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I recently started looking at Unity again - not for gaming, but as a way to deliver cross platform B2B products. Primarily leveraging the 2D layout primitives r

I recently started looking at Unity again - not for gaming, but as a way to deliver cross platform B2B products. Primarily leveraging the 2D layout primitives rather than the 3D rendering pipeline, but perhaps taking advantage of things like TextMeshPro instead of traditional techniques. The overall architecture would be client-server, very similar to a typical web app. Unity on the client, some backend written in .NET (so we can share contracts). If I was forced to do a proper "native" experience on every platform, I may spend a more significant amount of time on this path. The licensing arrangement with Unity isn't perfectly ideal, but in the realm of B2B products it's probably a manageable cost of doing business.

pests 2y ago
This is kinda similar to what Caves of Cud did. Pretty much wrote the entire game from scratch and then used Unity as a dumb renderer/UI handler/multi platform support. When the licensing fiasco happened the creator spent a live stream "converting" it to godot. He didn't open godot until the very end - just to start a thread with his code. Nor did he open unity at all either. Reminded me of your idea.
neonsunset 2y ago
I'm aware of at least one client terminal SW that uses Unity as a way to ensure consistent UI. This was way before AvaloniaUI was a thing and .NET became what it is today. Likely today we are spoiled for choice even if each one has tradeoffs (every crossplat GUI framework has and even native development can make engineers suffer just as much).
awfulneutral 2y ago
I spent a while working on a digital painting app in Unity. UIToolkit is not complete, but it is pretty good for web-like UI, and you can leverage existing knowledge of HTML/CSS layout. With some tweaks you tell Unity to only redraw the screen on demand, which is better for battery life. My experience is that Unity could be pretty good for cross-platform semi-graphical app development. Except that Unity dev is miserable (slow, never-ending compilation, bad docs, constant bugs, glacial update pace, broken Linux editor, etc etc etc).

pests 2y ago

This is kinda similar to what Caves of Cud did. Pretty much wrote the entire game from scratch and then used Unity as a dumb renderer/UI handler/multi platform support. When the licensing fiasco happened the creator spent a live stream "converting" it to godot. He didn't open godot until the very end - just to start a thread with his code. Nor did he open unity at all either. Reminded me of your idea.

neonsunset 2y ago

I'm aware of at least one client terminal SW that uses Unity as a way to ensure consistent UI. This was way before AvaloniaUI was a thing and .NET became what it is today. Likely today we are spoiled for choice even if each one has tradeoffs (every crossplat GUI framework has and even native development can make engineers suffer just as much).

awfulneutral 2y ago

I spent a while working on a digital painting app in Unity. UIToolkit is not complete, but it is pretty good for web-like UI, and you can leverage existing knowledge of HTML/CSS layout. With some tweaks you tell Unity to only redraw the screen on demand, which is better for battery life. My experience is that Unity could be pretty good for cross-platform semi-graphical app development. Except that Unity dev is miserable (slow, never-ending compilation, bad docs, constant bugs, glacial update pace, broken Linux editor, etc etc etc).