Never Again Unity.

Coming back with flooding tears, begging to be accepted back within the ranks of Unity Community, is how I finish my story.

A story about a curious young lad, poet at heart, and a programmer with a swag, leaving Unity behind in search of more powerful, more perfect, more complete game engine. Treading the valleys of uncertainty, I thought I saw the crown jewel. A game engine (which I wont reveal its name) rumored to be as powerful as a German washing machine, and as versatile as a Japanese bathroom, producing games on a whole different level. I thought I have finally found the one truly perfect engine, that only the best of the best have achieved.

This is a story of how wrong I was.

Not long after compiling the first line of code did I receive 23 errors. And my "Perfected" engine crashed. Leaving behind a peculiar taste of what was to come. Engine crashing, Code unreasonably disgusting, Editor unintuitive, Documentation misleading. My perception crippled, as with each task more doubt has flooded my mind. "What is this S***?" was uttered at every corner, and button press.

And then I have Understood.

That whats more important then efficient code, seamless graphics, and great renown. Is the fact the you are working on an engine that was crafted for you. A place where you can advance and learn. Feel safe, and surrounded by commoners like yourself.

I plead before you,
Unity Community,
Never Again,
Shall I Doubt,

Never Again,
Shall I waver.

And Remain With Your,
Forever

 

Awwwww!

Now get to work.

 

Now you know what dangers lurk out there, awaiting the naive travelers who think "pffft... I got thiz".

Making games is not a game.

 

If you program with C# in Unreal your game crash, try again with C++.

 

The marginal performance gains of my crappy C & SDL game is insignificant to the speed at which I can produce very efficient content in Unity. If you write code yourself, you narrow the performance gap even more!

GameObject.Find(""); BAD
GameObject.FindObjectWithTag(""); better... but still BAD

referencing a variable in your "things I know I'm going to need to refer to" array... GOOD

 

Booooooo

 

Haven't noticed any problems with using these liberally. I had to start using these for gui 4.6 interactions in a program I was writing, and I realized they work for everything. So, I decided to ditch this "they are BAD!!!" stuff and have begun throwing these calls in loops and everything.

I'll find out first hand where the limit is where it affects performance.

 

Let the rest of us know where they are. This authoritative rhetoric is straining my critical thinking skills.

 

Welcome back to Unity XD Most of us are quite nice here, and the buglist isn't too bad at all

 

The community gods welcome you back with open arms.

 

I almost only ever use these in one block per class, to populate local copies of references, and then basically never again.

 

And so it begins, the reverse exodus. The grass was greener on the other side of the fence, but it was radioactive green!

 

You're talking about Unreal engine, right?
i'd like to honestly hear criticisms of it.

ive found misleading documentation in unity many times, that's hardly an isolated thing

 

Although that said, i'm ASSUMING that UT are smart guys, and they compile all instances of each tag into an array for each, so unless you heavily use one tag, it's probably only got a tiny dataset to search and should be very fast

 

Pretty sure it's still a string compare, so it's good to use a dictionary in cases like this which use script, object - where object is transform, gameobject or collider etc, and the script holds references to everything else, if you don't know what you'll encounter in future at game time.

Find with tag, or find in general will always be a terrible thing. Good for Start() or editor setup.

 

we could do with a non string version. Each tag already has a place in an array, finding them by their tag array value seems like an easy enough thing for UT to implement.

yes finding things is slow, but it can still be faster than it is

 

Wouldn't it be better for each enemy to, on Start, add themselves to a list / array in a gamedata singleton? Everyone knows where the singleton is

I like string compares. it's like.....

"a" compared to "b"
97 compared to 98
1100001 & 1100010 == 1100010

It may be false, but the hamming distance is only 2

 

I've used UDK and bought UE4, and I can say that Unity is easier for the fact that importing assets. UDK/UE4 is more difficult, as you can't use just any 3d mesh. It has to be in a specific format!!

Unity's major weakness is that it's script intensive. What UDK/UE4 does well is making tools that anyone other than a programmer can create a game. To my knowledge, there was a game created in UDK completely in kismet(I can't remember it though). Kismet/Blueprint are the built in equivalent to PlayMaker, but better. Since they are built in-engine, they have modules that are specifically detailed to UDK/UE4. PlayMaker is very general at times.

UDK/UE4 has great graphics, but Unity can have somewhat similar look. However, UE3 games ALWAYS looked similar graphically, while Unity games don't look similar at all. Most times, I cannot tell.

UDK/UE4 controller support is EPIC. :| Unity could learn a thing or two.

 

If i could bring one thing to a deserted island it would be Unity!

 

You have to be careful, some compares in unity actually allocate a new string.

 

The only time I do a string comparison is when I'm loading & saving files on the user's machine or serializing / deserializing data. I just like what's going on under the hood for string comparisons. I learned a lot about bits this semester and it's blowing my mind about as much as learning about number bases did.

