14 ms·

Unity 5 released with upgrades, full-featured free version

303 points by jarsin 12y ago

strangecasts 12y ago
Sadly, you still have to fork out the full $1500 for the dark UI skin ;) Having full access to render textures and framebuffer stuff is a godsend though. Looking forward to experimenting with the audio as well. They also seem to be setting up a discount program for the Asset Store, as well as a cloud build system (for mobile/web only so far, though).
- kendallpark 12y ago
  It's pretty amazing how much weight that dark UI skin has for me. For being purely aesthetic I value it more than many of the pro-only features.
- daenz 12y ago
  > Having full access to render textures and framebuffer stuff is a godsend though. I haven't used Unity, but I've written my own game engine. Unity didn't used to expose the GBuffer textures?
  - robterrell 12y ago
    Previously, render-to-texture was a Pro-only feature.
DennisP 12y ago
Does that mean it supports Oculus? The previous Personal version didn't.
- ChrisClark 12y ago
  It does, and the previous version actually did support Occulus. They released a free plugin for it (the free version of Unity) a few months ago.
  - antiuniverse 12y ago
    With Unity 4, only the Pro version supported the Oculus Rift plugin, because the Rift SDK relies on render-to-texture support, which was disabled in the free version. Now the free version of Unity also supports the Rift. That is indeed new. EDIT: I am totally wrong!
    - ChrisClark 12y ago
      Nope, they specifically released a Rift plugin for the Free version of Unity 4 just a few months ago. http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/12/23/calling-all-vr-enthusiasts-target-the-oculus-rift-with-unity-free/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/12/23/calling-all-vr-enthusias... With full lens correction that needs render-to-texture. Render-to-texture is still disabled in Unity 4 Free, but it is specifically allowed just for the Oculus plugin.
      - antiuniverse 12y ago
        Oh, I stand corrected! Thanks for clarifying.
  - karmakaze 12y ago
    So for Oculus, both Unity and UnrealEngine are free to use up to $100k/company/year and $3k/product/quarter respectively. Beyond that $75/mo or $1500 for Unity or 5% for UE4 seems small enough to just use the product that's better for your use case. Right now UE4 works better with Oculus timewarp feature. The same on Unity5 apparently suffers from jitter.
trekky1700 12y ago
This is amazing news! Really glad render textures are now available.
bstar77 12y ago
I absolutely love unity. I've been playing with it on and off for the past few years and it has been surprisingly easy for me to pick up. The free version has a pretty spectacular feature set. I've had a lot of fun with 2d mode- as a learning project I recreated the Monkey Island I Melee Island scenes with mixed sprites from Monkey Island II. Such a blast re-creating a game from my childhood. I really need to find more time for this stuff.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- babuskov 12y ago
  The problem with Unity from game-player POV is that it's too easy. It means that anyone can make games, and I've seen too many games now that have beautiful art and crappy play experience. The games feel slow and controls sluggish. It seems that developers assume that Unity would take care of everything and they do not have to consider performance of responsiveness at all. Whenever I see Unity splash logo I'm getting mentally prepared for mediocre experience. Unless it's a strategy or point&click game where performance is not important.
  - strangecasts 12y ago
    Would you suggest making it harder to develop games? Nintendo tried that with the Nintendo 64: Yamauchi took a different approach with the SNES' successor the N64, however, which was released in 1996 at least partly to distract attention away from the disastrous Virtual Boy. Yamauchi admitted at the 2001 Space World event that he had deliberately ordered the N64 be difficult to develop for. The intention behind this was to discourage untalented third-party developers from releasing poor-quality games -- it was no longer practical for Yamauchi to personally approve every game -- but the plan backfired somewhat: given the commercial success of previous Nintendo systems, third-party developers were still keen to get their games on a Nintendo console, and this consequently led to a number of sloppy, low-quality third-party games that clashed significantly with the high-quality first- and second-party titles that were being released on the platform. (from http://www.usgamer.net/articles/hiroshi-yamauchi-the-iron-fist-in-the-velvet-glove http://www.usgamer.net/articles/hiroshi-yamauchi-the-iron-fi... )
robertfw 12y ago
I was debating over trying out Unreal vs Unity last night. Unreal was looking more capable in its free version than Unity 4 Free, but I would prefer to learn C# over C++. This release makes it an easy choice to give Unity a whirl!
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  One of them should adopt Rust. Let's see who does it first!
  - robertfw 12y ago
    That is my highest desire and I did look around for some bindings, but I think it's still early.
    - chc 12y ago
      I think it's more likely for Unreal Engine. Epic have said that they're open to new language implementations as long as they are free and open-source (this being why they didn't want C#).
      - scott_karana 12y ago
        That's changed now, though: Microsoft's Roslyn C# compiler is Apache 2.0 licensed. :-) https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/License.txt https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/License.txt
- alpyne 12y ago
  Unity does support Clojure (sorta) https://youtube.com/watch?v=tJr_TD1BtF0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=tJr_TD1BtF0
- fredophile 12y ago
  I've seen this type of comment before but usually in the context of someone that already knows either C# or C++. As someone that doesn't know either what factors make you want to learn C# over C++?
yohann305 12y ago
