10 ms·

Unity 3D is free on Android and iOS until April 8th

176 points by njs12345 15y ago

brador 15y ago
Is this a license/sub type of thing or an "I get it permanently for free" once I've downloaded it once type of thing?
- kranner 15y ago
  The latter, from what I understand.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- okamiueru 15y ago
  Judging by the tweat (https://twitter.com/#!/unity3d/status/176767532936605697 https://twitter.com/#!/unity3d/status/176767532936605697) it seems like permanently free!
Herald_MJ 15y ago
What's the normal price?
- kranner 15y ago
  $400 each for iOS Basic and Android Basic.
jasonlotito 15y ago
Getting to the review order page, I get: Temporarily Down for Maintenance You are seeing this message because the page that you were trying to visit is down while we make some changes to our servers. This is a temporary thing, and we hope to have things restored quickly, so please check back in a few minutes.
- rooster8 15y ago
  Looks like it's back up now.
rainboiboi 15y ago
Temporarily Down for Maintenance You are seeing this message because the page that you were trying to visit is down while we make some changes to our servers. This is a temporary thing, and we hope to have things restored quickly, so please check back in a few minutes. Thanks for your patience, The Unity Team
0x0 15y ago
Note that you cannot use the non-pro version if your company has a turnover above $100k/year.
- epaga 15y ago
  ...at which point the $1500 dollar version doesn't sound like a bad deal...
  - 0x0 15y ago
    It's actually ($4500 * number of developer seats) if you still want android + ios. Unless the entire company revenue comes from your unity3d project, this may certainly be a dealbreaker. Definitely makes it impossible to use on what would otherwise be a one-week project.
    - dagw 15y ago
      Yea, I just ran into this at work the other week when we wanted to take a look at Unity for a small side project. Just because the company that you work for is making several $100k (or even million)/year doesn't mean your tiny little department down in the guts of that company is seeing that money.
      - talmand 15y ago
        I would hope the total required is from revenue generated by your Unity project, not total revenue of the company. If not, that's a huge mistake on their part as it would encourage companies with unrelated revenues to go elsewhere. Which was exactly your response.
        azakai 15y ago
        If it's just for the project inside the company, a big company could set up an internal "project" for just the Unity stuff, and not pay for the full version. So no one would pay for the full version.
thespace 15y ago
AWESOME!!!
acron0 15y ago
This is totally legit. 100% free - for the 3.x releases. Can't recommend this enough....especially as I just dropped £300 on an iOS licence a month back :E
soofaloofa 15y ago
I recently bought an iOS Basic licence and got an e-mail from Unity stating that I get 25% off my next purchase just because I missed this sale. Great customer support!
seclorum 15y ago
Wow, this is truly amazing .. I'm currently running the sample app "AngryBots" on my iPad, and I'm sold: I'll be upgrading to Unity3D with iOS and Android PRO licenses as soon as I can. Nice move, Unity Technologies! You've got a new convert!
- wlesieutre 15y ago
  What were you using before?
  - seclorum 15y ago
    The Blender3D game engine, as well as hacking on my own 3D engine (mainly a curio, nothing great) .. but Unity is just so much more productive. After an afternoon spent on the Unity tutorials and hacking on AngryBots, I'm sold.
JoeH 15y ago
I am currently in SF at the Game Developer Conference, and I have been using Unity w/an iOS license for the last year for a side-project. The timing is great for us, since we are just now working on re-deploying our project to Android for testing. If you have ever considered doing any type of game development, I would strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. Unity has allowed me to be immensely productive working relatively few hours a week. Being able to prototype up a game idea in a few hours and experience that on your mobile device is hugely powerful.
epaga 15y ago
Is anyone able to compare and contrast this with the UDK which seems to be a similar license (free until you make six figures)?
- nluqo 15y ago
  I'm wondering this also, especially how the learning curves differ. The obvious difference is UDK won't deploy to android.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  I have fooled around with both, but I am probably not competent to speak on the matter. The UDK is just the UDK, the free Unity is missing features that the paid version has. Unity has more ease of use features.
xymostech 15y ago
I'd like to point out to anyone on the edge that they don't even take credit card information, just an email and a physical address. This seems like an amazing deal.
- talmand 15y ago
  Yep, I was happy to see I didn't need to feed them a CC number to get it. I may not use it but I snagged it anyway, you never know. It'll probably serve it's purpose since I'm more inclined to fire it up to play with it. Plus I'm contemplating getting RageSpline in the asset store as it's on sale for 66% off to correspond with the module giveaway. That's a strong looking tool for $25.
nextparadigms 15y ago
How does Unity 3D compare to the Unreal Dev Kit?
- colkassad 15y ago
  UDK is more friendly to large dev teams (collaboration and source control). There was a great comment on reddit[1] by a professional developer on why this was the case but sadly he has deleted his comment. [1]http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/nua84/from_a_professional_game_dev_point_of_view_why http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/nua84/from_a_profes...
neovive 15y ago
How does Unity compare to something like CoronaSDK for 2D games? Unity clearly seems geared more towards 3D gaming, but I've seen some references to locking the Z-axis to create 2D experiences.
- seclorum 15y ago
  Unity is really not less than a total 3D environment for developing games .. you can definitely use it to do 2D style games (or 2.5D games, where 3D models are locked on the Z-axis, as you say) but in my opinion if you want flat bitmap-style 2D games you'd be better off getting into something like MOAI (http://getmoai.com/ http://getmoai.com/) or Corona or LÖVE2D to get the job done .. (my pref is MOAI right now, its just so fresh and fun..)
- alvivar 15y ago
  There a lot of plugins to handle 2D (2.5D) games on Unity, I am currently using 2D Toolkit ($50) for sprites and it's awesome. I also recommend to check RageSpline and RagePixel, this tools provide features totally integrated with the IDE and really easy to use. I haven't try CoronaSDK but I can see a lot a potential in 2D games with Unity, not just 3D. I fact, you can see a lot of nice 2D games in his showcase, for example Zombieville USA and Max & The Magic Marker. - http://unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/ http://unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/ - http://ragepixel.com/ http://ragepixel.com/ - http://ragespline.com/ http://ragespline.com/ - Max & The Magic Marker http://goo.gl/H9Hl0 http://goo.gl/H9Hl0 - Zombieville http://goo.gl/fzZP0 http://goo.gl/fzZP0 - Showcase http://goo.gl/g4uux http://goo.gl/g4uux
itsboring 15y ago
We've been using Unity for the past year to develop a couple of games and we've had very good success with it so far. The best part, for us, is the fact that it uses Mono as its scripting engine (if you want to call C# scripting). This unlocks things like LINQ, iterator coroutines, .NET sockets, etc. It also allows us to share code between client and server. We can reference the same core DLL on both, as well as share game logic between client (for offline play) and server (for multiplayer anti-cheating). We tend to do most of our development in VS, but we deploy to Linux servers and will be deploying clients to web, iOS, android, and possibly steam. The way we use the actual Unity editor, it ends up being just an asset pipeline on steroids; but many other users use the drag-and-drop scene building features. We've found Unity to play nice with git, especially with the 3.5 release which lets you use a textual format for asset metadata. They were previously binary making merges impossible. In all, this offer is very worth checking out if you are interested in game development.
- buff-a 15y ago
  But of course, to be allowed textual format for asset metadata, you have to buy the pro version. Or did they change that in 3.5?
  - itsboring 15y ago
    You do need pro to make scene files and stuff text, but the most important thing for source control (the use of .meta files) can be enabled in the free version now.

