Response to Unity CEO failures – Starfighter General

Code Monkey wondered how I lost 600 hours of game dev time in the past 1.5 years due to the terrible decisions of this Electronic’s Arts CEO. Unity is still the way, but this CEO gotta go.

I didn’t lose over 600 hours of work by a loss of a backup. I lost over 600 hours of work due to new Unity bugs since this CEO took over. I’m one of the most experienced game devs on Earth (150,000 hours gaming/design/coding), so you know the rest of the stuff I say is knowledgeable. I desired to use ECS/DOTS before I even heard of it. My code was slowing down in scripts after 500 AI enemies and I wanted more. I was planning on programming my own parallel processing solution having done multi threaded coding successfully. So I asked a question on the forum and they said,”Yeah we’re doing parallel processing now.” So I got excited, and ECS/DOTS is fairly well done. The problem is that I only wanted to use 1 experimental package. But in order to build ECS/DOTS, you’re forced to use the Scriptable Build Pipeline experimental package which simply didn’t work out of the box, took me a good 400 hours on that. I started using ECS/DOTS March2021 or so, and never got a standalone working til about March 2022. This is a failure of Unity since Unity used to boast that you could compile standalone to Windows/Mac/Linux/Iphone/Android/Xbox/PS/Nintendo/handhelds very easily. I got into Unity because compiling standalones was easy, it is not anymore. Before this CEO got into trouble and the stock tanked, I was expressing concern that we’re being forced to use too many of the new experimental packages, and they’re incredibly unstable. Addressables alone, I encountered like 4 confirmable bugs, and yesterday in about 30 minutes I found 2 new more bugs, just straight crashing when choosing addressables options in the menu. Addressables is not high tech, we had this stuff in Flash in 2007 to load/unload assets. The problem is this EA CEOs philosophy (surprise surprise). This EA CEO is focusing on glitz and glamour and is neglecting the meatier foundation. I pride myself on my software architecture that the more I build on my code, the easier and more stable it becomes. EA’s culture is to make great graphics and kick a soulless game with no game mechanics out the door. The last game I played was C&C3 which the best strategy was to strip mine the map and make medium tanks. I was top 50 world and rising, but I quit before I was #1 world because I didn’t want to give EA the honor of me being #1 in a trash game like I was #1 world Starcraft/Warcraft3 and more. EA makes good graphics, glitz, and the inside becomes corrupt much like their corporation. Again, this is easy to see by people… Even without the CEO’s comments, I was crying foul. All I wanted to use was ECS/DOTS. But I’m being forced to use The Scriptable Build Pipleline which is a failure of bugs and tech nightmares that took 400 hours. I’m being forced to use some new subscene rework which wasn’t documented… My game worked in editor, not standalone. Took me another 100 hours to find out that subscenes were reworked. I needed Addressables because I have a couple gig of music files, and it has many many bugs, so many I’m refactoring the package out. Unity took a very dark turn with this CEO, losing all sorts of stability in favor of boasting techs that don’t always work. The glitz and glam EA CEO who wants boastable high tech features is not focusing on core stability. I’m okay with experimental features and them being unstable… but the problem is this CEO removed our fundamental features which we need to use like making a standalone and replaced em with experimental features like Scriptable Build Pipeline. When experimental features are forced upon you, they no longer get a bye that they can fail, they’re not experimental anymore, they’re Unity. And this new Unity sucks for stability because of this CEO. He needs fired, sure up the core functionality. Don’t eliminate the experimental packages, but just make sure windows builds happen right out of the box, cuz they don’t anymore, not since this CEO took over, and I called him out even before the stock tanked. Professional software engineers know when things are failing before they get announced to the news. Unity could easily easily easily be back on track with a new guy, or someone kick this guy in the pants to run unit tests to make sure things compile without having to set hidden options. I wanted this CEO fired before the news broke since he wasted well over 600 of my hours this past year and a half. At the same time, Unity is still the best option. Like if you bought a Porche and a friend walked up and installed figit spinner rims on it that you couldn’t take off and smashed your starter so it doesn’t always run… You’d probably still drive the Porshe if you had no other option, but you’d tell your jackass friend to take a hike.

That said: Today’s day will be me removing Unity Addressables mostly out of my game until Unity can remove the bugs from them.

2) Networking that pushes the envelope where no networking has gone before. People laugh at this like it is impossible to innovate, but I marketed it to Midway in 2003, and they laughed too. Meanwhile it was working in house as a Tekken style(3d fighter) MMO with part of what today is known as rollback code. Midway’s manager was mocking what is today’s standard thinking rollback and such was impossible. Infinite action players same zone, limit only by video card and other hardware, networking ain’t a limiting thing anymore.

4) First MMO designed for late game. Everyone enjoys mmos until power capped and then get bored.
There is no power cap to begin with(just a log log logarithmic progression), but there are many many many other end game design elements to make it so want to keep playing end game! The grind is there, but better and more fun things are around too! You can build up a super big fleet and it get destroyed to pieces and you start over again. You have a power floor level that you can’t go below so you’re always building permanent power, but temporary spikes of power surges and galactic dominance for fleeting moments give a rush. The larger the fleet, the larger the fleeting moment.

8) PVP bounty system. Everyone can PVP at all times. Stakes are low if your ship explodes. If you get attacked without declaring aggressive mode or an opponent to duel, the aggressor gets a bounty on their head in accordance with the damage dealt to you. If this bounty gets high enough, and they get caught, they will be put in jail. When they log on for the next few hours or days, their character can play only in jail, and visitors come see him and such. Enjoy roleplaying being a prison inmate, or just use a different crew member on your account. Developing many crew members is a thing for when you fly capital ships.

10) Omnipotent roleplay: Earn your right into a a movie anime by great roleplay! Live game masters in about 6-12 months after the content updates roll through. We bias people with Founder’s RP tokens some and good manner role players who stay in character(we have chat logs and even game logs). This promotes good role play even when not live GMing. Who doesn’t want to bring their friends to a movie and surprise em with their own character in it? So stay in character for a better game! https://www.starfightergeneral.com/live-role-play/

Punky-Pulpy action, Levels, stats, skills, talents, items, fleet amassing, and great apocalyptic space plots, trippy Lewis Carrol level Mad Hatter humor along the way. It’s really weird to see how this synergizes from a game design standpoint. Players naturally want to level up and power up… That’s the twink min maxer in all of us. So when humor, plots, intrigue, or NPCs getting your blood boiling to action vs them happens, you get stoked, rewarded, happy and tossed off your axis. Then when resolved, you look back and get serious about powering up. The core of a RPG gamer is always powering up, it is something we can’t get rid of, but the core of a game designer is to get you out of a spreadsheet mindset temporarily… And then you appreciate both more. So tacky humor, along serious pulp action and serious leveling up game mechanics… It is like a symphony of fun.