It seems this news is a direct reply to yesterday's move from one of their competitors, Epic's Unreal Engine 4 announced to be free* to use. link: https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free
- jarsin 12y ago
  Ya, as far as pricing it now seems there is no debate. No rev share and only having to buy the pro edition if you exceed 100k in revenue makes Unity superior on the price imo. Of course there are other factors to consider depending on the project.
  - nsxwolf 12y ago
    An aspiring indie with zero track record should choose based on the strengths of the tools themselves. Making $3000 in a quarter is a pipe dream, let alone 100k over any time scale.
    - sramsay 12y ago
      Making $3000 in a quarter is a pipe dream? Why do you say that? The indie game market is not all that crowded, if we're thinking about games like Dear Esther, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Sword and Sworcery (all of which did way better than $3000 a quarter). Gamasutra, the other day, was lamenting the fact that there aren't enough games in this space. Assuming we're not talking about the very difficult mobile market (but just about high quality indies on the PC), why is it absurd to think that a small indie studio could be quite successful (even with a first game)?
      - cwyers 12y ago
        Because most of them aren't? You're naming the hits, but it's a lot harder to remember the games that failed (or the ones that didn't even make it out of development).
        12y ago
rdudek 12y ago
Nice response to Unreal Engine price change. Now the hard part is trying to pick which one to learn and use. Competition is a good thing.
- cwyers 12y ago
  The timing is really, really close, but it's hard to believe they were able to roll all of this out in a day -- it's a new version on top of the licensing change. I think it's more likely to be a response to Unreal Engine's earlier price change of $19 a month than a response to yesterday's news.
  - rdudek 12y ago
    Yea, but they've been marketing Unity 5 for a long time now. Finally they just said "screw it and release it to public".
    - maccard 12y ago
      I doubt they just said screw it lets release. This week is GDC so both companies were likely to make large announcements during GDC IT just so happens that epic didn't wait for their keynote, meaning it's more like unreal said "screw it lets just go for free"
      - rdudek 12y ago
        They had to. Even their forums exploded with people asking about this. And honestly, I'm very glad they did it. Now I have two game engines to mess around with.
        maccard 12y ago
        My point was that they had most likely planned on releasing during GDC anyway, (which is this week)
- zanny 12y ago
msie 12y ago
Now I can deploy to iPhone and Android for free!!! Yippee!!!
- totalforge 12y ago
  There are still $1500 Pro exporters for IOS and Android listed on the site.
  - jeznav 12y ago
    You are always able to export to mobile with Unity Free (now Personal) but now the Pro Mobile features such as Static/Dynamic Batching, Code Stripping which is now included in the Personal version. The only main difference is that you are paying $1500 to remove or have custom splash screen when you deploy to mobiles.
teamhappy 12y ago
> This graphic, provided by Unity, will help make things clear: What a joke. Both include "Unity 5 engine with all features." Except that they don't. If you click "Get Unity 5" you see a list of differences[1] between the two. That list used to be a little longer though. [1]: http://unity3d.com/get-unity http://unity3d.com/get-unity
- cwyers 12y ago
  It looks like the list of differences is differences in tooling around the engine and/or licensing, not differences in engine features, though.
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    There is also the source code. Being able to take a look under the hood is critically important. (trying to modify is insane, but just knowing that you can see what is going on inside makes integration and bug hunting much faster)
    - maccard 12y ago
      Pro license doesn't give you source access, that's negotiated in their enterprise license, which had always been the case. Idgo so far as to say if you're not modifying the source having it available doesn't add much for you.
  - teamhappy 12y ago
    Technically you're right, and I almost mentioned that. It's kind of a stupid argument though. I.e., rendering engine != engine.
    - WillPostForFood 12y ago
      Right, but it is things like the profiler, which you didn't have access to in Unity 4 free, that are now included. As a unity 4 free user, this is a huge improvement. The chart understates the value of Unity 5 free to people not familiar with the old ecosystem.
zura 12y ago
Xamarin, we're looking at you... :)
- skrowl 12y ago
  Yeah, I clicked on this to see if the Mono stuff was going to be included
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Is it Xamarin asking too much or Unity not wanting to pay and leech on what they got from Novel?
  - zura 12y ago
    Yes, I think Xamarin is asking too much with regard to indie devs. They could come up with better licensing, e.g. pay after you earn $X...
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      My point was about the license agreement between both companies.
      - zura 12y ago
        Oh, I see... I was talking about: Unity is free, Unreal is free, now Source engine from Valve.. So we're waiting for Xamarin's step in similar direction :)
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- vblord 12y ago
  Can you use Unity to make regular (non-game) apps like you would with Xamarin?
  - 12y ago
druidsbane 12y ago
Unreal Engine comes with full source updated live on GitHub, that is worth its weight in gold, sadly not even the Pro Unity subscription version comes with that option.
- bhouston 12y ago
  Unity does license the source code to enterprise customers though, although I guess that is negotiated on a per customer basis?
  - druidsbane 12y ago
