Lesli, Unity supports Javascript as well doesn't it?
Oh well will let you know later as today is day 1 of playing with Unity.
chris
Lesli, Unity supports Javascript as well doesn't it?
Oh well will let you know later as today is day 1 of playing with Unity.
chris
http://unity3d.com/unity/features/scriptingQuote:
Unity supports three scripting languages: JavaScript, C#, and a dialect of Python called Boo.
Unity Dev so far...
So...after getting a Mac, installing the Unity trial,I spent my first day banging my head into the monitor and achieveing very little. When you are learning a new system, not being on your usual OS makes everything seem 10 times harder. Am quite shocked to see how much Unity seems to expect you to be good at using 3D packages to get things done (I personally am a complete moron when it comes to precisely dragging things in 3D, but I never have to as I can, you know, Code.)
By the end of the day I have placed a character in the 3D world, and with a very simple attached javascript, made him move with the cursor keys and made a camera follow him (using a built in component).
Day 2 :
Things making a bit more sense today. I decide to try and do things the 'Unity' way, and by reading over their example of a 3D platformmer, in very little time get my dude now running around a true 3D terrain, jumping and have even added a blob shadow underneath him. This makes me feel very good about myself, but I have a nagging problem, I don't really know how any of this is put together. I don't know how to add buttons, or trigger simple scripts, yet I can mock up Mario64 gameplay, is this a good idea? I really don't know.
Am going to try to make some menus and things next, try to build a proper framework and not get distracted by too many 'features'.
more updates to follow.
ChrisError x
ps. Oddest thing so far with unity, is that to import Maya files, you need to have Maya running on the machine you are developing for. weird, but I guess it must be for a reason.
Nice work.
Chris, quite a few formats have to be exported because they're proprietary, maybe maya won't open their format up to be imported, only exported from their app, hence the need to have maya open.
Can I just say: £MAC + £MAYA + £UNITY LICENSE = £SILLY MONEY
I'm really keen to know how the different scripts compare to each other. csharp isn't supposed to be an interpreted script anyway, it's compiled code - so how does that work, is it put in there to entice more developers, or does it run much faster than javascript and boo (as you might expect?) Edit - I've just been to the linked article, which kinda explains it all.
Anyway, thanks for the update.
<offtopic>
I have no patience to dive into that mac vs windows crap,but there is only one thing i would care that is, its truth that macs dont have viruses?
a) yes
b) no
</offtopic>
(Tony, i dont know if you care about that but) So, in the future, it will be ok for FK that we can talk and show our unity games here?Its inspiration, and 'related' to games, anyway.
Macs have viruses, but they cost more, and look cooler, and come in a choice of colours. <end of topic>
Again, I'm not sure anyone cares...but a wee update on my journeys into Unity as a pure Flash chap.
Day 3
Now are, as they say, cooking with Gas. I kind of 'get' Unity now, it took a little bit, but today I have been writing custom Javascript behaviors, building levels and building menus (with clickable 3D text objects).
My world is starting to feel like a game now, but there is no game logic. Think I'm going to have some dinner, get my Unity manual and the Samaritans phone number (just in case) then see if I can plug in some sort of sensible game manager.
Chris Error x
ps. Im afraid the demo of what I'm making will be premiered at my conference next week, but after that playable demos and source explanations a-go-go on here (or linked to some sort of internetworked blog thing)
Hey chris,it would be nice to see that demo, i know its not complete but can give an idea of what can be done in 3 days with unity
I shall hook you up with a video of it today...gimme a few hours to add some bits and bobs.
Christopherrror x
So many moons ago, in fact it was errorware's first game, we made Zaphod and Aztec. It was a massive hit, and is still played a ludicrous amount of times a year, but alas there was no such thing a mochi-ads so we didn't make a penny off it :)
Anyways, here is the original
http://www.addictinggames.com/zaphodandaztec.html
And here are some little youTubes of the new Unity demo version. The screen capturing hasn't really done any favours to the colours and textures, but there ya go.
Main menu screen and level load and a spot of exploring
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y_bU40qy_BY
Zaphod traps a cow in the tractor beam and it gets sucked up
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IucMDrNZRpg
So in three or so days of Unity playing I have :
Clickable menus
Loading in scenes
Explorable 3d terrain
Third person controlled hero
Player following camera
very stupid NPCs (they just run away from you)
Custom script handling beam ups
and yeah that's about it, hope you all like it / find it interesting
more updates to follow if anyone cares :)
ChrisError x
p.s. it's workflow is a zillion times better than Director's ever was.
Di what?Quote:
Originally Posted by chriserrorplain
Yeah, more updates please, i think no one said anything because they know its unity, if it was flash everybody would omg omg awesome, even knowing that it would take months to try to do the same...and it would work only in some computers
I dont know if you are in this point already...but how do you handle hitTests and collisions?
