Zaephir-Moth: By curiosity, since you seem knowledgeable on that matter, are those issues really structurally due to the Unity's current weaknesses ? I'm asking that because one can read that... and the opposite on many forums, the users of the concerned games reporting wildly different experiences (not much complaints about stuttering in
BallisticNG's reviews on Gog for example). What's your take on that matter ?
As I am not privy to the inner workings of the Unity gaming engine, my post is merely based on my first-hand experience with games utilizing it as a foundation. However, I personally do believe that Unity is the underlying cause (rather than, as some would suggest, the developers of said games).
I have noticed that game performance can vary greatly between versions of the Unity game engine (with game version being of lesser importance, unless a substantial overhaul is involved). As an example,
The Signal from Tolva had previously (on Linux, with game version 1.0.34, and Unity version 5.5.4p3 had slightly perceptible stutter, but, eventually, as subsequent versions had featured a major new mode, I had eventually 'updated' the game (version 1.0.62, and Unity version 2017.4.1f1). With the same hardware, the resulting negative impact to performance (extreme 'lag') had been intolerable. A further 'update' (game version 1.0.65 and Unity version 2017.4.6f1) had done nothing to rectify this; so, I had decided to continue running on the known-to-be-decent 1.0.34. I had tested the later versions of said game with my recently acquired AMD Ryzen 8700G, and, unfortunately, there had been no improvement.
Hoping that this had been unique to The Signal From Tölva, with the new CPU, I had tested a host of other Unity games with which I had previously experienced issues. To the best of my recollection
ATOM RPG: Post-apocalyptic indie game had a similar (although not as severe) shift in gaming performance through its countless updates over the years. With the AMD Ryzen 8700G, the results from testing older versions which were known to be problematic, as well as newer versions, were disappointing, in that, even with the increase in raw processing power, the very same immersion-interrupting stutter had been present. Sadly, another Unity game that comes to mind,
else Heart.Break() (an all-time favorite programming-related game), during movement of the player character, features such spasmodic disruptions (this occurs on the Linux and Windows versions).
I have witnessed the same symptoms within numerous non-2D Unity games. I remember noticing stuttering within
Pillars of Eternity and
Kerbal Space Program (especially while flying normal aircraft near ground-level). With
BallisticNG, particularly on some of the Barracuda Model B tracks (Underpass, Lujiazui Park), such momentary lag has necessitated the need to pre-simulate certain turns within the mind, and, once brief performance degradation occurs, adapt accordingly. Again, with BallisticNG, the new CPU had provided zero performance benefit (regardless of paired GPU). Also, across a countless number of user-uploaded YouTube gameplay footage, I had noticed the very same issues on a fair number of tracks.
Regardless of game engine, more often than not, in my opinion, the notion that blame should be placed solely on game developers is completely unjustified. It is rather facile to foist responsibility onto game creators, while each of these games share one commonality (game engine).
Edit: As the forum has issues with umlaut letters within URL tags, altered title of a game (
The Signal from Tölva), and corrected mention of game version.
