7 ms·

I found unity to be so unbelievably bloated and confusing that I am seriously shocked people are actually using it

johnnyanmac 3y ago
It functioned (barely, but still functioned), had a lot of support, and had a lot of answers around the inevitable jank. For a game engine, these put it above 90% of other engines. Having console support alone puts it in the top 1%.
- depereo 3y ago
  Also plenty of tutorials and introductions to the various features.
  - krasin 3y ago
    Unfortunately, Unity tends to break things often, so many of these tutorials are obsolete. But yes, it's a lot of tutorials and it's always possible to find the one you need.
- jliptzin 3y ago
  For most indie games I feel like three.js + css + JavaScript would be so much better for both developer and user (no steam install just go to a website)
  - ivalm 3y ago
    Steam install is valuable way to monetize/promote.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    If they only care about 2011 (WebGL) or 2015 (WebGPU) hardware, sure. Still waiting to see a WebGL game that matches Infinity Blade, released in 2011 alongside iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvPIhCd8N4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvPIhCd8N4 Meaning, those graphic API are able to deliver at least PS 3 graphics, yet due to browser support, specially the way browsers blacklist drivers, download sizes, and lack of tooling on par with native, very few professional developers bother, hence streaming.
    - jliptzin 3y ago
      I am talking about things like puzzle games, board games, etc. There was one digital board game I used to play with my friends, it was such a simple game I probably could have built it in 2 days in JavaScript, but they developed it in unity…one ~60 minute game would heat up my laptop like I had put it in the microwave and completely drain the battery from 100%. For a board game with no fancy graphics. My friends all had the same problem. If someone were traveling, we couldn’t play because that person wouldn’t want to drain their whole battery for it. I have no idea if that was specific to the developer of that one game but my friend who plays a lot more games than I do said it’s just the unity engine doing that.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        That is a very tiny fraction of the game market.
  - EarthLaunch 3y ago
    It is such a better developer experience. My unfinished Three.js game[0] was on Unity a few years ago, but that became unbearable. The modern web platform is too new, it hasn't proven itself to big money, so it's going to be indie games first. To answer sibling comments: Graphics aren't a limiting factor for indie games. And a Three.js game can be put onto Steam, I'm pretty sure. 0: earth.suncapped.com
  - ido 3y ago
    It is a ton easier to make a game in unity than in these (having done both multiple times). And a lot easier to get artists and designers to work inside unity than with three.js.
- herbst 3y ago
  Dragon Ruby, Haxe (Heaps, OpenFL, ...), Game Maker and I am sure thousands of other smaller engines most never heard of have native console support. The first 2 examples even without huge extra costs.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >native console support that's a lot narrower than you think, I wouldn't even put it in the dozens. Maybe a few dozen if we include all the in-house proprietary engines. Being easy to port to console =/= native console support. But yes, a few dozen out of hundreds of engines is the 99th percentile.
  - james33 3y ago
    Yes, but that list becomes much shorter when you're making 3D games.
  - slikrick 3y ago
    native console support does not just mean compiling to console architectures
tetris11 3y ago
Yeah, my thoughts too. It took 5 minutes to fully load, and then just moving around a scene with more than 2 objects felt very clunky. I uninstalled it and never thought to use it again. This was maybe 10 years ago, so i assumed it had improved since then...?
- nearbuy 3y ago
  If you think Unity is slow to load, wait until you try Unreal...
- andybak 3y ago
  That is not normal. Specs?
  - tetris11 3y ago
    I think it was a dell inspiron laptop which at the time had no issues loading up blender and autodesk
    - andybak 3y ago
      Unity is famously capable of running on nearly anything. Until recently I used to take my 2013 Macbook Air out with me so I could do some work without lugging a gaming PC. It's always felt pretty lightweight to me. The exception is creating a new project where it has to download or import a lot of packages (especially if you're using URP or HDRP) But loading an existing project with a valid Library folder and working interactively in the editor should feel pretty snappy.
- gambiting 3y ago
  ....What other big games engines have you used? I've used unreal as well as some proprietary ones(Anvil and Snowdrop) and they all take more than 5 minutes to load, in case of Snowdrop it could easily be 20+ minutes if you were loading in with the game world present.
  - tetris11 3y ago
berkle4455 3y ago
It’s enabled thousands of indie devs and small studios to release games every year for the last decade. I think that’s pretty awesome. Unity, the game engine, has undoubtedly been a net positive, and now that torch is being passed onto others. The company management just totally sullied all that goodwill in a week however.
throw_m239339 3y ago
> I found unity to be so unbelievably bloated and confusing that I am seriously shocked people are actually using it Bloated compared to what other game engine that does the equivalent exactly? Some of the biggest games today are made with Unity, for instance, Genshin Impact. Unity isn't bloated, quite the contrary. It's fairly modular for a game engine and authoring tool.
idrios 3y ago
What other game engine are you comparing it to? It's daunting with how many tools it gives you but it doesn't force very much onto you and gives you a ton of flexibility. I'm as happy as as everyone else about this momentum away from Unity since their business leaders clearly hate developers, but I really like the Unity game engine. From a software design standpoint, I didn't understand how powerful composition can be (versus inheritance) until I started working with Unity GameObjects.
dimgl 3y ago
Unity has always been an excellent engine in its ideation. Easy to understand, easy to get started with, truly a great onboarding experience. Additionally the ability to use C# can't be understated as, IMO, it's a fantastic match for game scripting... until you start to hit performance problems. Which has kind of always been the problem with Unity. Once you start getting into the meat of it there's always some issue. Most recently their obsession with DOTS and the fragmented rendering pipelines were really off-putting and enough to get me to switch to Unreal. I also found a lot of the features barebones for a very long time, like 2D tilesets, landscape editing tools, nav mesh, animation tooling, etc. None of this matters to companies with actual teams, but for indie development I've found Unreal to be a much better match for me than Unity. That being said Unity has come a very long way in the recent years and the engine can be a joy to work with (as long as it's not crashing and misbehaving, which it does). But that's history at this point. There is no way I'll ever attempt to create a game in Unity again.
keyle 3y ago
It's so bad, and it made the topic of many schools into game development!
- herbst 3y ago
  I don't know about your school, but the IT school I went to would make sure to not teach any walled garden tools when avoidable.
andybak 3y ago
"Bloated" implies "full of things that aren't useful" with a silent "to me" at the end. Unless you're implying a large chunk of the features aren't useful to anyone?
herbst 3y ago
Same here. As programmer the whole software felt like a big antipattern trying to break my programming trained mind.

