Unity 2.0 Coming This Summer!

Looks very cool. Its going to be a happy day when this comes out.

 

Arf, arf <me, salivating hard....

Are you sure it is a good idea to show this right now to us, poor still-1.6 users? Do you know Pavlov? Our stomacs will suffer still more...

Seriously, It will be a really nice default demo for sure. Great job, OTEE and other helpers.

 

Yoggy (Forest) is my hero. So's that other 15 year old Jedd (aka BronxBomber).

I hate them both, their seeming endless set of skills. :wink:

PS. If I'm three times older, shouldn't I know three times MORE stuff, rather than 2/3 LESS stuff?

 

I don't know.. I remember myself at 15 reading "Advanced Graphics Programming in C" where one of most advanced thing was "Bresenham's line algorithm"..

I wish I had Unity and internet instead!

 

Seriously. At 15 I had a Commodore 64 and no internet. I'm surprised I knew as much as I did.

This is not to take away from what kids are achieving these days but it IS a much better environment to learn in. The information and resource overload is unreal.

 

Yep, I remember checking the Library weekly, hoping/praying that a good programming book would arrive so I could learn SOMETHING. They didn't really have programming books in bookstores around me back then. No Barnes and Noble and Borders, much less the internet.

Plus, I used to walk to school through 5 miles of deep snow. (Actually, that was my Dad.)

Anyway, it will be SO hard not to buy this right away. I do want to make version 1 pay for itself, though. Can I finish my game without switching over? I'm not sure.

 

When I was 15, my parents would yell at me for asking questions about anything and tell me to shut up and watch TV. Unity is great at inspiring you to make up for lost life!

 

Funny, when I was 15 I was making games in Unity 1.6.2.

How times have changed since then, eh?

 

DELETED!

 

Let's all go watch the video again.

Imagine yourself painting huge swaths of trees and vegetables. You are caressing the landscape, sculpting sensuous terrains. You are pinching off entire planets with ease. Your "friends" appear in the virtual clubhouse, and you serve them virtual beverages. Your paypal account steadily increases as they enjoy your virtual furniture. Dynamic shadows impart a subtle moodiness to everything.

 

...and we're all gonne be making landscapes like Bob Ross did.

"Maybe there's a little tree living down here...juuuust like this."

"Now I tell you what - let's get crazy!"

 

When I was 15 I was playing on the Fairchild 'Channel F' videogame system.

http://www.cedmagic.com/history/fairchild-channel-f.jpg

 

As with all game engines, content will be the bottleneck.

 

When I was 15, I was listening to Pink Floyd and King Crimson, wearing bell bottom pants, and--ahem--having encounters with a particular plant that twisted my perception of time and space.... (It wasn't broccoli, either.) Bronxbomber, Moldorma and Yoggy are on a much more productive path.

 

Thanks a lot. I left your demo on the screen, with the green guy's face up close, and went on an errand. When I awoke my computer later, suddenly there he is, big as life, singing/praying/whatever from my speakers, and scaring the living biowaste out of me!

 

Ah, feels good to get off topic in this thread. Less painful that way.

terransage, I'm betting you are about 36-38?

eddie_y. I have no idea what that is, but it looks "totally awesome!" Seriously, I love that type of hardware, all chunky.

I made this "platformer" on the Apple ][e that used some clip art like graphics and it was supposed to be real time, only you could watch every frame slowly redraw. (It was HIRES afterall.) Didn't know about buffering and all that. It was kind of psychedelic watching the shapes redraw... I remember discovering GOSUB after exclusively using GOTO for so long, too. That was a BASIC revelation.

It's very cool that you younger guys can start with such a huge infrastructure out there for learning and then to also have landed in this spot which is frankly very nourishing and nurturing and you're developing on Unity to boot with all its instant feedback. Very cool.

 

Yeah, I know, we rock. But seriously, Unity is full of win. I'm glad to have run into it in my internet-travels.

 

I bet terransage is a little older. 36-38 would put high school graduation around 1987-1990 and bell bottoms were out by 1980 or so if I remember. Wow, I am going to guess mid to late 40s

Agreed. Unity is an awesome tool. It is nice you don't have to roll all your own drawing code before you can see anything besides text. I remember how exciting it was to see a line move around on a screen.

Can't wait till 2.0. I bet there is a lot of midnight oil being burned squashing the remaining bugs. Any speculation on the other 40 features?

 

Yep, Ifrog, you're right about the age there. I'm way off. He'd be 15 in 1984 by my calculations and that doesn't match up right at all.

 

ifrog said:

Very good deducting, ifrog! I'm 48. I watched the Beatles the first time they played on the Ed Sullivan show, watched the first moon walk, remember when JFK was assassinated, and said things like "Hey, man, don't lay that heavy scene on me!" (Well, okay, I never said that till now....)

I got into this whole game dev thing very late. My first computer was an abacus.

 

Phew! I thought I was the old guy at 45! Like terransage, I watched and clearly remember the first moon walk (though I was only 7) and worked my first punch card Wang computer back in high school that took place before many here were born (late 1970s).

