Why the hate against certain game engines? (especially Unity or Unreal)

[dookie85]

Personally, I don't really like Visual Novels as a style of gameplay; I prefer plain old novels and audiobooks, whether they're lewd or otherwise. However, I can see the appeal and understand why they're popular here. They can be aesthetically pleasing and barely interactive enough to fill a particular niche. That's why I don't mind when yet another one is released or that they clog up the search results on this site and others (filters are my friend).

On the other hand, I've been looking through a bunch of threads where the developer(s) chose to use Unity, Unreal (or whatever else) as their engine; and inevitably one of posts is about how someone will refuse to play based on that alone. This I don't understand. It makes sense to me if you don't like a particular genre or gameplay style, but if you're not interested, why trash the game without trying it?

It's especially confusing because some of the best games in many genres are made with Unity, and Unreal is a tried and true engine for both blockbuster AAA games and great indie 3D titles. Obviously, that's not true in every case; there's tons of garbage made with these engines as well, but that's not really an indication of anything. There's low quality junk made with every popular engine.

If developers had to program game engines from scratch every time, there would be a lot less indie games (or games in general) made, and not everyone wants to play a RPGM or Ren'Py style game. There's potential for these engines bringing a whole variety of genres not yet fully explored into adult gaming. So, I think it's a positive thing some developers are trying to utilize them. In my opinion, many of these popular engines have their own inherent benefits; even Flash and HTML engines have their place. Therefore, why the hate?

I'm sure this topic has been discussed before, but I didn't find a place for it.

 

[icesun]

I'll let you in on my POV:
I personally prefer Ren'Py VNs over most other stuff here, because you can do everything at your own pace, you can control everything with one hand (*cough*) and I've grown very accustomed to the rollback feature.
That combination is just a level of comfort hard to get elsewhere.
So while I'm not hating on other engines, games outside my comfort zone have a way harder time hooking me - and maybe there's just enough folks with a similar mindset, but they're just like "nah, I won't even try".

And if that was it, we'd all be cool, but:
Users actively trashing stuff they don't like for whatever reason (kinks/engine/etc.) is sadly a general issue which at times feels hopeless to combat. If only "if you know you won't like something, just stay the fuck away" was the default...

 

[Back]

It boils down to this: different strokes for different folks. Simply put, regardless of the reasons, different things appeals to different kinds of people. That's it, really.

Edit (got ninja'd by Icesun): I agree with the statement that people shouldn't hate on or trash other folk's preferences in engine, kinks, or whatever. It's cool to have lively discussions, but belittling others for what they like or dislike is not cool. We should all be awesome with one another in our shared interests in such topics found on F95. Be respectful and kind, and let's all have fun! xD

 

[Winterfire]

I'll let you in on my POV:
I personally prefer Ren'Py VNs over most other stuff here, because you can do everything at your own pace, you can control everything with one hand (*cough*) and I've grown very accustomed to the rollback feature.

You can do that in Unity, or any other engine.
What Ren'Py offers is quite simple and replicable elsewhere (since Visual novel as a game genre is quite simple to begin with).



Anyways, in my opinion, people "hate" on Unity and Unreal because of game performance.
In Unity there is quite a lot you have to do yourself, and if you have just started, there is a lot you could do wrong by simply keeping the default options, which impacts both performance and memory usage.

Ren'Py is more straight-forward, you can still screw up with it if you have just started, but it is much harder to.
In Ren'Py, if you want to play music, simply add a mp3 file and type "play music "name.mp3" and you're done.
In Unity, you have to change the import settings for each file depending on what you need to use it for (Sound Effect, Music, Ambient, ...) and not everyone is aware of that.

I personally avoid Unity Games because new developers tend to use playerprefs to store game data, which is totally wrong.
Ren'Py does a lot of the background stuff very well, and that is why people tend to prefer it.

 

[icesun]

You can do that in Unity, or any other engine.

Of course you COULD, but I've yet to find a game that actually does it.

 

[Hentai_Kishi]

From a performance point of view Unity and Unreal are big overkills if you want to do a simple Visual Novel, why should I download a huge file that some engine spewed out when the developer could have done everything in HTML frameworks or even in Ren'Py? You need to use the best tools for the job, if there is a simple RPG system you would like to do then you probably should use RPGM, if your story is more like a novel with choices then Novel focused engines are the best, only if you were doing some grand strategy complex game or a project that would be too much of a hassle trying to implement on the "normal" engines I would recommend Unity, Unreal or even coding you own game from zero. There is also the issue of familiarity, people already know more or less how Ren'py, RPGM and Twine works, for more obscure or even more "open" engines such as Unreal and Unity the players don't know what type of behavior to expect, I personally remember a time when I played an Unity game where I couldn't scroll back to see the backlog and there were a lot of UI problems that wouldn't have happened if the developer simply used Ren'py.

