Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Shiva does iPhone publishing for free

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by taumel, Oct 10, 2008.

  1. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    No additional costs, you just need the normal app. I would have loved to see the same in Unity.

    -> http://www.stonetrip.com/
     
  2. aaronsullivan

    aaronsullivan

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2005
    Posts:
    986
    Well...

    It is more expensive to begin with, but not as expensive as pro AND the iPhone Unity.

    I am impressed that it's available now. The part I don't quite get is that it is suggested that there is a runtime to put on the iPhone or iPod Touch... a player. I was pretty sure that Apple wasn't allowing "players" that execute code. Sort of a gray area, though.

    It's cool they have a tutorial section with some videos in there, but the site navigation is a nightmare. A Lua-like language is for scripting, but the one scripting example in the tutorial has no code, and it takes about 15-20 steps to do something that is possible in about 3-5 and using one line of code in Unity. :?

    Looks like some good competition overall, though. Looking closer I'm also a bit skeptical about the support for using the functions of the iPhone. It seems to be all about this exporter, but no mention of... supporting ANYTHING the iPhone offers. No mention of accelerometer support or even multi-touch. Hmm... maybe it just interprets one click/drag/release at a time?
     
  3. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    Well, first i would differ that Unity isn't Shiva and the other way around. There are pros and cons for each tool and in the sum i favour Unity (as a dev tool) but this deal simply is what i was hoping for with Unity in first place, second would have been a less expensive and more reasonable version seperation. I'm happy that they went this way because it seems that it already needs more competition here.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the Unity version is the smoother and more capable solution in a whole but the question is do you really need this and what are you aiming for. Maybe an eventually not so perfect solution is already enough for your projects needs and the price is much more important to you.

    Shiva Unlimited is said to offer full features and this one sells for €169,00. If you already own the tool it simply comes for free.

    The unity solutions, for new users, range from $600 to $3000 (+VAT, without asset server) and i guess you also have to do multiple updates (tool and publishing options) when major updates will show up.

    Saying so i have not tried out the iPhone option yet.
     
  4. Aras

    Aras

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2005
    Posts:
    4,770
    Isn't that against license agreement of iPhone SDK? It basically disallows any interpreted code (I know, quite a stupid requirement, but it's there).
     
  5. aaronsullivan

    aaronsullivan

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2005
    Posts:
    986
    Yeah, I don't get this whole thing. Either they got some sort of special agreement (unlikely) or they are flying by the seat of their pants a bit hoping Apple won't care, or there are some details that are lost in the marketing.
     
  6. Aras

    Aras

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2005
    Posts:
    4,770
    ...or there's no Lua for the iPhone version.
    ...or they implemented something that precompiles Lua into ARM assembly (quite similar to what we do with Mono in fact).
     
  7. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    I've followed the forum a bit since the iPhone release and i found it quite interesting that the iPhone publishing option lead to more than a 30% increase of the userbase (registered users in the forum). So at least it seems to drive the interest in a dev product, i haven't followed the numbers here.
     
  8. MatthewW

    MatthewW

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2006
    Posts:
    1,356
    To revisit the earlier discussion about Lua and interpreted languages--as far as I understand it you can use interpreted languages. What you can't do is download and run interpreted code (ie your app fetches new scripts and runs them).
     
  9. mindlube

    mindlube

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2008
    Posts:
    993
    So I doubt the iphone CPU can run interpreted scripts fast enough for most games. Even bytecode compiled scripts it probably has trouble with.

    Also see section 3.3.2 of your iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. I am no lawyer, but after re-reading that, I would say that interpreted code is a definite grey area! So are "plug-in architecture", according to that clause.

    Thanks UT for making the Mono script compilation for iphone. It rocks!
     
  10. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
  11. drunknbass

    drunknbass

    Joined:
    Dec 4, 2008
    Posts:
    52
    i have been reading discussion on oolong engine list about lua, and how unity actually converts it at compile time to asm but that is just to 'be safe' since this is a grey area. seems oolong and sio2 both use lua and there are numerous games live on the store so i guess its not a problem.
     
