Unity 3D now on Wii

god I need to buy a mac!

I need to buy a Mac

This engine gets better all the time

Sounds great!

I don´t think it will be that long until they have a Windows port.
http://unity3d.com/company/people
Maybe their secret developer is working on it?
Look at the size of their team. The Gamestudio team seems to be shrinking instead of growing. Where is Doug?

But you also have to keep in mind that it costs twice as much as Gamestudio. I think the indie license is quite limited but I didn´t find the comparison anymore.

it's still much more expensive than ShiVa that has basicly the same feature set like running in the web browser etc, plus its native development platform is windows. wait for 1.6 which is to come soon, it will surely kick ass. players for linux and iphone are planned for this summer, too, and, if they manage to acqire licenses, any major gaming console will be supported.

Check out ShiVa/Ston3D - LUA doesn't bite

Hmmm - why should Unity be more expensive?

The Indie versions just as the Pro versions cost about the same although Unity's smaller package in fact lacks some features. On the other side for the full feature set you need to pay more with Shiva (Shiva Advanced + Ston3D Server)...

Then there also is the point of documentation and community and as rather new engine Shiva really is lacking at this point imo which is one of the reasons I decided not to use it...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

well, you don't really need shiva advanced - it only has some optimization features...

you are right about the docs. and they know about it. a new doc will be introduced together with the 1.6 release. i'm keeping my hopes up

The great thing about Unity (at least from my point of view) is, that all the scripts are compiled to machine code.
You can write relatively fast code with an easy to use and powerful scripting language.

I don't know how well the supported languages (JavaScript, C# and Boo) are implemented into the engine, though.

DX Studio for example has an excellent JavaScript implementation, where prototype based programming is fully supported.

In this regard ShiVa is still limited, as the scripting language is very high level.
As an example, it is not possible to define own objects (eg. data structures) in StoneScript.

comparing shiva with unity3d is impossible. it is like having an emtpy nut and a full frige

i hope they get a windows version out

you may be right about the secret developer... since the windows coder isnt on the jobs page anymore that'd be so cool!

proove it. beside the "mac coolness factor".

Screw that, I like working on the MAC. Spend the resources on the iPhone version of Unity, that's a sweet emerging market for indies...

We are looking at Unity for Wii deployment. The key for us is the Ageia Physic's is intergrated very well. Unity Wii does cost $xx,xxx so its not cheap. IMHO , I think it's much better than the Torque Wii that GG is selling.

I think Unity is a very solid product, $1500 for the pro version is bargin. Screw the windows version, I have been enjoying tooling around on my Mac, its a nice break from VISTA suckola...

Ken

I think Conitec should screw DirectX and support multi-platform/device.

the problem is that the big market on pc is under windows, and to be honest, opengl is not nearly as advanced as directx 10.

OpenGL can do everything DirectX can do. Working with all the needed extensions probably is a bit more cumbersome for the programmer though.

I think the need for prove is more on the ShiVa side. Never heard of it before you mentioned it.

Not sure about the feature comparison of Direct X and OpenGL.

What we have experienced is....

Direct X Platforms

PC
XBOX
XBOX 360
Zune (?)

OpenGL Platforms

PC
PS2
PS3
PSP
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Wii
Mac
iPhone


Now it becomes a developers preference as to where they want to spend their time and energy.

Direct X is very Microsoft Centric, OpenGL offers more platform choice.

Since the main open systems for Indies is the PC, Mac, and now the iPhone. It really is a toss-up....

Agreed that most hobbiest's buying a $200 3D engine will have PC's and not Mac's. That definetly is the market 3DGS is going for, I am not so sure about Unity. Seems to me Unity is doing a good job finding biz other than the Window Hobbiest's.

Windows 3D engine land has many competitors. Bigger Pie, lot's more pigs eating at the troff...

Ken

you're indeed right, opengl has way more platforms it supports.

Gamestudio support DX9 at the moment.

Maybe working on extension is easier for engine developer to upgrade the engine.

And Conitec should also consider lite-C for Mac as well I think.

If the Unity editor really appears on PC then it will probably rule the indie dev market.

I know of many ambitious people which bought a mac only for Unity3d.
Every review I read of this tool-set left only good words.
Even very experienced people with lots of coding and project experience with Torque, C4 and other tools decided to go with Unity now. There must be a reason for it.

