Unity Ren'Py Why are most unity games not ported for mobiles ? and why renpy has so many 3dcg game ,when they are much better suited for unity ?

[Krakk3n]

Spoiler: motivation

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So , I have tried downloading games from this site for mobile phones. But it hardly ever works in my 2 GB ram phone. Also , the renpy engine has a flaw with its games. i.e. even games with not very diverse assets also take a lot of space because every image is saved as an image. While game engines have an upper hand in such cases as they can render 3d models. Thus saving lot of space . so the games with slightly lower poly assets or bones can use same model for multiple scenes. now obviously this will take some processing power. But some games like "harem hotel" (ie. serial asset reusing games) can have lower space . also they can add animations at will. And having made 3D games on mobiles which work fine even with 3-4 models at a time in the camera. I think , there is a scope for people to consider unity.


On top of it , unity has a much better resource management than renpy (or atleast that is my understanding.) as it can load and unload assets from RAM. while renpy must keep it in the ram (I am assuming this because even smaller renpy games also run very sluggish on my phone . While , UI from the games I have made previously on Unity are much smoother than any renpy game I tried on phone. ) . Also , the asset bundle part can also help reducing the size of apps and easier installation instead of 2GB APKs, which crash my phone while installation.

I am not an expert in unity but I feel like there has to be some limitation in unity that I am not able to see here. Or is it just lack of technical knowhow and convenience of renpy ?

 

[TessaXYZ]

Spoiler: motivation

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So , I have tried downloading games from this site for mobile phones. But it hardly ever works in my 2 GB ram phone. Also , the renpy engine has a flaw with its games. i.e. even games with not very diverse assets also take a lot of space because every image is saved as an image. While game engines have an upper hand in such cases as they can render 3d models. Thus saving lot of space . so the games with slightly lower poly assets or bones can use same model for multiple scenes. now obviously this will take some processing power. But some games like "harem hotel" (ie. serial asset reusing games) can have lower space . also they can add animations at will. And having made 3D games on mobiles which work fine even with 3-4 models at a time in the camera. I think , there is a scope for people to consider unity.


On top of it , unity has a much better resource management than renpy (or atleast that is my understanding.) as it can load and unload assets from RAM. while renpy must keep it in the ram (I am assuming this because even smaller renpy games also run very sluggish on my phone . While , UI from the games I have made previously on Unity are much smoother than any renpy game I tried on phone. ) . Also , the asset bundle part can also help reducing the size of apps and easier installation instead of 2GB APKs, which crash my phone while installation.

I am not an expert in unity but I feel like there has to be some limitation in unity that I am not able to see here. Or is it just lack of technical knowhow and convenience of renpy ?

"why renpy has so many 3dcg game ,when they are much better suited for unity"

Because most games are developed by a solo developer and creating a fully animated experience in Unity is a massive challenge to do by oneself. And, often, people just want a good story, and creating an actual 3D game to tell that story is overkill when the VN model is tried and true.

 

[peterppp]

you're saying that 3dgc games on renpy are better suited as 3d games on unity? uh... two different things ma dude

 

[baka]

not sure I can agree to what u write.
unity also uses static images. most VN games that uses unity are like that.
we have unity games that uses real-time rendering, those are either low quality or require massive amount of time and expertise.

a lot of unity games waste tons of HD space because of bad file-management. so another cons.
ren'py is free and crossplatform and fairly easy to code compared to other languages also theres help everywhere if u want to get started.

unity also eat cpu a lot. demand plenty. ren'py is usually quite cpu friendly.

I think html/java (electron) would be a better alternative. not unity.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I feel like these kind of games are Better experience on phones rather than on PCs.

Well, my desktop screen is 14 times bigger than my smartphone one, but I guess that now I understand why MC's dick is generally oversized, is to see it on smartphone.

Also , I have heard that the mobile games which are low specs friendly are much better because the newer mobiles have a larger and larger gap between low end and high end phones according to

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.

Well, this answer your question.
Some Unity games are so badly optimized that they struggle to play on desktop. No chance for those games to works on smartphone.

So , I have tried downloading games from this site for mobile phones. But it hardly ever works in my 2 GB ram phone.

And once again, this answer to your question.

I'll be short, for once.


Firstly, your thread should be named: "My smartphone is old, help me find a culprit to explain why you can't play lewd games on it".

Secondly, you are really full of delusion if you believe that quality real time 3D could works on a smartphone, especially yours.
Really low poly meshes with really optimized algorithm can perhaps run on top end smartphones, but even this I'm not really sure. 3D renders can easily be 5 times slower when done exclusively with the CPU, than when they can rely on the GPU. And this is with high end desktop CPU.