I don't hate engines by themselves but I have seen some Unity and Unreal games that shouldn't be that demanding on the computer but for some reason used resources like a hellish sex beast. While this is all heavily dependent on the developer skills, optimization would be WAY easier if they just used a common engine and they didn't need to code everything in the first place, this saves the player the risk of high resource consumption and it also saves the developer of unnecessary headaches when developing, it can be the difference between a popular game or not since not everyone here is playing erotic games on a high-end PC or even on a PC at all. Speaking of developers I would also say that indie developers should try to use engines and frameworks that are free, no point in having to pay a license at the end of it if you are an indie dev unless you really think it will matter.

The RPG Maker thing is a touchy topic since there is some truth to what people say, in the case of RPGM the standard engine heavily limits the developer if he/she doesn't know or want to learn how to create scripts for it. There is the issue that people are simply tired of the way developers do their games in RPGM, a lot of those games are grindy and it shouldn't be like this if you want to tell a story where erotic content is the focus, lots of developers also just dump a barebones story with some lacking characters trying to get money on patreon and this is one of the reasons why the engine has a stigma, despite all that there are a lot of good and engaging games on RPGM.

 

[Winterfire]

From a performance point of view Unity and Unreal are big overkills if you want to do a simple Visual Novel, why should I download a huge file

Only when used improperly (At least in Unity's case, I do not know about Unreal).
When used properly, Unity's file size will actually be smaller than Ren'Py.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Unity seems to attract a lot of hacks who use premade assets and either don't know what they're doing, or are just flat-out taking the piss. I like the point Jim Sterling made once about why Unity's reputation is in the dump: the bad developers don't bother to remove the Unity logo and recognizable launcher, while the good ones often do and so you might never know the game was made on Unity. Hearthstone, for example. Given the massive amount of copy-pasted Unity jank there is out there and how similar it all looks, you'd never guess in a million years that Hearthstone uses Unity.

 

[Winterfire]

Unity seems to attract a lot of hacks who use premade assets and either don't know what they're doing, or are just flat-out taking the piss. I like the point Jim Sterling made once about why Unity's reputation is in the dump: the bad developers don't bother to remove the Unity logo and recognizable launcher, while the good ones often do and so you might never know the game was made on Unity. Hearthstone, for example. Given the massive amount of copy-pasted Unity jank there is out there and how similar it all looks, you'd never guess in a million years that Hearthstone uses Unity.

You do not have to remove the logo, the majority of games show the logo of all products used (Speedtree, Unreal, and so on).
Some AAA games made with Unity do show the logo, just not the classic "Free one", but there is nothing wrong with it... You cannot expect everyone to make 100k yearly.

That being said, I do agree that the launcher should be disabled unless you are making an alpha build meant for testing purposes... It is meant to be a temporary substitute for when your game does not have a settings menu.

As for premade assets, that is only partially true.
People like Jim Sterling seem to give the impression that all assets are bad, which is totally wrong.
Unity lacks many features which make your life much easier such as an internal way to edit models (Which some assets offer), a way to internally animate models (which some assets offer) and some other utilities which make your life much easier.

From a player-perspective, assets should be wrong because you end up with a mix of styles or something that you may end up seeing more than once, but that often cannot be helped.
When it comes to solo developers, not everyone has the skills to do everything so more often than not you need to use assets, especially when your game will end up having so many that it would take forever for a single individual to do everything.
Still, from a player-perspective, they are right to find such assets distasteful.

That later part does not really apply to this topic though, majority of Ren'Py games (and not) use DAZ models... I saw that woman with red-black hair way too many times, and I did not even play or purposely look for DAZ games.

 

[dookie85]

You have all given valid reasons why some players prefer an engine in a given situation:

• bad utilization/optimization by new developers, hindering performance and resource usage
• familiarity with UI design and controls of VNs with Ren'Py
• personal preference in gameplay mechanics suited towards a particular common engine

I agree that these are real issues and problems for players. However, I'm not sure if I made it clear enough in the OP, but most of the threads I was referring to weren't strictly VNs. I was mainly looking at and thinking about other categories/genres.

