8 ms·

Unity 4 is here

130 points by dysoco 14y ago

Ygg2 14y ago
Does anyone know if they updated their default GUI elements (they were pretty rudimental in v3), so you don't need to use custom GUI elements?
- vignesh_vs_in 14y ago
  They are planning the GUI update for the later 4.x releases. At-least that's what i could guess from the forums.
  - vegashacker 14y ago
    Correct. I heard from a Unity rep that it's definitely coming in 4.x, but he made it sound like it was still about 6 months away.
  - mjn 14y ago
    Here's a blog post on the upcoming GUI-system revamp, from earlier in the year: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/06/29/the-new-gui/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/06/29/the-new-gui/
  - beemoe 14y ago
    Also, there is a video of it being early pre-release demoed at the Unite 2012 conference: http://unity3d.com/unite/archive/2012 http://unity3d.com/unite/archive/2012
mtgx 14y ago
No OpenGL support at all? Isn't Unity used for mobile games, too?
- ddorian43 14y ago
  From a quick search it seems that it does use OpenGl.
- octopus 14y ago
  On Windows Unity uses DirectX. On iOS and Android OpenGL ES. On Linux and Mac OpenGL.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  There has to be, unless they have ported direct x to Linux. They are just not bragging about it on the sales page.
- aras_p 14y ago
  What makes you think that? Unity uses: D3D9, D3D11 (new in 4.0) or OpenGL on Windows; OpenGL on Mac & Linux; OpenGL ES 1.1 or 2.0 on iOS, Android and NativeClient; libGCM on PS3; D3D-like API on Xbox360; Stage3D on Flash. What is new in 4.0 is D3D11 support, which is kind of a big deal since it opens new GPU possiblities (compute shaders, tessellation etc.). But all the other rendering APIs are still there and fully supported.
JiPi 14y ago
I would be curious to see how Ouya will fit in there, yes Android is supported, but at what point will Ouya be supported or not by Unity 4?
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Presumably after they show some signs of actually shipping the thing. Yes, yes, I'm a curmudgeony and perennial Kickstarter skeptic - but what other stance can you take when a team that has never shipped any consumer electronics before promise to ship a profoundly game-changing piece of hardware on an extraordinarily aggressive schedule, at a shockingly low price?
  - bryanlarsen 14y ago
    The price is realistic: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-Nexus-7-Carries-$157-BOM-Teardown-Reveals.aspx http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-N... gives a BOM cost for the Ouya sans controller at around $75. Add a year's worth of deflation, and it should be around $50. No, they're not making any profit at $99, but they hope to make that up on game sales and later sales to those who missed the Kickstarter. The point is that they're not losing money. A normal manufacturer would have to spend millions in advertising to get the exposure Ouya did. The only thing that's hard about the schedule is that they're a new manufacturer and need to build relationships with all of their suppliers. NVidia would have given them a reference design that they could almost use unchanged.
  - podperson 14y ago
    I was under the impression that they have in fact shipped consumer hardware (nothing especially elaborate -- I think they do bluetooth speakers for iPod/iPhone).
- neverm0re 14y ago
  How about never? The Ouya is a pig-in-a-poke at best. There's nothing compelling about it that you couldn't do with an ARM evaluation board (in fact, it's more limited), the average console gamer opinion regarding it is 'meh' and it will be obsolete the moment it arrives as what you can buy for $100~ in the ARM SoC space is getting crazier every minute. The Mali-400 on http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G133999328931 http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.ph... is already posting better benchmarks than the Tegra3 on the Ouya and the CPUs are the same core, this one slightly lower clocked. Sure the price is a bit higher than the Ouya for a dev board, but that's something you can buy right now. And they're only going to be better and cheaper by the time the Ouya hits, which if I might remind is still five months away if everything goes to plan. Might as well be eternity at the rate cellphone hardware evolves. Really, all they've done is sold a case and gave us some simple interface mockups. Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ouya_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ouya_software is completely underwhelming and resembles the total lack of commitment other DOA consoles like the NGage had going for them. You can expect Asia to be cranking out a new Ouya-like every few months. It's the software stack on these devices that is significant, as the hardware is now practically free. Hell, it's even open source: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ * (* Mali-400 GPU still not fully reverse engineered. As usual, GPUs are the FOSS barrier -- still, there's hope: http://limadriver.org/ http://limadriver.org/)
reitzensteinm 14y ago
