Unity. Is this thing for real?

Renzatic on 16/12/2012 at 08:46

I'm kind of the complete opposite of you, considering the better I get with 3D editors, the more I'd rather use them for everything, rather than working within the confines of a BSP engine.

Also, every day brings me closer to becoming an Apple hipster. I should know better considering the price vs. performance and all, but...but...damn. Those new iMacs and retina Macbook Pros are so damn nice, man. The need to sell out is getting harder to ignore.

One day soon, Henke and I will become best friends who talk about our eclectic collections of physics based indie games involving blocky trucks carrying skulls over barren wastelands while we drink cup after cup of really shitty coffee.

Volitions Advocate on 16/12/2012 at 08:59

If it didn't cost so much I'd be getting a macbook pro and triple boot the thing. They probably are the best built laptops on the market, but the difference in price makes me feel it isn't worth it. In my field, even if i'm not a Mac guy, it pays to have a mac handy and know how to use it. Having said that though, and all this Apple hipster talk, there's been a lot of exciting stuff happening for Mac in the last Year or so. The number of "gamer" games you can play on a Mac has exploded logarithmically.

I'll never not buy a game because of the engine it's made with, but I might harbor an opinion on why the developer chose that engine, and I think its a legitimate skepticism. I'd also be happy to be proven wrong, because a good game is a good game.

Fafhrd on 16/12/2012 at 11:15

Quote Posted by Renzatic

...is Epic really licensing it out for $1 mil a pop? I know it's good and all, but damn...that's pricey.

They don't really have set prices for a full license. It scales largely based on how much support they expect to have to give and how much money they expect you to have. And the full license comes with the full source code.

And looking at the UDK licensing, it's $99 flat fee + royalty on revenue. And if you do any sort of crowdfunding for a UDK game, Epic considers that revenue, so they get a piece. Which is lame.

demagogue on 16/12/2012 at 12:17

I said building on Unity was fun with the drop-and-play thing, and its modular design with the code and all, which is true... But honestly I feel more in power building for Dark Mod / id4. So yeah, being able to build really convincingly with BSP, and having a slew of assets to already work with goes a long way.

That *and* you still get the power of custom scripts and even modifying the sourcecode to whatever gameplay you want. At this point, I'd rather build a fork project off Dark Mod than start a game from scratch, since I understand it better than anything else now.

Renzatic on 16/12/2012 at 18:11

Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate

If it didn't cost so much I'd be getting a macbook pro and triple boot the thing. They probably are the best built laptops on the market, but the difference in price makes me feel it isn't worth it.

It depends. You do generally get better repair service with Macs than you do most PCs. I've got a few Apple stores in my area. If I were to get one and found I had some weird hardware problem with it, all I'd have to do is drop it off, wait a day or so for it to get fixed, then pick it back up. If I got, say, an Asus or Samsung laptop, my only choice is to drop it off at Best Buy or send it out RTM.

The one thing that balances all this out is that I can usually fix a PC laptop on my own, whereas the newer, thinner Macbooks are nigh impossible to service yourself. Like the new 27" iMac that just came out. You can replace the ram, but swapping out the HDD is an absolute pain in the ass (this is kinda offset by Thunderbolt drives, though). You can't do any user upgrades on the retina Macbook Pro whatsoever. It's all locked down and soldered together. You're stuck with what you ordered. If you want anything more, you have to sell the whole laptop and get something else.

What's scary is that this isn't necessarily Apple just being bastards. As computers get thinner and more complicated, it's going to become that much more difficult to upgrade or fix your own problems. As far as all this goes, it seems more like Apple is only slightly ahead of the curve than doing just it so they can gouge you for more storage space and ram...

...which...yeah, they do. In a big, bad way.

Quote:

In my field, even if i'm not a Mac guy, it pays to have a mac handy and know how to use it. Having said that though, and all this Apple hipster talk, there's been a lot of exciting stuff happening for Mac in the last Year or so. The number of "gamer" games you can play on a Mac has exploded logarithmically.

Yup. It's not up to Windows standards yet, but OSX and Linux both are getting more and more support every day that passes.

SubJeff on 16/12/2012 at 21:41

Yeah, Macs are really nice. I have a PC and Android devices, my gf has a MacBook Air and iOS devices.

The Apple stuff is really polished and does what it sets out to very, very well. It's just not flexile enough for me and the prices, oy vey!

Judith on 17/12/2012 at 19:28

Quote Posted by Fafhrd

And looking at the UDK licensing, it's $99 flat fee + royalty on revenue. And if you do any sort of crowdfunding for a UDK game, Epic considers that revenue, so they get a piece. Which is lame.

That's really lame. It looks like they want to suck you into this AAA budget madness, even if you are an indie developer... I'd consider looking for other alternatives then. CryEngine is pretty neat too, can't find the details about pricing though.

Quote Posted by demagogue

While making a game from scratch is a lot for a single person, there's no way to "build convincingly" with BSP these days, not with modern level of complexity. At some point, as mapper, you have to get into modeling to develop your skills, and your maps. Environments built from static meshes with unwrapping and baked AO will always be superior to any BSP work, that's why most games use those extensively.