Should newbie start on Unity 5?

I have a small non-game (AEC/sim) project I need to complete in Q1 next year targeting web deployment (Unity Web Player and/or WebGL). Should I jump straight into Unity 5 beta and ignore Unity 4? Apart from the expected beta bugs, what are the downsides to doing this? E.g. I am confused a little by the asset store - are version 4 assets expected to mostly work with 5? Also is 5 similar enough to 4 that many version 4 tutorials and references will still be reasonably relevant?

 

Unless you are a Unity 5 pre-order customer or a Unity Pro subscriber, then you won't be able to start with Unity 5 anyways. You will, however, be able to transfer whatever you make in Unity 4 to Unity 5, I'm sure. If you don't feel like laying down $1,500 to start your game, go with Unity 4. U5 will probably be released by the time your game is complete anyways, and you'll be free to upgrade then. I wouldn't ever pay money to start out on something you're not sure can make a return. People pay $1,500 for unity once they know they can make that money back, plus some. Until then, indie has plenty of features to offer.

 

Thanks for the advice, and I hear what you're saying about the indie version, but I should have mentioned that I've already factored Unity Pro pricing into the budget. It's a commercial AEC/sim project, not a game, so I don't have to wait for a game release to see a financial return. I'm not sure if it's worthwhile me investing time learning U4 when I could just go straight to U5, but I also don't want to be caught out not being able to leverage Asset Store assets in 5 (if that's even a valid concern).

 

You should be able to use any asset withing U5 that you would use in U4.

The problem, here, is that you're wanting to jump into a BETA version of a program to make a commercial project. UT highly discourages this and recommends that you use the latest stable release, which would be Unity 4.6. I promise you, man, I tried to run the 4.6 beta (when it was in beta), to create a game, and I thought to myself "Nah, it won't bug out on me.".. I was wrong. It bugged out horribly and I had to keep waiting for them to update their betas so that I could continue development, which ultimately lost me days and even weeks of development time. And in the end, there was nobody to blame but myself since there were huge disclaimers, written in bold font, on the Beta download page, stating that the beta was not intended for production purposes lol.

Long story short, ALWAYS go with the stable, tested, version of Unity if you are planning on making a production project. You'll thank me later lol.

 

Makes good sense, thanks.

If I knew U5 would be officially released in Q1 2015 to coincide with my project deadline it might make the decision clearer, but I guess there's no guarantee or official word about a release date yet.

Can I easily port from 4.6 to 5 at a later date?

 

This has been the general way that Unity has worked ever since I've used it. I can't guarantee that your project will update correctly, because I simply do not know. But I do know that I've never updated unity and found any incompatibilities, so I'd say it's safe to assume that you'll be fine.

 

Awesome, thanks for your advice Epictickle.

 

No worries inteja, and good luck on your journey! Don't hesitate to PM me if you run into any issues or anything, I'm always glad to help ^_^

 

Thanks again Epictickle. This is also my first interaction with the Unity community so thanks for the positive and reassuring first experience.

 

Some assets don't work with Unity 5; it will attempt to upgrade what it can, but it depends to some extent on authors making sure their assets are Unity 5 compatible. Art assets would generally be fine.

--Eric

 

@Eric5h5 , Do you know these limitations off hand? I know that U5 is doing a massive shader overhaul.. Will some shaders for previous versions become obsolete? I also know that lighting will be overhauled.. Will lighting assets, such as Enlighten, become obsolete with this? Just trying to get a hold on what assets I need to start preparing for upgrade lol

 

In terms of the asset store and U5 compatibility, I'm less interested in art assets (my project is almost 100% custom / from scratch models) and more interested in scripts and shaders.

 

Scripts should almost always work. Even if a function within the Unity API has been depricated, it'll still be there, and still be useable.. It'll just be marked with the Obsolete attribute, and will throw a yellow warning in your console whenever you use that specific function. The warning message that throws will USUALLY tell you exactly how to upgrade to the new and improved function.