Lots of impressive headline features. DirectX 11, detailed animation system, Linux support. The trouble is, these come at the expense of the basics. Not so impressive is that the only supported method for sharing code between projects is copy and paste. The engine is six years old. I'm not kidding. Unfortunately, frustrations like that are common. I adopted Unity expecting to be there for the next few years at least; however my experience has been lukewarm. It's a shame, because it could be a fantastic engine if they'd concentrate on polishing what they've got. But I don't get the impression that's the roadmap. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/148393-Unity-4-removes-support-for-symlinks-on-Windows-listed-as-quot-improvement-quot http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/148393-Unity-4-removes-supp...
- julius 14y ago
  On the other hand, Unity has implemented some basics, which are a real time sink in other engines, outstandingly well. Lets compare the coding workflow in Unreal Engine 3 and Unity 3: In UE3 you play the game, find something you want to change. So you shutdown the Game/Editor and go to the code. You code in some immature language called UnrealScript (I think there is a complicated way to use C++ too). Then you compile. Then you startup the Game/Editor again (this is slow). In Unity you find something you want to change. Alt-Tab to your Code Editor. Change C#/Javascript code. Alt-Tab back to the game, recompiling the code and loading it into the currently running game is automatic and takes about 1-2 seconds. Also the engine APIs are one of the best software designs I've seen in a long time.
  - reitzensteinm 14y ago
    On the other, other hand, if you don't use their serialization system (I prefer to stick with json), automatic reloading of the code causes a hard crash as your objects have been incorrectly reloaded. And, naturally, there's no way to turn it off. Strictly speaking there is but it requires restart of Unity, not just the game, to reload code. Which is basically the UE3 workflow you describe. You're right though; there are quite a lot of good parts of Unity - which is why I'm sticking around for now. But I stand by my assertion that their focus on headline features is troubling.
rplnt 14y ago
Anyone knows how much the upgrade costs? Can't find it without login which I don't posses at the moment.
- schnelle 14y ago
  $750 for pro license and $125 each for iOS / Android
  - matthew-wegner 14y ago
    $125 is for upgrading "basic" iOS/Android. Pro upgrade is $750 for each. License comparison chart is here: http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses Edit: Note that it is possible to upgrade just your Unity 4 Pro license without upgrading the individual platforms. For instance, I have Pro iPhone/Android licenses, but currently working on a PC/Mac game, so I upgraded my Unity 4 Pro license and left the platforms for a later upgrade.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
kayoone 14y ago
I am an ex Web developer who got into game programming with Unity over the last 3 years. Its been amazing, i have learned a ton by using C# and actually needing to apply Math knowledge to a real world project. Unity is awesome but also has some issues, but as i havent really worked with the other big engines, i guess these have similar issues. * Version control is a pain. We used Git (with Github) all the time but unitys meta files like to screw things up from time to time. Unity also uses alot of binary files (eg. prefabs) that could easily be replaced by some kind of JSON based format, making version control much easier * its not cheap. If you want to use their killer multi platform features you will need licences for all platforms per seat, which adds up to quite a lot if you have several developers. When they release a new major version once a year, you will need to upgrade all your licenses (granted for a reduced price). Its a nice customer lock-in... * its not very stable. At least under Windows it crashes alot on big projects
- skittlebrau 14y ago
  Project Settings/Editor/Asset Serialization/Force Text. I think this might be pro-only though.
negativity 14y ago
...and oh, how we wish it wasn't.
- negativity 14y ago
  Oh, ha ha! I thought this was an article about Ubuntu. Whoops!
- hayksaakian 14y ago
  This has got to be the lightest gray comment I've ever seen.
ljmeijer 14y ago
disclaimer: I spent the last three years making Unity. You can share code between projects by having seperate visualstudio projects that create a managed library. just put the managed library into your assetsfolder. it live reloads as smoothly as when you edit just one script. While I'll be the first to admit that we have some things that you can consider basic that don't work as well as they could yet, the perspective from inside the development team is that we have an enormous focus on improving what we have, and do not do "jump on new feature, and quickly move on and forget about it". @reitzensteinm, We would love to fix your crash! If it happens in Unity4 as well, it would be great if you could file a bug, or give us some way to reproduce the problem. While we think using our serialization system makes a lot of sense for most games, we will always support people wanting to do things in their own way, and serializing your data with json should not be a problem. obviously, you crash and there is a problem, so we'd love to get our hands on that and fix it! Bye, Lucas Meijer
- acgourley 14y ago
  Is there a similar solution for mono develop / OSX? Common libraries remain one of our largest pain points. We tried git repos but it broke down constantly. Currently are using a series of scripts that copy files or create symlinks when needed.
robbyishere 14y ago