Thirdly, Ren'Py only use at most 300 MB to store the images. Unity would need at least the same size to store the meshes and textures. A basic scene with Daz can easily need 8 GB, divided by 20 it would still mean 400 MB for a low quality equivalent with Unity. For Ren'Py, it's the maximum it will use, for Unity the minimum.

Fourthly, you struggle to play Ren'Py games on your smartphone because your smartphone only have 2GB RAM, period.


Edit: Sorry, totally messed the formatting, closing the wrong tag.

 

[79flavors]

The simple answer is technical skill.

A kinetic visual novel in RenPy can be written by learning as few as 8 programming commands. A full branching path visual novel is not many more than that. All using tools which can be as simple as "notepad.exe".

Not only that... but the totality of the UI functionality is already delivered with RenPy without writing a single line of code. Delivering a "rollback" system in Unity is not a simple task. Nor is a save/load system or point-and-click style adventures. Not complex... IF you already know Unity, but not simple.

A developer will need to understand maybe Daz3D or HoneySelect to develop their game, but that would likely have had to be true even if they used Unity (though more likely Blender for Unity).

There is also familiarity. Players know what to expect from a RenPy game... it is comfortingly familiar.

And whilst it's not easy, it's also not hard to deliver RenPy games onto Android devices (with RenPy auto converting some UI functionality to better cope with touchscreen devices).

Unity would likely be easier to deliver to the iOS market. Even then, I have my doubts whether the iOS gatekeepers would allow through some of the sort of games that people here on F95 would write.

Sure, it you already know Unity... write in Unity. But the majority of VN developers won't and so RenPy is the path of least resistance and can be seen as the safer path to possible success.

 

[Tompte]

Hi, Unity mobile game developer here.

I see a lot of misconceptions about Unity on mobile in this thread. I can tell you there are no real technical reasons why you wouldn't use Unity on mobile. In fact, when we were rolling our own engine we struggled to keep up with the latest trends and mandates from phone manufactures. Unity has support for all of it out of the box. It's true you can easily waste RAM if you don't know what you're doing, but an experienced developer would know how to avoid that. That would be true for any engine.

If you're wondering why you're not seeing more Unity games on mobile, I think this might just be a case of selection bias. There are TONS of developers, small and large, that make mobile games with Unity. Just those games don't advertise themselves as such, and wouldn't be visual novels, because that's such a niche genre and isn't as popular on mobile as, I don't know, puzzle games or anime horse girl racing.

The device performance disparity span is real, but both the platform holders have taken steps to reduce it, like enforcing developers to stop supporting older devices. If you're having problems with your 2 gig phone it's because Google wants you to buy a new phone.

Spoiler: Side-rant

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Honestly though, in my experience, the point of failure on mobile is rarely the games themselves, rather the ad network SDKs that come bundled inside them. They're usually shoddily put together by some web dev who doesn't even know what RAM is. They will eat your RAM and ask for seconds. I get really good crash analytics for the games I work on and it's always some fucking ad network, and it usually afflicts people who were unlucky to buy the "wrong" phone.

 

[GNVE]

I feel like these kind of games are Better experience on phones rather than on PCs. And I have heard that most mobile gaming is almost as sizable as pc market. Also , I have heard that the mobile games which are low specs friendly are much better because the newer mobiles have a larger and larger gap between low end and high end phones according to

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.

About half the mobile market is currently an IOS device. Which has no real or consistent way to sideload apps. Games in this niche are not going on the IOS or Play store. So the market is smaller than you think. Sure the EU will force Apples hand to accept secondary stores at some point but that doesn't mean these types of games will be allowed in those stores either.

So , I have tried downloading games from this site for mobile phones. But it hardly ever works in my 2 GB ram phone. Also , the renpy engine has a flaw with its games. i.e. even games with not very diverse assets also take a lot of space because every image is saved as an image. While game engines have an upper hand in such cases as they can render 3d models. Thus saving lot of space . so the games with slightly lower poly assets or bones can use same model for multiple scenes. now obviously this will take some processing power. But some games like "harem hotel" (ie. serial asset reusing games) can have lower space . also they can add animations at will. And having made 3D games on mobiles which work fine even with 3-4 models at a time in the camera. I think , there is a scope for people to consider unity.

Most Unity games on this site also use prerendered images. This is for several reasons.