    I think that's the issue though, hard to compete with getting it all for free without any lawyers or needing to even ask, especially when you are a paying customer. It will take time but with the source for Unreal being on GitHub it has the potential of becoming an actual "open" standard of sorts given how much the community can contribute back. It also makes it a greater platform for experimentation for universities and students in addition to smaller shops that can't afford to license it. Usually when a company says that the source can be negotiated separately the price is of the form of: "if you have to ask..."
- robotkilla 12y ago
  My barrier to entry with Unreal is not knowing C++ - I picked up a few books and will be diving in shortly, but I'm already good with JS so UnityScript was easy to pick up (easy, but painful none-the-less).
ffn 12y ago
I really love that these game engines are doing this. As a hobbyist game dev with a day job and a night-shift (tfwgf), one of the biggest hurtles that keep me building on html5 instead of on desktop was the demand that I had to pay $$ upfront before I have any idea if I can even finish what I'm building (much less how the market will receive it). I mean, I don't mind paying the engine company their demands if I can make money selling my game, but I'm already risking my free time on a project that may very well go nowhere, so I don't want to also risk my money. I'm sure plenty of other folk with great ideas and skills are in this boat, so by finally offering a free version, I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more esoteric indie games that tell great stories, introduce fun new mechanics, educate the player, or make us lose faith in American democracy on Steam instead of the nonstop rehash of mainstream FPS games. As for me, it's finally time to start building that Sierra-esque ancient civilization city-builder game (i.e. Caesar, Pharaoh, Emperor, etc.).
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Unity's been free for years, you've fallen for their advertising to upstage Unreal. "Finally offering a free version" Honestly, it's been free for ages. Not only that but Microsoft had XNA which was also a free game engine that they only discontinued last year so you're wrong thinking that html5 was the only option. I don't think you really researched the market much if you thought that. Plus if you are serious about an RTS you should read about AI war, who used Unity. It's interesting as if you want to do multiplayer in an RTS you can't use Unity's collision detection as the float calculations are chipset dependant.
  - trsohmers 12y ago
    What most people don't realize is that the IEEE Floating Point standard (754-2008) actually doesn't standardize when a float should be rounded. Since most CPUs/GPUs are able to do FMAs (Fused Multiply-add)'s that are rounded after the operation, you get a different result than if you were to do a multiplication operation, then round, then add, and then round again. I'm pretty sure Unity would be able to fix this if they had their compiler always handed rounding the same way. Also: If you want to see a sane way to handle floating point, check out the Unum format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_(number_format) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_(number_format))... higher precision than IEEE, doesn't have rounding errors, and uses fewer bits.
equil 12y ago
from the changelog[1]: • Removed “Make MMO” button from Edit menu. ;) [1] http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.0 http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.0
antiuniverse 12y ago
In my mind, the use case for Unity is mobile and other downlevel hardware. I still wouldn't try and target mobile or low-end PCs with Unreal Engine 4. That said, I'm still uninterested in using Unity because of the implications of having a black box engine that underlies your project. Being able to step into the engine code is too important to my understanding and my ability to debug problems, not to mention the possibility to implement your own bugfixes or otherwise modify the engine. In addition, the collaboration story with Unity still isn't great once your team scales past "tiny." Unreal and its Perforce integration were built and battle-hardened in the forge of AAA studios with hundreds of artists; Unity still encourages you to use a proprietary "Asset Server" which they charge extra for, and even then it gets awkward and prone to irreconcilable merge conflicts once you go past two or three people on a team. Having said all that, yay competition!
- cableshaft 12y ago
  You can integrate Unity with Perforce just fine. We started with the Asset Server, and then migrated over to Perforce at the last place I worked for. It did take a little extra effort to get it set up, but once it was, it worked great.
  - antiuniverse 12y ago
    You're right that you can at least use Perforce as the underlying database, but "worked great" is subjective. The concept of version control is much more integrated into the UX of the Unreal tools, with things like visual diff/merge support for assets built in. Additionally, one of Unreal's killer features for scaling collaboration up with larger teams is the idea of editing a map in multiple distinct layers which are composed at runtime. This means you can have someone working on audio in the audio layer, someone working on collisions in the collision layer, someone working on lights in the lighting layer... all in parallel. If you tried that in Unity, all you'd end up with is a binary blob with a merge conflict, and n-1 people having wasted their time.
    - weaksauce 12y ago
curiously 12y ago
so im at crossroads here. I downloaded UE4 engine yesterday but now that Unity is free I'm also taking a look at it to see what I can do with it. Does the cloud build service lets you build iphone games without an apple machine? What about for submitting games on the Apple market? Also, what does unity do better than unreal? Is unity suitable for building mobile games and high concurrent multiplayer games?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- noio 12y ago
