5 ms·

Please don't down vote me. But can I ask that in a world where Unity exists, how is this relevant?

by icemelt8 14y ago

aeze 14y ago
Open source vs $1500+
- untothebreach 14y ago
  To be fair, Unity3d _does_ have a free version, but it is not Open Source.
  - srik 14y ago
    The free version does have restrictions that would matter in s final production.
    - yowmamasita 14y ago
      That would be unfair for game devs who made it through and making money just using the free version. It does lack features vs Pro but it is still viable for a production release.
      - srik 14y ago
        Yes, it is certainly viable and I don't mean to discount what Unity offers for free. However, IMO the restrictions matter as in, for instance, the free version does't come with pro's lighting and shadow etc. GAme devs do resort to small "hacks" to get around but it is a slight inconvenience at the least. Either way, doesnt hurt to have competition :)
        attrition0 14y ago
        A minor clarification, Unity Free does have real-time lighting, just not real-time shadows.
  - dagw 14y ago
    You're only allowed to use the free version if you're a hobbyist or a tiny company.
untothebreach 14y ago
It's open source.
yowmamasita 14y ago
simpler for 2d stuffs
mrcharles 14y ago
Unity is a jackhammer when sometimes you just want a chisel.
dysoco 14y ago
In a world where you can do everything in Pascal... how are Scheme or Java relevant?
yeureka 14y ago
I payed for a Unity license to do work for a client but I still prefer to use C++/Ogre3D/SFML for other projects where I need a bit more control.
eropple 14y ago
Unity is a great product for what it is, but it enforces upon you a particular view of the world and it's one I personally do not share. It puts you into its editor environment (which I don't find to be very good) and more or less expects you to be using the visual tools for most of what you're doing. I don't like that workflow; I prefer to work in a data-driven environment and in a real IDE. It is not as quick to prototype, but I enjoy it more and the end result satisfies me. I also prefer to know exactly what's going on in my game code, and there's enough obscuring that in Unity or another closed-source runtime that I'm not comfortable with it. And I don't trust Unity not to close up shop one day and leave me high and dry with closed-source, bit-rotting libraries. Or to not target a platform I care about in the future, again leaving me screwed. I need to control the stack, and Unity is antithetical to this. (This is also why I have moved away from Xamarin's stuff--while enough of their stuff is open that I could spend multiple man-years re-implementing it if it went away tomorrow, it's a much better investment of my time to use the platform APIs directly.)
- tolmasky 14y ago
  I was initially hesitant to use Unity or to give their workflow a chance, but now I have to admit I really love it. I use my own text editor vs. Monodevelop, and like a truly good visual editor, it really is just augmenting the code experience (you could do everything in code if you wanted). There really isn't that much magic going on. That being said, I share many of your frustrations, but I think the root cause is that its closed source and not any particular design decision they made. At the end of the day the design is straight forward, but its hard to wrap your head around since you can't easily just look at the code and go "ah ok FixedUpdate gets called right after WhateverFunction, now this makes sense". This is severely exacerbated by bad documentation. Here is one of my favorite examples: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Time-smoothDeltaTime.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Time-s... "Time.smoothedTime - A smoothed out Time.deltaTime (Read Only)." Great, no idea why I'd ever want this or what it actually does. In OS land I'd just go to the function, but not such option here. On the other hand, I have considerable more faith in Unity than some OS tool to be around in the future and to support new platforms. They have a really great track record of this (they've been around forever), and the fact that they make money is more comforting to me than some random group of developers doing it for the love of programming. However, more tools is better, I'm in no way suggesting Polycode isn't cool or shouldn't exist or anything.

Please don't down vote me. But can I ask that in a world where Unity exists, how is this relevant?

aeze 14y ago

Open source vs $1500+

untothebreach 14y ago
To be fair, Unity3d _does_ have a free version, but it is not Open Source.
- srik 14y ago
  The free version does have restrictions that would matter in s final production.
  - yowmamasita 14y ago
    That would be unfair for game devs who made it through and making money just using the free version. It does lack features vs Pro but it is still viable for a production release.
    - srik 14y ago
      Yes, it is certainly viable and I don't mean to discount what Unity offers for free. However, IMO the restrictions matter as in, for instance, the free version does't come with pro's lighting and shadow etc. GAme devs do resort to small "hacks" to get around but it is a slight inconvenience at the least. Either way, doesnt hurt to have competition :)
      - attrition0 14y ago
        A minor clarification, Unity Free does have real-time lighting, just not real-time shadows.
- dagw 14y ago
  You're only allowed to use the free version if you're a hobbyist or a tiny company.

untothebreach 14y ago

It's open source.

yowmamasita 14y ago

simpler for 2d stuffs

mrcharles 14y ago

Unity is a jackhammer when sometimes you just want a chisel.

dysoco 14y ago

In a world where you can do everything in Pascal... how are Scheme or Java relevant?

yeureka 14y ago

I payed for a Unity license to do work for a client but I still prefer to use C++/Ogre3D/SFML for other projects where I need a bit more control.

eropple 14y ago

Unity is a great product for what it is, but it enforces upon you a particular view of the world and it's one I personally do not share. It puts you into its editor environment (which I don't find to be very good) and more or less expects you to be using the visual tools for most of what you're doing. I don't like that workflow; I prefer to work in a data-driven environment and in a real IDE. It is not as quick to prototype, but I enjoy it more and the end result satisfies me. I also prefer to know exactly what's going on in my game code, and there's enough obscuring that in Unity or another closed-source runtime that I'm not comfortable with it. And I don't trust Unity not to close up shop one day and leave me high and dry with closed-source, bit-rotting libraries. Or to not target a platform I care about in the future, again leaving me screwed. I need to control the stack, and Unity is antithetical to this. (This is also why I have moved away from Xamarin's stuff--while enough of their stuff is open that I could spend multiple man-years re-implementing it if it went away tomorrow, it's a much better investment of my time to use the platform APIs directly.)

tolmasky 14y ago
I was initially hesitant to use Unity or to give their workflow a chance, but now I have to admit I really love it. I use my own text editor vs. Monodevelop, and like a truly good visual editor, it really is just augmenting the code experience (you could do everything in code if you wanted). There really isn't that much magic going on. That being said, I share many of your frustrations, but I think the root cause is that its closed source and not any particular design decision they made. At the end of the day the design is straight forward, but its hard to wrap your head around since you can't easily just look at the code and go "ah ok FixedUpdate gets called right after WhateverFunction, now this makes sense". This is severely exacerbated by bad documentation. Here is one of my favorite examples: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Time-smoothDeltaTime.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Time-s... "Time.smoothedTime - A smoothed out Time.deltaTime (Read Only)." Great, no idea why I'd ever want this or what it actually does. In OS land I'd just go to the function, but not such option here. On the other hand, I have considerable more faith in Unity than some OS tool to be around in the future and to support new platforms. They have a really great track record of this (they've been around forever), and the fact that they make money is more comforting to me than some random group of developers doing it for the love of programming. However, more tools is better, I'm in no way suggesting Polycode isn't cool or shouldn't exist or anything.