It´s Unity for me?

Hello, I´m new here, I currently use GameSalad and I am evaluating changing engine, although I think GS is great, now I need an engine that gives me more possibilities.
I'm evaluating using Unity, I want to focus on 2D games, for me this is a big step and that is why I want to be as safe as possible. For this reason, I made a list of things that I would like to be sure are possible in Unity and also that these are not a dark science, I chose GS years ago because I was looking for something simple and fast

I appreciate the answers you can give me to each of these points (these go in no particular order):

1- when developing for mobile devices, you have to adapt to many resolutions and different aspect ratios, how do you solve this in Unity?

2- the process of exporting to the different platforms (iOS, Android, PC, Steam, Consoles?) that is so simple or complicated? Unity provides everything necessary?

3- in terms of performance, in case you want to use physics with tens or hundreds of objects interacting and colliding, how does it behave? Is there any "but" in this area?

4- in GameSalad, if you want to make a pixelated game you can not scale the sprites, because GS does not have the "neighbor neighbor" resample mode, that is, it does not keep the hard edges. How is it in Unity?

5- I know that multiplayer projects in real time are out of my reach, however I would like to be able to make games with multiplayer offline or in turns, is it possible to develop them with Unity comfortable way? What is required?

6- I would like my games to access an external web or database, and get information from outside the app, is this possible? It is contemplated?

7- Are push notifications available? this is something missing in GameSalad

8- Finally, GameSalad has tables, which allow the entry and management of game data in a very comfortable way, being able to export them and import them from a spreadsheet. Is there something similar here?

I have many more things that I would like to know, however these are the core and I would like to be sure that they are available in Unity before taking the leap. Maybe if the focus is 2D, should I go to GM2 because it's easier? I do not seek to polemize, if not recommendations.

Thank you very much!

 

1. UI can use scaling mode. Not enabled by default. Usually you'll develop only for portrait or only for landcape mode.
2. You just press a button.
3. Generally you can. Depends on what you're doing. I'd recommend to avoid unnecessary physics on mobile.
4. As far as I remember there is no built-in support for "pixelated" games. But I think there are assets for what you need.
5. Too implementation specific. If you know how to do it then it's easy. If you just starting to learn then it's going to be time consuming.
6. It's super easy to do HTTP requests in Unity, just use the WWW class.
7. I'm not sure what exactly do you mean by "push notifications"?
8. In Unity you have ScriptableObjects. Instead of tables you have files, which are instances of your ScriptableObject. You can look at each file as a table row.

And Unity is great for 2D and 3D.

 

Hi Zoran404! thanks for your answers

The truth is that I originally chose GameSalad, for the simplicity, because I did not want to deal programing with syntax and I preferred the drag and drop... I have a past "hardcore" in which I code in Assembler, but that was decades ago and now I'm old for that
Sorry, I forgot clarify this aspect and all my questions must be seen from that perspective
I know that when I move to Unity, I will surely lose this aspect, but I look for the simplest solutions and implementations for each one of the points that I detailed.

5- Respect to this, I'm looking for a simple implementation that allows simple turn base games, but without having to develop my own solution, if not use something that is already ready

7- These are push notifications:

 

Unity doesn't yet have its own approach to visual scripting. There are numerous third party assets available with wildly varying features and prices. Some like PlayMaker have been around for a very long time and have had support for them added to other assets.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=category:110
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/368 - PlayMaker ($65)

Game Maker 2 does have its own approach to visual scripting but there are no third party solutions to my knowledge so if you find the capabilities to be lacking or the solution not to your taste you may have no choice but to dive into the code or switch engines.

 

2) Switching platforms in Unity is extremely simple, you just make a change to the build settings window. Some platforms have additional SDK's required from outside of Unity in order to complete the build which you will need to install yourself. Steam specifically just uses regular Windows/Mac builds, but requires their own SDK to be integrated, which you will have to integrate into your game yourself (though there are lots of examples to be found that cover the basics).

3) Unity's physics implementation can certainly do it, though hundreds on mobile is a big ask and will require your game to be designed relatively lean.

5) Networking is a huge topic. There are several networking API's ready to use in Unity, one built in and several 3rd party, as well as related cloud services again both from Unity and from 3rd parties. What is required is learning the API you end up going with, and whether it is comfortable I suppose would depend on how good of a match the API was for your type of game.

For example, the high level networking API in Unity's UNET is designed to be a general purpose API for games where the players are moving around characters in a 2D or 3D game world. You may find the tutorials frustrating though if you are trying to build a card game and find little that addresses your game type. Even though the API can certainly do a card game easily, even much easier than moving around a 3D character, this may not be "comfortable".

6) There are 3rd party cloud databases available for Unity, and you have built in support for interacting with web servers and doing the usual PHP/MySQL thing.

8) I think most people right now use JSON for export/import. Understand that Unity has a huge Asset Store that you can use to extend the capabilities of the engine. I'm sure you can find an asset to handle whatever format of data you want. I know there are a good number that cover XML and CSV. CSV is pretty simple, so I just rolled my own CSV script.

As for entering data directly into the editor, that is usually done via the Inspector to fill in serializable parameters on the various components of gameobjects in your game.

