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this is going to sound like a sales pitch for Unity but ... Engine + Tools > Engine Moai = Engine Unity = Engine + Tools I've got 25 years experience making

this is going to sound like a sales pitch for Unity but ... Engine + Tools > Engine Moai = Engine Unity = Engine + Tools I've got 25 years experience making AAA games. I am continually amazed at how productive people are in Unity. I've got several x-coworker friends from various AAA game companies including Namco, EA, Vicarious Visions, and others that have started using Unity. All of them can't praise it enough. Some of these are even engine guys. In other words, the types most likely to have a "not invented here syndrome". I've also been watching and participating in game jams and watching the amazing things coming out of them with the largest percentage coming from Unity. Been to a few "teach kids game programming" events where Unity was one of the options and those kids always come away with more than the kids doing python, processing or JavaScript. Even GDC had several unity games at the experimental gameplay session, the indie games summit and more. There's also a large market of 3rd party libraries and editor plugins for Unity that provide many of those things like support for social network X or picture service Y. Unfortunately Unity stupidly made the store for those plugins only accessible from inside Unity, buried in the Window menu under "Asset Store" so that none of it is discoverable from the outside. Of course there's a learning curve. If you've written your own engine it's easier to get a couple of images/models on the screen by writing code from scratch. But for a real game with a team that initial speed is quickly dwarfed by the amount of work writing exporters to support your artists, level editors to support your game designers and the fact that Unity editor is fully interactive while the game is playing for the ultimate in quick iteration times. You can practically edit functions on the fly as the game runs. No, I don't work for unity and I actually haven't done more than a couple of tutorials nor have I used Moai but I have written 6 game engines and all the tools and utilities for them and after seeing my various friends and x-coworker's successes and praise for Unity I'm not about to pick something that only provides 1/2 to 1/3rd the feature and therefore have to pick up the slack myself.

ralfn 15y ago
Unity does not support linux. So how is it even relevant for Double Fine given their stated requirements? Or any other game dev given the possible future of linux based steamboxes?
- malkia 15y ago
  Do you really think that's going to be a problem for Unity? Having based their stuff on Mono, MonoDevelop, and supporting OpenGL? Maybe a little bit, but I'm sure there code is almost prepared, if not already running on it. Especially if they just shipped statically linked code, to not bother with glibc/libc changes, or other differences between distros.
- adam-a 15y ago
  A while ago I spoke to a Unity engineer about this. He told me they have internal builds running on Linux. I think the main thing holding them back from releasing it is the testing they would have to do for each distro. Probably not worth it for the limited use it would see. If Linux Steamboxes do become a reality they would quickly be able to release Unity for that platform. Of course I wish they would release the editor for Linux as I would like to use it :)
- greggman 15y ago
  not quite the same thing but Unity does run in Chrome in Linux in Native Client.
malkia 15y ago
Unity's ability to extend the editor while it's running, and the clever use of imgui (immediate mode gui) is just what I need to prototype things. Get this Autodesk? Not writing plugin in C++ and restarting every time each one of your god-damn products. Or the pains of the python that came with it (and assert() causing crash of the whole god damn thing). So back to Unity. Last year, just for fun I was able to write an importer while Unity was running for one of levels, just to see it happen.
seclorum 15y ago
I've used both Unity and MOAI. Unity is too heavy for a cross-platform 2D game engine - whereas MOAI is absolutely light and tasty. No question, there is big power in the Unity tools. But if you want to build a 2D game with physics and access to cloud services, MOAI does a pretty damn fine job of giving you exactly what you need, and getting out of the way. Plus, you don't have to buy a per-seat license for MOAI...
davedx 15y ago
I work with Unity daily for my regular job, and also code in it on side-projects at home. It's pretty rare that I've been able to do the same kind of work that I do at my day job in my free time also without getting burn-out / boredom issues. Unity is such a pleasure to work with though that I've not stopped since learning it. The productivity thing amazes me too. We've built some incredible things in ridiculously short timeframes. It really is a game-changer.

ralfn 15y ago

Unity does not support linux. So how is it even relevant for Double Fine given their stated requirements? Or any other game dev given the possible future of linux based steamboxes?

malkia 15y ago
Do you really think that's going to be a problem for Unity? Having based their stuff on Mono, MonoDevelop, and supporting OpenGL? Maybe a little bit, but I'm sure there code is almost prepared, if not already running on it. Especially if they just shipped statically linked code, to not bother with glibc/libc changes, or other differences between distros.
adam-a 15y ago
A while ago I spoke to a Unity engineer about this. He told me they have internal builds running on Linux. I think the main thing holding them back from releasing it is the testing they would have to do for each distro. Probably not worth it for the limited use it would see. If Linux Steamboxes do become a reality they would quickly be able to release Unity for that platform. Of course I wish they would release the editor for Linux as I would like to use it :)
greggman 15y ago
not quite the same thing but Unity does run in Chrome in Linux in Native Client.

malkia 15y ago

Unity's ability to extend the editor while it's running, and the clever use of imgui (immediate mode gui) is just what I need to prototype things. Get this Autodesk? Not writing plugin in C++ and restarting every time each one of your god-damn products. Or the pains of the python that came with it (and assert() causing crash of the whole god damn thing). So back to Unity. Last year, just for fun I was able to write an importer while Unity was running for one of levels, just to see it happen.

seclorum 15y ago

I've used both Unity and MOAI. Unity is too heavy for a cross-platform 2D game engine - whereas MOAI is absolutely light and tasty. No question, there is big power in the Unity tools. But if you want to build a 2D game with physics and access to cloud services, MOAI does a pretty damn fine job of giving you exactly what you need, and getting out of the way. Plus, you don't have to buy a per-seat license for MOAI...

davedx 15y ago

I work with Unity daily for my regular job, and also code in it on side-projects at home. It's pretty rare that I've been able to do the same kind of work that I do at my day job in my free time also without getting burn-out / boredom issues. Unity is such a pleasure to work with though that I've not stopped since learning it. The productivity thing amazes me too. We've built some incredible things in ridiculously short timeframes. It really is a game-changer.