We will see what happens in the future.

i heard rumors about the windows version comming end of this year, but well, lets see

where have you heard these rumors?

in another forum someone mentioned that it was said on the FMX

I'm still waiting for the iPhone version. I purchased an iPod Touch and a Mac Mini to do iPhone dev, but have been sitting on my lazy butt.

Of course, that means learning a whole new platform. I'm comfortable with 3DGS! Also, I'm lazy. As is my butt.

Look what someone did with Unity, great little game that plays over the web, so cool.
Unity


What does it take to do this? Is the screen being rendered to flash or is it DirectX in browser?

The Unity web player plays in any browser, so maybe its not activeX

Its not flash, and you do need to install a unity plugin. I guess that is part of their "secret".

The plugin installs ocx files so maybe it is activeX


"Microsoft now calls an OCX an ActiveX control, the component object under Microsoft's set of ActiveX technologies, of which the fundamental concept is the Component Object Model (COM) and, in a network, the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM). "

Is the porting from Mac to windows really a so hard job or is it just a marketing decision ?

Hi

I think its a marketing decision after all Unity is coded in C# (running on MONO) for the tools and I think it users C# for some of the engine too.

I still don't get why Conitec hasn't made a web player for gamestudio, cmon guys

a web player would result in a modular approach, a "player" that has to be installed on the client system, and a "game pack", perhaps a wrs archive. but 3dgs compiles to *.exe

i guess this could be solved by simply compiling on the fly instead of creating an exe but another thing (one of the most important actually) to consider for a web player is security. the scripting environment has to be sandboxed somehow otherwise it could be used to create malicious websites. i am not sure how feasible this would be with lite-c. i could imagine that this is quite impossible with a language based on c.

A few guys did it in the past (well, in januari) using java to wrap the game in a .jar, then deploy it on an applet.
http://www.coniserver.net/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=179403&page=1

It was for A6, not sure if they went on with it.

I have been using Unity 3D for the last three days, it's just amazing. Really. Much easier than Torque, and I don't even want to say how gamestudio compares to it. Maybe because I still am pretty fond of A6/7. With the Mac and now Wii compatibility in addition to Windows and web browser playability, tidy Javascript, flexible resuable template style objects which work well, I think I might move my game to Unity 3D.

The terrain system and world editor and stunning, and you can just plop assets into the scene without complex conversions first, like my player fbx has been a nightmare to convert to MDL in MED, with repeated attempts and lots of time out the window. But in Unity, just drop the sucker into the level as fbx or blender or maya format, and it automatically takes care of the rest.

I think it's worth a Macintosh (or Hackintosh)

can you say something about performance?

You can check their demos provided at the website. The scene-management for outdoor looks impressive IMO.

jetpack, do you use a mac book (like this: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/We...1wEZqHYp/2.?p=0 )

the link expired... i'll check out the demos.

damn temp links. however i ment the middle listed mac book from the apple store.

I have checked out the Unity trial. It´s totally awesome!

Unity is exactly what Gamestudio is supposed to be. Wasn´t there talk about a new WED for A7 which uses the engine in the viewports? Where is it? A7 WED just seems to have some panels rearranged but it still looks and feels like from 1995.

If it really is true that there will be a Windows port at the end of the year then good luck Conitec! They better hurry up and do something impressive in the next few months.

ummm... come on. you know the specs of the wii?
it's nothing more than an improved GameCube.
Processors:

* CPU: PowerPC-based "Broadway" processor, made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process, reportedly† clocked at 729 MHz[70]
* GPU: ATI "Hollywood" GPU made with a 90 nm CMOS process,[71] reportedly† clocked at 243 MHz[70]

* Memory: 88 MB main memory (24 MB "internal" 1T-SRAM integrated into graphics package, 64 MB "external" GDDR3 SDRAM)[72]
* 3 MB embedded GPU texture memory and framebuffer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii#Technical_specifications

so, even if you get a license to develop for the wii, you will by no means be able to port the next-gen look of Unity to that machine. not with 88 MB RAM and a 729MHz CPU. 3 MB texture memory? have fun.

>Unity is exactly what Gamestudio is supposed to be.
That's about right.. and there are a lot of new features that I never had even considered or seen in gamestudio, like the layers system.

>ummm... come on. you know the specs of the wii?
>it's nothing more than an improved GameCube.

Although the Wii export part is awesome, everyone knows how hard it is to get a license-- but that's not why I'm switching to it.

