Unity's Capabilities and Limits

[662df62c785dbHikari]

The systemshock.com site says the remake is powered by Unity. I know Unity is able to make 'real' games because I've seen it in action for things like spiral knights, shadowrun returns, and a few other things. However what are its limits? What can it do well?

Basically I want to know what we're getting into so the bar isn't set impossibly high on what we want them to do verses what the engine is actually able to realisticly do both in terms of actual capability and what sort of hardware is needed to get that.

And for the record I think it would be a stupid idea to jump engines right now. If nothing else they at least have SOME assets ported along with level geometry. We don't want to keep engine hopping because reasons and end up like duke nukem forever.

[662df62c78801fox]

You're probably looking for specifications and feature lists but since it seems  to me like a pretty great demonstration of what the engine is capable of in terms of FP-ImSim stuff I'll throw this video of PAMELA in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cg_ilDaMA8

Looks to me as if the Unity-engine is able to do many SS-relevant things very well. (Really don't like the enemy animations  they show here, though.)

[662df62c78b81Olfred]

You can do games on par with any other major engine. In fact, Unity is the most used engine nowadays. On AAA titles not that much. There you have in-house engines, unreal engine or cryengine for the most part.

At the time otherside was founded they probably sat down and decided which engine to use. At that time Unity still had the best deal for small companies. And once you are used to an engine and have all the in-house assets and tools for it, you don't want to change anything.

There really isn't much to be concerned about. The only downside I would see is that Unity is a little weak on the performance, but not as a length that I would be concerned about it.

[662df62c78ce3Hikari]

My major concern really is what is it's processor/graphics cost for that performance verses other engines? Mind you this is mostly because my desktop is an 07 core duo I probably won't get to upgrade anytime soon beyond the graphics card I got for christmas. So boils down to not wanting to get my hopes up on actually being able to play the thing.

[662df62c78e8avoodoo47]

it's been mentioned that they are planning to support integrated graphics hardware, so anyone using a half decent dedicated graphics card has little reason to be afraid.

it won't run too great on integrated intels, I'd imagine, but then again, what does.

[662df62c78f9bHikari]

I dunno, tribes vengeance ran pretty decent on my box before I got the GT720, but that was basically the best it could do and even then there were issues. Mostly it was the fact integraded only had 1.1 shaders instead of the 2.0 most things expect and or 3.0 some things are starting to need.

[662df62c79100ZylonBane]

Given that the original System Shock's environments were designed to be within the capabilities of a slow, primitive software renderer, I don't think Unity will have much trouble with it. It's not like we'll be looking down on a city from the top of a mountain or anything.

[662df62c79354JosiahJack]

Unity is actually very capable.  It simply has many pitfalls in use as would any engine.  Unity's strength is it's immense flexibility.  Because of that you are flexible to the point of doing things in a way that might be slow, poor performance, etc. but only at the developer's fault for not considering how Unity handles garbage collection, GetComponent calls, deferred vs forward rendering, etc.

As an example of a good FPS game that has a complex UI and inventory system, please take a look at 7 Days to Die.  It uses a voxel based world, which has thousands of gameobjects comprising the world blocks, not to mention the hundreds of trees, buildings, zombies, etc.

I for one have had plenty of issues with Unity as a learning experience after switching to it for Citadel.  I tried treating it like the Source engine, expecting to have a lot of builtin functionality out of the box, but because of Unity's flexibility it unfortunately expects you to do everything from scratch or buy prefabs from the asset store.  I actually prefer doing it from scratch as I can have complete control over things like player physics, friction to stop player walking vs running, etc.--plus I can learn how Unity works.

All in all, it has a difficult learning curve, but is actually not so bad once you figure out its quirks, ins and outs, and what best practices to follow.  I highly recommend Night Dive to NOT switch engines.  I know firsthand what the impact is.

[662df62c79512Producer_chris]

so no idea what engine we would be using.
But, we did pick Unity for Underworld for a reason. Doing the kind of gameplay we speicalize in it just made far more sense. Making something 'real' in Unity --i.e. not scripted..is far easier than say Unreal. With the new lighting engine in 5 they are getting close to Unreal in looks. But its not about the looks is it.

