd be surprised. There's a GDC talk about Antichamber from a couple years ago (I really recommend watching it) which explains the amount of time that was invested into the game. Antichamber was a 7 year long hack on Unreal Engine, it's really not a drop-in game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlcB-JxkFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlcB-JxkFw
      - loup-vaillant 11y ago
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    You have an attitude problem. First of all I've worked with Unity myself and I know how nice it is. It's not the end-all-be-all of game development and it's not suitable for all genres. Second, like someone else said, this is about a language - not a framework. Unity locks you into C#. Third, the guy says himself 'I absolutely DO NOT mean to say "hey, you should use C too".'. He's not forcing you to write games in C, he's enjoying writing games in C and explaining why. If you want to be a good developer, especially a good game developer, consider listening to people who have opinions and experiences different to yours and are willing to explain them. Evaluate their argument. Come up with a rebuttal, share your own experience, by all means - but don't be rude, aggressive, pompous, or a number of other things you are being right now. This is why the games industry has a NIH problem. Not because people want to develop in C, but because every single dev has their own idea of what is right, what is wrong, and EVERYBODY ELSE is wrong. You want to fix the industry's NIH syndrome? You start by listening. And as a sidenote, the guy didn't say "Why I'm implementing my own physics/graphics/sound/UI engine". He said he's using C. There's a lot of C libs for games. I don't know if you know this, but Unity isn't the first framework and C# isn't the first language.
    - orthecreedence 11y ago
      When I first learned to program, I made some nice little fun apps, compiled them to executables, ran them, and sat back. But something wasn't right. I knew that the code I wrote was doing something, and I knew that it was doing what I told it, but I didn't know why. What is in this binary executable that makes the computer print "hello world"? I started digging. I found assembly. I found disassembly. I got into cracking and exploits. SoftICE. Unlimited ammo in games. Patching. Sniffing serialzz in shareware. Etc etc. My point is, if I had just been happy with printf("Hello, world!\n") and moved on, I wouldn't have the incredible understanding I do now for what goes on under the hood. I wouldn't know what an executable is, or how to bend it to my will. This knowledge has always been powerful for me. Game programming is like this too. You can install Unity and make a basic game, hell maybe even make a few bucks off it. But what the hell is happening under the hood? What if you need to do something Unity isn't capable of? Where does that leave you? Maybe some people want to just make a game and be done with it. But I like to know why what I built is actually working. It's worth the time it takes. OpenGL extensions, FBOs, triangulation, etc are all complicated and hard to understand, but once you know how it all works you know what's possible and what isn't, and you don't need a (proprietary!!) framework making that decision for you.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    Unity is great for a certain class of games. But I've played plenty of games that were developed with Unity, where the dev quite obviously strong-armed the engine into doing what they wanted, and what you end up with is a slow, stuttering game that would likely run 10X better if they had used a different engine, or even just a renderer with some middle-ware. Also, think of the most successful indie game ever made (Minecraft). It was written in Java (a much maligned language, wrongfully IMO), with a very thin framework (Lwjgl), and it's made its creator a billionaire. If you're doing a game in a relatively mature genre, then yes, engines are great and will save you a ton of time. However if you want to do something completely outside the box, sometimes you save a lot of headache by just simply writing it yourself.

by ivanca 11y ago

TL;DR Many people is making money doing Unity games, so I ignore it exists - for $1500 - and I go the hipster way and create my own hundreds of memory corruption bugs myself.