I wish I could see the look on me face when I realized that, I really do.

Spoiler: Stuff

10 in binary is 1x2^1
10 in decimal is 1x10^1
10 in hexadecimal 1x16^1

I hope that fibre optics lead to us being able to do more than 1s and 0s in data transmission. Why can't we have machines detect more than the presence and absence of a signal? We have access to different colors and amounts of light. We could send light pulses instead of electrons

 

Well we could wire up rat brains in a vat I suppose.

 

Any such techniques reduce the bits per transmision error rate. Even in current pulses of electrical signals, there are still transmition errors every wikimillion bits. It is currently a higher priority to increase bits per transmition error rate, and reduce latency, rather then create a broader bandwidth.

 

fell off from motorcycle, back to tricycle... (What i want to say is that UE4 is harder to master, but if you do so, Unity don't have a chance in that race)

 

If you're an Indie why do you need AAA graphics capabilities?

Even if you can achieve top level graphics, you don't have the resources to create enough content to fill that type of game.

Seems like buying a motorcycle, but you can't afford the gas. Silly.

 

That's the thing about the Unity community, it's populated by a vast array of strange creatures which don't always get along, but for some reason that's actually OK and doesn't escalate. Possibly because I will roll on them if it does.

What I'm trying to articulate is, it's a pretty good community, and is in a way, the backbone of Unity.

 

Well, I haven't slapped with a perma-ban yet, which gives me the impression that this is a pretty cool and happenin' place.

 

With the way things are advancing. It wont be long before Unity outrivals the NoNameEngine in whatever race you think it is.

 

That was basically the idea The rate would become worse, but the message arriving would be a few giant bits to decode instead of many small ones. It's impractical for streaming & sockets, but imagine encoding and transmitting a 2TB file in a series of light pulses!

I almost had an idea.... almost.

@hippocoder We'd get some real computing power from cuttlefish brains

 

I see what you did there.

 

Welcome Back.

 

Only if you never post stupid crap like this again.

 

You've been discussed in the mod channel for being a bit wild, like a digital game dev rockstar trashing the hotel rooms. We decided we would put it on your bill instead of kicking you out.

In any case moderators have different styles, but one thing we all share - and we are 100% united in is that women will not, ever, be made to feel like they are not welcome here. We don't care much for gamergate, but I think I can speak for all Unity staff and mods in that personal sexuality / gender based attacks will just be a ban immediately, without any hope of coming back

People do squabble but that's ok if people know where to draw the line. I've still got a lot of faith in humanity to know when it's gone too far so I think the community moderates itself really.

I'm so cheery sometimes

 

You mentioned only women! Are men not welcome here?

 

Are you a man?

 

maybe

 

I cri evur tiem.

btw, I want to thank the unity staff for making me giggle.

 

We thank you for your continued patience and understanding regarding these matters. Your concerns have been noted and I can assure you that we are working on these issues as we speak. Our aim is to provide you with the very best service possible and we are constantly seeking new ways to serve you better!

 

Are you applying to be a Blizzard moderator?

Your claim is misandrist and ostracizing! Go ahead and ask me for proof, I've got more evidence defying insults! #YesAllMods #ForumGate #UnityStorm #DarudeStormSand

 

Yet. Yet.

--Eric

 

I am aware.

 

That's right, folks, step right up! Place your bets here for the exact date that Misterselmo gets banned! Whaddya say? Could it be tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Don't be shy, place your bets!

--Eric

 

*puts on groucho marx mask*

I'll take that bet, I'll put $300 down for a week from next tuesday...

 

Am I corrupt enough to change the outcome? :O

 

The jokes on him. The early upgrade is $600, not $300.

Well, let's say the average poster has a 3% chance on posting to overstep his or her boundaries (regardless of intent & awareness) and gets an instant ban. Given the increase in volume of posts by sir @Misterselmo in the past months, I would place my bet on... some day that isn't today, and probably not tomorrow.

If we run the odds through a function, I'm sure we'll reach a ban before t=infinity

 

Place your bets ladies and gentlemen, is hippo corrupt enough to change the outcome?

 

He definitely stands out the most over the other mods in terms of personality. Eric seems to be the code guru, aurore's title matches what I'm sure we all think of him, and then there's dogeinalobstercostume. I don't think I've ever read that admin's name, can't take my eyes off that picture....

My prediction is yes, with a side of "he'll probably never act on that potential".

 

Aurore isn't a guy
...last time I checked

 

Now that you mention it I don't think I have ever read his name either. But he should definitely change his name to Lobster Doge if it isn't that already.

 

lol "him". Yeah sure, Aurore is really beefy, muscular... maybe 6.5 foot, can kill with a tea cup and has a voice like tombstones across gravel.