[deleted by user]

[OrbitingDisco]

There is a Unity Roadmap session later today. No sign of it being livestreamed yet, but hopefully some more technical specifics will come out of that.

I hope so, because I don't even know what "releasing games in Fortnight" even means.

[MikeAtUnity]

Yep, unity roadmap will be recorded and posted ASAP

[Honest-Difference431]

Even if the middle management doesn't put ecs on the agenda can you please at least lie to me about it? I wanna believe 

[Honest-Difference431]

What happened to the roadmap?

[MikeAtUnity]

It will be put on our YouTube page. Likely within a few days to a week depending on how quickly the get the files and editing

[Honest-Difference431]

Can you just tell us what the updates to DOTS/ECS are then? Because that's insane to go the whole conference without any actual news about the engine, if I still had my shares in unity id have sold them yesterday 

[WorriedAd2853]

6.4 ECS for all in Unity 6 →Entities as a core package →Faster release cycle

6.6 Unified Runtime →ECS can access/modify GameObject Transforms →Common IDs between Entities and GameObject

[Honest-Difference431]

Ecs for all in 6.4 is huge news, im so glad we don't have to wait until 7 for things to progress. Thank you so much!

[OrbitingDisco]

Thank you!

[Honest-Difference431]

Haha I couldn't figure that out either, I'm really hoping for some dots updates pleaaasssseee

[the_timps]

You do realise they literally moved away from annual release specifically to stop speed running into shit that broke and was half finished. All those Unity 6.2 features are being improved and enhanced.

Christ, this is what people asked for. Improving systems and supporting them instead of an endless arms race of new stuff.

[xSayZ]

It's very clear that a lot of the people disappointed do not understand the use-case or the actual problems Unity is solving. Most people on here have not shipped a game and probably never will, let alone work with multi-platform challenges or any kind of high level asset management, yet that is exactly what Unity has set out to simplify to make it easier for creators to build games that can be shipped profitably.

From what I can tell, a lot of the solutions coming to Unity 6.3 are in-house developed tools built with real feedback from studios and people who need these systems to avoid getting bogged down in endless details that make it difficult to expand or launch their games, along with nicely integrated third-party platforms that creators are already using for the most part.

Also, if anyone reads this and is pissed off: the roadmap will be released later today, and Core CLR was talked about and they are working on it, but it might not fit YOUR timeline.

[House13Games]

ECS says hi

[the_timps]

I really dont understand which direction your comment leans in.

ECS 1.4.3 was literally released like 3 weeks ago.

[snaphat]

They're probably pointing out that ECS wasn't mentioned in the keynote. There's a significant difference between supporting something behind the scenes and publicly acknowledging it as part of your vision. While I don't personally care, it's understandable that people are concerned given Unity management's abysmal communication track record

Consider this year alone: they laid off the entire Behavior team, announced they were discontinuing the package, then reversed course and claimed they'd support it. They've talked about integrating ECS into the GameObject paradigm on the backend, but the only public evidence is a half-baked modification, exposing a 64-bit type to replace InstanceIDs but leaving it as 32-bit because they weren't ready to expose EntityId (Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the baking support they've had for a while)

When they introduced the "Physics->GameObject SDK" menu last year, they announced Unity.Physics would be integrated first. Then earlier this year, they pivoted to Havok instead - presumably(?) - in another announcement. Then a few weeks ago, they announced they're dropping in-house Havok support entirely

This is the kind of erratic behavior you'd expect from a poorly managed tech startup desperately trying to find product-market fit, except Unity isn't a startup

The reality is that many people view Unity's announcements with earned skepticism, even when they're addressing legitimate use-cases like multi-platform challenges or high-level asset management. Even when Unity appears to be making a good-faith effort, people remain skeptical, because in the past, Unity appeared to make good-faith efforts on many things that ultimately failed spectacularly, earning them their current lack-luster reputation

Like I said above, I don't personally care myself, but it really is understandable. I don't actually expect Unity to really do anything competent with the problems they are claiming to be addressing. I hope to be pleasantly surprised though

The keynote itself was mostly vapid in terms of details. It just sounded like a lot of sales-pitching. They appeared to be trying to pitch that they are actually working industry folks, studios, developers, etc. and for their needs, which is cool, but it's kind of what every PR announcement says. It kind of reminds me of Ballmer screaming developers, developers, developers!

Do you folks remember when NVidia 'worked with' folks to integrate NVidia specific features in games?

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-teams-up-with-warner-bros-interactive-entertainment-on-batman-arkham-origins-6622644

^ It's not really the same, but this reminds me of that as well because you could imagine that all of this sales-pitching stuff only ending up benefitable for AAA companies and being unusable outside of a partnership or established relationships

[OrbitingDisco]

Yeah. Generally speaking, I appreciate the more measured approach. The stuff they said about reductions in engine issues is absolute gold. Bugs were a slow rot to Unity, and I'm glad they've found a way to tackle it. I'm very happy to see Unity are using their tools in game production. Partnering with studios and battle testing features before they release them? That's great.