Moreover, you recognized these issues are caused by bad implementation, so the root problem isn't the game engine itself. Therefore, I still don't get why fools won't say something like, "your UI design is cumbersome and janky" or "based on what's here, this is an enormous disk and memory hog," albeit in a nicer way. Instead, they often attack the engine choice rather than provide any useful criticism, and considering they're dismissing the games out-of-hand without trying them, it's no wonder. We could easily click away, no harm no foul, especially on this site. You don't need to tell everyone the game is a pass because it's made with whatever engine; we already know that based on the tags.

As for the amount of crap made with a particular engine, it doesn't make sense for that alone to ruin the engine's reputation, in my opinion. It's simply a matter of consumer perception, which isn't any accurate indicator if it's too general. If you look at games made with Unity for example, you get a wide variety of genres from old school cRPGs to city-building games to side-scrolling platformers to just about anything. Not gonna lie, some of my favorite non-erotic games are made with Unity--some have the logo, some don't.

It's not a commodity like coffee or bananas, where you have a general idea of what you're getting regardless of the specific type of coffee or bananas. For instance, you can make a RPG or business management game with Ren'Py, so you don't even know that it's a VN without reading the other details in the posts. We don't have a clue what the game is about or how good it is if we only look at the game engine used. That's what the rest of the thread tells us.

 

[Droid Productions]

I'm obviously quite happy with Unity, but I think users have a point that it's a lot easier to screw up Unity than it is to screw up Renpy. Combined with a lot of schools (especially in the gamedev sector) teaching Unity, and you get a lot of ambitious devs making their first master-piece and tanking things in the process.

Renpy's a great implementation of a very narrow subset of the games market (Visual Novels); but since most people here want VNs, it's likely to be a decent experience even in the hands of someone without programming experience. Unity promises the same, but... reality is that it's a lot harder to make something decent in Unity without experience in programming and development.

 

[dookie85]

Combined with a lot of schools (especially in the gamedev sector) teaching Unity, and you get a lot of ambitious devs making their first master-piece and tanking things in the process.

I totally understand that. My main issue is users are posting in threads which aren't necessarily Visual Novels, complaining about the developer(s) choosing a specific engine (i.e. Unity or Unreal) with something to the effect of how 'games made with that engine are trash... ' How are these new developers going to learn from that kind of feedback? They'll just ignore them, or try to create a VN instead? These users wouldn't know if the devs were on the right track because they didn't even try it. It's not constructive at all.

My anecdotal experience of back when I was a developer is different from the scenario you laid out though. As an Information Systems major, we were taught programming mostly in Visual Basic .NET and SQL (along with other shit). But when I graduated, I ended up making applications with Ruby and Python in my first job. So, I was writing bad apps with those instead of .NET, lol . My boss was self-taught, and this was a tiny startup, so it's not like it was dictated from corporate bureaucracy. We had our reasons for using those systems, and our clients never told us to port anything to another language. Whenever I screwed something up, they would tell us what they wanted fixed rather than complain about the specific tools we were using to code. A good while ago, I switched careers and probably wouldn't want to be a dev nowadays.

I can see how new devs trying to apply what they learned could end up doing poorly. Still, we were also taught a bunch of theory on best practices and project management. It was more general principles than only nitty-gritty coding. If they didn't pay attention to those classes and are doing poorly with applying the programming too, then it's all around bad. Fools on the internet telling them to change game engines definitely isn't going to solve anything.

That said, this brings me back to my original point: We're not going to see much variety and innovation if developers are discouraged from doing anything different. Some users are being highly presumptuous by assuming these projects are bad based solely on the game engine, without actually reviewing them and giving proper feedback. Who knows, they could potentially turn out to be great like yours.

 

[freedom.call]

Unity - I don't trust any software sending info from my computer, I try keeping that to a minimum. The few games I've tried have not been very user friendly, if I want a chore I just go and wash dishes or something.

Unreal - my pc can't cope.

Renpy - I like. As long as the dev isn't removing user friendly options like rollback, save when I want and such. It's not clever, it's annoying.

 

[mazul]

Some who are kinda defending the reputations on this site of certain engines seem to fall back on the 'but they are also used for great non lewd games' tactic, which begs the question of what a engine's track record with non lewd games has to do with their usage for lewd games?

RPGM lewd games tend to be grindy to the point of making asian mmo games cum in their pants (while the actual player rarely gets to actually cum), while at the same time just using the same basic building blocks and every other game. Which adds to the perception of blandness and tediousness of that engine, mix that with the engine being clunky you will get the deserved entry reputation it has here.

Now while I love Renpy for the same reasons previously mentioned here, I will admit that there is a fair share of trash renpy games around. But unlike some of the other engines it gets more of a pass due to the ease of which users can fix stuff fairly easily on their own, it's simply way easier to deal with for the users even when stuff is broken. Not to mention that even if the dev has a hard on for grindyness, user can simply skip it and get to the meat of the game (this often also exposes how shallow some games are).