  Cloud build will probably send you iOS builds, but testing for those devices through that service is going to be a pain. I'd say you really want to run things in the simulator for a quick testing cycle.
  - ianlevesque 12y ago
    The iOS simulator is ridiculously faster than a real iOS device and far less memory constrained. You can't develop an iOS game without an iOS device for testing.
kelukelugames 12y ago
Unit is really easy and fun to use. Here are my three favorite tutorials. Takes around 1 - 2 hours to go through each one if you know how to program. http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/2d/2d-controllers http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/2d/2d-co... http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/ http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dP7R-GbFkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dP7R-GbFkM I was able to put my high school friend in a platformer within a day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpiZF7bjQ3U&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpiZF7bjQ3U&feature=youtu.be The only complaint I have is that it doesn't make webgames.
- adam12 12y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/03/03/unity-5-ships-and-brings-one-click-webgl-export-to-legions-of-game-developers/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/03/03/unity-5-ships-and-b...
- runevault 12y ago
  Would you do them in the order you linked them? I've been wanting to make a 2d game but hadn't found good tutorials yet.
  - kelukelugames 12y ago
    Yes. Just do them in that order.
- davedx 12y ago
  I downvoted you, because one of the big features I have been waiting for with Unity 5 is WebGL export, and this thread seems to have a lot of misinformed commenting in it. Please research before you make claims about something. [1] [1] http://unity3d.com/unity/engine-features http://unity3d.com/unity/engine-features
Illniyar 12y ago
In Unity 4 there was this weird licensing model where certain IOS/android features were not available for the personal addition (such as UDP broadcast, or network access). Is this still true? or is unity 5 personal addition really contains all features?
- msie 12y ago
  I believe you can deploy on iOS and Android for no extra cost.
mickanio 12y ago
I recently released my first game using Unity: http://newbeings.com/ http://newbeings.com/ and I spent a real long time weighing the different engines. I wish I hadn't spent so much time deciding on an engine, and had just picked one and gotten on with it. I think the differences are pretty negligible for first (and probably even third and second) timers. This news makes me happy!
yummybear 12y ago
License server down for maintenance. Throw some more coal on it :)
aoakenfo 12y ago
UE4 is a complex beast that will take a long time to master. It takes a team of specialists to truly leverage its power. UE4's market is high-end PC and console titles. UE4 is pretty. Unity targets small shops and indie devs. It has quick iteration times for rapid prototyping of gameplay mechanics. It takes more work to make things pretty in Unity. It will be easier for Unity to ramp-up its visual fidelity than it will be for UE4 to revamp fundamental workflow. We're already beginning to see these changes, like new GI (global illumination) system and physically-based materials in Unity 5. Perhaps Unity v6 or v7 will have graphics on par with UE4.
- keyle 12y ago
  Although you seem to know what you're talking about, my experience isn't that clear cut. I've used UE4 quite a bit. Just using blueprints, I didn't feel like I needed to be a specialist to do really cool stuff. And I wish it had something like C#. Also, it wasn't that quick to get something looking great in UE4 and took quite a bit of practicing.
mahyarm 12y ago
Is unity planning to upgrade mono with the recent license changes? Or are those license changes still not good enough? Are they planning to improve it's VCS friendliness problems?
hobarrera 12y ago
Title should have read "freeware versions". Considering how much stuff around mono is now free (as in FOSS, and not merely "freeware"), it's nice to state the difference clearly to avoid confusion. I had kinda gotten exited for a bit there. :(
sprite 12y ago
I just bought Unity Pro with iOS and Android for personal use around a week ago :(
- nezza-_- 12y ago
  Their FAQ says they might offer refunds in that situation, contact them.
endergen 12y ago
Valve Announced Source 2 will be free for developers: http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-announcement-free-developers http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-annou...
increment_i 12y ago
I'm sure I'm nitpicking here but this is a huge deal for me: forcing a branded splash screen onto the final product. Ugh! Why?! I understand a ton of work has been put into this engine and Unity is graciously offering it for free, but indie software is an individual's art. When an artist paints a portrait, you don't see a "Powered by Winsor & Newton Acrylic Products" stamped onto the bottom of the canvas. I'm sure I'm coming off harsh here but seeing that limitation really turns me off from an otherwise unbelievable proposition. Edit: spelling.
- RoundCube 12y ago
  I don't really mind it. Just takes a couple seconds then it is gone.
- lucaspiller 12y ago
  It's removed if you upgrade to the pro version. Seems like a fair deal to me as it means studios who can afford it will pay, while indie developers just getting started don't need to.
- kosoy 12y ago
  Artists pay for their supplies. And this seems to be a fair deal - if you're not paying them, you should at least give them some publicity.
jestinjoy1 12y ago
Why no Linux version?
davedx 12y ago
I just tested the WebGL export with a very simple 2D scene. It produced a 24MB compressed JavaScript file. I'm guessing it's the entire Unity engine that's portable to WebGL compiled with Emscripten. I wonder if it's possible for them to leverage the Closure compiler to strip out the parts of the engine your project does not use. Anyone from Unity here who can comment on this?

