In the end it is all about which features you can live without in your game. As far as Mac publishing is concerned, if you are an Indie who can afford only the Indie version, Unity making a Mac exe isn't really a bonus since you can't really test it 24/7 yourself for bugs and all (if you don't own a Mac). Also, good luck finding a publisher that will finance a Indie dev (so that you can purchase the Pro version)..

The editor on Unity is really good though. It really makes your life easy compared to 3dgs editor. Interface is clean and customizable (you can add/remove a lot of tabs).

Hm, even without shadows it looks very good, much better than most of other terrain demos.

And I agree with Fogman: Unity does no harm to other 3d applications. It is nice to check FBX files, to prototype some scenes to play around with it and finally it can even publish to a lot of platforms.

The multi-platform availability makes it more expensive of course. So if you really only want to play at weekends on a Windows PC then Unity is not the right choice for you. Then you better go with 3dgs or free options like Irrlicht, Ogre or Wintermute.

Its a reaction for posts like this:





,gri

A mac mini costs 600€ but it would be stupid anyway if there were platform dependent bugs. I can´t imagine that publishing to OSX needs a lot of testing.

Compared to Gamestudio there are a lot more possibilities to make money with Unity. iPhone games are very popular at the moment or you could do small web based advertising games. It´s pretty easy to afford Pro after your first small indie project.

Oh yes, it definitely looks good and all. But you just know that something's missing. However, like I said, you can always use all the tricks in the book to make it look good.

I'll be honest and say that more I use Unity editor, the painful the thought of using 3dgs editor becomes. :P

So basically, even without the crucial features, the editor itself is like a nail in the coffin for every possible Indie engine out there (esp. Torque).


Going to try out the terrain editing and FBX support now. I also noticed a crazy thing that the demo level models have PSD files with the texture files. I believe updating the PSD files is also a built in feature here? (I messed around with normal map settings and the editor mentioned PSD changes..?)

All in all the editor has definitely been developed by people who were trying to make it easy for the artists out there. Pretty cool.

Assuming if..

1) Your game is good enough for that Mac mini.

2) Every Mac user out there has a Mac mini. If a more expensive (or "advanced") tech is common among users, wouldn't you rather have that to test your game onto? (why would you optimise it for lower end if that shouldn't be the target anyway)

3) If you know nothing about OSX. What happens when bugs are reported? You have to learn ins and outs of OSX now? If you hire someone for that.. well, he ain't working for free.

4) Lot more possibilities? What happens when your game isn't portable? Will you port an FPS to iPhone? What happens when your game isn't for browser based plugins? In the end you pretty much come down to downloadable standalone app.

5) It doesn't cost "600€" EVERYWHERE in the world (and 600 is still way too expensive, you can buy a pro license for that instead).

i kinda like it, editor and workflow is very nice,i didnt tried any scripting/programming, but i am gonna stick with Gamestudio.

I felt the same.

Then I guess you also buy 20 different Windows PCs for testing your Gamestudio games. You can´t really expect a lone wolf developer to have a huge testing center at home.

A game runs in the engine and has almost nothing to do with the underlying OS. I think you are exaggerating those issues a little.

I don´t really understand this argument!? It´s no big deal to keep the other platforms in mind when designing a game and of course you have a lot more possibilities with Unity. Gamestudio has no ports to different platforms at all.

In europe a mac mini costs 600€ at the moment and as far as I know they are cheaper almost everywhere else. If you are a cheapskate you can also install OSX on your normal PC.

^ Installing OSX on normal PC (Windows, right?)... is that even legal? Still, it's not the same hardware and not being a cheapskate (you wouldn't be purchasing "Indie" if you could afford everything out there anyway).

Actually, buying 20 different Windows PC's is cheaper than 5 Mac's.

You are forgetting that I can just replace my display card with other to test my game on different configuration (just like every other part)..

Seriously though, I know that making for Mac is a plus overall and most developers can find a way to test their games on a Mac (like publishers/portals, they can test it for you) eventually.

Still, they should add proper shadow support in Indie. I can see upgrading for stuff like motion blur but basic 3D feature, dynamic shadows, that's just wrong on so many levels. Removing such features would've worked on Mac but on PC you will be competing with a lot of 3D games with different engines, all with proper shadows..

I think except for the BIOS macs use exactly the same hardware as PCs since they have moved to Intel processors.

With Unity indie you can use dynamic decal shadows.

Yes, but Gamestudio should add proper shadow support too. I haven´t seen a Gamestudio shadow demo like the one on the Unity website yet. At least Unity has nice shadows in pro. Of course I wouldn´t mind having them in indie either though.