Look at the hardcore Danish demo scene nerd viking crew who is developing it. you know these guys don't sleep.

how will this export work? if you use more than 4 MB of textures, will it give you errors, warnings? how can you develop on e.g. a dual core pc for a 729MHz CPU without getting bad surprises? how does playtesting work - burn on cd every time you make a slight change? gnah...

i am not sure but from my understanding those 3mb just are some kind of faster cache but of course you can use more memory for textures. you just have to look at wii games. if you subtract the framebuffer almost nothing is left from those 3mb and the games don't look as if they only used a few kbs for textures.

consoles often work differently. it's possible that they have a lot more memory bandwidth for example and use some kind of streaming technology. otherwise most ps2 games wouldn't be possible either with the limited memory of the ps2.

<edit>i guess this also is for textures which isn't that bad for the low screen resolutions the wii uses.
</edit>

The WED and MED terrain editor is a joke really. And I like the direct blender format support, no export/import tasks.

The Unity tool-set is my dream tool-set, I want to buy a Mac once Nehelem use in MacBook or iMac.

I also don´t really get the idea of GameEdit. I don´t want to talk down the efforts of its author (I am sure it was a lot of work) but having two separate level editors makes absolutely no sense. Additionally the GameEdit gui is very clumsy. A7 panels aren´t really suited for doing something complex like this.

Unity automatically compresses your level and assets to a high degree if you tell it to build a web player version of your game, it appears to scale stuff as needed to fit. Your textures and sound files, design with them as bmp and wav, and it will automatically turn them into compressed formats on the export! So, I imagine it would compress everything to fit onto a wii and alert you if it weren't possible-- and if you have a proper dev kit, you are connected directly to the console and don't have to burn discs back and forth.

I really like the design of Mac OSX Leopard. Instead of spending a lot on Apple hardware, you can just install it on a couple of different PC setups which are guaranteed to work with it, like these guys: Open Mac

From the news page:


The Gamestudio user base is really big and growing fast, the funding is more stable than Unity I think.

I think Conitec should turbo up before Unity port to Windows.

Yes. I realized that also. The market of hobby game devs is growing and many of them find easy access via Gamestudio.

I also saw that the simple FPS creator has very much customers and the much more advanced and powerful C4 engine has less.

The key to earn much money from the huge crowd of casual game developers is to make an easy tool set and good workflow for beginners and a good renderer competing visually with current games. Unity can probably compete well in this area and the upcoming Gamecore could do as well.

So a turbo for GS tools is really needed to stay on top (real-time in-game editor, better shadows, terrain editing and so on).

http://apricot.blender.org/

i think if they keep up with putting effort into it then the blender game engine could become quite similar to unity too. the glsl shader stuff they have added recently is really cool. blender materials will be automatically converted to glsl shaders now. they even have a web plugin. it is outdated and doesn't work at the moment though.

The BGE toolset and the video looks impressive. It has much potential. But I still wonder why they decided to go with Crystal Space. It is not outstanding in any area. But maybe it gets improvements and a revival this way.

Man their support team is FAST

>I think Conitec should turbo up before Unity port to Windows.

Honestly I would be surprised / impressed if they could do this in time to beat Unity's windows version. Although the A7 engine is pretty good, they'd have to completely scrap the editors and create a brand new UI which seamlessly integrates with it, with the engine running, and the automatic file conversions and everything.. and Lite-C doesn't come close to the hot-swappable and well-organized and easy to use implementation of javascript in Unity. You can modify code while the engine is running and see the results in real time!! I don't even know if I would bother if they could keep up with Unity, at that point, since they've already made something so rock solid and innovative, and with their geekcore dev team (see pic above).. a lot of people here identify with gamestudio but there is some threshold point where change becomes worthwhile. Gamestudio is a great tool for learning, and I have a lot of fun and great results with it but I predict a big exodus when the windows version comes to market.

Actually sometime you must start from the scratch if you want to get something really good
Unity looks fantastic both on programming and artistic side
However I am scared of bugs
Did anyone test this engine for a reasonable period of time ?
If you see the list of bugs which are fixed in any edition..well..
I wonder whether Mac users unlike the spoilt PC users, never complain, simply because they dont have any other choice

I have my copy of unity now. Lovin it! Especially the in-engine mtt terrian system with many more splat maps than I have ever seen in a 3DGS app. The AGEIA phys-x engine is amazing too, with lots of prefab components like physics-based wheel systems easily hooked up and ready to apply forces to.. playing your games in a browser is just the beginning.