The first computer I actually owned was an Apple II.

Groovy. Flared bell bottoms not so much, no, but I did own a pair of black low-cut "groove-boots". And disco still sucks, baby. Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Rush!!, BTO, Triumph and the like. Rock man!

 

When I was 15...

I was going dead shows... Stage diving and moshing at The Dead Milk Men, 7 Seconds, Smashing Pumpkins, They Might Be Giants, and Jane's Addiction shows - Building half pipes in every friends backyard and sk8'n swimming pools. Oh man I'm glad I was 15 when I was -- thanks for the sXe (straight edge) flash backs.

That reminds me... maybe that's why my hip hurts... diving into empty swimming pools with a skateboard.

When I was 8...
I taught myself BASIC on a TRS-80 color 2.

 

Hello over there! I am writing to see if you guys could just give us pricing info. Many users have been asking for months about upgrade costs, etc. I know that you guys are busy with the dev. of the software, but perhaps Tom could spend a few minutes of his time to give us that info. even if it was just a reply to this thread.

Would it also be possible for you guys to set up some kind of preorder system? I apologize if this is annoying to you, but the silence about certain things is deafening.

Thank you very much for showing us the stuff you have so far and I truly do look forward to the day I can start tearing into the new version. Thanks for your time.

Gary

 

This is why developers should refrain from saying anything until they're a week or so away from release. Nothing against you, gary, as this happens on other forums as well (blitzbasic.com is especially bad for this).

Announce a product too early and prepare yourself for endless badgering about release dates, requests for screen shots, pleadings for more info, questions about pricing, etc.

I don't think it's gaining anyone a darned thing to announce 2.0 so far in advance of release.

 

So let's learn from Apple and cover ourself into a coat of silence...
(some people say this is one secret of Apples success)

 

Sorry. He has granted you a free carbon offset.

At 15, I was completely controlled by a psychoactive hormonal imbalance. I'm better now, really...

 

Are you always in a bad mood?

I'm quite happy they announced it, complete with a list of main new features. Even though I can't access these now, I can plan for their use in upcoming projects and/or versions of current ones.

 

It just would be nice know how MUCH it will cost so I can plan for it... Sheesh! Yes, of course I would like more info. about the upgrade features... When someone wets your appetite you want more... plus it never hurts to ask

Cheers,

Gary

 

One thing that I suggest OTEE doing in the next major release is to slowly give out new features. For example, instead of putting online all those features at the same time, one week they mentioned shadows, the other one they mentioned the network, etc.

I find that a regular release of info makes me much more interested in a product. For example, this release of modo they said "ok, this is what is coming out" and then each week there was a sneak preview of each of the features. I found myself going every friday to their page and see the little movie previews and also hearing their podcast every friday (which I got "hooked on" and continue to listen every friday).

Regards,
Afonso

 

I was simply making an observation. Just because my opinion runs contrary to yours it doesn't mean I'm angry or upset.

 

Tease, Tease ;-)

 

Pretty!

Does the editor do grid snapping yet?

 

It's always dicey to announce stuff early on (too little? too much? too soon? not soon enough? guaranteed, someone somewhere won't be happy). Coming from a company where we wouldn't announce anything until we announced it all I can say that we're at least offering y'all some information, even if it's not all of it just yet. We're not perfect (yet!) and will continue to take in the feedback and do better in the future (both far and near).

For the record, I'm personally quite used to the "badgering" so I'm not worried about that so much, keep it coming if that's your vibe. I say that because hiding it would only fool us into thinking what we're doing is peachy keen with y'all, if that's not the case then it's likely best that we hear about it so we can adjust/change in the future. As always the key thing is to make the criticism constructive which I think is being done here, so thanks for that!


Edit: and dang Nicholas! I know what's coming and I still look at those screenshots you're posting and must say "Hot damn tamale that looks good!".

8)

 

As one of the coders who who's social life has been focused on at least making Unity not claim YetAnotherGirlFriend, I can say that the badgering is kinda nice... When you're working at 3AM, it's actually quite nice to know that people are looking forward to the final results...

 

Nicholas: Please tell me that's one of the demo scenes included with 2.0 (pretty please!). The foam at the water's edge is something I definitely would like to study (amongst other things).

 

You can do this pretty darn well in 1.x by writing an Editor script that is assigned to an easy keystroke, like s or control-s. So then when you press "s", your little script runs and "rounds" the selection's position to then nearest grid value.

Further reading:
http://unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Selection.html
http://unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/MenuItem.html

Cheers,
-Jon

 

I know and I'm currently doing that. Instead, I would prefer that the editor did it natively so I could do really cool things like change the grid size without editing and recompiling a script file. As an added bonus, I wouldn't have to hit a key combination every time I move something.

 

*cough*iPhone*cough*



--Eric

 

Well, the early announcement of 2.0, along with announcement that a Pro upgrade now earns a free 2.0, achieved two things:

a) Got me to stop waiting and buy Pro. (I'm enjoying my game's new reflective floor!)

b) Got me to prioritize gameplay work over GUI. I was going to build my GUI next, but now I have the info to help me decide to leave that for 2.0 and work on other tasks now.