It functioned (barely, but still functioned), had a lot of support, and had a lot of answers around the inevitable jank. For a game engine, these put it above 90% of other engines. Having console support alone puts it in the top 1%.

depereo 3y ago
Also plenty of tutorials and introductions to the various features.
- krasin 3y ago
  Unfortunately, Unity tends to break things often, so many of these tutorials are obsolete. But yes, it's a lot of tutorials and it's always possible to find the one you need.
jliptzin 3y ago
For most indie games I feel like three.js + css + JavaScript would be so much better for both developer and user (no steam install just go to a website)
- ivalm 3y ago
  Steam install is valuable way to monetize/promote.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  If they only care about 2011 (WebGL) or 2015 (WebGPU) hardware, sure. Still waiting to see a WebGL game that matches Infinity Blade, released in 2011 alongside iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvPIhCd8N4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvPIhCd8N4 Meaning, those graphic API are able to deliver at least PS 3 graphics, yet due to browser support, specially the way browsers blacklist drivers, download sizes, and lack of tooling on par with native, very few professional developers bother, hence streaming.
  - jliptzin 3y ago
    I am talking about things like puzzle games, board games, etc. There was one digital board game I used to play with my friends, it was such a simple game I probably could have built it in 2 days in JavaScript, but they developed it in unity…one ~60 minute game would heat up my laptop like I had put it in the microwave and completely drain the battery from 100%. For a board game with no fancy graphics. My friends all had the same problem. If someone were traveling, we couldn’t play because that person wouldn’t want to drain their whole battery for it. I have no idea if that was specific to the developer of that one game but my friend who plays a lot more games than I do said it’s just the unity engine doing that.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      That is a very tiny fraction of the game market.
- EarthLaunch 3y ago
  It is such a better developer experience. My unfinished Three.js game[0] was on Unity a few years ago, but that became unbearable. The modern web platform is too new, it hasn't proven itself to big money, so it's going to be indie games first. To answer sibling comments: Graphics aren't a limiting factor for indie games. And a Three.js game can be put onto Steam, I'm pretty sure. 0: earth.suncapped.com
- ido 3y ago
  It is a ton easier to make a game in unity than in these (having done both multiple times). And a lot easier to get artists and designers to work inside unity than with three.js.
herbst 3y ago
Dragon Ruby, Haxe (Heaps, OpenFL, ...), Game Maker and I am sure thousands of other smaller engines most never heard of have native console support. The first 2 examples even without huge extra costs.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >native console support that's a lot narrower than you think, I wouldn't even put it in the dozens. Maybe a few dozen if we include all the in-house proprietary engines. Being easy to port to console =/= native console support. But yes, a few dozen out of hundreds of engines is the 99th percentile.
- james33 3y ago
  Yes, but that list becomes much shorter when you're making 3D games.
- slikrick 3y ago
  native console support does not just mean compiling to console architectures