Ever since unbuntu ruined their desktop with the same brand name, I flinch a little everytime I hear the word
- Aardwolf 14y ago
  By the time Unity for Ubuntu reaches version 4, it will include the following features: -the ability to launch a command line will be gone, because the command line could allow accidental damage to your system -it will not be possible to minimize or maximize windows (if you can still call what they have turned it into "windows"), those buttons will instead have been replaced by a shopping basket, and a helper assistant button, respectively -because top left is not exotic enough, the window close button will now be in the bottom left -launching more than one window of the same application will not work because this is confusing -the menu of a program will be on the right side of the screen. You'll have to hover the mouse there first, then wait for a list of helpful suggestions to slide into view, scroll through it with an awesome fluent scrolling animation, and then finally at the end will be the menu options. -the file system is abstracted away. Directories are confusing, so the concept of directories is hidden. Instead it presents the files as if they're in one large "basket". Extensions won't be shown because those, too, are not understood very well by most users. -the scrollwheel, middle and right mouse button, and keyboard shortcuts, are ignored, to unify the desktop better with touch interfaces of mobile devices
  - Of_Prometheus 14y ago
    Then just get Xubuntu.
- dysoco 14y ago
  Am I the only one that likes Unity ? I'm a die hard desktop user: KDE, XFCE, Tiling WMs... but I find Unity quite good.
  - etfb 14y ago
    You're not the only one. I like it too. But we're the only two.
dave1010uk 14y ago
Anyone know if Unity has any plans to support WebGL?
- beemoe 14y ago
  Take this with a grain of salt, but I vaguely remember some moment when everyone was talking about the announced ability to export to Flash, and a question mentioning HTML 5 or WebGL came up: their (unofficial?) response was something along the lines that they would do whatever it takes to be on any platform they need to if there is demand. I feel they have proven that they really care about wide multi-platform availability, with efforts like their "Union" program and availability on console and mobile platforms. This recent move to support Linux shows that also. If WebGL proves itself to have a large critical mass of developers asking for it, I bet they will very very seriously try to do something. I can't speak to the difficulty of such a move, or compare the actual results of their Flash exporting efforts, but I don't doubt they would do it if it was reasonably possible and there was demand.
- troymc 14y ago
  I remember seeing an interview with the Unity CEO and he said that they had someone who was looking into (evaluating) HTML5 as a Unity target platform. I guess that would include WebGL, but also things like the Web Audio API and WebSockets. My impression is that the web browsers aren't quite there yet, in terms of support for all the necessary functionality required by a modern 3D video game. For example, IE doesn't support WebGL.
- dualogy 14y ago
  WebGL would be extremely tricky for them -- they'd first have to port their OpenGL render pipeline to JavaScript, which would be "doable I guess" especially since they could just port their GL ES (mobile) render paths, that's mostly identical to WebGL. But they'd also have to port their entire runtime library to JS, which would exceed a major rewrite in terms of effort I believe. And then they're calling .NET / Mono APIs everywhere in their own runtime/core code, I'm sure. And then there's the thousands of Unity projects out there calling said APIs. And then, and then, and then... Next, asset loading but since you're on the web, ideally you'd have smarter on-demand streaming of compressed assets, rather than a 10-minute-long "Loading Game Assets" splash-screen page... Next, user code. Uh-oh... I give up.
mixmastamyk 14y ago
Looks like fun. I've heard game development (for an employer) is quite the sweatshop though. What are the employment prospects and expected salary for someone proficient in this software? Also, wondering if there any competitive open source game engines to aide in learning.
- swivelmaster 14y ago
  I can definitively say that where I work, at EA All Play's Sacramento studio, is not a sweatshop. We encourage eight hour days (plus lunch break, however long that ends up being), and every Friday afternoon there is free beer and fun presentations to end the week. Right now, though, our only programming openings are for Java server engineers. Sorry. I do recommend learning Unity though, if that's what you're interested in. As Unity improves, its easy cross-platform deployment becomes more and more attractive to larger companies.
Yuioup 14y ago
I just ran a 32-bit build of "Angry Bots" for Linux on my Windows machine. It ran flawlessly on Linux machine (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS).
BaconJuice 14y ago
I love the scroll effect on the header of this website, gives it a depth perspective. Very cool stuff...off topic I know, just wanted to mention it =P
- dave5104 14y ago
  It's called parallax scrolling, just as an fyi. :) (I learned the term myself not too long ago, so I get excited to use it when I can, haha.)
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130 points by dysoco 14y ago