For PC users, it is definitely worth the hassle of migrating to Mac! Your PC desktop or laptop could probably run MAC-OSX right now, with about a day's worth of tweaking, so you don't need to fork out a lot of money to migrate. You can even just install it to an external USB drive and can boot Mac OS-X leopard without wiping your existing Windows installation.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSx86 for more information, or search Hackintosh, insanelymac.com forums is really useful.

Dear Gamestudio,

Ever since we first met nearly four years ago, back when you were just a young and innocent version of yourself named A5 to today in your full game-enginehood as A7, we have grown together and shared many endearing moments. I learned a lot from you, and we loved and laughed... it's been a long beautiful relationship but.. I think there is a time in every developer's and game engine's life, and maybe this time for us is right now, when it is necessary to move on and start seeing other middleware solutions.. no, it's not you, it's me. You'll always be my first love... (god i need a life)

Check this nice game out made with Unity: http://raptorsafari.com/play.php

Right click it to go fullscreen.

jetpack, what are you telling me? i can use unity on my windows notebook just by using a mac-simulator? you are kidding, right?

if they have direct export to ps3 i will move and buy unity lol,but thats impossible cause no homebrew support in ps3

Ello,

Not a simulator, you can run Mac-OS-X natively on most Intel machines. Apple stopped making their macs with Power PC chips, and are now purely Intel based, just like your desktop PC.

If you got OS-X 10.5 (aka Leopard) and patch it, you could install it and run it on your PC natively (though it can take some time to get the drivers right). Like Vista, you can buy Mac OS-X Leopard without a computer. This works best with a dual core intel chip with SSE2 and SSE3. I have heard that you can do it with a Pentium IV and SSE2 only though. No idea what SSE actually is, btw

Mac OS-X will identify your computer as a Mac Pro. So you are not simulating Mac OS-x, you are actually running it, and as far as the operating system is concerned, you are using a real Macintosh. But not as a window within Windows, but as a separate installation. Lots of people are doing this suddenly, now that the newest version of Leopard is much easier to install on non-apple PC's.

Also, it is possible to just install it to an external USB hard drive and boot from there. And then boot normally when you want windows.

Some drivers for sound cards and wifi don't work out of the box, though, and some people have resorted to sticking little USB wifi and sound card dongles on their PC's, which do work. (and you can get for less than 25 EUR apiece)

People are discussing this alot at insanelymac.com. It's a very hot topic all of a sudden. I for one can vouch how much nicer OS-X is than vista.. is smooth and creamy.

just got an reply from the unity support. a mac book is not the way to go if you want to create content. better an iMac or a mac book pro, but those are expensive if you want to have something capable

Or just get this and buy Leopard to run unpatched on it
http://www.psystar.com/index.php?&op...1&Itemid=72

Dear lovely JetPackmonkey,
We know you'll come crawling back to Daddy Gamestudio where you belong, so stop fooling yourself.
~From GameStudio

just checked the Unity website and also was checking out the gallery.
I think it is a very nice engine with many nice features.

I also checked their architectural visualisation that I found in the gallery, the screenshoots looks very cool and promising. So I downloaded the program found on http://unity3d.com/webplayers/ZeroFractal/Agua-Windows.zip.

I was more than disappointed, maybe it a is matter of the conversion to make it able to run under windows.
But something like this should not be used for promoting an engines output, no matter what “3D pipelines" were involved.

Judge by yourself:

A print screen directly taken from the application.

Here the Acknex result:

This scene is without Anti-Aliasing, directly taken from the application. With the next update for A7 (that will come very soon I hope *sigh*) AA will be intergrated in that scenery.
Also a bloom-blur and a sharpen shader is implemented.

Dont get me wrong, I think Unity is surely an impressive engine. But for me/us it is no option.

A funny sentence I found in the Developer profile:



Well, they invented the "do_a_very_good_looking_scene" button

/sarcasm.flags = !VISIBLE;

To be honest, after exploring this application, I found me asking my self why our screenies doesnt adorn the 3DGS galleries

cheers

zwecklos

The A7 engine itself isn´t that bad at all. It´s quite competitive with Unity in my opinion (except maybe the ODE physics engine and lite-c, which is a less modern and less sophisticated "scripting" environment than MONO). The tools make the difference. The Unity editor is what a game editor should be like nowadays and Unity comes with ready to use high quality solutions for things that require a lot of your own work in A7 (shaders and shadows for example).

zwecklos, i believe your scene would look as goog in unity. that is a question of the person(s) behind. so its no valid comparison

Try to create a huge terrain in both engines! You will see the difference easily. As many other said: the tool-set makes the difference.