scrollaway 11y ago

If you're going to write a TL;DR for others, you should at least read the article yourself, don't you think?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ivanca 11y ago
I did, it is so abstract to pretend you can do better that there is no way to discern. He didn't even mention "unity" in his post, thats just ridiculous in 2016, but yeah, keep down voting, your implementation of 2d graphics, sound, collision, physics, plugins, marketing, sprites, menus is gonna be so much better than hundreds of engineers at unity withing 10 years straight.
- vardump 11y ago
  Unity games I've tried seem to stutter often. Any idea why? GC cycles?
  - seanwilson 11y ago
    With C and C++, you have to be careful you release resources yourself to avoid leaks. With GC languages (besides memory leaks from referencing objects you no longer care about) you have to be careful that you preallocate upfront a good portion of the objects you need and reuse them to avoid GC stutters.
  - je42 11y ago
    GC cycles.
- ketzu 11y ago
  Unity is not a language. They do not discuss frameworks/gameengines. Fürther unity is basically C# and JavaScript, languages mentioned by the article.
  - ivanca 11y ago
    No. First of all Unity doesn't use JavaScript, it is a proprietary language called UnityScript that barely resembles JavaScript. Second, Im talking about the hundreds of tested possible compossibilities of the game you envisioned, regardless if you make it in ensambler or JavaScript. C# is just the language they choosed for their API (unity is written in c++ fwiw)
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Try and implement http://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/ http://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/ with Unity. My guess is, the author would have taken more time learning Unity than implementing this game.
  - krapp 11y ago
    For that to be a valid comparison, you would have to compare the learning curve for Unity to the amount of time it took him to learn how to implement the original.
    - loup-vaillant 11y ago
      Yeah, this was a wild guess. I stand by my wild guess, though.
  - Jach 11y ago
    I'm looking forward to playing that next time I boot into Windows (couldn't get it to even create a window on my Linux machine after satisfying its dynamic dependencies (really old libpng for one), or even the Windows exe via Wine -- one of the perils of custom engine development) but I know Antichamber (http://www.antichamber-game.com/ http://www.antichamber-game.com/), which has the similar concept of a non-Euclidean world, was built in Unreal. Unreal is pretty different from Unity, and I know neither of them well, but I think it shouldn't be all that difficult once you know Unity. And a lot of what I briefly looked at on Youtube for Knossu looks like shader heavy lifting, rather independent of the core engine.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      You'd be surprised. There's a GDC talk about Antichamber from a couple years ago (I really recommend watching it) which explains the amount of time that was invested into the game. Antichamber was a 7 year long hack on Unreal Engine, it's really not a drop-in game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlcB-JxkFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlcB-JxkFw
    - loup-vaillant 11y ago
- scrollaway 11y ago
  You have an attitude problem. First of all I've worked with Unity myself and I know how nice it is. It's not the end-all-be-all of game development and it's not suitable for all genres. Second, like someone else said, this is about a language - not a framework. Unity locks you into C#. Third, the guy says himself 'I absolutely DO NOT mean to say "hey, you should use C too".'. He's not forcing you to write games in C, he's enjoying writing games in C and explaining why. If you want to be a good developer, especially a good game developer, consider listening to people who have opinions and experiences different to yours and are willing to explain them. Evaluate their argument. Come up with a rebuttal, share your own experience, by all means - but don't be rude, aggressive, pompous, or a number of other things you are being right now. This is why the games industry has a NIH problem. Not because people want to develop in C, but because every single dev has their own idea of what is right, what is wrong, and EVERYBODY ELSE is wrong. You want to fix the industry's NIH syndrome? You start by listening. And as a sidenote, the guy didn't say "Why I'm implementing my own physics/graphics/sound/UI engine". He said he's using C. There's a lot of C libs for games. I don't know if you know this, but Unity isn't the first framework and C# isn't the first language.
  - orthecreedence 11y ago
    When I first learned to program, I made some nice little fun apps, compiled them to executables, ran them, and sat back. But something wasn't right. I knew that the code I wrote was doing something, and I knew that it was doing what I told it, but I didn't know why. What is in this binary executable that makes the computer print "hello world"? I started digging. I found assembly. I found disassembly. I got into cracking and exploits. SoftICE. Unlimited ammo in games. Patching. Sniffing serialzz in shareware. Etc etc. My point is, if I had just been happy with printf("Hello, world!\n") and moved on, I wouldn't have the incredible understanding I do now for what goes on under the hood. I wouldn't know what an executable is, or how to bend it to my will. This knowledge has always been powerful for me. Game programming is like this too. You can install Unity and make a basic game, hell maybe even make a few bucks off it. But what the hell is happening under the hood? What if you need to do something Unity isn't capable of? Where does that leave you? Maybe some people want to just make a game and be done with it. But I like to know why what I built is actually working. It's worth the time it takes. OpenGL extensions, FBOs, triangulation, etc are all complicated and hard to understand, but once you know how it all works you know what's possible and what isn't, and you don't need a (proprietary!!) framework making that decision for you.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Unity is great for a certain class of games. But I've played plenty of games that were developed with Unity, where the dev quite obviously strong-armed the engine into doing what they wanted, and what you end up with is a slow, stuttering game that would likely run 10X better if they had used a different engine, or even just a renderer with some middle-ware. Also, think of the most successful indie game ever made (Minecraft). It was written in Java (a much maligned language, wrongfully IMO), with a very thin framework (Lwjgl), and it's made its creator a billionaire. If you're doing a game in a relatively mature genre, then yes, engines are great and will save you a ton of time. However if you want to do something completely outside the box, sometimes you save a lot of headache by just simply writing it yourself.