To buy or not to buy? That is the question.

Hello all;

I am a Windows based user Not a mac guy, never have been, HOWEVER with that said, Unity looks to be an amazingly solid dev platform for games and edutainment.

So I put a couple questions to you. Firstly, Is Unity better than Garage Games products... Namely Torque Game Engine Advanced. In respects to current gen technology / visuals? It appears to be but alas, I do not have a mac to try it on.

Secondly, as I said above I am not a MAC guy at all, but I would consider buying a Mini Mac for developing on / testing our products created with Unity. So would a Mini Mac Dual Core 1.66 with 1 - 2 GB of memory run this product? All 3D art assets will be done on my PC, since I have the software purchased there.

Oh and Thirdly, as far as the license goes, if I purchased the PRO engine for my company, can my employees use the engine also, or do I need to purchase seats for each employee?

Finally, how do multi products work?, in respects to making them.... Can I make as many games as I want with the pro license, with no further cost to me, ie royalties. A one time purchase, unless of course 2.0 comes out then I am sure there will be an upgrade fee of sorts.

I am sure these have been asked before, but I am really interested in purchasing this product and a Mini Mac, based on the responses I get on this form post.

Thanks for your time.

Take care.

 

Owning both a mac mini and unity I think I can give you a fair estimate.

We are of course biased here but Unity blows the pants off the competition currently, especially Torque yech.

A lot of us as far as I know model on a PC and run Unity on a Mac. And that model is great for testing on. If it will run on the mini it will run on pretty much any current mac well.

About the license I am fairly certain it is per machine. If you just have the one mac mini it doesn't matter who is using it at the time.

And yes it is a one time purchase with no royalties or hidden fees.

We look forward to seeing not only a new Unity developer but a new mac user.

 

As far as not being a Mac guy, I'd just like to say that up until 2.5 years ago, I wasn't a Mac guy either, and in fact I disliked Macs a lot (being only familiar with the old kind of Macs that ran OS 9). But now it's what I use 100% of the time. I didn't get it for Unity though, but after I discovered it, I was 10X as glad that I got a Mac. Get Unity. It rocks.

--Eric

 

If you are interested in starting a game easily and getting it somewhere fast, Unity beats down torque with no contest at all. You will be surprised how easy it is to create things once you grok the workflow.

Looking at the torque engine advanced screenshots it appears that there isn't really anything it does graphically that Unity can't (except possibly in engine shadows and terrain builder).

Thing about Unity is the positively awesome community that surrounds it. The devs are right here and you can talk to them, and they add something new, awesome and useful to the engine fairly often. Easier networking tools and a robust shadow solution are both rumored for 2.0.

I think if you buy a unity license you are allowed to use it on a few computers. Not clear on multiple users though. OTEE isn't really harsh about these kinds of things.

If you can, find a mac and give it a spin or even purchase a mac mini to try it on if you have the extra cash.

Of course, just about any mac less than 3 years old will run Unity itself pretty fast. The problem with the mac mini is the Intel GMA 950 integrated card. It will run most shaders but doesn't do well at all with large volumes of stuff being rendered so don't expect to be making a large scale game with lots of objects on it.

 

GWPGearWorx, I have been using computers since the days of Wang punch card systems and Unity is, by far, the best game engine I've ever had the pleasure of using. Yes we tend to be biased here, but no more than on any other forums I'd wager. I also do own TGE and have owned or tried almost all game negines accessible ($-wise) to indie and small game studios since the 1980s).

There is simply no comparison ... the workflow, asset management, UI, usability, ease of use, power etc are unmatched by any current engine on the market. I look at a game like Orbz (created using TGE) and know that given a team of 1-2 other folks we could knock that out in two weeks with Unity ... tops. Unity is a joy to use. You'll never look back.

And yes, with the license, there's no royalities or anything. Create games, sell games. You'll also find the support, friendliness and knowledge in these forums second to none. OTEE are great developers and we're all here to help.

I wouldn't hesitate for a second to go for it. At all. And if you really are concerned, grab the indie license first to get your feet wet then upgrade pianlessly to the pro version when ready.

Good luck and welcome!

 

I would like to add: You almost definitely want a Mac with a real graphics card. If youre spending $2200 on the software and computer, I would spring another $600 and get the second-lowest-end iMac that has a graphics card. I have this, myself, and can say that it's one of the best computers I've ever used, and for games development it'll beat the pants off a mini for the ability to run graphics similar to that which your client base will likely be able to run.

 

I've seen prettier things come out of Unity than TGEA, but that's just my opinion. I've seen some pretty impressive stuff come out of both. A lot of that has to do with the engine, but a lot also has to do with the talent behind the game.

If you have one Mac shared by two devs it's probably fine to have a single license. If you have Unity installed on several Macs all being used by different devs you should a copy of the license for dev. People who are just doing art or audio and not using Unity directly don't need their own license, but people working on code, building the scenes, etc generally do. Torque has similar per-developer license requirements.

You can release as many games as you'd like. There are no future royalties and there are no per-game fees. Torque requires a "commercial" license if you make over a certain amount per year or if you make a non-game product, so that might be worth keeping in mind.

As a disclaimer: I'm a fan of both OTEE and Garage Games. Unity is my personal favorite engine, but I"m also starting to be quite fond of Torque Game Builder - it's a fun little 2D engine, but it's still awfully rough around the edges.