Another interesting tool is the good material / shader editor.

But I understand the point of view of experienced users. If you know a certain tool-set very good then it always looks better than any other tool, you are faster and more comfortable in your home-application.
I have the same feeling when I check new modelling tools like Modo. I know for sure they do faster and better modelling than my Lightwave but I am used to LW and I am fast.

Learning takes some time. But often it is worth it in the end.

hell what is that... thing...
looks like bird. but has fur.

huh? clear your glasses

The german name would be "Schneeeule"... :P
And if you didn't know them yet you're going to do so soon enough:



Enjoy your meal
Toast

Now I lol'd as well :P

full details

Additional Features, improvements, and changes
Unity is a lot of things to a lot of people, so of course we added lots more for your development pleasure.
Asset Bundles

* All types of assets in the Project View can exported as a compressed asset bundle.
* The asset bundle file can be streamed through the WWW class. This makes it possible to stream all assets on demand, as characters or other assets come into view.
* Assets in asset bundles can be loaded by name or through a designated "main asset" for easy prefab instantiation.
* Asset bundles can contain additional scene files and their dependencies. This can be combined with asset bundle cross dependencies.
* Asset bundles and all their loaded assets can be unloaded explicitly through AssetBundle.Unload function.

Web Player

* PlayerPrefs now work in the Web Player! Use them to store persistent data on the client machine.
* Joysticks and mice are now hot swappable on OS X web players

Editor

* Undo and Redo for all scene operations!
* Unity Editor can now natively import .DDS texture files.
* Added "Split tangents across UV seams" option to mesh import settings, most often used for bumpmapped characters.
* Arrays of booleans, Vector2, Vector4, Rect, LayerMask are shown in the Inspector now.
* Game View statistics window displays video memory size used by the screen, total video memory usage and skinning/animation statistics.
* Assets->Reimport and Assets->Import Settings now works recursively for folders.
* Help menu and the Console window have buttons to open Editor and Player logs.
* Renamed Open and Save menu entries Open Scene and Save Scene.
* Added warning when importing scripts and shaders that use mixed CR & LF line endings.
* Ogg Vorbis encoding bitrate expanded to 16..320 kbps (previously was 56..256 kbps).
* .ogv files are recognized as Theora movies. Exporting movie to a file also uses .ogv extension.

Editor Extensibility

* New EditorWindow class lets you create a window in which you can draw custom GUI. Use it to create your own game design tools!
* Editor classes AssetImporter, TextureImporter, MeshImporter have been renamed to AssetPostprocessor. Be ready to update your asset post-processing scripts.
* Introduced OnAssignMaterial for overriding the default material assignment behaviour.
* Introduced OnPostprocessAllAssets for tracking any changes to assets from editor scripts.
* Import settings for textures and models are now exposed and can be modified from AssetPostprocessor to customize the asset import pipeline.
* Added AssetDatabase class with functions to import, delete, create Assets, and create, instantiate, update Prefabs.

Asset Server

* Server view now shows a quick summary of changes and conflicts at the top of the view.
* Improved performance of Asset Server Status and Update commands by 10x.
* Added a feature to update entire project to any previous Asset Server version.
* Reduced connection timeout from 60 to 15 seconds when connecting to the Asset Server.
* Much reduced false positives of changed Prefabs, Materials and Scripts.
* Commit message in Asset Server is now a lot faster.
* Improved displayed message when trying to commit without commit access rights.

Terrain Engine

* Multiple terrains can be included in a single scene.
* Terrains can now be moved and connected. LOD across terrain edges can be matched with Terrain.SetNeighbors.
* Terrains have an additional "Pixel Lit" render mode. Shadows on terrains finally work!
* VertexLit terrain lighting mode supports point lights now. Spot lights are treated as point lights.
* Projectors work on terrain.
* Terrain can be displayed in wireframe mode in Scene View.
* Terrain textures, tree types, and detail object types can be removed from Terrain Inspector.