I supose it takes more time because you would be using the ageia engine, but can you also do without it?
Thanks
I think flash will replace and assimilate Director's functions as 3d capabilities and support expand.
I think if Microsoft is really smart (doubtful), they'll find a way to get visual studio content running as a browser plugin.
I think unity is a fad, and will always be the small man in the game. Developers will develop for it though, simply because it runs on a Mac, and that makes people want to throw money at it.
If you're gonna program Unity in a .NET language, you might as well go for some good 3d and program for xBox/Computers using XNA gaming studio. It's a lot free-er, has full hardware support, you don't need a mac, you have better penetration (because it runs on windows and the xbox, no plugin required), and is WAY more powerful than any of that other 3D junk on the market.
And if you're having problems with windows, try getting a registry cleaner. I recommend CCleaner. I got it a little bit ago, and it fixed all of my windows problems. You'll have to run it a few times to get all of the problems (doesn't take long), but everything runs perfect in Vista now, I love it.
The real isue is whether Unity can be the Flash of 3D in a browser. Director failed.
Seems to be easy enough to get into, from what I see so far, and if they can get windows version out soon, who knows. Flash doesn't compete with Playstation3, Unity doesn't have to either.
They need a windows version before they can compete.
As much as using a Mac is like fingers down a chalk baord to me (for purely personaly reasons, I am just not used them, I know how good an OS is it technically), there is something to be said for getting everyhting done right one 1 platform _then_ porting it over. The Unity team don't seem to be in a rush and, from what I can tell, are in this for the long game. If they can achieve a few minor hits on the web at this point, get people learning the Dev process, then when they hit with the Windows version, they will have much better player penetration figures..and hey presto..a success.
ChrisError x
In fact is quite the opposite, they are NOT developing for it because is mac only.There is a huge crowd of flash and director users that would be using it, if it has a windows versionQuote:
Developers will develop for it though, simply because it runs on a Mac, and that makes people want to throw money at it.
As far as i know unity and xna can use the same capabilities on the graphics card.Quote:
If you're gonna program Unity in a .NET language, you might as well go for some good 3d and program for xBox/Computers using XNA gaming studio (...)
and is WAY more powerful than any of that other 3D junk on the market.
Jumping in between my coding marathon :)
Incrue told me about the thread so just to quickly set some more things straight:
Regarding this what Al said:
"I think unity is a fad, and will always be the small man in the game. Developers will develop for it though, simply because it runs on a Mac, and that makes people want to throw money at it."
Unity is around since 2005 and constantly growing in penetration,user count and supported platforms, so yeah, it already is no fad anymore for sure and just the Wii and Iphone support make it quite interesting to many now.
Regarding this:
"If you're gonna program Unity in a .NET language, you might as well go for some good 3d and program for xBox/Computers using XNA gaming studio. It's a lot free-er, has full hardware support, you don't need a mac, you have better penetration (because it runs on windows and the xbox, no plugin required), and is WAY more powerful than any of that other 3D junk on the market."
Several things are wrong there: First of all in unity one can code in C#,Boo and even Javascript, so one isn´t forced to use C# if one doesn´t want to.
Next up, yup, neither unity nor XNA support directX10 features but besides that one has pretty current gen 3d support, way surpassing pretty much anything else out there (besides going low level from the ground up DirectX/Open GL and C/C++ development of course).
So yeah, in case that was unclear unity has full hardware support.
Next up its also wrong that with XNA one gets more platforms supported than with unity.
Right now with XNA one can deploy to Windows and Xbox 360 and soon to Zune.
With Unity one can deploy to Mac, Windows, Wii and soon Iphone.
Besides that the unity people want to support as many platforms as possible and are working on that, whereas i doubt XNA content would ever be supported in similar quality on Iphone,Wii or PS3.
So this what Mike said:
"Seems to be easy enough to get into, from what I see so far, and if they can get windows version out soon, who knows. Flash doesn't compete with Playstation3, Unity doesn't have to either."
is off,too cause unity3D doesn´t attempt to compete with other platforms, the guys are working on supporting deploy on as many platforms as possible.
I don´t want to talk down XNA, it has its own nice sides and yup, right now there´s no more easily approachable way to deploy to Xbox 360 than with XNA content, i just see many wild guesses so i thought it would be good to clear some things up, no hard feelings guys :)
cheers to all :)
I don't think that Unity will ever be very large on the Wii. They said that flash would be huge on it, and look how that turned out...
Unity on the iphone would be cool, but I wonder if it can process that kind of data. I mean, it's other functions aren't exactly blazing fast, but 3d is a whole different game, so I guess we'll just have to see how it turns out.
