How far can I get in Unity Free?

Not looking for a Unity Pro vs Free thread, but would like to know until what point am I able to get things working as far as gameplay and rendering goes. I have seen some neat things being made in Unity from youtube videos, but most(if not all) of the videos I saw were using Unity Pro. I do know of the limitations of stuff like shadows, but is there any other major limitations? Please again, this is not a Pro vs Free war, just wanted to know about it as I am planning on working on a pretty big project with Unity Free(I cant afford the $1500 Pro license) and want to know what I can and cannot do with it.

 

What experience do you have in game dev? This will give an idea of your abilities as most of the Unity pro features are more advance.

 

Really, you can make most any kind of game with Unity free. You only need to get into Pro once you want to add some advanced visual effects in (better water, better shadows, video rendering, etc.) Also, there are some features in Pro that will give you a bit of a performance boost.

 

@Tyler: Well, I am still studying development. This is the farthest I've done as far as development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdgpGhPhiTI&feature=share&list=UUCWkaSMMeFKC4Kf_Fz7Ik5A

@khanstruct: I see. I am mostly concerned about what I can do as far as gameplay, I can live with most of the visual limitations. Although, that performance boost thing you said sounds promising. Thank you very much for your input.

 

Unity free would be fine, and then if you get money then its straight forward to just load your game into Unity pro.

 

Fair enough, thank you =]

 

A Direct x11 tessellation demo I created with Unity 4 Free Beta..

 

Not that i'm advertising my game, but here is my game in action only using free software (Unity free, blender and gimp).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJvopvtC5k8&feature=g-user-c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x38zKfVQ4I&feature=relmfu

As you can see, it's possible to make a fairly advanced game using Unity Free. although we will be getting Unity pro in the near future, we are very satisfied with Unity free.

 

@brilliantgames: o.0 did you used special shaders for those rocks? They look amazing.

@eskovas : Sweet!!! Everything looks real smooth and awesome. This makes me even much more confident for using blender, which is also something I was debating whether to use for modeling or not. Were the shadows made using lightmapping?

 

Thanks, yes the shadows were made with lightmaps. If you want real time shadows in Unity free, there is a package in the asset store that creates that.

 

If I recall correctly, it's a bit of a performance hit – moreso than native realtime shadows in pro.

 

Do you think you guys can tell me what package is that? I don't really need real-time shadows THAT much, but would be nice to have them.

 

You'll do perfectly fine with Unity free and you can do some really great things, Pro generally offers features that i consider far more important than the fancy image effects but are only relevant if you are really planning to make some money with unity, in which case you should be able to buy it anyways, the asset server, beast radiosity, profiler, depth and render to texture etc.Unity free will take you absolutely most of the way there for almost any idea you can think of, and you can still get some pretty great graphics going to boot

 

It's called the shadow volumes toolkit and goes for $30 on the asset store, it's a hit but more relevantly it takes a fair bit of setting up and has some limitations that only make it suitable for specific situations, but i think it's really neat, that said, i still use it for this and that and have had it running fine on recent mobiles

 

Even when you have limits, there is always scope for appearing to go beyond those limits through creative use of the tools at your disposal and finding ways to make it look like it is doing more than it really is.

 

@lazygunn: thank you very much for your opinion. I do believe Unity has a vast of features, even on the free version. I will go explore the Assets store a bit to see what can I get there. Btw, I took a look at the shadow volumes toolkit and it looks neat, but why does it have so many bad reviews? Since you have used it, would you recommend it? Thank you

@imaginaryhuman: Thanks for sharing your opinion as well. You are right, I guess I need to study the program really hard to get the best of it then.

 

I'm a Unity Basic user. And that's OK.

I'm actually having fun finding ways to circumvent the limitations of Unity Basic. It's tough to make things look good without the depth of field, refraction, and post-processing effects, but with clever use of textures, creative programming, and a good design (that's the part that's hard for me), the differences are non-existant.

Graphics are one admittedly important part of a whole, but their importance is somewhat overblown. Don't be fooled into thinking a game is just graphics, any more than it is mechanics or story! In truth, it's all a unified experience.