Graphics & Shaders

* Added rendering with shader replacement. See Camera.RenderWithShader and Camera.SetReplacementShader – it's The Bomb :-)
* RenderTextures with high precision "depth" format can be created (see RenderTextureFormat).
* Shader Model 3.0 level shaders can be created by using #pragma target 3.0 compilation directive.
* Improved support for lightmapping inside of Unity. Each renderer now has a per-renderer offset & scale value for the lightmap and a index into a set of lightmaps available in each scene.
* Added Particle render modes for rendering particles that always face up right and particles that always lie flat down.
* Shader compiler is multithreaded, usually resulting in about 2x speedup.
* Much reduced "double lighting" artifacts on Direct3D on close or intersecting geometry when pixel lights are used!
* Re-enabled fragment programs, shadows and render-to-cubemap on Intel GMA X3100 on Mac OS X 10.5.3 and up (driver bugs got fixed).
* Upgraded Cg to version 2.0, January 2008. Improves code generation a bit and fixes some bugs.
* On graphics card with 512MB or more video memory, Unity allows higher shadowmap resolutions.
* ShaderLab: added RequireOptions=SoftVegetation pass tag, IgnoreProjector=True subshader tag, LightmapMode texture property.
* Combine Children script supports mesh vertex colors now. This requires you to reimport the Standard Assets package!
* Much improved handling of "out of video memory" situations:
o Automatic reduction of anti-aliasing level if memory required by screen would not sanely fit into VRAM.
o Automatic down-scaling of textures that are within hardware limits but are too large to sanely fit into free VRAM.
o Automatic reduction of shadowmap resolution when running close to video memory limits. Fixes major slowdowns or machine hangs with large resolutions, high anti-aliasing settings, large shadowmaps and not-so-large VRAM amounts.

Networking

* Better support for limiting transmission of communication groups. Both SetSendingEnabled() and SetReceivingEnabled() now allow modification on the group level or network player level.
* Proxy relay support for clients and server. Servers can get their incoming connections relayed through a proxy server and clients can get their outgoing connections relayed as well.
* Direct relevant set support. Network views can be in or out of scope relevant to specific network players.
* NetworkViewID can now be serialized during state synchronization.

Scripting
Animation & Skinning:

* Added API to procedurally generate animated characters, stitch multiple character pieces into one character at runtime to reduce draw calls, or reassign bones to different characters.
* Added API for creating Animation Events that are invoked when the animation clip is played back and passes the specified time. You can now easily spawn particles, play sounds and so on, all synced to animation.
* Individual Animation Curves can be created from scripts and used as response curves.
* Material properties can now be animated using animation clips. Any material property including UV tiling, UV rotation, float properties, Color properties and Vectors can be animated using Animation Clips.
* Editor API for accessing AnimationClip curves, animation states and sampling the current state of a specific animated property of any scene object.
* You can assign animation curves to animation clips.
* Renamed AnimationCurve's preInfinity, postInfinity to preWrapMode, postWrapMode.

Graphics:

* Added Graphics.DrawMesh that draws a model, while taking all lighting, shadowing, projectors and whatnot into account.
* Renamed Graphics.DrawMesh to Graphics.DrawMeshNow. Graphics.DrawMesh does other things now...
* Exposed Light's shadowStrength, shadowConstantBias, shadowObjectSizeBias properties to scripting.
* Added Texture2D.LoadImage(byte[]) function to load a JPG or PNG from a byte array.
* Shader.name now returns the actual name of the shader (same as used in Shader.Find), not the filename.

Other:

* Added Application.LoadLevelAdditive. Incredibly useful for creating continous virtual worlds, where more content is loaded as you walk through the environment.
* Seeking in played sounds via AudioSource.time!
* JavaScript now supports virtual keyword!
* System.Environment.CommandLine and System.Environment.GetCommandLineArgs() works in editor and standalone players.
* Added TextAsset.bytes.
* GetComponent now works correctly with abstract classes and interfaces.
* WWW files can now be cancelled while they are downloading.
* Input.GetKey API now supports Keycode enum instead of string based queries for improved performance.
* 50% faster GetComponent or component accessors. Heavily reduced memory allocations which reduces strain on the garbage collector, further improving speed.
* A warning is given in the editor when user script has the same name as a built-in Unity component.
* Added warning when creating MonoBehaviour from code incorrectly using the new keyword.

Other improvements

* Multiple Audio Sources can now be added to a single Game Object.
* Standalone Windows games can use arbitrarily sized windowed resolutions (window sizes no longer limited to list of display resolutions).
* ShaderLab reference moved from Manual into Reference. Much expanded documentation regarding Cg shader programs.
* Improved performance for animation sampling with deep hierarchies where not all transforms are animated.
* On OS X, Unity won't print to global system console anymore. Editor prints to ~/Library/Logs/Unity/Editor.log, and players print to ~/Library/Logs/Unity/Player.log (both can be viewed through Console.app, or opened from Unity's Help menu).
* Improved performance when downloading large WWW files.
* PlayerPrefs are now stored in the same place as the published standalone player and not in the Unity Editor preferences file.

