So a pv3d developer has found out about unity

No, trolling would be Unity talk for over a year and no games to play.

( what do they have so far, 5-6 games ? ).

And you completely misunderstood what I meant with that pre-rendered graphics talk, but I don't feel like explaining again.

I'm not against progress, and you can get excited all you want. I'm simply pointing out what I see.

People were excited about speed increases in flash player 9, then 3D in flash 10, Unity for a couple of years. I shot all of those down as being pure marketing bull$hit and so far I've been right.

If I wanted to make a 3D game I'd use Unity instead of flash, but I don't want to make games nobody will play. If Unity ever becomes a major player, it won't take me more than a week to get up to speed, so why even care about it now.

And I'm pretty bored of demos and speculating. You want different discussions, show me games. If you want to talk about Unity, finish a game with it and post a link, otherwise we might as well talk about whether Posh blew Becks today.

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Originally Posted by MikeMD

It's not a circle. It a very short straight line.

On one end: Flash game --------everybody can play it

the other end: Unity game ------- most people won't bother playing it.

Which is a more capable app when it came to pure game creation was never in question. Even Director has always been more capable than flash, look what good it did it, even with 75% penetration once upon a time.

Give me some credit at least. I predicted over a year ago, that Unity would be irrelevant in browser gaming today. I'll tell you again right now. Next xmass still won't be much better.

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Doesn't matter what plugin we're talking about, it needs to be installed. I can remember there were Quite the few years where the Flash plugin was a download, but it became more popular and it was incorperated by the major browsers. Now the reality today is that the Flash plugin has a huge penetration, but to really predict what's going to happen next year, you're going to have to answer the why. Just saying something which happens to become reality isn't that much of predicting as it is geussing.

Now to why I think times are indeed changing. Flash was very easy to get into as is Unity right now. Then why don't we see all the immature "give me scripts", "give me an exact tutorial" demands of young people (generalizing here, sorry) trying to get into Unity? Let me ask another question: do you believe that the most of those demanding that actually bought Flash? Acces to "free software" is a lot easier for Windows. Just await the first cracks for Unity and a whole new audience will start to poop out their latest half-creations. From there on out it's a matter of the spreading of the buzz.

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Originally Posted by MikeMD

If Unity ever becomes a major player, it won't take me more than a week to get up to speed, so why even care about it now.

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Because to become popular it needs games, and to have games it needs developers. Unity isn't just going to suddenly find its way onto everyone’s computers. It's up to us developers to back the platforms that we see as progress for the industry. To just wait until other developers make it popular is the lazy option sure, but if you are truly interested in the progression of web game development then platforms like unity become very interesting, that’s where the difference in opinion here comes from I think.

It's also important to realise that, as far as I’m aware, unity is primarily (if not only) for game development. Not everyone plays games in their browser, therefore to compare the penetration of the unity plug in to the flash plug in isn't logical. The majority of people with flash player installed have no interest in playing games at all, so just because unity has a lower penetration percentage, that doesn’t mean less people are going to play your game (although it's fair to say that’s true at the moment).

Ali

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Originally Posted by MikeMD

People were excited about speed increases in flash player 9, then 3D in flash 10, Unity for a couple of years. I shot all of those down as being pure marketing bull$hit and so far I've been right.

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man, that's just laughable.

i happen to agree with most of what you say, but god do you make that difficult.

what i take from all of this is that the flash player should perform better. a lot better. i had forgotten about the file size concern argument; but that's clearly not the issue anymore... so wtf?

unity is great looking, and if it doesn't die off i bet we'll see a lot of great stuff in the future. making the argument that there aren't great games on the platform (which is ludicrous- you'd know that if you played off-road velociraptor safari...) is a total straw-man argument; it says nothing of the platform's capability.

I did play Raptor safari, and I think it's a just another 3d game along the lines of Director stuff. I think that Pucca racer is a better Unity game than Raptor safari ( I prefer racing to aimless go anywhere kill crap games just because it's there )

I agree with you that we should not blame Unity platform for developers' shortcomings. Of course it's not Unity's fault people can't make a great game with it. But that goes back to my "must have a windows version" before it can hope to become a major player. Most developers don't care enough about it to even try it if it means working on a Mac.

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It's up to us developers to back the platforms that we see as progress for the industry. To just wait until other developers make it popular is the lazy option sure, but if you are truly interested in the progression of web game development then platforms like unity become very interesting, that’s where the difference in opinion here comes from I think.