 

Will keep that in mind. I agree in that games are not only graphics. A good example is minecraft. not the best graphics, but really great gameplay lol Is good to see there is great feedback for the free version.

 

It's just very limited with specific uses, like using AA with it will show artifacts, the shadowed meshes need to be closed, theres a bit of setup involved, doesnt work on terrain, and so on, i do recommend it but only when you know exactly what you want to do with it so, probably not to you just yet. There are some great things for anyone in the asset store though and more relevantly, an extremely supportive and giving community, you'll find some amazing things going around absolutely for free, when you get into it, have a poke around the shaders forum and suchlike, your unity basic game will look beautiful in no time, realtime shadows? pah!

 

Yes, both the sand and the rocks have tessellation(You will notice the sand has full geometry). This is a new feature in Unity 4, and its in the free version. I have always wanted to use tessellation ever since I first heard of it and now I can.

 

You can go quite far with Unity free as long as you have the time and patience.

The time is to be spent at the community wiki to pore over the scripts, learn from then and use them with appropriate modifications and quite often use them as is also.

It is also useful to get acquainted with free assets as well as free versions of some important paid assets at the asset store such as pathfinding tools etc.

All of this can add up to quite a formidable set of tools for building a game. I suspect what most of us indies, myself included are struggling with is the creativity and work discipline required to produce good games. The engine itself is usually the least of the limitations.

 

I quote Yoda now:

"Yes, yes! To him, you must listen!"

 

If you don't need third-party code via native code, the main difference is performance. Pro gives you better shadows and shaders which work faster than the hacks for Basic, and there's Umbra for higher frame rates with busy static scenes. But for a procedural game you're really only missing shadows, unless a DLL with level generation code actually speeds things up. C# isn't a huge bottleneck, though. If you're just starting out you're less likely to actually do the advanced things which call for Pro

 

Yes, I am still a newbie lol I am not really looking to get Pro anytime soon, until I am able to make a couple of games so that I know what I really need.

 

that's what i learned when i got Indie so instead of going with a photo realistic look i deiced to go with a stylized look

 

There's no reason to completely give up on photoreal visuals in Free, you'll mostly need to hone your lighting and material/shader skills

 

i dont mind going with a stylized look besides most good games are made when developers are forced to work with there limitations.

 

Ahhh nope no worries i was just, saying, for the record. Actualy I think if you can concept and develop a really great style with experimentation in modelling and shaders you can take the best from both worlds!

 

thanks for the look of my game i went with a stylized american toon instead of anime Look for my RPG

 

Well, I guess the developer makes the game good, not the game engine. To be honest, even tho UDK and Cry Engine have better visuals, I just love how Unity has much more support as far as community and documentation. I saw the tech demo for Unity 4 and I actually think graphics like is much more appealing to me than realistic, especially for the fact that is realtime. I was thinking for a while and, Unity can view videos right? Like for example, just put a video in the scene instead of an actual 3D scene right? I was thinking, is it possible to do an animation in any 3D modeling software of choice(lets say Blender) and then just use the rendered video? I mean, there is logic in there somewhere for using high quality cutscenes. That is what I think anyways, and if that is possible, that will be really awesome!

 

pre-rendered cutscenes are a pro feature

 

Really? 0.o snap!!! >.<

 

Very. Unity Pro adds more AAA stuff, like navigation, shadows and visual effects. Other than that, you can use basic for almost any game.

 

I see, oh well. I wanted to ask, regarding cinematics cutcsnes for, say, intros or endings, is it possible to use a 3D program to render the cutscene and the use the rendered video and put it on Unity? I am not saying I'll use it now, but it is still a thing that is wondering in my mind.

 

I think you can, but only with pro. You can make in-game cutscenes via animate it in Unity(or in an external app then import it in), and swap cameras to give a cutscene feel like metal gear solid does.

 

Ok, thank you for letting me know.

 

Lack of native code integration in Free is driving me insane.

Otherwise Free is fine for just about anything.

 

What can you do with native code?