Ygg2 14y ago

Does anyone know if they updated their default GUI elements (they were pretty rudimental in v3), so you don't need to use custom GUI elements?

vignesh_vs_in 14y ago
They are planning the GUI update for the later 4.x releases. At-least that's what i could guess from the forums.
- vegashacker 14y ago
  Correct. I heard from a Unity rep that it's definitely coming in 4.x, but he made it sound like it was still about 6 months away.
- mjn 14y ago
  Here's a blog post on the upcoming GUI-system revamp, from earlier in the year: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/06/29/the-new-gui/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/06/29/the-new-gui/
- beemoe 14y ago
  Also, there is a video of it being early pre-release demoed at the Unite 2012 conference: http://unity3d.com/unite/archive/2012 http://unity3d.com/unite/archive/2012

mtgx 14y ago

No OpenGL support at all? Isn't Unity used for mobile games, too?

ddorian43 14y ago
From a quick search it seems that it does use OpenGl.
octopus 14y ago
On Windows Unity uses DirectX. On iOS and Android OpenGL ES. On Linux and Mac OpenGL.
tomjen3 14y ago
There has to be, unless they have ported direct x to Linux. They are just not bragging about it on the sales page.
aras_p 14y ago
What makes you think that? Unity uses: D3D9, D3D11 (new in 4.0) or OpenGL on Windows; OpenGL on Mac & Linux; OpenGL ES 1.1 or 2.0 on iOS, Android and NativeClient; libGCM on PS3; D3D-like API on Xbox360; Stage3D on Flash. What is new in 4.0 is D3D11 support, which is kind of a big deal since it opens new GPU possiblities (compute shaders, tessellation etc.). But all the other rendering APIs are still there and fully supported.

JiPi 14y ago

I would be curious to see how Ouya will fit in there, yes Android is supported, but at what point will Ouya be supported or not by Unity 4?

potatolicious 14y ago
Presumably after they show some signs of actually shipping the thing. Yes, yes, I'm a curmudgeony and perennial Kickstarter skeptic - but what other stance can you take when a team that has never shipped any consumer electronics before promise to ship a profoundly game-changing piece of hardware on an extraordinarily aggressive schedule, at a shockingly low price?
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  The price is realistic: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-Nexus-7-Carries-$157-BOM-Teardown-Reveals.aspx http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-N... gives a BOM cost for the Ouya sans controller at around $75. Add a year's worth of deflation, and it should be around $50. No, they're not making any profit at $99, but they hope to make that up on game sales and later sales to those who missed the Kickstarter. The point is that they're not losing money. A normal manufacturer would have to spend millions in advertising to get the exposure Ouya did. The only thing that's hard about the schedule is that they're a new manufacturer and need to build relationships with all of their suppliers. NVidia would have given them a reference design that they could almost use unchanged.
- podperson 14y ago
  I was under the impression that they have in fact shipped consumer hardware (nothing especially elaborate -- I think they do bluetooth speakers for iPod/iPhone).
neverm0re 14y ago
How about never? The Ouya is a pig-in-a-poke at best. There's nothing compelling about it that you couldn't do with an ARM evaluation board (in fact, it's more limited), the average console gamer opinion regarding it is 'meh' and it will be obsolete the moment it arrives as what you can buy for $100~ in the ARM SoC space is getting crazier every minute. The Mali-400 on http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G133999328931 http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.ph... is already posting better benchmarks than the Tegra3 on the Ouya and the CPUs are the same core, this one slightly lower clocked. Sure the price is a bit higher than the Ouya for a dev board, but that's something you can buy right now. And they're only going to be better and cheaper by the time the Ouya hits, which if I might remind is still five months away if everything goes to plan. Might as well be eternity at the rate cellphone hardware evolves. Really, all they've done is sold a case and gave us some simple interface mockups. Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ouya_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ouya_software is completely underwhelming and resembles the total lack of commitment other DOA consoles like the NGage had going for them. You can expect Asia to be cranking out a new Ouya-like every few months. It's the software stack on these devices that is significant, as the hardware is now practically free. Hell, it's even open source: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ * (* Mali-400 GPU still not fully reverse engineered. As usual, GPUs are the FOSS barrier -- still, there's hope: http://limadriver.org/ http://limadriver.org/)

reitzensteinm 14y ago

Lots of impressive headline features. DirectX 11, detailed animation system, Linux support. The trouble is, these come at the expense of the basics. Not so impressive is that the only supported method for sharing code between projects is copy and paste. The engine is six years old. I'm not kidding. Unfortunately, frustrations like that are common. I adopted Unity expecting to be there for the next few years at least; however my experience has been lukewarm. It's a shame, because it could be a fantastic engine if they'd concentrate on polishing what they've got. But I don't get the impression that's the roadmap. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/148393-Unity-4-removes-support-for-symlinks-on-Windows-listed-as-quot-improvement-quot http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/148393-Unity-4-removes-supp...

