Unity 2.1 Update...

...brings you this:

-> http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-2.1

Unity looks nice.
Would have to learn Javascript, C+ or Boo though.

The price is right, at $199 for an indie license. Crossplatform between windows and Mac, plus the Wii console (with applicable licensing).

I think the indie version is Mac only though. That would be a deal killer for me.

System Requirements for Unity Authoring

Mac OS X "Panther" 10.3.9 or later
Radeon or GeForce graphics card with 32 MB of RAM
Will run fluently on any Intel Mac
On PPC based Macs, we recommend a 500MHz G3 processor or faster
System Requirements for Unity-Authored Content

Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X "Panther" 10.3.9
Rage 128 graphics card or better, depending on complexity.
Online games run on all browsers, including IE, Firefox and Safari among others.

Very nice.

After having written a large game in Blitz3d, Unity's editors/cross compatibility/webplayer/general shininess look very appealing.

Sorry, I couldn't wait for Unity to get a proper Windows version. I bought Shiva instead. It seems to tick all the same boxes as Unity. I think it even targets the same platforms ( Web, Mac, Linux, Windows and Windows Mobile with IPhone and consoles coming soon. ) It's also a fraction of the price.

http://www.stonetrip.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=28

Shiva looks quite nice :). I was always interested in Unity but not having a windows native version made it pretty much useless. Dedicated 3dsmax tools too, so you don't have to use collada.

@Gabriel
Well, as you know in my opinion you should have bought a Mac some time ago, this would have saved you a lot of time but i also understand why some people don't. Once Unity will be available for windows it will be quite the same again as they are just moving forward very quickly. It will be interesting to see were Unity will be at this point compared to other engines.

So you're moving away from TV3D or do you just need an additional online capable 3d engine?

What i don't agree on is that you get the same with Shiva for a fraction of the costs as they both differ quite a lot in terms of quality. But for what it is, Shiva can be an interesting offer.

Neither support Linux unfortunately.

Unity Indie license doesn't allow Windows publishing but in fairness the feature list is awesome.

[edited this next bit to show what I had mis understood to be correct]
Check out http://www.ageofconan.com for a look at some of those features in action in a MMORPG - just incase you like that sort of game.
[As Gabriel pointed out lower down, Age of Conan is DreamWorld Engine not Unity - my bad sorry ]


Unity Pro license is where I have been headed (not there yet though), even though it is Mac only at this stage - the whole package looks very nice and I always wanted to learn C# - so on we go.

IPete2.

Oh you're right, sorry about that. I could have sworn that Unity published to Linux, but at least Shiva has Linux on the roadmap.


Yes, I remember you telling me that. I did wonder how you could know, being that you didn't know anything about the game I was making, but I'm sure it's possible that I might have been able to save some time. We all make mistakes though. I mean I could have decided not to write my own game engine, and then I wouldn't have been able to license that engine to a developer who was going to pay me enough that I could call it a good salary for the two years I developed the engine and another two years to finish the game. One door closes, another door opens, and all that.


It's a very interesting time for Indie Engines at the moment. It will certainly be interesting to see where Unity, Shiva, S2, Blade3D and one or two others are in a year or two from now. Probably stealing a lot of action from the traditional programming language plus 3D engine.


Nope, I don't need anything, and this game won't be finished for another year or two, at least. Unity would only have been for fun. Once I'm finished with the current game, it's possible I might make something in another engine, but it's more likely I'll make another engine of my own. I have a hankering to try another genre after this one, so we'll have to see. I also have a hankering to do something like an adventure game creator or an RPG creator, like the really easy to use 2D creators you can buy now, but with shadow-casting, normal-mapped goodness thrown in. Who knows? I'm impulsive, that's my trouble. Oh, and obsessive too.

No, I just figured I would end up with Unity for a toy, I like playing with game engines. But Shiva added the features I was missing quicker than Unity did, so it won out. Not to say I won't ever buy Unity, but with Shiva covering the same territory, for me at least and performing much better on my machines to boot, I probably won't.


