@Mazzy There's nothing at all wrong with the Unity Engine. The main problem was because in development the game was poorly optimized. Switching to another engine may make the devs have to do extra work scripting.
The unity engine seems to maybe use a bit more processing power, even though it doesn't have any effect on FPS for me. I rarely ever experience any kind of lag.
Other engines such as Unreal Engine 4 will also have lag, possibly even more than Unity because of their realistic graphics. Anyway, Subnautica is as beautiful as it needs to be.
The lag for some people in Subnautica is most likely because of Subnautica's large world with voxel-based terrain (I think), hundreds of AIs, high-poly 3D models, and all of the water and plant animations.
(By the way, I don't know much about the Unity Engine, some of this stuff I just thought of. But I'm sure it's mostly accurate)
@Mazzy There's nothing at all wrong with the Unity Engine. The main problem was because in development the game was poorly optimized. Switching to another engine may make the devs have to do extra work scripting.
The unity engine seems to maybe use a bit more processing power, even though it doesn't have any effect on FPS for me. I rarely ever experience any kind of lag.
Other engines such as Unreal Engine 4 will also have lag, possibly even more than Unity because of their realistic graphics. Anyway, Subnautica is as beautiful as it needs to be.
The lag for some people in Subnautica is most likely because of Subnautica's large world with voxel-based terrain (I think), hundreds of AIs, high-poly 3D models, and all of the water and plant animations.
(By the way, I don't know much about the Unity Engine, some of this stuff I just thought of. But I'm sure it's mostly accurate)
The devs have said Unity has held them back or at least made some things harder multiple times in the past. But they seem to be doing an okay job at working around these limitations.
I do not understand if unity is making it a little harder for the devs will we not have the same issues in the Arctic DLC ? Why not change to another engine ?
I play DU "Unreal" and it runs very smoothly in some of the biggest MP matches with up to 12 people going at it.
Still though i can not argue the graphics in Subnautica are very beautiful, again i state that i am no programmer so i can not say what is best for the DLC, i will settle for a relatively more bug free DLC.
I do not understand if unity is making it a little harder for the devs will we not have the same issues in the Arctic DLC ? Why not change to another engine ?
I play DU "Unreal" and it runs very smoothly in some of the biggest MP matches with up to 12 people going at it.
Still though i can not argue the graphics in Subnautica are very beautiful, again i state that i am no programmer so i can not say what is best for the DLC, i will settle for a relatively more bug free DLC.
Well, I’m no programmer either, but I think the only thing Unity does is make more lag for some people and other performance problems. A few of the bugs might be unity’s fault, but some might scripting errors. The prawn suit bug in ground is most likely caused by unity. Most other bugs probably aren’t.
While I do agree that realistic snow and ice would be great, the devs would take longer to release the DLC. It’s planned for mid 2019, so switching to another engine might take a while.
(Again, I’m not a programmer, but I think this is true)
You cannot use multiple engines in an open world game. If the game itself is built on Unity, so too will be all subsequent expansions.
Unity provides a slew of things, including the physics, the asset integration, AI pathfinding, etc etc etc. Switching to another engine would (essentially) mean starting over... for the entire game.
Therefore, what we have now is what we will have in unto forever.
Edit: It's worth mentioning that all "out of the box" engines have their own issues and reasons that another engine could be "better" in one case or another. While Unity may cause problems under certain conditions, it's equally likely that CryEngine or Unreal may cause an equivalent volume of issues in other subsets of development. No one engine is the supreme choice. If there was, there would only be one engine in use by developers :P
Realistically, for what Subnautica is, they picked the correct engine to suit their needs.
You cannot use multiple engines in an open world game. If the game itself is built on Unity, so too will be all subsequent expansions.
Unity provides a slew of things, including the physics, the asset integration, AI pathfinding, etc etc etc. Switching to another engine would (essentially) mean starting over... for the entire game.
Therefore, what we have now is what we will have in unto forever.
Edit: It's worth mentioning that all "out of the box" engines have their own issues and reasons that another engine could be "better" in one case or another. While Unity may cause problems under certain conditions, it's equally likely that CryEngine or Unreal may cause an equivalent volume of issues in other subsets of development. No one engine is the supreme choice. If there was, there would only be one engine in use by developers :P
Realistically, for what Subnautica is, they picked the correct engine to suit their needs.
Actually, the Expansion is a separate game, so the developers actually could make it a different engine. But again, that would be a huge waste of time and the game is fine how it is.
They picked unity because it was quick to prototype and develop for, and even though it has caused issues and it could probably work at least a bit better on another engine, it's kind of too late to change now, and switching would mean adding a lot more dev time onto the expansion.