julius 14y ago
On the other hand, Unity has implemented some basics, which are a real time sink in other engines, outstandingly well. Lets compare the coding workflow in Unreal Engine 3 and Unity 3: In UE3 you play the game, find something you want to change. So you shutdown the Game/Editor and go to the code. You code in some immature language called UnrealScript (I think there is a complicated way to use C++ too). Then you compile. Then you startup the Game/Editor again (this is slow). In Unity you find something you want to change. Alt-Tab to your Code Editor. Change C#/Javascript code. Alt-Tab back to the game, recompiling the code and loading it into the currently running game is automatic and takes about 1-2 seconds. Also the engine APIs are one of the best software designs I've seen in a long time.
- reitzensteinm 14y ago
  On the other, other hand, if you don't use their serialization system (I prefer to stick with json), automatic reloading of the code causes a hard crash as your objects have been incorrectly reloaded. And, naturally, there's no way to turn it off. Strictly speaking there is but it requires restart of Unity, not just the game, to reload code. Which is basically the UE3 workflow you describe. You're right though; there are quite a lot of good parts of Unity - which is why I'm sticking around for now. But I stand by my assertion that their focus on headline features is troubling.

rplnt 14y ago

Anyone knows how much the upgrade costs? Can't find it without login which I don't posses at the moment.

schnelle 14y ago
$750 for pro license and $125 each for iOS / Android
- matthew-wegner 14y ago
  $125 is for upgrading "basic" iOS/Android. Pro upgrade is $750 for each. License comparison chart is here: http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses Edit: Note that it is possible to upgrade just your Unity 4 Pro license without upgrading the individual platforms. For instance, I have Pro iPhone/Android licenses, but currently working on a PC/Mac game, so I upgraded my Unity 4 Pro license and left the platforms for a later upgrade.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

kayoone 14y ago

I am an ex Web developer who got into game programming with Unity over the last 3 years. Its been amazing, i have learned a ton by using C# and actually needing to apply Math knowledge to a real world project. Unity is awesome but also has some issues, but as i havent really worked with the other big engines, i guess these have similar issues. * Version control is a pain. We used Git (with Github) all the time but unitys meta files like to screw things up from time to time. Unity also uses alot of binary files (eg. prefabs) that could easily be replaced by some kind of JSON based format, making version control much easier * its not cheap. If you want to use their killer multi platform features you will need licences for all platforms per seat, which adds up to quite a lot if you have several developers. When they release a new major version once a year, you will need to upgrade all your licenses (granted for a reduced price). Its a nice customer lock-in... * its not very stable. At least under Windows it crashes alot on big projects

skittlebrau 14y ago
Project Settings/Editor/Asset Serialization/Force Text. I think this might be pro-only though.

negativity 14y ago

...and oh, how we wish it wasn't.

negativity 14y ago
Oh, ha ha! I thought this was an article about Ubuntu. Whoops!
hayksaakian 14y ago
This has got to be the lightest gray comment I've ever seen.

ljmeijer 14y ago

disclaimer: I spent the last three years making Unity. You can share code between projects by having seperate visualstudio projects that create a managed library. just put the managed library into your assetsfolder. it live reloads as smoothly as when you edit just one script. While I'll be the first to admit that we have some things that you can consider basic that don't work as well as they could yet, the perspective from inside the development team is that we have an enormous focus on improving what we have, and do not do "jump on new feature, and quickly move on and forget about it". @reitzensteinm, We would love to fix your crash! If it happens in Unity4 as well, it would be great if you could file a bug, or give us some way to reproduce the problem. While we think using our serialization system makes a lot of sense for most games, we will always support people wanting to do things in their own way, and serializing your data with json should not be a problem. obviously, you crash and there is a problem, so we'd love to get our hands on that and fix it! Bye, Lucas Meijer

acgourley 14y ago
Is there a similar solution for mono develop / OSX? Common libraries remain one of our largest pain points. We tried git repos but it broke down constantly. Currently are using a series of scripts that copy files or create symlinks when needed.