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And it's lazy to have a Mac only version after 4 years into any apps life, especially a game specific app.

If I really needed to make a 3D game, I'd go with Unity over flash, but right now I can make games I want to make much faster with flash. And right now I want and need to make games without worrying whether people will bother playing them. When you balance advantages of unity against advantages of flash, right now flash wins. If somebody wants to get into iphone or wii market with Unity and get an early jump on competition, sure, go ahead, but I'm not interested right now, and since this is flashkit it's not that relevant here. I don't have the power to censor anybody on this boards, nor would I want to. It's OK to talk about iphone or wii, and whatever else, but it's also OK for me to say it's not really relevant to flash and this board.

I still remember when flash plugin was just 200kb, I didn't even realize it is now bigger than Unity plugin which seems ridiculous, but as you say, it's not much of an issue these days ( I still export most games for version 8, and if I needed to could make them work with version 5 without much trouble ). On the other hand what is all this extra file size for? If anybody succeeds in killing off flash it will probably be adobe itself.
It is becoming a mess.

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Originally Posted by MikeMD

And it's lazy to have a Mac only version after 4 years into any apps life, especially a game specific app.

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Wow. Everywhere I can read up about the team bieng small and their accomplishments biggie and you can call them lazy, because a PC version isn't one of those accomplishments. Way to measure up someones lazyness.

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Originally Posted by alillm

To just wait until other developers make it popular is the lazy option sure, but if you are truly interested in the progression of web game development then platforms like unity become very interesting, that’s where the difference in opinion here comes from I think.

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And how does that respond to allilms accusation? They're lazy so I can be lazy too? Sorry for going a bit offtopic and personal here, but that one just blew me away.

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Originally Posted by MikeMD

It's OK to talk about iphone or wii, and whatever else, but it's also OK for me to say it's not really relevant to flash and this board.

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I don't think those topics are irrelavent. Flash can be used to develop games for the Iphone and Wii and people even do use Flash for that reason. To use your logic on this subject: I don't think that Flash Tower Defense games became relevant only when a lot of people started making them. Not all that is uninteresting for most of the visitors here is irrelavent. As for how relevant Unity is to this board: Unity can become a serious competition to Flash and with it the games that are develloped using it can become serious competition to Flash games. Flash exists among other development packages which shouldn't be ignored. We should ignore Unity as little as we do ignore php, 3dMax and photoshop.

Technically, unity is quite an accomplishment, but I am going to have to side with Mike on this one.

The chances of unity going anywhere substantial are slim. Unity has existed for many years. The tropical paradise demo (among the others) has been up for well over a year, possibly several. I have yet to see a single piece of unity content, game or otherwise, on the internet.

As to the mac comment, perhaps "lazy" is the wrong word, however I would consider it on the verge of incompetent for a piece of software whose success is measured by its install base to only has its IDE available for a very minor OS. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction of values there.

I don't have anything against unity, I actually would be very happy if unity was a real player in the plugin market but I have to be realistic here.

Unity is and has been non-existent since its inception. Generous estimates peg it at 1-3% penetration (and I would suggest an order of magnitude lower). It might as well not exist.

I think there is really room for both - i'm 3D resilient in my approach of Flash Games, but nethertheless, i'm excited about the progress Flash is making ... at worst, it means that the core will be optimized for fast rendering, and us, 2D guys, will win from that...
Also, I believe that there is co-existence of 2D games and 3D games, at least, in the begining of technologies ... right now, as far as Flash goes, I believe 2D is way more capable to render a proper "mood" and "art" AND stay within contengencies (meaning short load times, no processor hog, etc ).

People will always push boundaries ... and because some do, the other people that evolve within contengencies will often adapt and create even more compelling experiences - progress pushes people that are behind to compete harder to stay in the wake ... I believe that it is a good thing for everybody : devs and gamers ...

Sorry to surface back on some random subject, but there again : the argument is over technology ... **** technology, let's talk about games, let's imagin gameplays - and the technology that fits that gameplay :) - there again, there's room for both!

yes, i'm not talking about unity ...don't really care about it - i'm a Flash lover :) - but i don't mind Unity raise the expectations for online games ... we will all, gamers and devs benefit of that on the long term ...