XNA will probably never be supported on Sony systems. Sony is like Apple, except with PC's. Nobody buys the PS3, and few games are sold for the Wii, though they sell a lot of systems.
What's this about Unity support on the Wii?
Is Wiiware using it? If not then I'm pretty sure they made Wiiware to discourage people from using 3rd party tools like Flash and Unity.
to Al:
we´ll see how unity content does on the wii, but yeah, it´d be off to compare it to playing flash games on the wii through wii´s opera browser if you meant that.
flash always runs worse in the browser than in standalone player, it doesn´t help either that the wii´s opera browser only supports flash 7 and flash is generally a ram and performance hog and the wii doesn´t have huge amounts of ram and neither the fastest cpu (and yup, the browser and plugins running in there only get a fraction of that)
Unity was approved as licensed wii middleware which means one can do full blown retail/wiiware games with it, so that allows accessing more of the hardware ressources than when running as plugin in the browser.
When you say "it's other functions aren't exactly blazing fast" on what is that assumption based? Have you tried it and made some performance comparisons there? Yup,C++ and C (of course even more assembler, haha) runs at better performance, unity isn´t bad in code execution performance either though.
Its code execution performance is a lot better than when coding AS3 in flash (and that even if one codes Javascript in unity), add to that the hardware access support for the display/3d performance and one has a lot to play with there.
to hatu: As i said unity was approved as licensed Wii development middleware by Nintendo meanwhile, so that means one can make Wii games with it and deploy to Wii (for the deploy part one has to become a licensed Wii developer as is typical in the console game dev biz).
So yeah, one can do Wiiware aswell as Retail Wii games with it.
It seems like there are lots of questionmarks popping up regarding deploying to consoles so maybe i should explain those things a bit more:
As i said regarding consoles one can deploy to 360 with XNA and to Wii (and in a while to more) with unity3D.
The XNA Xbox 360 deployment:
Once one made an XNA game and has a xbox 360 one can buy a creators club membership for 99$ a year from the XBox store. Then one can connect the pc with the 360 and deploy games to it to test em there.
So then you can test your games on the 360, nice, but what next, how to get your games played on the 360 by the masses?
Well, right now you can´t. Only other creators club members can try your game.
Right now the community service part MS is working on is in beta, the idea is that one can submit game and the developer community can review it and if it gets approved then the game gets released to a community area of the XBox live service where usual Xbox 360 owners can download it then.
To be able to sell your game you´d still have to get in contact with MS/Another Xbox publisher and then its about evaluating whether your game is fitting for beeing developed further or right away released as sold Xbox Live Arcade game then.
The unity3D Wii/Wiiware deployment:
You´d develop your game and then either contact Nintendo or another Wii/Wiiware publisher to show them your demo to either have your game released by them or become a licensed wii/wiiware developer to be able to publish the game as commercial game yourself.
You´d probably want to develop a good part of your game running on PC/Mac and then apply to become a licensed developer to get a devkit and that way be able to run your game on Wii like hardware for a good part of the dev cycle.
While one could code on a game made in any technology/language and show that to a console publisher to see if they are interested in helping getting it released on the console both unity and XNA made games are more interesting to MS/Nintendo and other publishers since its less porting work involvedto get the games rolling on the console.
Alright that sounds pretty cool. Not I'm-buying-a-mac-for-this-one-program cool, but pretty damn cool. I hope they'll port it for windows someday. Or can you run Mac programs on Windows somehow like you can run Windows programs on mac?
i heard there are some ways to run mac os on a usual pc but i´m not well informed about that.
The unity guys are also working on a pc version of the ide, they´ll surely announce it publicly once its closer to completion.
Problem is, hackintosh is illegal
For those who say that in the end 3d in unity is nothing better than 3d in director, thats what director developers with tons more experience in 3d have to say about that
(Remus knows his stuff, he is the guy who made that , that and that... maybe the best director stuff ever)Quote:
Originally Posted by Necromanthus
That's far, far from even good Director stuff ( Quake is good, the other 2, especially warcraft are bad ).
Maybe he made some of those too, but there are about a dozen games on Miniclip far better than these Director examples.
Anyway, It looks like Unity is better than Director, but so far games are not any better, most of them are worse. It's all hopeless until they release the windows version.
damn those demos are cool. Really makes me think why I'm trying to make something in flash. Oh wait, I don't have a mac :)
Wow they sure are, I spent far to long chasing that bird around the tropical map and throwing chairs around the living room.Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_malee
It'd be interesting to know what the budget is for a unity game, ie do clients understand the increased dev time / costs and are willing to pay that for a relatively new plug-in without the penetration figures of Flash.
I imagine like most new tech, the earlier adopters are taking a financial hit to cement their place in the new market.
Squize.
as usual higher paying cliets who usually also want the higher end content will be more into it, the smaller portals probably not initially.