robbyishere 14y ago

Ever since unbuntu ruined their desktop with the same brand name, I flinch a little everytime I hear the word

Aardwolf 14y ago
By the time Unity for Ubuntu reaches version 4, it will include the following features: -the ability to launch a command line will be gone, because the command line could allow accidental damage to your system -it will not be possible to minimize or maximize windows (if you can still call what they have turned it into "windows"), those buttons will instead have been replaced by a shopping basket, and a helper assistant button, respectively -because top left is not exotic enough, the window close button will now be in the bottom left -launching more than one window of the same application will not work because this is confusing -the menu of a program will be on the right side of the screen. You'll have to hover the mouse there first, then wait for a list of helpful suggestions to slide into view, scroll through it with an awesome fluent scrolling animation, and then finally at the end will be the menu options. -the file system is abstracted away. Directories are confusing, so the concept of directories is hidden. Instead it presents the files as if they're in one large "basket". Extensions won't be shown because those, too, are not understood very well by most users. -the scrollwheel, middle and right mouse button, and keyboard shortcuts, are ignored, to unify the desktop better with touch interfaces of mobile devices
- Of_Prometheus 14y ago
  Then just get Xubuntu.
dysoco 14y ago
Am I the only one that likes Unity ? I'm a die hard desktop user: KDE, XFCE, Tiling WMs... but I find Unity quite good.
- etfb 14y ago
  You're not the only one. I like it too. But we're the only two.

dave1010uk 14y ago

Anyone know if Unity has any plans to support WebGL?

beemoe 14y ago
Take this with a grain of salt, but I vaguely remember some moment when everyone was talking about the announced ability to export to Flash, and a question mentioning HTML 5 or WebGL came up: their (unofficial?) response was something along the lines that they would do whatever it takes to be on any platform they need to if there is demand. I feel they have proven that they really care about wide multi-platform availability, with efforts like their "Union" program and availability on console and mobile platforms. This recent move to support Linux shows that also. If WebGL proves itself to have a large critical mass of developers asking for it, I bet they will very very seriously try to do something. I can't speak to the difficulty of such a move, or compare the actual results of their Flash exporting efforts, but I don't doubt they would do it if it was reasonably possible and there was demand.
troymc 14y ago
I remember seeing an interview with the Unity CEO and he said that they had someone who was looking into (evaluating) HTML5 as a Unity target platform. I guess that would include WebGL, but also things like the Web Audio API and WebSockets. My impression is that the web browsers aren't quite there yet, in terms of support for all the necessary functionality required by a modern 3D video game. For example, IE doesn't support WebGL.
dualogy 14y ago
WebGL would be extremely tricky for them -- they'd first have to port their OpenGL render pipeline to JavaScript, which would be "doable I guess" especially since they could just port their GL ES (mobile) render paths, that's mostly identical to WebGL. But they'd also have to port their entire runtime library to JS, which would exceed a major rewrite in terms of effort I believe. And then they're calling .NET / Mono APIs everywhere in their own runtime/core code, I'm sure. And then there's the thousands of Unity projects out there calling said APIs. And then, and then, and then... Next, asset loading but since you're on the web, ideally you'd have smarter on-demand streaming of compressed assets, rather than a 10-minute-long "Loading Game Assets" splash-screen page... Next, user code. Uh-oh... I give up.

mixmastamyk 14y ago

Looks like fun. I've heard game development (for an employer) is quite the sweatshop though. What are the employment prospects and expected salary for someone proficient in this software? Also, wondering if there any competitive open source game engines to aide in learning.

swivelmaster 14y ago
I can definitively say that where I work, at EA All Play's Sacramento studio, is not a sweatshop. We encourage eight hour days (plus lunch break, however long that ends up being), and every Friday afternoon there is free beer and fun presentations to end the week. Right now, though, our only programming openings are for Java server engineers. Sorry. I do recommend learning Unity though, if that's what you're interested in. As Unity improves, its easy cross-platform deployment becomes more and more attractive to larger companies.

Yuioup 14y ago

I just ran a 32-bit build of "Angry Bots" for Linux on my Windows machine. It ran flawlessly on Linux machine (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS).

BaconJuice 14y ago

I love the scroll effect on the header of this website, gives it a depth perspective. Very cool stuff...off topic I know, just wanted to mention it =P

dave5104 14y ago
It's called parallax scrolling, just as an fyi. :) (I learned the term myself not too long ago, so I get excited to use it when I can, haha.)

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