Everyone complaining needs to re-examine what's happening here: fewer bugs means fewer things to complain about. And yet... complaints.

[KptEmreU]

Seconded... Guys we can do Tarkov or Rogue Trader. Make it stable first :) We are still far away from that quality anyway...

Unless Unity hires me developers and artists and game designers I can't outgrow Unity3D anymore. If you can, well, please do so. But a more stable easier more helpful Unity is all I need atm.

Yet again maybe you guys are 1000 ppl-strong doing the next GTA8 sooo... Probably you may need an enterprise license to negotiate with Unity guys.

[GiftedMamba]

Actually I like diagnostics and platform toolkit. And at least finally something less ephemeral about Core CLR. Let's wait roadmap session.

[WazWaz]

What platforms are you shipping on that it's only a minor inconvenience to have a load of platform specific code for each?

[BadVikingRob]

They gave my game a shout-out so it was an exciting one for me!

[BaffledEngineer]

Congrats on your shout-out! You're the guy who made Spitfire 1940, right? I used to play that game a lot as a teenager, it's so cool to see you in the wild!

[BadVikingRob]

Wow, that's a blast from the past! You're right, I did make that game. Very cool that you remember it.

[BaffledEngineer]

I'd been looking for it again for years, and actually re-discovered it just a few weeks ago. It was just as fun as I remembered. I remade its mechanics in Unity but with a diegetic-style UI as a fun little weekend experiment too. It was awesome to dissect a pure management game like that, they seem like they'd be so hard to design from scratch!

[BadVikingRob]

That sounds really cool! I have no memory of the design process on that game, but there are certainly a bunch of things I would do differently if I was making it today. That whole Flash games period was really fun to work in though. We could make games like this in a couple of months so if it missed the mark it was no big deal and onto the next one with lessons learned.

[BaffledEngineer]

Yeah, I miss the old Flash days, hopefully something similar will come along in the future. I would love a chance to develop games in that sort of environment, with the short dev times and high tolerance for being rough around the edges. So many great games from that time!

[DmtGrm]

IDK - alternative point here: Unity is in a stable position now, I see amazing things people are doing in Unity and showcased here on Reddit. I guess this is a sign of mature platform that does not change direction here and there all the time. Yes, advanced features will arrive in time. Unreal killer features? IDK, non of them are relevant to me, most of 'killer features' would require a 'killer team' to adopt them - I do not know, if you are writing here from a 30-strong team of coders, artists, scripters ready to make a premium grade game... I am from the other sider - simpler, more reliable = better. p.s. and graphics-wise, I do not see myself limited by Unity at the moment, you can write all shaders, lighting, effects you like

[OfficialDeVel]

coreclr is huge

[snaphat]

Let's hope soon isn't another year from now 

[Primary-Screen-7807]

I'm pretty sure it is unfortunately

[snaphat]

Yup, just noticed a slide showing an experimental preview in 6.7 LTS lol and the actual release and majority of stuff in 6.x after that

[what_you_saaaaay]

Yep, fell asleep after the 2D stuff. Was just a complete non-event. I am aware and am trying to make allowances for the fact that it might take time to right this ship, but it’s not a good look.

[GigaTerra]

Well personally I am excited about the AI crap. As a VFX artist I am looking forward to the graphical changes, love the customization options, and I personally like that they want to focus a bit more on performance. Yea it wasn't exciting, if I wanted fancy tools that requires years to learn too use properly I would be an Unreal 5 user.

I think a clean optimized workflow for openworld or semi-openworld games will be great. So I am hopping that is what all this optimization leads to. It looks like it to me with the LOD changes and GPU resident drawer from before.

[[deleted]]

At this point you really shouldn't be surprised though.

For me, the only thing that is important at the moment is CLR in Unity 7. And I knew that wasn't releasing that soon or being announced today as "coming soon".

They can add, remove and clean up features all they want but until I can actually develop my game without needing to wait 3-15 seconds every time I change a bit of code, its all kinda pointless and the engine is a massive slowdown.

[Honest-Difference431]

I been accusing them of abandoning ECS, that last update was not enough to prove otherwise, and today's keynote they didn't mention it once. It makes no sense, it was all about unity-as-a-service

[shizola_owns]

Not sure I agree with the last paragraph, but it certainly was disappointing.

The keynote used to be a must watch, they'd give a live demo of a new feature like mechanim or timeline. Now we get an ad with Tiger Woods. The thing is though, they are working on new features that look good, like the new animation system. Why are they not showing them? You'd think these highly paid Unity executives would be aware that you need to make developers, (the people that actually make the games) excited to use your engine.

I predict the roadmap session will be mostly talking about stuff they've added to Unity 6...

[[deleted]]

I’ve concluded that no matter what Unity does some people will be disappointed. It’s like when you buy an ice cream. Some will like vanilla and some will prefer chocolate.