Unity Working to Optimise Engine on Switch, Talks Up Success on Platform

Let that library of games grow. Glad I picked up that 200 gb micro sd card.

What's the best game made on the Unity Engine that's seen or will see a release on Switch?

Snake Pass runs on Unity and I'd say it works pretty well. Anything that makes development easier and quicker is a good thing in my book.

EDIT: I definitely confused Unity and Unreal. Sorry about that, and thanks to those who corrected me.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I'd say I Am Setsuna, Snipperclips and Super Bomberman R are contenders. Those are from a pretty old list though, so I don't know which newer titles are also Unity-based.

Hoping to be in that percentage in the not too distant future, so this is great news to me!

@thesilverbrick it actually runs on UE tho

It's a good platform. I'd be most happy with it reducing its footprint though.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
Good question. Within the next year, over a hundred Unity 3D titles will arrive on Switch.

My college roommate used this program a lot learning the trade. Seemed like it was a pretty solid piece of tech.

"Now a few developers..."

I can't recall any Unity issues being written about here besides Playtonic. Which I think says more about Playtonic - who dedicated their entire team to the Wii U version when they farmed out the PS4 and X1 versions to Team 17 and we all know how that turned out - then it says about Unity.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/06/playtonic_handling_wii_u_version_of_yooka-laylee_team17_porting_to_ps4_and_xbox_one

"We wanted to make sure that Wii U gets the right attention"

30% of Switch games run on Unity, but still no release date for Yooka-Laylee. Yeah, let's blame it all on the Unity engine and not Playtonic's never-ending ineptitude.

@rjejr I heard of another game having trouble, Battle Chasers: Night War.

@rjejr I remember Overcooked had framerate issues, and also Battlechasers: Nightwar was delayed because of Unity. I'm sure there's more, just not recalling off the top of my head...
Anyway, great that they are paying attention and planning on adressing everything!

Now, if we could just get Gamemaker support too, that would be great

Earthlock: Festival of Magic is also with Unity.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
In terms of graphic fidelity the most impressive Unity title I've seen so far is Layers of Fear, which has been reported earlier to come to Switch (soon or soonish?). I am genuinely impressed with the level of detail, each time I fire it up on the PC. I think most of it will be carried over, minus the resolution perhaps.

Where did Nintendo use it?

I briefly used unity for a project at uni... was fairly easy to use, and could get pretty good results with practice... the only problem was that their updates had a habit of missing out features or fixes that had been added in previous updates, so I found myself intentionally using an old version at one point... by the sounds of it, developers may be experiencing something similar with Switch development.

It's still a terrible engine.

@thesilverbrick Nope. Snake Pass DOES NOT run on Unity. It uses the Unreal Engine 4 version.

@rjejr Morphite is another example of a game launching on all other systems day and date that was unable to hit the Switch on time thanks to the Unity issues. It seems to be a real problem.

@Yasaal Nintendo used Unity on Mini Mario & Friends amiibo Challenge

@Yasaal Flip Wars. Super Mario Run. Snipperclips.

@Donutsavant @mauroh @SLIGEACH_EIRE "Battle Chasers: Night War" "Morphite"

Don't know much about them but I don't doubt it. I do know about Overcooked, probably b/c it released already, didn't know about the framerate issues though.

OK, I've seen BC:NW, but mostly on PS so I didn't know about the Unity issues, only that there's some connection to Sin Mora EX which I did know about back from when I played it on PS3.

And if BC:NW did get delayed on Switch I hope somebody beat them up for this tweet:
"Hey all! We ARE coming on Switch, but NOT FIRST! The game will be on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch at the same time! #WePromise"

Should never hashtag "Wepromise"

So yeah, Unity issues. Seems like NL didn't cover it, at least I can't find it, and I research stuff when I feel like it.

http://nintendoeverything.com/battle-chasers-nightwar-officially-delayed-on-switch/

It is looking very Yooka-Laylee all over again - Kickstarter+Unity = bad news. Though I'll cut these guys a bit more slack as they kind of stated from the outset Switch was a new addition after THQ stepped in, whereas Playtonic were all - don't worry, we got this - from day 1.

But ok, I'm on board, Unity is a pain on Switch.

So it turns out I posted on the Morphite article 2 weeks ago - seriously considering a senility test - but the guy made the delay sound more like a Ntnedo issue than a Unity issue. Or maybe I just read it that way b/c I'm so used to blaming everything on Ntinedo?

"we have found the support from Unity for the Switch to be really great. Also, Nintendo’s development tools and platform is much improved. There was one issue we discovered, but Nintendo were very apologetic about it."

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/09/feature_morphite_devs_explain_why_its_much_more_than_just_no_mans_sky_on_switch

I mean, why would Nintendo apologize for a Unity issue?

Unity is Sh*t. Unreal Engine is the real deal. There's a huge difference in quality and performance between these 2 engines.

@Cosats @aemir Oh, right. I definitely confused the two. Thanks for the correction.

As someone who works with GM:S, I wish they would get support on a Nintendo system for a change.

Looks like Battlechaser is also waiting for the same update. It was huge disappointment the the game delayed because of this.

Game Maker next, please!

Anyone calling Unity bad clearly has no idea what they're talking about. UE and Unity both have pros and cons. I've released games with both and have used them professionally for the last 10 years.

Unity brought game design into the hands of thousands who couldn't afford it. There are studios out there who wouldn't exist if it were not for Unity.