Edit, in regards to the Sterling & "assets are bad" thing, Sterling has never claimed that buying assets are a bad thing in itself. The bad thing happens when so called devs purchases complete packages (eg complate basic games), and then reposts them with little to none alteration as a new game (aka asset flip). And to a smaller degree when devs purchases assets with reckless abandonment and throws it together without a plan nor reason and calls it a 'game', it's just a disjointed mess of random assets thrown into a blender and turned to a sludge.

 

[rk-47]

Id say unity is a little more complex and you can have many many more features in a game but renpy has that classic adult game charm, rollback is extremely helpful when youve missed dialogue or want to change a choice
id also say its easier for developers to use renpy

 

[dookie85]

Unity - I don't trust any software sending info from my computer, I try keeping that to a minimum. The few games I've tried have not been very user friendly, if I want a chore I just go and wash dishes or something.

Unreal - my pc can't cope.

Those are valid reasons I can understand. If you post about how devs aren't disabling an internet feature or designing the UI well, that's cool. Or, if you tell them your computer can't handle it. My issue is people are posting in Non-VN games' threads about how those engines are trash without even trying them.

Some who are kinda defending the reputations on this site of certain engines seem to fall back on the 'but they are also used for great non lewd games' tactic, which begs the question of what a engine's track record with non lewd games has to do with their usage for lewd games?

I don't think you understood my point or only skimmed the posts containing that "tactic." I brought that up just to explain that the problem is with the devs' implementation, and so there's nothing inherently wrong with the engines themselves. Matter of fact, almost every Unity game I found on this site, I've enjoyed playing because I read the tags and reviews beforehand (along with some other posts in the thread). So for me, their track record for lewd games is excellent.

I get it. Most of you are looking for Visual Novels or something similar. But like I mentioned before, while I understand their appeal, I'm usually searching for other genres with filters. I'm looking for something other than a long, branching story with nice art or pictures. I'm usually looking for other gameplay mechanics. It's annoying to come across these posts dismissing projects simply due to engine choice. The only other option is probably to build an engine from scratch, and we should already be vaguely familiar with pitfalls associated with that, especially for indie devs who make the bulk of erotic games, good and bad.

I think icesun said it best:

Users actively trashing stuff they don't like for whatever reason (kinks/engine/etc.) is sadly a general issue which at times feels hopeless to combat. If only "if you know you won't like something, just stay the fuck away" was the default...

 

[woody554]

no good reasons. some people just believe having strong negative opinions online fools people into thinking they know what they're talking about. it doesn't, of course.

programs are tools, you can use them right or wrong. neither way guarantees the result will be any good.

blaming a hammer for nailing yourself in the dick isn't the hammer's fault. probably won't stop you from cursing the hammer afterwards though.

 

[AmazonessKing]

Unity and Unreal are both proprietary software, and when better options like Godot exist, then using any of those is kind of dumb. In addition, both require a lot of optimization to not run like bad, because both engines uses resources most dev don't even need.

 

[dookie85]

Unity and Unreal are both proprietary software, and when better options like Godot exist, then using any of those is kind of dumb. In addition, both require a lot of optimization to not run like bad ...

I completely agree that indie devs using open-source engines is a great idea, and at least this directly addresses the game engine itself, as opposed to inexperienced development and bad implementation.

However, it doesn't seem like you read the thread though, since we're rehashing the same dismissive attitude regarding this topic. We always end up talking about development mistakes and pitfalls, which could happen using any engine.

To reiterate, it's not the fault of the game engine when developers misuse them, and it's not a good reason to trash a game, without trying it, solely because of that. Granted, I'll concede that some problems might be more likely than others, but the engine alone is not a good indicator of quality or lack thereof.

 

[AmazonessKing]

We always end up talking about development mistakes and pitfalls, which could happen using any engine.

Yes, but Unity/Unreal both need to be adjusted for them to run optimal, unlike engines like RPGM or ren'py, and that's simply because they use more memories because they are thought for full-fledged 3D games or 2D games with a lot of particles or 3D elements. They are way too much for the kind of game you usually see here, it's like using a nuke on a single person. You can optimize it, sure, but at that point why just don't use Godot or ren'py?

To reiterate, it's not the fault of the game engine when developers misuse them, and it's not a good reason to trash a game

Don't get me wrong, I agree, I just think people take it the wrong way, the reason I assume most people hate games using those engines is simply because they would rather devs to use something simple if their game is simple in the first place, and, even then, I insist, Godot is a thing.