Here is an example of what we like about Unity. Tim builds a trap. It uses 'springs'. It has gears. Now, in other games you would have to add scripting for diabling the trap, it can get complicated...and frankly developers then say screw it and stop placing traps because they are a pain in the ass.
Our trap is just a prefab, it works. You can disarm it, bash it with a rock, stop the gears somehow exc. Because it has all those properties already. Since it is part of the physical world, all our physical rules automagically apply. Honestly the first time we did this with a trap we all had that look of..why doesn't everyone do it this way? Now you can do all of the above in any engine. But the simplicity of doing it in unity compared to a blueprint in Unreal or worse diving under the covers into C like the old days is far more time consuming. So for us, living with the limitations that Unity has- and it does have them, was worth it for the modularity of the systems design.

[662df62c79c81RocketMan]

Making something 'real' in Unity --i.e. not scripted..is far easier than say Unreal.

Har har har .... 

[662df62c7a004voodoo47]

automagically

I like this word. I'll be using it from now on.

[662df62c7a508ZylonBane]

Our trap is just a prefab, it works. You can disarm it, bash it with a rock, stop the gears somehow exc. Because it has all those properties already. Since it is part of the physical world, all our physical rules automagically apply.

On the one hand, this sounds great. On the other hand, I've played far too many physics-based games where getting past certain puzzles relied on the physics system triggering in exactly the right way, leading to much screaming and hair-pulling, and even when things work perfectly there tends to be a loose bounciness to world objects, like everything is made of balsa wood and styrofoam. I choose to be confident your team is well aware of these potential issues.

I like this word. I'll be using it from now on.

You've never heard "automagically" before? 

[662df62c7a640RocketMan]

There are only so many factors that need to exist in order to properly simulate kinematics in objects.  If 1 is missing from the prefabbed physics of the engine I would hope one could just add it via code or whatever, while the other parameters should be tweakable until you get the desired effect.

[662df62c7a744ZylonBane]

Jimmy Bob's Discount Programmering: We add code or whatever and tweak parameters, guaranteed!

[662df62c7a829RocketMan]

Not sure what the punchline is there but it sounds cute.

[662df62c7a928Olfred]

The last time I worked on physics in Unity was back at version 3(.5 IIRC), the bad thing about it was that it worked way too realistic and we had to tweak any manipulate the physics so it felt more "game like".
So the physics system is good and you can do a lot of tweaking to it if necessary.

[662df62c7aa16RocketMan]

Not knowing the editor I had no clue what's involved but it's good that you can do that.

Forgive me but what's "game like" physics?  I'm assuming it's synonymous with wrong physics?

[662df62c7aaf2ZylonBane]

You know how when you run up a ramp in Thief you go flying into the air?

That.

[662df62c7abfbRocketMan]

Wouldn't know... never played it.


(here it comes)

[662df62c7ad23Olfred]

Yeah, it was wrong physics, of course. It was demolition based gameplay and everything just broke way too easy and thus there was no challenge.
The funny thing was, we chose Unity because we won't need to do a physics system or need to integrate some external one. But in the end we screwed so much with it until it felt right, we might as well could have written our own in the end 

[662df62c7ae34ChickenHead]

That's always a pain. I'm currently working on a game, but I keep changing the platform I'm using....  The game itself is sort of like what SS2 would be like from the top-down view.  But because I'm so indecisive, I can't set anything in stone.

[662df62c7afcaKolya]

I used to be indecisive too. But now I'm not quite sure.

[662df62c7b326Olfred]

That's always a pain. I'm currently working on a game, but I keep changing the platform I'm using....  The game itself is sort of like what SS2 would be like from the top-down view.  But because I'm so indecisive, I can't set anything in stone.

George Broussard, is it you?

[662df62c7b569ChickenHead]

I used to be indecisive too. But now I'm not quite sure.

sunnava....