303 points by jarsin 12y ago

Sadly, you still have to fork out the full $1500 for the dark UI skin ;) Having full access to render textures and framebuffer stuff is a godsend though. Looking forward to experimenting with the audio as well. They also seem to be setting up a discount program for the Asset Store, as well as a cloud build system (for mobile/web only so far, though).

kendallpark 12y ago
It's pretty amazing how much weight that dark UI skin has for me. For being purely aesthetic I value it more than many of the pro-only features.
daenz 12y ago
> Having full access to render textures and framebuffer stuff is a godsend though. I haven't used Unity, but I've written my own game engine. Unity didn't used to expose the GBuffer textures?
- robterrell 12y ago
  Previously, render-to-texture was a Pro-only feature.

DennisP 12y ago

Does that mean it supports Oculus? The previous Personal version didn't.

ChrisClark 12y ago
It does, and the previous version actually did support Occulus. They released a free plugin for it (the free version of Unity) a few months ago.
- antiuniverse 12y ago
  With Unity 4, only the Pro version supported the Oculus Rift plugin, because the Rift SDK relies on render-to-texture support, which was disabled in the free version. Now the free version of Unity also supports the Rift. That is indeed new. EDIT: I am totally wrong!
  - ChrisClark 12y ago
    Nope, they specifically released a Rift plugin for the Free version of Unity 4 just a few months ago. http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/12/23/calling-all-vr-enthusiasts-target-the-oculus-rift-with-unity-free/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/12/23/calling-all-vr-enthusias... With full lens correction that needs render-to-texture. Render-to-texture is still disabled in Unity 4 Free, but it is specifically allowed just for the Oculus plugin.
    - antiuniverse 12y ago
      Oh, I stand corrected! Thanks for clarifying.
- karmakaze 12y ago
  So for Oculus, both Unity and UnrealEngine are free to use up to $100k/company/year and $3k/product/quarter respectively. Beyond that $75/mo or $1500 for Unity or 5% for UE4 seems small enough to just use the product that's better for your use case. Right now UE4 works better with Oculus timewarp feature. The same on Unity5 apparently suffers from jitter.

trekky1700 12y ago

This is amazing news! Really glad render textures are now available.

bstar77 12y ago

I absolutely love unity. I've been playing with it on and off for the past few years and it has been surprisingly easy for me to pick up. The free version has a pretty spectacular feature set. I've had a lot of fun with 2d mode- as a learning project I recreated the Monkey Island I Melee Island scenes with mixed sprites from Monkey Island II. Such a blast re-creating a game from my childhood. I really need to find more time for this stuff.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
babuskov 12y ago
The problem with Unity from game-player POV is that it's too easy. It means that anyone can make games, and I've seen too many games now that have beautiful art and crappy play experience. The games feel slow and controls sluggish. It seems that developers assume that Unity would take care of everything and they do not have to consider performance of responsiveness at all. Whenever I see Unity splash logo I'm getting mentally prepared for mediocre experience. Unless it's a strategy or point&click game where performance is not important.
- strangecasts 12y ago
  Would you suggest making it harder to develop games? Nintendo tried that with the Nintendo 64: Yamauchi took a different approach with the SNES' successor the N64, however, which was released in 1996 at least partly to distract attention away from the disastrous Virtual Boy. Yamauchi admitted at the 2001 Space World event that he had deliberately ordered the N64 be difficult to develop for. The intention behind this was to discourage untalented third-party developers from releasing poor-quality games -- it was no longer practical for Yamauchi to personally approve every game -- but the plan backfired somewhat: given the commercial success of previous Nintendo systems, third-party developers were still keen to get their games on a Nintendo console, and this consequently led to a number of sloppy, low-quality third-party games that clashed significantly with the high-quality first- and second-party titles that were being released on the platform. (from http://www.usgamer.net/articles/hiroshi-yamauchi-the-iron-fist-in-the-velvet-glove http://www.usgamer.net/articles/hiroshi-yamauchi-the-iron-fi... )

robertfw 12y ago

I was debating over trying out Unreal vs Unity last night. Unreal was looking more capable in its free version than Unity 4 Free, but I would prefer to learn C# over C++. This release makes it an easy choice to give Unity a whirl!

higherpurpose 12y ago
One of them should adopt Rust. Let's see who does it first!
- robertfw 12y ago
  That is my highest desire and I did look around for some bindings, but I think it's still early.
  - chc 12y ago
    I think it's more likely for Unreal Engine. Epic have said that they're open to new language implementations as long as they are free and open-source (this being why they didn't want C#).
    - scott_karana 12y ago
      That's changed now, though: Microsoft's Roslyn C# compiler is Apache 2.0 licensed. :-) https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/License.txt https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/License.txt
alpyne 12y ago
Unity does support Clojure (sorta) https://youtube.com/watch?v=tJr_TD1BtF0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=tJr_TD1BtF0
fredophile 12y ago
I've seen this type of comment before but usually in the context of someone that already knows either C# or C++. As someone that doesn't know either what factors make you want to learn C# over C++?