  12. G-o-D933

    G-o-D933

    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2008
    Posts:
    185
    lua is executed in compiled bytecode, and as most of the stuff in shiva is just called through shivas api, your lua scripts wont do much more than controlling everything.

    i don't think that shiva programs would run slower as unity programs, but lua's syntax is.... well... i'll stick with unity ;)
     
  13. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    They've finally released 1.7:

    -> http://www.stonetrip.com/
    -> http://www.stonetrip.com/release-informations/release-information.html

    *snip*
    In this release we have added some new features including :
    - A live preview for Materials, Particles, Trails and HUDs
    - A XML scripting API (with easy send and receive functions)
    - A layer support in the SceneViewer
    - A full LightMap control (export/import of UVs/Lightmaps)

    We have taken in account lot of your forum requests, corrected lot of bugs and stability issues, added more than 50 new scripting functions, made lot of GUI enhancements and import improvements...

    We also made a free SDK that will be available in a few days, to let you embed the Ston3D engine into your own framework.

    A new version (2.5) of the iPhone Authoring Tool is also available, including all 1.7 new features : device and OS informations, geolocation and language management...
    *snap*
     
  14. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    Hey calm down, it comes for a fraction of the costs what Unity costs. It's a solution for small games, obviously you don't want to implement Crysis with it on the iPhone.

    It's a casual world we live in
    A sweet romantic place
    Beautiful people everywhere
    The way they show they care
    Makes me want to say
    It's a casual world
     

    Attached Files:

  15. Dreamora

    Dreamora

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2008
    Posts:
    26,601
    It looks really nice yeah :)
    Especially at the price.

    But looking at their page I remembered again why I decided against it originally: 8500€ to get more than 4 multiplayer sessions online was reminds me very much of Conitec with their A7 (or whatever the current version is) engine which especially attempts to force you to fork a grand if you want an acceptable resolution, working physics or usable multiplayer support.
     
  16. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    Some people aren't interested in building MMOs and then for €170 you might get all you need already.

    At the moment i would be more careful about that it's a *.0 release. :O)
     
  17. Dreamora

    Dreamora

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2008
    Posts:
    26,601
    I don't see how 5 concurrent multiplayer games of 8 players relate to an MMO actually, yet it still would require the Pro server as the Indie only grants you 4 sessions at a time.

    But I think this is a bit of offtopic. All techs have their benefits and drawbacks, otherwise I wouldn't own a little fortune in worth of game technologies, which is continously growing :)
     
  18. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    Hmmm, actually all the games i'm enjoying on my iPodTouch don't have a multiplayer function at all.

    In comparison not beeing forced to showing a splash screen seems to be the better option to me in this one. Anyway as you said, all have their pros and cons.
     
  19. Anim

    Anim

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2008
    Posts:
    289
    I just had a quick 10 minute look at Shiva.

    Seemed quite impressive at first but that declined the more I looked into it.

    Their web demos crashed firefox (espeically the car one). Had to reboot and reinstall the web plugin to get it working again. Then I got stuck in full screen mode and couldn't get out as the game crashed and locked up my mac (this is using their demos).

    I was surprised by the Smartphone and PDA deployment in their blurb until I found in the downloads section they are greyed out as "coming soon".

    Seems that quality control is lacking and things feel rushed a bit which is risky if your in this as a business. None the less its good to have competition for Unity.

    One thing I was quite surprised at is the fast download times for their web3d demos.

    I think this is one to watch though.

    Geoff
     
  20. codepunk1

    codepunk1

    Joined:
    Jan 31, 2009
    Posts:
    19
    I own a copy of it, the importers where next to useless I could never get anything to import correctly into it. However I see they just released a new version 1.7 . I hear they improved the importer so I will have to give it another shot on the new version.