 

Just start. It's free to download and look in the learn section: https://unity3d.com/learn or many youtube vids.
The only reason you're asking at all is because you are feeling safe with game salad. But as Unity doesn't cost anything to get started...

Just Start

 

thanks, I will look at it more closely, my question is whether from a tool like this, I can address all points of my query, or if it serves some things, but I must "roll up" on others ... that is, need to invest time to know C#, which I do not doubt is more powerful, but I do not want to deal with something complicated if there are simpler options that give me what I need

 

OK, thanks

Ok, this despite being 2D?

OK, but there are no tools or assets designed for a turn based game? something that does not require that everyone who is going to make a game of this type, should develop their own tool for this?

tables in GS look like this: (coincidentally this image corresponds to Construct 3, others of the platforms I want to evaluate)

 

Yes, I know and maybe you are right, but my time is limited and I would like to find the right tool, I know I will not be able to deal with long projects and I do not want lost my energy programming the code... but I do not want to give up these points that I mention , that's why I do this research meanwhile end my current project in GS

 

That doesn't really change anything

The tools are all there. Your question wasn't about if the tools exist, but about how comfortable you'd be using them. The tools and instructions for the UNET HLAPI primarily are designed with real time multiplayer in mind. You can certainly make a turn based multiplayer game with the same tools, but you're probably going to have to run through a real time multiplayer tutorial along the way and apply the concepts to your turn based game.

Unity though is far less about what is included in the engine than what is in the ecosystem. Don't get hung up on what the engine can do out of the box.

Unity doesn't have that built in. Again, I'd bet there is something like that on the asset store.

 

Everything is turn-based. We just think slower than the computer.

 

There are solutions for the networking part, most popular being PhotonNetworking. You'll have to search on the asset store for a template project that implement game features which you are looking for, they will specify which networking solution they require. While there are a lot of them out there it's likely that you wont be able find exactly what you need and you will probably which to extend that template project.

As far as I remember it's not built in. But you should be able to find assets for this.

It's possible to get the stuff you need from the asset store and make any type of game using drag-and-drop without writing a line of code yourself. But since there have been a lot of poorly made games built that way you'll notice people calling those types of games "asset flips", this is mostly because they use the same art assets.

As you can see most of the things you wish to make will require getting something from the asset store and this is a thing you'll have to get used to.
On the other the side knowing how to code will greatly help you improve your games or help you create new types of games.

 

Ok I see, thanks

 

Only need asset store if you cannot code.

 

Or cannot make music, sounds, 3D models, UI textures, etc, etc

 

No. Only if you cannot code. The rest will still work with varying quality, but bad code will not. Here is hoping Unity will address it.

I made my own visual scripting tool anyway for inhouse.

 

Visual scripting usually means very bad coding. I haven't seen a single visual system which could generate a decent code. Not even the Blueprint in the UE4.
And usually visual scripting means they replace the basic coding objects with draggable objects on the screen without real invention.

 

That's neither here or there is it?

 

TBH, it's so easy to get into Unity and it is so flexible you can probably answer all of your questions within a couple of hours. Just scanning them (with some interpretation). Most of the stuff on your list is available, and some things (2D sampling, for example) might require an asset from the asset store.

The cool thing is that the Unity editor is extremely easy to customize, so you might find that creating features list entry interfaces can be made pretty quickly, and even be made relatively foolproof.

 

I don't need the asset store, but there's plenty of stuff like Final IK that I'd rather not spend hours coding and testing myself when I can just invest the minimum wage cost instead.

 

I refer to visual scripting, that non-programmers will only require a visual scripting system from the asset store.

 

However, sometimes you end up spending a bunch of time debugging an asset. The only problem with the asset store from a dev perspective is that there is not real quality control. They are produced by coders of all skill levels, which can become very apparent once you find that an asset is close-but-not-quite to what you need and requires modification, only to be riddled with dependencies that aren't obvious that have side-effects.

 

Well yeah, but I haven't had a single issue debugging an asset that I actually researched beforehand. There are some assets I've bought that I had to debug, but there hasn't been a single time that's happened where it wasn't an expected outcome.

 

Hi, thanks for all answers
I have no doubt that everything will be possible in Unity, however, my question is how simple everything will be, considering that I come from an engine that makes everything as simple as GameSalad.
This added to that my main objective will be the realization of 2D games, it could be that Unity will be "big for me" and have to find a more simple solution like (please d´not kill me) GameMaker2 or Construct3?

 

Game Maker 2. It costs less than Construct 3 while providing more features and more supported platforms.

 

Undertale was done in Game Maker. It's proven stuff.

 

Indeed. Undertale was crazy successful.

http://steamspy.com/app/391540

Commercial games have been made with Construct but my research hasn't turned up anything more successful than these.

http://steamspy.com/app/332250
http://steamspy.com/app/334190

Basically Construct is an engine for hobbyists. Just about everyone who is serious seems to ignore it.

 

So was the absolutely stunning Hyper Light Drifter, iirc. I wouldn't be surprised if a good 50% of the 2D games I have on Steam were made in Game Maker, with the other 50% being Unity or hand rolled.