 

Hi and welcome.
I cant speak highly enough of Unity. Ive run trials of Torque DarkBasic, FPSC and a few others (Jolt3d etc), but none of them would even get me started beyond the demos (except fpsc, which is not really a commercially usable engine IMO).

The documentation and tutorial content has doubled in the 12 or so months I've been using it, and the devs are really, really good at helping the whole community (here). I brought a low end g4 to get started, and buying Unity has been the single most inspiring thing I have ever done. These guys deserve full credit for making our dreams a reality.

My understanding of the license is that you can install the license on two machines, but only one instance of the license can be used at any one time. (the idea is you have a laptop and a desktop, you can switch from one to the other...)

email david@otee.dk for the final word there.

Unity is awesome, make no mistake.

AC

 

I voted yes, but the answer really comes down to -- how much C++ coding do you want to do?

I haven't seen TGE 1.5, but I own TGE 1.x and found it kind of useless. It's essentially "here's a ton of code that implements an FPS, but we're sure you can use it to make any kind of game -- enjoy". I'm sure that Torque is a very good deal for groups that (a) are building a Quake/Tribes clone or (b) have a bunch of C++ coders but can't afford to license a really bleeding edge engine (e.g. whatever the Unreal folks are selling).

If you're implementing something really close to what Torque does well, Torque is probably hard to beat short of getting a AAA engine. Otherwise, you're basically trying to convert someone else's codebase into your game; on the plus side you have a ton of functionality, on the minus side you have to figure out how it works, and live with their decisions. I'm not exactly sure how that's better than, say, using Ogre or Crystalspace -- which are cheaper (free), designed agnostically from the ground up, and are probably at least as advanced in terms of features. (I haven't looked really hard at them so they may have glaring shortcomings I don't know about.)

Unity isn't perfect, but it is designed from the ground up to be a general purpose development tool, and by and large it seems very well-designed. It also is aiming to target Wii rather than XBox 360, which seems like a better commercial choice, and its ability to run in browsers is also pretty compelling.

 

I think i'm not biased and Torque is something i would not even touch with gloves...

 

Everything here applies to me as well. All I can say is Ditto! OSX changed everything! and Unity rocks - I've reviewed LOTS of game engines and even written reviews on other high-end games engines. Unity's pipeline is the cleanest by far.

 

I have licensed the Torque Game Engine, the Torque Game Engine Advanced, and Unity Pro. I have worked quite a bit in all of these.

These other products cannot hold a candle to Unity.

Unity is a well-supported, full-featured IDE and game engine for cross-platform game development. Those "other products" are nothing more than complex programming libraries with low-end tools. When using them in a mid-sized project (around 20 people), we spent more time fighting and fixing the tools than we did implementing game features. (Beware! I think if TGE was dropped and TGEA got significantly more vendor support, it could some day be a real competitor. This is also the case with the young XNA tools. What has really made Unity shine is the vendor support from OTEE.)

The most significant downside of Unity is the lack of a Windows port of the IDE. (Though the rumor mill says this will change in the future.)

 

Thank you all for your opinions on this, it does look simply amazing and very intuitive to use. I need a solid engine, in which to create my games, I am sick of fighting with TGE / TGEA, what a mess.

I have one more question, in regards to INDIE or PRO versions of the license.... What are the draw backs to getting the indie and what are the key differences between the two versions?

Also if I purchase the INDIE license, how much is it to upgrade from that to the pro, which I will do at a later date?

Thanks again.

 

The features listed on this page state the only differences.
https://secure.otee.dk/shop/

 

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I understand that if you buy the indie license that and upgrade to the pro only costs the difference. OTEE staffers may correct me however.

 

There's actually a $50 upgrade fee (is it OK to correct if I'm not an OTEE staffer? ). Well, normally...they had a sale in January where the upgrade fee was waived.

--Eric

 

Wait, to go from Indie to Pro it costs $50 dollars ?

 

I think he meant it cost +$50 compared to buying pro outright

 

Heh. Deal of the century. No, I could have worded that better...you pay the difference between Indie and Pro, and $50 on top of that.

--Eric

 

It seems that there were two questions here for OTEE staff, here are the answers:

- When you purchase Unity (either Indie or Pro) the serial number can be used on two different machines. If for some reason you need to go to a third (you sold your first machine to buy a new one for example) then you can contact us (me at tom@otee.dk, David at david@otee.dk or our general sales email of sales@otee.dk) and we'll help take care of you.

- We do offer upgrade pricing from Indie to Pro and as folks have indicated the total cost works out to only $50 more than if you bought Pro right off the bat:

Unity Indie: $249
Unity Pro: $1499
Indie to Pro Upgrade: $1300

Doing the math you'll see that buying Indie then later upgrading to Pro means you'll spend a total of $1549. Let us know if you have any other pricing questions, either in this thread, via PM here on the forums or via email (use the addresses above).

Now, go get a Mac and buy Unity, it's a move you won't regret!

 

Oh, what's the correct way to remove a Unity license from a machine?

 

Thanks for clearing that up Tom.

 

podperson: uninstall the app. The trouble is that our licensing back-end needs to be notified of that removal and that's where you have to contact us for assistance so you can install and use on a new machine.