176 points by njs12345 15y ago

brador 15y ago

Is this a license/sub type of thing or an "I get it permanently for free" once I've downloaded it once type of thing?

kranner 15y ago
The latter, from what I understand.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
okamiueru 15y ago
Judging by the tweat (https://twitter.com/#!/unity3d/status/176767532936605697 https://twitter.com/#!/unity3d/status/176767532936605697) it seems like permanently free!

Herald_MJ 15y ago

What's the normal price?

kranner 15y ago
$400 each for iOS Basic and Android Basic.

jasonlotito 15y ago

Getting to the review order page, I get: Temporarily Down for Maintenance You are seeing this message because the page that you were trying to visit is down while we make some changes to our servers. This is a temporary thing, and we hope to have things restored quickly, so please check back in a few minutes.

rooster8 15y ago
Looks like it's back up now.

rainboiboi 15y ago

Temporarily Down for Maintenance You are seeing this message because the page that you were trying to visit is down while we make some changes to our servers. This is a temporary thing, and we hope to have things restored quickly, so please check back in a few minutes. Thanks for your patience, The Unity Team

0x0 15y ago

Note that you cannot use the non-pro version if your company has a turnover above $100k/year.

epaga 15y ago
...at which point the $1500 dollar version doesn't sound like a bad deal...
- 0x0 15y ago
  It's actually ($4500 * number of developer seats) if you still want android + ios. Unless the entire company revenue comes from your unity3d project, this may certainly be a dealbreaker. Definitely makes it impossible to use on what would otherwise be a one-week project.
  - dagw 15y ago
    Yea, I just ran into this at work the other week when we wanted to take a look at Unity for a small side project. Just because the company that you work for is making several $100k (or even million)/year doesn't mean your tiny little department down in the guts of that company is seeing that money.
    - talmand 15y ago
      I would hope the total required is from revenue generated by your Unity project, not total revenue of the company. If not, that's a huge mistake on their part as it would encourage companies with unrelated revenues to go elsewhere. Which was exactly your response.
      - azakai 15y ago
        If it's just for the project inside the company, a big company could set up an internal "project" for just the Unity stuff, and not pay for the full version. So no one would pay for the full version.

thespace 15y ago

AWESOME!!!

acron0 15y ago

This is totally legit. 100% free - for the 3.x releases. Can't recommend this enough....especially as I just dropped £300 on an iOS licence a month back :E

soofaloofa 15y ago

I recently bought an iOS Basic licence and got an e-mail from Unity stating that I get 25% off my next purchase just because I missed this sale. Great customer support!

seclorum 15y ago

Wow, this is truly amazing .. I'm currently running the sample app "AngryBots" on my iPad, and I'm sold: I'll be upgrading to Unity3D with iOS and Android PRO licenses as soon as I can. Nice move, Unity Technologies! You've got a new convert!

wlesieutre 15y ago
What were you using before?
- seclorum 15y ago
  The Blender3D game engine, as well as hacking on my own 3D engine (mainly a curio, nothing great) .. but Unity is just so much more productive. After an afternoon spent on the Unity tutorials and hacking on AngryBots, I'm sold.