tetris11 3y ago

Yeah, my thoughts too. It took 5 minutes to fully load, and then just moving around a scene with more than 2 objects felt very clunky. I uninstalled it and never thought to use it again. This was maybe 10 years ago, so i assumed it had improved since then...?

nearbuy 3y ago
If you think Unity is slow to load, wait until you try Unreal...
andybak 3y ago
That is not normal. Specs?
- tetris11 3y ago
  I think it was a dell inspiron laptop which at the time had no issues loading up blender and autodesk
  - andybak 3y ago
    Unity is famously capable of running on nearly anything. Until recently I used to take my 2013 Macbook Air out with me so I could do some work without lugging a gaming PC. It's always felt pretty lightweight to me. The exception is creating a new project where it has to download or import a lot of packages (especially if you're using URP or HDRP) But loading an existing project with a valid Library folder and working interactively in the editor should feel pretty snappy.
gambiting 3y ago
....What other big games engines have you used? I've used unreal as well as some proprietary ones(Anvil and Snowdrop) and they all take more than 5 minutes to load, in case of Snowdrop it could easily be 20+ minutes if you were loading in with the game world present.
- tetris11 3y ago

berkle4455 3y ago

It’s enabled thousands of indie devs and small studios to release games every year for the last decade. I think that’s pretty awesome. Unity, the game engine, has undoubtedly been a net positive, and now that torch is being passed onto others. The company management just totally sullied all that goodwill in a week however.

throw_m239339 3y ago

> I found unity to be so unbelievably bloated and confusing that I am seriously shocked people are actually using it Bloated compared to what other game engine that does the equivalent exactly? Some of the biggest games today are made with Unity, for instance, Genshin Impact. Unity isn't bloated, quite the contrary. It's fairly modular for a game engine and authoring tool.

idrios 3y ago

What other game engine are you comparing it to? It's daunting with how many tools it gives you but it doesn't force very much onto you and gives you a ton of flexibility. I'm as happy as as everyone else about this momentum away from Unity since their business leaders clearly hate developers, but I really like the Unity game engine. From a software design standpoint, I didn't understand how powerful composition can be (versus inheritance) until I started working with Unity GameObjects.

dimgl 3y ago

Unity has always been an excellent engine in its ideation. Easy to understand, easy to get started with, truly a great onboarding experience. Additionally the ability to use C# can't be understated as, IMO, it's a fantastic match for game scripting... until you start to hit performance problems. Which has kind of always been the problem with Unity. Once you start getting into the meat of it there's always some issue. Most recently their obsession with DOTS and the fragmented rendering pipelines were really off-putting and enough to get me to switch to Unreal. I also found a lot of the features barebones for a very long time, like 2D tilesets, landscape editing tools, nav mesh, animation tooling, etc. None of this matters to companies with actual teams, but for indie development I've found Unreal to be a much better match for me than Unity. That being said Unity has come a very long way in the recent years and the engine can be a joy to work with (as long as it's not crashing and misbehaving, which it does). But that's history at this point. There is no way I'll ever attempt to create a game in Unity again.

keyle 3y ago

It's so bad, and it made the topic of many schools into game development!

herbst 3y ago
I don't know about your school, but the IT school I went to would make sure to not teach any walled garden tools when avoidable.

andybak 3y ago

"Bloated" implies "full of things that aren't useful" with a silent "to me" at the end. Unless you're implying a large chunk of the features aren't useful to anyone?

herbst 3y ago

Same here. As programmer the whole software felt like a big antipattern trying to break my programming trained mind.