We are using Unity for the Expansion, because it allows us to get a big head-start. Switching to another engine would mean starting virtually all code from scratch.
Unity games run on C# or Javascript(don't know which is used in Subnautica). Unreal uses C++. Changing the engine will need to change ALL the scripts from the current language to C++. Also, saying that Unity is for making bad games is WRONG. Saying, that Unreal is for making realistic games is also wrong. Unity games can be as beatiful as advanced(???) Unreal games and Unreal games can be as ugly as asset flips made with Unity. Unity is associated with bad games, 'cause it the editor runs better on slow and old devices. I have a potato computer and had Unreal installed. The editor was running in like 12 fps... Also, UI in Unity is (in my opinion) easier to use.
Unity games run on C# or Javascript(don't know which is used in Subnautica). Unreal uses C++. Changing the engine will need to change ALL the scripts from the current language to C++. Also, saying that Unity is for making bad games is WRONG. Saying, that Unreal is for making realistic games is also wrong. Unity games can be as beatiful as advanced(???) Unreal games and Unreal games can be as ugly as asset flips made with Unity. Unity is associated with bad games, 'cause it the editor runs better on slow and old devices. I have a potato computer and had Unreal installed. The editor was running in like 12 fps... Also, UI in Unity is (in my opinion) easier to use.
Unity's mainly associated with bad games because since it's so easy to use a lot of people make terrible asset flips with it and the people playing those asset flips accosiate asset flips with unity, despite the fact that unity's been used to make tons of great games.
Unity games run on C# or Javascript(don't know which is used in Subnautica). Unreal uses C++. Changing the engine will need to change ALL the scripts from the current language to C++. Also, saying that Unity is for making bad games is WRONG. Saying, that Unreal is for making realistic games is also wrong. Unity games can be as beatiful as advanced(???) Unreal games and Unreal games can be as ugly as asset flips made with Unity. Unity is associated with bad games, 'cause it the editor runs better on slow and old devices. I have a potato computer and had Unreal installed. The editor was running in like 12 fps... Also, UI in Unity is (in my opinion) easier to use.
Unity's mainly associated with bad games because since it's so easy to use a lot of people make terrible asset flips with it and the people playing those asset flips accosiate asset flips with unity, despite the fact that unity's been used to make tons of great games.
Exactly! Besiege, Firewatch, Ori, Subnautica(duh...) are all great games, made with Unity. There is also a lot more!
narfblatUtah, USAJoin Date: 2016-05-15Member: 216799Members, Forum Moderators, Forum staff
Expansions are unlikely to use new engines. That's much more common with sequels, though that isn't always the case, either.
If I remember correctly, a developer has said they would likely have used a newer engine if it were available when Subnautica was in development. This does indicate they encountered problems in Unity that were hard to fix - however, any engine will present some problems, potentially unexpected.
Any out-of-the-box engine will have its own difficulties. Unity is no exception. Cryengine has network code hurdles and map scale hurdles, along with a huge development curve. Unreal has some serious limitations in the types of content that can be added to a game, and Unity has optimization issues.
Furthermore, as I said, a DLC cannot use a separate engine from the core game unless you’re playing the DLC in a completely separate instance from all of the original content of the game - which would basically make it a sequel and not a DLC. When the content from the original game and the DLC are meshed into one loaded instance, using a different engine for the DLC would mean rewriting the entire base game on that engine as well and scrapping all of the work that’s been done so far, because you can’t run engines in parallel like that.
At the end of the day, given the scope of the project and the size of the team, Unity was the correct choice in my opinion and until a sequel with a (possible) engine change, Unity is what we’ve got.
Subnautica has done a great job with it, as have other games like The Long Dark and Firewatch.
Also, saying that Unity is for making bad games is WRONG. Saying, that Unreal is for making realistic games is also wrong. Unity games can be as beatiful as advanced(???) Unreal games and Unreal games can be as ugly as asset flips made with Unity. Unity is associated with bad games, 'cause it the editor runs better on slow and old devices.
Unity is an amazing game engine. Just check out all of the games that Unity gives life to in addition to Subnautica: HearthStone, Firewatch, Stranded Deep, The Forest, Heavy Bullets, Darkwood, Pony Island, Pokemon GO... and so on. All of these I metioned are pretty diverse with good-looking art and assets, and generally pretty fun to play. And honestly, any game engine is going to have its own set of programming limitations or bugs to deal with in one way or another (HearthStone in particular, but that's mostly due to Team 5's spaghetti code versus the actual game engine issues lol), but each has its own strengths in addition to its weaknesses.