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If somebody wants to get into iphone or wii market with Unity and get an early jump on competition, sure, go ahead, but I'm not interested right now, and since this is flashkit it's not that relevant here

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Its not the first time someone tells you that flash also isnt just browser games either
http://www.zeebys.com/winners.php

About ' no unity games' :
CrystalSkies
brazil's super volei
another brazilian advertgame, the axe effect
glider
coin pusher
crashdrive
cartoon network's laser warrior

I dont like some things inside but its a cool game:
rasta monkey

in development, one of my favorites, humilliate that alternativa demo
tram

Not a game but good for clients that want 3d
Renault Clio, Renault Twingo and renault megane

and as i said many times before,the upcoming kick ass of the world
fusion fall

And that was because i dont spent that much time in unity foruns

I admit I know very little about 3D but to me looks like for example "Google SketchUp" may evolve into 3D game design program. It already can handle interactions, its simple and easy, works on every platform and of course comes from G meaning there is lots of money on development. Once their Viewer becomes browser plugin or will be directly integrated into Chrome, it can spread faster in one day then Unity can within whole year.

Anyway, more U vs F links can be found here:
http://diamondtearz.org/blog/2008/12...-flash-or-not/

The best Unity game I've seen so far is Minotaur China Shop

as so many seem to be very focused on no windows ide, these are the last few points i say to those:
-have a look at wikipedia and elsewhere, check the history of major adobe and other apps that are seen as industry standard now, you will notice that several of them started out as mac only ide tools in first place and later on when they got more popular a windows ide was made.
This is a very common and intelligent way to go about creating software:
Focus on one platfoirm first (ideally on one that is most streamlined with least differences between systems and also a big designer/developer userbase) and once you got that right and get bigger you can port it to anything you like.
I find it very uninformed and an insult to put that clever way of doing things as laziness. Mostly because it obviously comes from people who have no idea how many big and innovative improvements unity has made just in the few time i use it.
When was the last time you could go to a forum and directly talk with the developers of a flash app and post your comments and your requests were turned into reality in a free dot update in the tool in less than 2 months?
Where´s the native wii and iphone deploy option for flash content getting added both in less than a year? (even if adobe should work on such things now the train of getting in early on the exciting new platform is gone long by then).
With Adobe i feel like they only listen to around 100 bloggers supporting them and they ignore more than 90% opf thir userbase and knowingly create things they know the majority won´t like.

Next up, again, it is a very limited point of view to compare web penetration of A with web penetration of B.
Its understandable that many create web games and therefore the web penetration is a big factor to them but there are many other factors that are important.
Again, flash takes a quite new and highend computer to run various types of content at decent performance (not just 3d stuff at all), therefore the actual number of people you can reach with most flash content is way lower than the plugin penetration numbers (which are quite debatable by themselves).
Next up unity is first and foremost a game engine so the focus is mostly on supporting many target platforms and devices.
In that field it already surpasses flash by far as flash either doesn´t run on various devices at all, needs additional costly middleware to get ported over or if there is a player; other than on windows and mac its usually a few versions behind or has even way worse performance and is therefore again way more limiting regarding whom one can reach and what one can run.

Yes, the web plugin penetration is small compared to the one of the flash plugin, so what, its raising and if you inform yourself you see there are more and more unity games on the web each day, several game portals which focus on unity games only and more and more major game portals and big paying clients are into having unity games rather than flash games.

Some seem to see it as threat when someone talks positively about "competing" technology.
I mostly saw it and brought these topics up because i´m a longtime flash user, probably longer than many others here and i´ve always been one of the biggest supporters of flash, heck, i pushed for flash being used for over 100 projects by big clients back when the plugin penetration wasn´t exactly that big yet and flash was laughed at as the new flashy fad toy.

I think its important for adobe to realize the world is moving on and with their RIA and forced workflow ways they bring up they are not appealing to a big part of its userbase and hey, as creative person working on stuff sure the lazy and longtime user of the flash platform tools it would be smoothest and easiest for me if adobe wakes up and does things in propper way but if not there are other tools and technologies and emerging and in my eyes it would be dumb to miss the boat out of ignorance and arrogance of sticking to what´s big right now (while you know its big and slow and not evolving as it should).
Flash has many uses it won´t be made completely useless by unity or something else anytime soon. But if someone is a game developer i find unity a better choice than flash if one looks a bit more into the future than just the penetration numbers of a web plugin in the next 3 months (they can change quickly with anything).

If you don´t want to get a mac for unity dev, sure, cool, you may wait for a windows ide; if you don´t want to give it a try even then and stick with flash for everything: fine, too. But yeah, maybe just be a bit more open minded regarding what´s going on and possible outside the flash sandbox.