JoeH 15y ago

I am currently in SF at the Game Developer Conference, and I have been using Unity w/an iOS license for the last year for a side-project. The timing is great for us, since we are just now working on re-deploying our project to Android for testing. If you have ever considered doing any type of game development, I would strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. Unity has allowed me to be immensely productive working relatively few hours a week. Being able to prototype up a game idea in a few hours and experience that on your mobile device is hugely powerful.

epaga 15y ago

Is anyone able to compare and contrast this with the UDK which seems to be a similar license (free until you make six figures)?

nluqo 15y ago
I'm wondering this also, especially how the learning curves differ. The obvious difference is UDK won't deploy to android.
stonemetal 15y ago
I have fooled around with both, but I am probably not competent to speak on the matter. The UDK is just the UDK, the free Unity is missing features that the paid version has. Unity has more ease of use features.

xymostech 15y ago

I'd like to point out to anyone on the edge that they don't even take credit card information, just an email and a physical address. This seems like an amazing deal.

talmand 15y ago
Yep, I was happy to see I didn't need to feed them a CC number to get it. I may not use it but I snagged it anyway, you never know. It'll probably serve it's purpose since I'm more inclined to fire it up to play with it. Plus I'm contemplating getting RageSpline in the asset store as it's on sale for 66% off to correspond with the module giveaway. That's a strong looking tool for $25.

nextparadigms 15y ago

How does Unity 3D compare to the Unreal Dev Kit?

colkassad 15y ago
UDK is more friendly to large dev teams (collaboration and source control). There was a great comment on reddit[1] by a professional developer on why this was the case but sadly he has deleted his comment. [1]http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/nua84/from_a_professional_game_dev_point_of_view_why http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/nua84/from_a_profes...

neovive 15y ago

How does Unity compare to something like CoronaSDK for 2D games? Unity clearly seems geared more towards 3D gaming, but I've seen some references to locking the Z-axis to create 2D experiences.

seclorum 15y ago
Unity is really not less than a total 3D environment for developing games .. you can definitely use it to do 2D style games (or 2.5D games, where 3D models are locked on the Z-axis, as you say) but in my opinion if you want flat bitmap-style 2D games you'd be better off getting into something like MOAI (http://getmoai.com/ http://getmoai.com/) or Corona or LÖVE2D to get the job done .. (my pref is MOAI right now, its just so fresh and fun..)
alvivar 15y ago
There a lot of plugins to handle 2D (2.5D) games on Unity, I am currently using 2D Toolkit ($50) for sprites and it's awesome. I also recommend to check RageSpline and RagePixel, this tools provide features totally integrated with the IDE and really easy to use. I haven't try CoronaSDK but I can see a lot a potential in 2D games with Unity, not just 3D. I fact, you can see a lot of nice 2D games in his showcase, for example Zombieville USA and Max & The Magic Marker. - http://unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/ http://unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/ - http://ragepixel.com/ http://ragepixel.com/ - http://ragespline.com/ http://ragespline.com/ - Max & The Magic Marker http://goo.gl/H9Hl0 http://goo.gl/H9Hl0 - Zombieville http://goo.gl/fzZP0 http://goo.gl/fzZP0 - Showcase http://goo.gl/g4uux http://goo.gl/g4uux

itsboring 15y ago

We've been using Unity for the past year to develop a couple of games and we've had very good success with it so far. The best part, for us, is the fact that it uses Mono as its scripting engine (if you want to call C# scripting). This unlocks things like LINQ, iterator coroutines, .NET sockets, etc. It also allows us to share code between client and server. We can reference the same core DLL on both, as well as share game logic between client (for offline play) and server (for multiplayer anti-cheating). We tend to do most of our development in VS, but we deploy to Linux servers and will be deploying clients to web, iOS, android, and possibly steam. The way we use the actual Unity editor, it ends up being just an asset pipeline on steroids; but many other users use the drag-and-drop scene building features. We've found Unity to play nice with git, especially with the 3.5 release which lets you use a textual format for asset metadata. They were previously binary making merges impossible. In all, this offer is very worth checking out if you are interested in game development.

buff-a 15y ago
But of course, to be allowed textual format for asset metadata, you have to buy the pro version. Or did they change that in 3.5?
- itsboring 15y ago
  You do need pro to make scene files and stuff text, but the most important thing for source control (the use of .meta files) can be enabled in the free version now.