As they made it so easy to create games this has sadly been abused with some appalling asset flips and reskins being sold on Steam. But that is the fault of the developer (and the store) not Unity.

Does anyone know what Nintendo's inhouse Engine is called? Or is that a daft question?

@Menchi187 That is not true.
The only reason why it might seem like a terrible engine is because it is free to use, so every idiot can use it to make games without having to pay anything. Thats why there is a high amount of garbage games made with Unity.

These are also a lot of great unity games though, like Cities: Skylines, I Am Setsuna or Ori and the Blind Forest.

The issue is usually not the engine, but the developer when it comes to Unity.

@JunkRabbit That is indeed an impressive looking game, especially for Unity. Interesting premise as well. Hope it does indeed come to the Switch.

Ok so then if Unity is so great, are we to blame piss poor coding on the part of the teams of Battlechasers, Yooka Laylee, and Sine More DX? They all use unity and all claim there are bugs and they can't resolve it on unity as the latest update made more bugs.

@ThanosReXXX
Isn't it though? Thanks for linking the in-engine (and actually in-game) trailer. I had heard people say before that Unity wasn't so good (only for mobile and ports of the same), and next I see this game, and I think "What are they talking about? This is absolutely stunning!". Granted it's only indoors and that might turn out to be an advantage, but the graphics are so polished, especially the item assets. They look photo-realistic when you pick them up, material quality and all, and that's no joke.

It was reported here on NL a few weeks back that it was to be ported.

Games like Kingdom Hearts 3, Tekken 7, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, etc uses Unreal Engine 4... do you see any AAA games using Unity?

Unreal Engine 4 = Ferrari
Unity = Hyundai

Good to hear, Unity certainly could use the optimization....not just on Switch, actually.....but glad they're taking Switch as a priority!

@Nincompoop part of that comes down to the professional services offered by Epic who specializes in supporting clients (for a price) versus Unity that offers less in terms of professional services, but is more economical to get into.

@NEStalgia

UE4 has all the features available in the free version unlike Unity where advance features are locked. If you turned on GI lighting, immediately you see the performance and rendering quality of UE4 over Unity. UE4 is now used in architectural and film industry, not just gaming industry: the photorealistic real-time rendering is so good that it can almost replaced pre-rendered video. You can't do that with Unity, these 2 engines are different classes.

@Nincompoop A triple-A game is nothing more than a game with a higher budget. It doesn't say anything about the quality.

@Nincompoop Yeah. They make their return on the services rendered. Funny, I remember when idTech was the more advanced one (by far) and UT was just an "ok" second engine. The subtractive brushes really held it back in the early days.

Funny, that video shows about as much gameplay as the average AAA game....

@Nincompoop
Graphics engine features aren't restricted in free Unity license. That was true in the far past, but not anymore. There are differences and reasons to choose one engine over the other, but because Unity has had a tradition of being cheaper to start and got to mobile long before Unreal Engine did, it has a reputation for all the quickly made mobile games. It was made worse, because the policy of showing the "Made with Unity" is enforced if you use the free version but not if you use the paid. In other words, the typical gamer always know when a smaller, cheaply made game was made with Unity, but you don't always know when a higher production value game was made with it.

Anyway, Unity is great and so is Unreal Engine and new developers have free access to them both, which has been an amazing change from the past. They are only tools, however. You can make great or horrible games with either one.

Here' something rendered real-time in Unity:

@aaronsullivan That is rendered in unity?!, Its looks pretty AAA to me.

@aaronsullivan I've seen that video last year, it's a promotional video made by Unity themselves. Show me something that looks as good by a user. Search for "unreal engine 4 architectural visualization" on Youtube and see the countless number of quality videos made by regular users.

It's a light engine basically for Mobile games. Bring us Hearthstone though its a great game. Even better Diablo 3

@aaronsullivan
Cool stuff. Coincidentally I've just read that a sequel to this has just been released, made by director Neill Blomkamp. It's called ADAM: The Mirror... and a third part is already in the making.

Certainly a powerful engine imho. It is obviously only a matter of creative input and the willingness to really work with it (not just "use" it) in order to use it effectively.

To decide if it's a good engine I believe we need only look at what it can do, not at what has already been done with it. The latter tells us nothing about the quality of the engine itself.

And even then I daresay that no matter how we assess it, it's irrelevant (what do we know anyway... ), because the engine used does certainly not determine the quality of the game made with it.

EDIT: I'd call Neill Blomkamp a "regular user" by the way, extraordinarily talented perhaps, and a pro, sure, but game makers need to be talented pros, too...

@nincompoop @junkrabbit
Not very interested in architectural visualization, myself. And I'm not often impressed by games that make achieving photorealism a high priority. I like games that are fun and that usually means abstracting away distracting parts of reality.

But that's me. Many gamers have different values and individuals and teams and development studios are going to find different reasons to choose one engine over the other, like I said. The visual rendering, maybe unexpectedly, is only one part of it.

I was just trying to balance the unwarranted FUD about Unity. Here's a link to a showcase of games, you'll see plenty of noteworthy games on there and a wide range of visuals. Plenty on there I wouldn't want to lose and who knows what factors led to their using Unity or how well it would have gone if they'd chosen a different engine. Too many factors to guess, really. https://unity3d.com/showcase/gallery

Their recent promotional video is on the main page, too. https://unity3d.com