I personally enjoy working with unity3D now like back in the days with flash3-6 where everything felt new and exciting and there were so many new things to play with and one felt like one could do tons of cool stuff in a flash and flashy enjoyable way.
Last time when i had that with falsh was for a short timespan shortly before flash 8 came out and everyone was amazed by the bitmapdata and filter stuff (in before noticing the various bottlenecks things done using those bring on other ends).

So yeah, i don´t get paid by unity nor do i have any other personal gain when many more designers and developers join using unity (i don´t make unity web games right now so plugin penetration doesn´t matter to me at all).
I just find it depressing when one has a shiny sweet toy and wants to share all the nice sides one experiences each day and talk about pros and cons with other developer mates and then some talk it down each day with the same arguments and it gets tiring arguing against them each time.

It's called pioneering Tom and I admire you for doing it. I too choose the lazy option of just coming on these boards, reading through the latest developments so carefully laid about by some of the very talented members here. Their analyses of what's avaible on technology today are quite valuable to me. I'd like to thank you for your rants against Flash (or should I say Adobe) and your comparisons with Unity. You've sparked my interest and thought me a thing or two about the inner workings of Flash along the way.

Are there any unofficial workarounds to run it in a emulator or something? Nod if yes

to Todorus:
Even if just one person thinks like that i feel like i achieved something.
Thanks a lot :)

to hatu: I´m not informed about the legalities of running Mac OS on pcs but yeah, nod.
I personally wondered a lot of course about whether i could somehow run it on my pc, back when the topic came up of me seriously wanting to try unity3d the first time. Back then the windows ide version was way more a rumor and way less a fact (they officially announced that they´re working on the windows ide at this year´s unite conference).
I bought a mac, i bought an iphone and meanwhile i don´t look back anymore. I enjoy a lot using my pc for what its good at and using my mac at what its good at, as developer i also find it a big advantage to be able to test things on several platforms.
I also feel like the investment is not a too big one at all regarding what one can do with it and ways to earn the money back in a reasonable timeframe.
I understand it though if its too costly for some to get a mac or if they´re just plain not into getting one. To those, unless they are into hacky ways of getting things going anyway, i´d suggest staying tuned for the windows ide.

I'm not being negative about Unity. I actually said it seemed like a good app and probably the way to go if you needed a 3D game.

But, I'm being realistic. It's not my fault realism is perceived as negativity. Unity could just as easily go bust within months . The fact that there is no windows version after 4 years should tell you they have very limited resources. The very first rule of every business ( something if you didn't know before, you may know now after all this financial crap ) is to lie about what's really going on. That's why I don't give a crap about demos and press releases. Give me games and give me something real to work with.

Choosing a Mac to start with was a mistake, lets be real here. They could have had dozens of games, each better than anything they have right now, just by having a windows version out first. Quality over quantity does not work here. Just going through the list of those games, 1/2 of them make you go WTF and bang your head against the wall. 3-12MB games that one could duplicate even with flash. I know you hate director comparisons, but with the exception of those two brazilian sites, finished Unity games, so far look either worse, or same as you decent director game.

We question Adobe, Microsoft, whatever, why should Unity get a pass. Sorry , but I question their decision to start a gaming platform on a Mac, to only have such limited number of games and limited plugin penetration after 4 years. It does matter. Many 3D platforms have come and gone without ever becoming relevant.

If you want to share, show me some games, I don't mind. It should be pretty easy to outmatch Flash games if Unity is that good.

man, your view on reality and the one of most others probably can´t be united so i won´t bother trying anymore. why are you talking with others if you ignore anything they say?

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why are you talking with others if you ignore anything they say?

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You are not really saying anything other than recycling Unity PR.

yeah man, in your reality i am.
in real reality i think i´ve talked about downsides of unity, too (like its less useful for 2D stuff or the hyped up rias or the plugin is less widespread).
Since i see myself mostly as game developer/designer and interactive artist (doing things for several platforms/devices) these things count less to me, but yeah,whatever.

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Originally Posted by Mike2d

But, I'm being realistic. It's not my fault realism is perceived as negativity....

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thats not it,- you are beeing personal and ignorant to others hence the bad atmosphere we have here now.
Let tomsamson have his optimistic way of Unity at least its constructive unlike your comments.

@tomsamson: maybe my first attempt was not that succesffull or good at all,- just wanted to add a diversed discussion about the bad sides as well,- seems it went to far that way :(