Engine/Skill Limitation?

[Gyges]

***This inquiry comes from someone completely devoid of any sort of technical know-how in regards to development software, so excuse my ignorance***

 

Due to a lot of factors, the Unity engine seems to have been chosen to be the foundation of several big ye-olde school RPG kickstarters and this might not change in the foreseeable future. My question is thusly: Are there inherent limits to the engine or can a developers skills in using it grow in such a fashion that future installations in what is hopefully a franchise of P:E games (assuming they are unity-based) rise exponentially in complexity, scale and smoothness of mechanics?

 

[MReed]

Not a unity developer myself, so this should all be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Well, the Unity engine sets limits on what can be done graphically, but that's true of any engine that you might care to name.  Further, it can be upgraded (by the Unity team) to address those limits as technology improvement or demand is created (note, though, only new games would take advantage of these new features).  Honestly, I don't see this as a big limit.

 

In regards to the story, mechanics, UI, and other elements that make up a game, the Unity engine really isn't relevant.  All Unity does is provide a particular set of interfaces that can be used to place graphics on the screen (3D and otherwise) -- the remainder of the game engine is in the hands of the developers.  So there is no limit to the type / nature of the stories that could be told, or the mechanics that could be told, relating to the Unity engine.

[mokona]

As developers get more comfortable with a system, they're able to squeeze more out of it. They're able to devise efficient solutions to problems using the tool rather than just throwing raw power at the development challenges they face. I'm reminded that, way back in the day, a few games developed at the very end of the original PlayStation ('PS1') lifecycle looked much better than earlier games. I even thought one looked so much better it almost felt like it was being run on upgraded hardware when, in fact, I was using my same old PS1 that I had always used.

[keysersoze]

There are limits with the Unity engine, for example "Kerbal Space Program" (which uses Unity) could really do with a faster physics engine. BUT Unity is unlikely to limit PE. 

 

Technically PE is going to be a 15 year old game with modern bells and whistles, it does not need to push the limits technically. It pushes the limits with story and design.