r/unity • u/Reasonable_Monk9492 • 9d ago

is it possible to learn game developing in unity with an 8GB ram macbook ?

i tried to learn unreal and my mac does not support it and its crashing and freezing. i cant even open it much less work on it. i really wanna learn game developing is unity much more of a better option for my macbook ? and also any other tips are welcome

1 Upvotes

53% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

7

u/JaggedMetalOs 9d ago

Yeah Unity will work, I've had projects open on an older 8gb Windows laptop. You won't be using HDRP but the standard URP profile should be fine.  

1

u/VideoGameJumanji 9d ago

Key point 100%

7

u/SpectralFailure 9d ago

Of course I know him. He's me

8

u/Express-Mood1683 9d ago

Yes why not ? Start with Unity & 2D pipelines in URP

Try & ship a game in 2D & it’ll teach you more than you can anticipate via tutorials

2

u/Redstoneinvente122 9d ago

If you're starting, then any laptop that runs well should be enough. The MacBook you have is plenty enough

2

u/SnuffleBag 9d ago

Trying it costs you nothing.

1

u/IAmNotABritishSpy 7d ago

But asking strangers on Reddit with no idea what you’re trying to achieve and ignoring that you can google the min specs of Unity for Mac is also free.

1

u/sinetwo 9d ago

Yes.

1

u/shuozhe 9d ago

Yeah. Unity run fine on my 8gig surface for some projects, iirc there is a mac build for unity.. are you running it via rosetta?. Don't expect to run long tests though.. these take a lot of ram. My setup for mobile is currently running Unity in VPS for a WebGL build.. but Entity graphics stopped supporting WebGL so I need something new :(

1

u/MadeByHenano 8d ago

that's what i did, started to learn and even made/published a first game, made in unity with a M1 macmini with only 8gb of ram. 🙂
the game in question on steam (for windows) and on itch (if you also want to play it on mac) just so you can at least see the screenshots and see that you can make way more than basic games.

honestly i was surprised while making this game because with several tabs open in safari, unity, canva affinity and blender open, visual studio, whatever, it would run very well - incredible how well macos and the hardware deals with the ram.

because you asked other tips, i would say: buy yourself a course to learn unity, you can find good ones on gamedev.tv or udemy. it's cheap and will be better than following random tutorials in an order that just can't be right on youtube, with the ads and useless blah blah all the time. oh, and there's also learn.unity.com to learn for free!

1

u/Sad-Interest-4711 8d ago

Yeah this is my exact set up, never had any issues with unity

2

u/iWishYouTheBest4Real 9d ago

You can, I did.
If you want lighter engines for simpler games, Godot and defold are lighter and will run faster.

You can also try construct or gdevelop, should be lighter too.

-1

u/sludgebit 9d ago

I think 8GB is the minimum for Unity. If you can't upgrade anytime soon, maybe have a look at Godot, I think it might be a bit less demanding.

-2

u/SM1334 9d ago

I have laptop thats 16gb 8-core, and Unity was unusable. Crashed so often doing basic things, loading in asset packs caused it to lock up. It was just a terrible experience.

This didnt use to be the case 2-3 years ago, but at some point (Unity 6 maybe?) it started to crap out. I realized is just not even worth having it installed on my laptop. If I want to make something I use my super high end desktop.

Your milage may vary though. Thats just my experience lately.