Wow, the makers of "Age of Conan" decided to use Unity for their next MMO

And the pure amount of new features is amazing as well. I am speechless.

Sigh, I could have been in front of a good Mac today...

But it's not the case, so I am still looking for the most "Unity like" game engine on PC.

A long list of bug fixes, though
Same for any new edition
I wonder whether they are good marketing people , too
Unity users never complain having no other choice thus they can develop their engine in peace before entering the arena of the ferocius window game programmers

Unity 2.1 Released July 24 2008

Unity is now a complete MMO-capable engine. Brand new major features like streaming Asset Bundles, multiple stitchable Terrains make it possible to stream gigantic worlds to the player based on how they play.

For everyone else, we have lots of other delicious new features including procedural generation/modification of rigged characters & animations, shadows and projectors on Terrains, per-camera shader replacement, complete Undo and a lot more.

It's not fair to compare the bug list with GS. In GS the bug list 99.99% about the engine; but in Unity, there are bug list for web player, asset server, and editors etc.

i noticed something interesting on miguel de icaza's (best known for starting the gnome and mono projects) blog.

"Next UnityEditor will run on Windows, and its rewritten in C# (it originated on MacOS, and is now moving to Windows)."

and

"Of course I am excited because they use Mono, but I am also excited because Unity will come to Linux."

http://tirania.org/blog/

Hey, these are great news! Thanks ventilator.

Since many of our latest customers are Unity3d users I believe that they will easily get new Windows customers after releasing a Windows editor. Probably they will grow very fast to the biggest indie developer community out there.

They already have one planned new customer <-----------------

Conitec maybe need to consider to turbo up the realtime game editor development...

I'm getting more and more frustraded.
Seems like I've chosen to put my money in the lamest engine available.
We don't even have working multiplayer, and other engines are able to do mmorpg, publish directly to wii, ps3, iphone...
bullshit.

nothing more to add.

oh well, there is. i still think shiva is easier and faster than unity. i ran unity's kitchen demo again today -> 23 fps with all lights on, on a dual core and a geforce 7600gt. that can't be it.
aaaand shiva's iPhone engine is already running (unity's iphone port is only announced) and they have an application in the appstore for free download, they are already in the top ten with more than 200.000 downloads.

Well i just can repeat myself somehow. I used Unity on my Mac and i can't get why people are so hyped about it. It might be the "personal taste" but for me it's, well, a nice engine but there are better engines out there.

Especially when you compare the prices to other engines, like (i feel the A7 snipers aiming at me right now) torque, you might realize that there IS really a better solution.

You don't need a mac, you can publish to PC, Mac, Linux, XBox360, iPhone or Wii (depending on the engines) and the price range goes from 100$ to 500$ (the iPhone version).

How many of you have even tested the engine? The workflow, the script languages, assets managing, etc.

Dunno much about Shiva but its sounds nice too.

I think there are some better solution and i hope you won't get tricked by this "Unity" hype.

Just my opinion.

How much testing did you do? The latest engine reviews often rated Unity3d as the best tool. And I got some feedbacks from our customers as well. Many people just like this engine because of the complete real-time tool-set and the good tutorials plus several scripting options.
Some coders still prefer more flexible solutions like C4 or Ogre. This depends on the needs of a project.

Since I am no Mac user I cannot write about my own experiences. The features are impressive though. We will all get a clearer image if they release windows tools.

But we have to realize: Unity3d got so much customers in such a short time. I also know some Torque projects moving to Unity3d. There must be a reason. Many mac-users are graphic artists and they are lucky with Unity3d. So the editors must be intuitive. Think about new developers - just entering the gamedev field for the first time. They love intuitive tools, real-time feedback and good visuals including modern shaders and shadows.
This is the future, this is what our graphic cards are made for.

Well as i said it's just my opinion, and my opinion might not be a mainstream one.
I tested Unity everyday when i had the trial, did most of the tutorials they have (which is really a good part, the documenation) and made some own examples (especially with the ortographic cam).

And i didn't feel good working with it. The control in the editor is a pain for me (i'm used to different controlling) and the assets management was a pain. Maybe they changed some stuff lately, i don't know.