1. Daz does not allow you to use assets in a 3D game without an extra licences (sure a lot of devs pirate assets but for those that don't want too it would increase the money they spent per asset by $15 or so. This means they could look at a 4-5 figure bill depending on the number of assets they want to use).
2. As TessaXYZ stated many devs work solo but not just that they are inexperienced devs. And as 79flavors stated Ren'Py requires little to no knowledge of programming to make a VN. Even better is that when you want to get into more complex programming Python is easier to wrap your head around then C# (at least that is my personal experience).
3. Daz and Honey Select are easy entry level programs to get into. They are however not suited for actual 3D game design you'd need for the game you are proposing. Most people developing a game in this niche are inexperienced 3D artists with little to no skill when starting out.
4. You use the tool others are using because support is better and your audience is more familiar with it. In this space the convenience of these tools will make sure they will keep dominating the space for quite a while.
5. I do not agree that a general engine like Unity is more suited for VN's than a specific engine like Ren'Py is. It was literally built to do this and when developing a game you notice that.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I see a lot of misconceptions about Unity on mobile in this thread. I can tell you there are no real technical reasons why you wouldn't use Unity on mobile.

Where have you see someone talk about technical reasons ? Whatever TessaXYZ or 79flavors, they both pointed to the human factor. As for me I only addressed the fact that real time 3D isn't what OP thought it is.

[...] but an experienced developer would know how to avoid that. That would be true for any engine.

Except that there's really few experienced developer on the scene. And those who pretend being one not always are.
Like this guy (that I'll not name because I'm not here to shame people behind their back) who was making a game few years ago and, despite his supposed ten years of experience with Unity, have never been able to make his game usable on none 16/9 screens.

If you're having problems with your 2 gig phone it's because Google wants you to buy a new phone.

And absolutely not because 2 GB is fucking low when the system itself need at least 700 MB...
If he haven't strictly configured his phone, ensuring that only the mandatory applications are running in the background, and don't regularly clean the RAM, nor effectively close the applications after he used them, he can easily have 1.5 GB or more that are already used when he starts a game. There's a reason why Android have a fully integrated VRAM system and it's enabled by default.

There's very little point in building your game for mobile only to dump it onto a store and never touch it again. It won't be seen or played by any significant number of people.

You understood that OP was talking about games available here, right ? Therefore it's application that would be updated regularly, and their authors would see the store as only being a secondary income source, while not effectively expecting incomes once the development cycle would end.

 

[Krakk3n]

Honestly though, in my experience, the point of failure on mobile is rarely the games themselves, rather the ad network SDKs that come bundled inside them. They're usually shoddily put together by some web dev who doesn't even know what RAM is.

I was talking about specifically VNs. can you even get ads on an game like this ? I mean you will not even be entertained in play store. Have to find some shady ad sdk and apstore.

1. it is no possible to rollback

And I don't think the technical things people are saying is true. Roll back is very easy if you are clever and encode every choice as an object. infact u can even support more rollback than renpy or rollback even after just loading which renpy doesn't support.

Daz does not allow you to use assets in a 3D game without an extra licences (sure a lot of devs pirate assets but for those that don't want too it would increase the money they spent per asset by $15 or so. This means they could look at a 4-5 figure bill depending on the number of assets they want to use).

I don't know about Daz situation though , may be animation part would be difficult and costly if you would have to get a license. but you can still use humanoid animation in unity and use other animations available open source. I am not particularly familiar with adult gaming resources and what are available.


And I agree , you will have to code specific things for VNs. But , I think people can make a VN template for Unity with specific features already implemented. A community resource that can further facilitate new unity VNs . There is like no cost associated with. Do you think that would be useful?

 

[88stanford88]

I forget to say:
Ren'py is easy to create cheat/mod that works on any Operating System! INCLUDING LINUX ANDROID IOS
easy to mod
easy to save with unlimited slots
the number of games in Ren'py are growing every day!
...

THE WINNER IS Ren'Py
UNITY IS OBSOLETE

 

[Tompte]

I was talking about specifically VNs. can you even get ads on an game like this ? I mean you will not even be entertained in play store. Have to find some shady ad sdk and apstore.

I see. That wasn't clear from your post. But like I said, VNs is just not going to find an audience on mobile. There are exceptions of course, like Inkle's 80 days, but broadly speaking. Sure, you CAN do it, and it's easy. But you're underestimating the crushing competition and the importance of appeasing the algorithm. There might be hundreds of visual novels on the app stores but you're going to have trouble finding them.

Other than micro-transactions, ads is how you make any money on mobile. 99.99% of people will never pay for apps or games up front, especially not on Android.