So even without knowing a date, it's been helpful to know what we know.

 

I'm curious, will there be tree/bush/grass assets included with the terrain generator, or will we have to supply our own foilage?

 

Look I am not trying to badger/annoy anyone! Take a look at some companies in the way they communicate. I think you guys have been doing a pretty good job, but there could be some improvement. I know that the team is small and is working hard. Since Tom is the Evangelist maybe he could find a way to give weekly or bi-weekly updates on the development. Sort of the way Luxology was building the frenzy for the release of Modo 301. You guys have some similarities in that you are both small companies creating AMAZING 3d DCC applications, with a rabid fan/user base. This boy(38 year old) being one of those rabid fans/users!

I know you guys want more users so you can grow the platform and make it even better and perhaps one day THE STANDARD on which small /medium sized studios create ALL their games and interactive applications.

You partly started the hype machine... then a long pause, with alot of quiet as we approached a 'soft' target for release. As I stated above, IMO, it would be great for 'little' updates, perhaps a preordering system in place, so the second the floodgates open for you guys you are getting paid by the preorders on credit cards all over the world and the user base won't have to wait long for the email letting them know they can go and download it!!!!

Anyway sorry for the long post and I, and probably everyone here is VERY appreciative of what you guys have done and are doing! I for one look forward(in the near future) to toasting you guys on another top notch release of one the COOLEST DCC products on the market.

I'm done now...

Cheers,

Gary

 

I'll wait until the cows come home for the actual product. (It would be different if I was about to ship something, I'd want to know whether to hold up my Windows release or not.) But I was about to question the need to hold back pricing info. Surely that's pretty solid by now?

But now I've thought of some reasons why you'd legitimately want to delay.
- Want to make a splashy announcement at Unite.
- Don't want to have people focusing on the negatives (i.e. cost) when the positives (actual product features) aren't available yet.

Anyway, I've decided to wait patiently until mid October. If we still don't know the price by then, I'll wait impatiently for another month. After that, I might just tap my foot in an agitated manner, and look at you askance. Harsh I know, but you have been warned.

 

To me the OTEE guys are actually very reasonable,
I remember Garagegames announcing the Constructor back in 05/2005 ..
well it came out some 2 years later, and worst of all...it s*cks

And I'm pretty 'darn' sure OTEE will bring it out Unity 2.0 before or at the Unity Conference 2007
so yeah, the wait is almost over

Right ?

We have a pro Torque licence, we thought exactly 3 minutes about buying a Unity Pro licence.
Before,we have stomached 2y of torque development, artistically painfull and have re-made
everything with Unity in less then 30 days ( but no network-code)

nuff said

except that I would kill for a beta :twisted:

 

I also went the Torque route at first, but was never able to even get it up and running, because I seemed to have some necessary files missing. My cries for help went unheeded--no response whatsoever--so I jumped over to Unity and OTEE, who were friendly and responsive right from the start.

Actually, I don't mind if 2.0's release is delayed a little bit, since I got sucked into a vortex of bills and need to regroup. Though the latest screenshots sure are tantalizing!

I'm holding back on creating assets and focusing more on gameplay/scripting until I can re-optimize with dynamic shadows and the terrain generator (and Cheetah's new lightmap capabilities).

Aras wrote:

I still like those groups (along with more "alternative" groups of the '90's and 2000's, like Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Beck and Radiohead), but I spend all my time tinkering with Unity nowadays. Instead of going out to clubs, the Unity Community is my new social life: No cigarette smoke, no blaring music drowning out the conversation, no drunks trying to pick a fight with me....

 

I actually now hope that 2.0 is delayed a bit more.

Since I haven't got that much work left to do until I have an alpha of my title,I've decided to upgrade to Pro. And I'd hate if they release Pro before I get my rebate/upgrade code - don't want to miss out on the free upgrade deal.

So, another piece of evidence that the early announcement works - another Pro customer.

 

Well, GG is not someone that we should take as a good example . They have a highly overhyped product, which sucks, and their interaction with the community also seems kind of crappy...

As someone said in the forum, it is more important for 2.0 to come out right than all buggy, and if OTEE has to postpone the release I think they should (although I confess that it sounds like Unite will be around 2.0). Apple did the same thing with Leopard, and I'm glad for it.

I just think that if they change a bit their "marketing strategy" when releasing the product, they could profit from that, by having the customers drooling for "this week's treat".

Regards,
Afonso

 

I guess that's part of being a small start-up: You assume we actually have a "marketing strategy"...

And we're much to busy just getting U2 done for us to really sit back and come up with one....

 

I guess I feel that if you guys are going to showcase lighting and terrain and shader effects, you could also disclose basic workflow improvements as well. Those are actually of much greater value to people who are trying to get actual games and products done. I'm not trying to be an ass, and I apologize if I come off like that sometimes, but it's an area of concern for me.

I've asked about grid snapping and other things and I get the cold shoulder and instead we get a screenshot of shader effect #276. I mean, the sizzle is great but we gotta eat the steak eventually and I'd prefer that it wasn't raw.