yohann305 12y ago

It seems this news is a direct reply to yesterday's move from one of their competitors, Epic's Unreal Engine 4 announced to be free* to use. link: https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free

jarsin 12y ago
Ya, as far as pricing it now seems there is no debate. No rev share and only having to buy the pro edition if you exceed 100k in revenue makes Unity superior on the price imo. Of course there are other factors to consider depending on the project.
- nsxwolf 12y ago
  An aspiring indie with zero track record should choose based on the strengths of the tools themselves. Making $3000 in a quarter is a pipe dream, let alone 100k over any time scale.
  - sramsay 12y ago
    Making $3000 in a quarter is a pipe dream? Why do you say that? The indie game market is not all that crowded, if we're thinking about games like Dear Esther, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Sword and Sworcery (all of which did way better than $3000 a quarter). Gamasutra, the other day, was lamenting the fact that there aren't enough games in this space. Assuming we're not talking about the very difficult mobile market (but just about high quality indies on the PC), why is it absurd to think that a small indie studio could be quite successful (even with a first game)?
    - cwyers 12y ago
      Because most of them aren't? You're naming the hits, but it's a lot harder to remember the games that failed (or the ones that didn't even make it out of development).
      - 12y ago

rdudek 12y ago

Nice response to Unreal Engine price change. Now the hard part is trying to pick which one to learn and use. Competition is a good thing.

cwyers 12y ago
The timing is really, really close, but it's hard to believe they were able to roll all of this out in a day -- it's a new version on top of the licensing change. I think it's more likely to be a response to Unreal Engine's earlier price change of $19 a month than a response to yesterday's news.
- rdudek 12y ago
  Yea, but they've been marketing Unity 5 for a long time now. Finally they just said "screw it and release it to public".
  - maccard 12y ago
    I doubt they just said screw it lets release. This week is GDC so both companies were likely to make large announcements during GDC IT just so happens that epic didn't wait for their keynote, meaning it's more like unreal said "screw it lets just go for free"
    - rdudek 12y ago
      They had to. Even their forums exploded with people asking about this. And honestly, I'm very glad they did it. Now I have two game engines to mess around with.
      - maccard 12y ago
        My point was that they had most likely planned on releasing during GDC anyway, (which is this week)
zanny 12y ago

msie 12y ago

Now I can deploy to iPhone and Android for free!!! Yippee!!!

totalforge 12y ago
There are still $1500 Pro exporters for IOS and Android listed on the site.
- jeznav 12y ago
  You are always able to export to mobile with Unity Free (now Personal) but now the Pro Mobile features such as Static/Dynamic Batching, Code Stripping which is now included in the Personal version. The only main difference is that you are paying $1500 to remove or have custom splash screen when you deploy to mobiles.

teamhappy 12y ago

> This graphic, provided by Unity, will help make things clear: What a joke. Both include "Unity 5 engine with all features." Except that they don't. If you click "Get Unity 5" you see a list of differences[1] between the two. That list used to be a little longer though. [1]: http://unity3d.com/get-unity http://unity3d.com/get-unity

cwyers 12y ago
It looks like the list of differences is differences in tooling around the engine and/or licensing, not differences in engine features, though.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  There is also the source code. Being able to take a look under the hood is critically important. (trying to modify is insane, but just knowing that you can see what is going on inside makes integration and bug hunting much faster)
  - maccard 12y ago
    Pro license doesn't give you source access, that's negotiated in their enterprise license, which had always been the case. Idgo so far as to say if you're not modifying the source having it available doesn't add much for you.
- teamhappy 12y ago
  Technically you're right, and I almost mentioned that. It's kind of a stupid argument though. I.e., rendering engine != engine.
  - WillPostForFood 12y ago
    Right, but it is things like the profiler, which you didn't have access to in Unity 4 free, that are now included. As a unity 4 free user, this is a huge improvement. The chart understates the value of Unity 5 free to people not familiar with the old ecosystem.

zura 12y ago

Xamarin, we're looking at you... :)

skrowl 12y ago
Yeah, I clicked on this to see if the Mono stuff was going to be included
pjmlp 12y ago
Is it Xamarin asking too much or Unity not wanting to pay and leech on what they got from Novel?
- zura 12y ago
  Yes, I think Xamarin is asking too much with regard to indie devs. They could come up with better licensing, e.g. pay after you earn $X...
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    My point was about the license agreement between both companies.
    - zura 12y ago
      Oh, I see... I was talking about: Unity is free, Unreal is free, now Source engine from Valve.. So we're waiting for Xamarin's step in similar direction :)
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
vblord 12y ago
Can you use Unity to make regular (non-game) apps like you would with Xamarin?
- 12y ago

druidsbane 12y ago

Unreal Engine comes with full source updated live on GitHub, that is worth its weight in gold, sadly not even the Pro Unity subscription version comes with that option.