Well Shiva certainly seems to be faster, their demos run very well on some pretty basic hardware, whereas Unity stuff only runs well on my gaming machine. And the animation stuff in Shiva beats hands down anything I've seen in any other engine. On the other hand, Unity seems to have more features in its terrain engine, and I think there are more post-process effects. Still, overall, they seem to be covering pretty much the same ground for me. I don't think Shiva sells itself very well, mind you, but then I'm a Blitz user, so I'm used to that, huh?


You've lost me. I was under the impression that Age of Conan used the DreamWorld Engine, Cheetah for rendering and speedtree for.. well trees. I was also under the impression that there was a DX10 version.

Well, out from the overall impression i had the feeling that you were poking around quite a lot. More than you should have to with a decent engine. Anyway if that pays out for you then there is nothing against to say.

Theoretical i think that there are quite a couple of engines which could do well but practically it also will narrow down and a few important factors like an already established userbase will be an important reason for a long term success of a product due to the steady cash flow, bug reports, output, marketing and so on. At the moment Unity has quite an advantage here but hey you never know what will happen. Maybe there also will be a big surprise from someone but if things evolve in a normal way than it's very likely that Unity will play quite role in this gamedev sector in the near future.

From the test i did with Shiva i came to the conclusion that stability and feature wise it's a year behind Unity. I did also not experince that it ran better on my hardware than Unity, instead i had glitches which i went through with Unity a year ago, so as i said, it's okay for what it is but Unity offers more depth, polishment, stability and long term perspective.

Gabriel,

it looks like I mis-understood as I thought the MMORPG announcement last week on the Unity website stated that Fun Com must be impressed to move on to use Unity 3D for their Age of Conan MMORPG and Anarchy Online games, now I think that Fun Com may have moved onto Unity from DreamWorld, after Age of Conan - sorry about that - ahem!

Any way here is the quote:


I had thought that DreamWorld was an advanced, bespoke version of Unity, but I can see I was mistaken.

IPete2.

Had a play with Shiva, and it looks nice and is fairly instinctive. But, I'm not sure what it really offers over Blitz3D. Any ideas?

Ohhh, I see what you mean now, Pete. In fact, I remember reading the same announcement now you mentioned it.

Beaker: A lot, but it's really a question of whether you need what it offers or not. Proper bump-mspping, per-pixel lighting, dynamic soft shadows, much, much more advanced animation handling ( eg: realtime mixing of several animation sequences at the same time on a single model ) Plus a lot of stuff which is DIY or third party like fantastic particle effects, motion blur, bloom, state machines, pathfinding, etc. There's a built-in lightmapper and you can bake ambient occlusion into textures or vertex colors. Plus all this stuff is implemented properly in an API which supports these things at good speed, not done with DLL's and copybuffer tricks which are still very effective visually, but lose performance.

And I suppose the most obvious thing it offers is a full development environment work with your actors ( importing animations, for example ) or particle effects, test performance, create your levels. I don't personally think that a WYSIWYG tool like this suits every type of game, but on the other hand, I think it makes a lot of games much easier and more fun to develop.

That plus your game is playable on Mac, on the web, and soon you'll be able to develop for IPhone and consoles too, if that's your thing. ( It's not mine, but a lot of people fancy it. )

So yeah, there's a lot over Blitz3D, if you could or would use any of it.

It does look good. I think I'm missing some of its more advanced features/effects because my laptop doesn't support them. I'll try it again again on my desktop later.

What's the lightmapper like, compared to gile[s]?

Also, I just noticed that I need a mouse to use the Scene Viewer properly (no third button).

I agree with what you say about not suiting every game, but it does seem like a good way to prototype and make fairly conventional (media centric) games. I've used Virtools in the past, which has some similarities, which made it fairly quick to adapt to.

The thing I'm also not sure about is how to get a good workflow going: switching between mouse and typing alot can be a pain.