I never heard of torque people moving to Unity3D but if you say so it must be true. But honestly people are always moving from engine to engine and get new experience. When 2-3 projects moving from Torque to Unity3D, it doesn't mean there is a new "revolution" or something.

Unity3D does have a great graphic (no doubt) but still, me as GameDesigner and Developer AND (not so experienced) artist prefers an engine that doesn't just look good but also have great features that makes it much easier to work with.

Well, anyone should decide for themself what they gonna use and what is perfect for them. I see no reason to move away from torque.

Yes it is

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/4553/14508

He noted his reasons to move to Unity:
- the production time
- overall workflow
- Unity can export games directly as webbrowser game
- no low level programming (C++) needed

I agree with you totally in terms of movements. There are often movements from any software to another. And there are often different reasons for that.

Many of these movements are some kind of evolution. You know it from yourself. The beginners start with Gamestudio or FPSCreator. Then, after learning and finding some borders, barriers or even show stoppers many of them change to more advanced tools like Torque. And then there are also some of them in need of more freedom. I realized that all C4 users used to be Torque users before that.
But some programmers also move to completely free libraries like Ogre as an example.

This is some kind of evolution that happens if you gather enough knowledge. The same happened with my modelling tool-set: I started with MED, moved to Gamespace and then to Lightwave. Later I added Bodypaint3d and ZBrush to that. You cannot simply start with these advanced tools. It is better to learn with something more simple like MED and Gamespace first.

Thank you for the link, the game looks quite cool.

Though i somehow can't understand his reasons.
The product time and workflow isn't slow in torque and i felt slower in unity, without having knowledge of both engines. But again, that's probably personal taste.

Later you will be able to publish games to InstantAction with torque so it's webbased too. There is also an ActiveX plugin for TGB to play TGB games in a browser.

You don't need C++ to work with torque. That's somehow a big mistake many people think about. You only need it to modify the engine code if you need some special functions or effects. Or if you want to manipulate the network code like i did. You can finish your games completely without C++ modifications.

I don't want to compare Unity with Torque or something. I'm just a bit confused about this Unity hype which i can't understand. It's all personal taste

Yeah i also tested many different engines and moved back and forth.

Pinball Maker -> Gamemaker -> Gamestudio -> Ogre -> Gamestudio -> Unity -> Ogre -> Gamestudio -> Torque.

Can't call it "move" though. It was more like doing some vacations to get down the stress caused by gamestudio :P (oh noes the A7 snipers D:).

I am impressed, what an experienced and advanced game developer you are!

But seriously, you know I appreciate your work.

Yeah i played around with the elite of game engines out there :P

Same to you

iPhone publishing.

It is possible now, and read about this
http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=469&tag=nl.e539

does unity work on a hackintosh ??

sure, every program works on a hackintosh once you have the 3d and sound driver and everything working.

Hi! I have seen the promised land and it is unity
joooin ussss

Hi. I noted this post by accident, and since unity 2.5 for windows is out I though it might be cool to share some insight, since a screenshot of an old old old (2006) project of ours was shown.

Ever since we started out using unity3D we simply fell in love with it! Before that we were quest3D users, and gave torque and even a7 a try, but were overwhelmed, sine (NO SARCASM HERE) we were able to import a scene from max w/baked textures in FBX and drop in a FPS prefab and had a incredible VR simulation just 2 hours after downloading the trial version.

I noted that the screenshot that zwecklos posted was incredibly crafted to look the engline look crappy, which is actually a bit silly. I invite you guys to check that same old project here and proove me wrong. We are very friendly people but it just annoys me a bit when things are skewed like this.

This is a link to the webplayer of the project:
http://www.zerofractal.com/fractalreality/agua.html

Again, I'm sorry for bringing a year old post to life!!!

Alejandro Gonzalez

Why do you have light grey text on white background? I couldn't read anything written on the keys created there. Luckily when the game started it showed a gamepad for like a second so I used my gamepad to move around (was easy finding all the controls)

Still, might wanna change the colour scheme on the site there.

Other than that, it looks pretty impressive (there was strange shimmering all over the place though, textures popping up and down here and there). I went into every room, nice detail. This is created using the Pro version of Unity, right?

It was done using pro, but there are not much pro features implemented there... and it was done 3 years ago Nowadays we take much more care on loaders and on vram usage.

In short I think you should not judge a tool by the works of one or the another person, but maybe how your own work looks in one or another tool. For us its unity, but I guess more than one is really confortable with gamestudio. Good thing all of those have rather generous trials and no $ xxx.xxx price tags (y)