Bottom line is, Unity is an amazing game engine, and to state one is inferior to the other is just comparing apples to oranges. If someone refuses to play a game solely on the engine it runs on well... they're only just spiting themselves.
What engine you choose really comes down to the type of project you're making, and while some engines might not be better than each other in general, depending on the project there could be engines that work better than others for what you're doing. As for Subnautica, like I've said it seems Unity maybe wouldn't be the best choice now, but they've done an okay job working around it and pushing it to it's limits.
Comments
The unity engine seems to maybe use a bit more processing power, even though it doesn't have any effect on FPS for me. I rarely ever experience any kind of lag.
Other engines such as Unreal Engine 4 will also have lag, possibly even more than Unity because of their realistic graphics. Anyway, Subnautica is as beautiful as it needs to be.
The lag for some people in Subnautica is most likely because of Subnautica's large world with voxel-based terrain (I think), hundreds of AIs, high-poly 3D models, and all of the water and plant animations.
(By the way, I don't know much about the Unity Engine, some of this stuff I just thought of. But I'm sure it's mostly accurate)
The devs have said Unity has held them back or at least made some things harder multiple times in the past. But they seem to be doing an okay job at working around these limitations.
I play DU "Unreal" and it runs very smoothly in some of the biggest MP matches with up to 12 people going at it.
Still though i can not argue the graphics in Subnautica are very beautiful, again i state that i am no programmer so i can not say what is best for the DLC, i will settle for a relatively more bug free DLC.
Well, I’m no programmer either, but I think the only thing Unity does is make more lag for some people and other performance problems. A few of the bugs might be unity’s fault, but some might scripting errors. The prawn suit bug in ground is most likely caused by unity. Most other bugs probably aren’t.
While I do agree that realistic snow and ice would be great, the devs would take longer to release the DLC. It’s planned for mid 2019, so switching to another engine might take a while.
(Again, I’m not a programmer, but I think this is true)
Unity provides a slew of things, including the physics, the asset integration, AI pathfinding, etc etc etc. Switching to another engine would (essentially) mean starting over... for the entire game.
Therefore, what we have now is what we will have in unto forever.
Edit: It's worth mentioning that all "out of the box" engines have their own issues and reasons that another engine could be "better" in one case or another. While Unity may cause problems under certain conditions, it's equally likely that CryEngine or Unreal may cause an equivalent volume of issues in other subsets of development. No one engine is the supreme choice. If there was, there would only be one engine in use by developers :P
Realistically, for what Subnautica is, they picked the correct engine to suit their needs.
Unity's mainly associated with bad games because since it's so easy to use a lot of people make terrible asset flips with it and the people playing those asset flips accosiate asset flips with unity, despite the fact that unity's been used to make tons of great games.
Exactly! Besiege, Firewatch, Ori, Subnautica(duh...) are all great games, made with Unity. There is also a lot more!
If I remember correctly, a developer has said they would likely have used a newer engine if it were available when Subnautica was in development. This does indicate they encountered problems in Unity that were hard to fix - however, any engine will present some problems, potentially unexpected.
Furthermore, as I said, a DLC cannot use a separate engine from the core game unless you’re playing the DLC in a completely separate instance from all of the original content of the game - which would basically make it a sequel and not a DLC. When the content from the original game and the DLC are meshed into one loaded instance, using a different engine for the DLC would mean rewriting the entire base game on that engine as well and scrapping all of the work that’s been done so far, because you can’t run engines in parallel like that.
At the end of the day, given the scope of the project and the size of the team, Unity was the correct choice in my opinion and until a sequel with a (possible) engine change, Unity is what we’ve got.
Subnautica has done a great job with it, as have other games like The Long Dark and Firewatch.
Unity is an amazing game engine. Just check out all of the games that Unity gives life to in addition to Subnautica: HearthStone, Firewatch, Stranded Deep, The Forest, Heavy Bullets, Darkwood, Pony Island, Pokemon GO... and so on. All of these I metioned are pretty diverse with good-looking art and assets, and generally pretty fun to play. And honestly, any game engine is going to have its own set of programming limitations or bugs to deal with in one way or another (HearthStone in particular, but that's mostly due to Team 5's spaghetti code versus the actual game engine issues lol), but each has its own strengths in addition to its weaknesses.
Bottom line is, Unity is an amazing game engine, and to state one is inferior to the other is just comparing apples to oranges. If someone refuses to play a game solely on the engine it runs on well... they're only just spiting themselves.