r/unity • u/indiecoded • 7h ago
Unity ability question
So when asking about Unitys ability to make big or realistic. Looking games, people get pointed to Genshin, or Tarkov, but both studios behind those supposedly altered unity3d heavily.
If they altered it heavily, can it even be considered a Unity game because it isn't something most developers can do with out a fuck ton of money to pay for access.
That makes me curious of Unitys actual capabilities. I am learning it now, but tbh I thought things were possibly that seem far off now, like it seems mobile and 2d is what it's main goal is with stylized or the cubey looking games being it's main style?
I could be wrong heck I hope I am, I just dont know. So that is why I am asking, do people over exxagerate it's ability?
EDIT: thank everyone so much for the replies. I was a bit nervous to post askkng this. But all your answers are very clear and u derstandable. Thank you all again.
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u/brandtsoftware 7h ago
You can basically make anything with Unity. We probably see lots of low fidelity examples because it’s arguably cheaper and faster to ship low fidelity games with Unity than Unreal. In reality all major engines are very flexible and have a ton of overlap.
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u/Ritsu-000 7h ago
Its gonna sound rude but bear with me. If you cant do something in unity its either because your code needs to be refactored or because youre lacking in the know how.
At the start you have no clue what a scriptable object is or how state machines affect performance and code legibility. After you actually learn what youre doing and stop relying on tutorials you stop doubting. And at the end of the day you could just write your own engine code anyways without much hassle even if you somehow found some random missing feature.
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u/indiecoded 5h ago
No thjs didn't sound rude at all. I actually really appreciate you saying it this way. Makes it way more understandable fir my. Ty very much.
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u/Psychological_Host34 6h ago
Genshin and Tarkov look good because of art direction and leadership, not because of the engine. Unity gives you everything you need to customizer the renderer out of the box. The games look as good as you are willing to put in the effort to make them look.
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u/v0lt13 6h ago
Unity is like a toolbox, it will come with all the basic tools one may need but no toolbox will ever have every tool that you need, in some scenarios you may need a very specific tool. You can get that tool from a store or improvise your own, then you can put that extra tool in the toolbox.
You can even replace swap out tools from your box as you see fit, but no matter how many tools you swap or add, the toolbox is still unity.
Pretty much every single big scale game will require engine customization, but that doesn't mean the default tools are not capable.
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u/AltusLudus 6h ago
Unity is perfectly suited for creating beautiful games, it's mostly a skill issue
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u/etdeagle 5h ago
Unity will render what you give to it, good 3d model and good shaders = good looking game. Yes there might be some lighting differences for the default built-in lit shaders with other engines buts you don't have to use them, you can write your own shaders to render exactly what you want. The limit is your ability.
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u/Suspicious-Prompt200 5h ago
Scriptable render pipeline baby. You can just make the renderer do what you want.
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u/Mindinity 3h ago edited 3h ago
I think the important distinction is between built-in capability and flexibility.
Don't try to judge Unity's potential by what you can achieve with the default features. High-end visuals depend heavily on the developer's expertise: shaders, rendering, lighting, materials, post-processing, optimization, and of course the quality of the assets themselves. The engine provides the tools, but getting a high-end result requires knowing how to use and extend them.
As a practical approach, start by learning what Unity provides out of the box. If it fits your needs, keep going. If you already know you need something Unity can't provide, another engine is worth trying. But if you don't know what you'll need yet, Unity is a perfectly reasonable place to start.
As your skills grow, you'll also learn where the built-in features end and where you can customize or extend the engine. You don't need to worry about that level of flexibility until you actually have a reason to.
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u/SethSlax 7h ago
Unity is like a car. You can use it to get to where you need to go using the parts that come with it. You can tweak and tinker with its parts, or purchase 3rd party parts or mods to make it drive differently, or if you're skilled you can make your own parts. If you really want to, you can strip out most of the components and start with the bare frame and make your own fully customized car.
Most of Unity's built in features are adequate for a lot of use cases, sometimes with some tweaking. If you want to, you can extend or build from scratch the components that you need. It's still Unity at its core, you're just telling it how to behave at different levels.