bhouston 12y ago
Unity does license the source code to enterprise customers though, although I guess that is negotiated on a per customer basis?
- druidsbane 12y ago
  I think that's the issue though, hard to compete with getting it all for free without any lawyers or needing to even ask, especially when you are a paying customer. It will take time but with the source for Unreal being on GitHub it has the potential of becoming an actual "open" standard of sorts given how much the community can contribute back. It also makes it a greater platform for experimentation for universities and students in addition to smaller shops that can't afford to license it. Usually when a company says that the source can be negotiated separately the price is of the form of: "if you have to ask..."
robotkilla 12y ago
My barrier to entry with Unreal is not knowing C++ - I picked up a few books and will be diving in shortly, but I'm already good with JS so UnityScript was easy to pick up (easy, but painful none-the-less).

ffn 12y ago

I really love that these game engines are doing this. As a hobbyist game dev with a day job and a night-shift (tfwgf), one of the biggest hurtles that keep me building on html5 instead of on desktop was the demand that I had to pay $$ upfront before I have any idea if I can even finish what I'm building (much less how the market will receive it). I mean, I don't mind paying the engine company their demands if I can make money selling my game, but I'm already risking my free time on a project that may very well go nowhere, so I don't want to also risk my money. I'm sure plenty of other folk with great ideas and skills are in this boat, so by finally offering a free version, I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more esoteric indie games that tell great stories, introduce fun new mechanics, educate the player, or make us lose faith in American democracy on Steam instead of the nonstop rehash of mainstream FPS games. As for me, it's finally time to start building that Sierra-esque ancient civilization city-builder game (i.e. Caesar, Pharaoh, Emperor, etc.).

mattmanser 12y ago
Unity's been free for years, you've fallen for their advertising to upstage Unreal. "Finally offering a free version" Honestly, it's been free for ages. Not only that but Microsoft had XNA which was also a free game engine that they only discontinued last year so you're wrong thinking that html5 was the only option. I don't think you really researched the market much if you thought that. Plus if you are serious about an RTS you should read about AI war, who used Unity. It's interesting as if you want to do multiplayer in an RTS you can't use Unity's collision detection as the float calculations are chipset dependant.
- trsohmers 12y ago
  What most people don't realize is that the IEEE Floating Point standard (754-2008) actually doesn't standardize when a float should be rounded. Since most CPUs/GPUs are able to do FMAs (Fused Multiply-add)'s that are rounded after the operation, you get a different result than if you were to do a multiplication operation, then round, then add, and then round again. I'm pretty sure Unity would be able to fix this if they had their compiler always handed rounding the same way. Also: If you want to see a sane way to handle floating point, check out the Unum format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_(number_format) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_(number_format))... higher precision than IEEE, doesn't have rounding errors, and uses fewer bits.

equil 12y ago

from the changelog[1]: • Removed “Make MMO” button from Edit menu. ;) [1] http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.0 http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.0

antiuniverse 12y ago

In my mind, the use case for Unity is mobile and other downlevel hardware. I still wouldn't try and target mobile or low-end PCs with Unreal Engine 4. That said, I'm still uninterested in using Unity because of the implications of having a black box engine that underlies your project. Being able to step into the engine code is too important to my understanding and my ability to debug problems, not to mention the possibility to implement your own bugfixes or otherwise modify the engine. In addition, the collaboration story with Unity still isn't great once your team scales past "tiny." Unreal and its Perforce integration were built and battle-hardened in the forge of AAA studios with hundreds of artists; Unity still encourages you to use a proprietary "Asset Server" which they charge extra for, and even then it gets awkward and prone to irreconcilable merge conflicts once you go past two or three people on a team. Having said all that, yay competition!

cableshaft 12y ago
You can integrate Unity with Perforce just fine. We started with the Asset Server, and then migrated over to Perforce at the last place I worked for. It did take a little extra effort to get it set up, but once it was, it worked great.
- antiuniverse 12y ago
  You're right that you can at least use Perforce as the underlying database, but "worked great" is subjective. The concept of version control is much more integrated into the UX of the Unreal tools, with things like visual diff/merge support for assets built in. Additionally, one of Unreal's killer features for scaling collaboration up with larger teams is the idea of editing a map in multiple distinct layers which are composed at runtime. This means you can have someone working on audio in the audio layer, someone working on collisions in the collision layer, someone working on lights in the lighting layer... all in parallel. If you tried that in Unity, all you'd end up with is a binary blob with a merge conflict, and n-1 people having wasted their time.
  - weaksauce 12y ago

curiously 12y ago

so im at crossroads here. I downloaded UE4 engine yesterday but now that Unity is free I'm also taking a look at it to see what I can do with it. Does the cloud build service lets you build iphone games without an apple machine? What about for submitting games on the Apple market? Also, what does unity do better than unreal? Is unity suitable for building mobile games and high concurrent multiplayer games?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
noio 12y ago
Cloud build will probably send you iOS builds, but testing for those devices through that service is going to be a pain. I'd say you really want to run things in the simulator for a quick testing cycle.
- ianlevesque 12y ago
  The iOS simulator is ridiculously faster than a real iOS device and far less memory constrained. You can't develop an iOS game without an iOS device for testing.

kelukelugames 12y ago

Unit is really easy and fun to use. Here are my three favorite tutorials. Takes around 1 - 2 hours to go through each one if you know how to program. http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/2d/2d-controllers http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/2d/2d-co... http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/ http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dP7R-GbFkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dP7R-GbFkM I was able to put my high school friend in a platformer within a day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpiZF7bjQ3U&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpiZF7bjQ3U&feature=youtu.be The only complaint I have is that it doesn't make webgames.

adam12 12y ago
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/03/03/unity-5-ships-and-brings-one-click-webgl-export-to-legions-of-game-developers/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/03/03/unity-5-ships-and-b...
runevault 12y ago
Would you do them in the order you linked them? I've been wanting to make a 2d game but hadn't found good tutorials yet.
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  Yes. Just do them in that order.
davedx 12y ago
I downvoted you, because one of the big features I have been waiting for with Unity 5 is WebGL export, and this thread seems to have a lot of misinformed commenting in it. Please research before you make claims about something. [1] [1] http://unity3d.com/unity/engine-features http://unity3d.com/unity/engine-features

Illniyar 12y ago

In Unity 4 there was this weird licensing model where certain IOS/android features were not available for the personal addition (such as UDP broadcast, or network access). Is this still true? or is unity 5 personal addition really contains all features?

msie 12y ago
I believe you can deploy on iOS and Android for no extra cost.

mickanio 12y ago

I recently released my first game using Unity: http://newbeings.com/ http://newbeings.com/ and I spent a real long time weighing the different engines. I wish I hadn't spent so much time deciding on an engine, and had just picked one and gotten on with it. I think the differences are pretty negligible for first (and probably even third and second) timers. This news makes me happy!

yummybear 12y ago

License server down for maintenance. Throw some more coal on it :)

aoakenfo 12y ago

UE4 is a complex beast that will take a long time to master. It takes a team of specialists to truly leverage its power. UE4's market is high-end PC and console titles. UE4 is pretty. Unity targets small shops and indie devs. It has quick iteration times for rapid prototyping of gameplay mechanics. It takes more work to make things pretty in Unity. It will be easier for Unity to ramp-up its visual fidelity than it will be for UE4 to revamp fundamental workflow. We're already beginning to see these changes, like new GI (global illumination) system and physically-based materials in Unity 5. Perhaps Unity v6 or v7 will have graphics on par with UE4.

keyle 12y ago
Although you seem to know what you're talking about, my experience isn't that clear cut. I've used UE4 quite a bit. Just using blueprints, I didn't feel like I needed to be a specialist to do really cool stuff. And I wish it had something like C#. Also, it wasn't that quick to get something looking great in UE4 and took quite a bit of practicing.

mahyarm 12y ago

Is unity planning to upgrade mono with the recent license changes? Or are those license changes still not good enough? Are they planning to improve it's VCS friendliness problems?

hobarrera 12y ago

Title should have read "freeware versions". Considering how much stuff around mono is now free (as in FOSS, and not merely "freeware"), it's nice to state the difference clearly to avoid confusion. I had kinda gotten exited for a bit there. :(

sprite 12y ago

I just bought Unity Pro with iOS and Android for personal use around a week ago :(

nezza-_- 12y ago
Their FAQ says they might offer refunds in that situation, contact them.

endergen 12y ago

Valve Announced Source 2 will be free for developers: http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-announcement-free-developers http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-annou...

increment_i 12y ago

I'm sure I'm nitpicking here but this is a huge deal for me: forcing a branded splash screen onto the final product. Ugh! Why?! I understand a ton of work has been put into this engine and Unity is graciously offering it for free, but indie software is an individual's art. When an artist paints a portrait, you don't see a "Powered by Winsor & Newton Acrylic Products" stamped onto the bottom of the canvas. I'm sure I'm coming off harsh here but seeing that limitation really turns me off from an otherwise unbelievable proposition. Edit: spelling.

RoundCube 12y ago
I don't really mind it. Just takes a couple seconds then it is gone.
lucaspiller 12y ago
It's removed if you upgrade to the pro version. Seems like a fair deal to me as it means studios who can afford it will pay, while indie developers just getting started don't need to.
kosoy 12y ago
Artists pay for their supplies. And this seems to be a fair deal - if you're not paying them, you should at least give them some publicity.

jestinjoy1 12y ago

Why no Linux version?

davedx 12y ago

I just tested the WebGL export with a very simple 2D scene. It produced a 24MB compressed JavaScript file. I'm guessing it's the entire Unity engine that's portable to WebGL compiled with Emscripten. I wonder if it's possible for them to leverage the Closure compiler to strip out the parts of the engine your project does not use. Anyone from Unity here who can comment on this?