Unity 3.1 part 2

Did you watch the video? I'm talking about the spontaneous applause in the middle of the demonstration; it was a "hey, that's pretty cool" moment.

As for timing, here is a topic where people are asking for an official store, and a bit less than 3 months later it's delivered, which seems like good timing to me.

--Eric

 

No, i haven't had time doing so yet but i believe you.

I just had this itching in my brain that something like this isn't surprising, maybe i also was influenced by the weird experience from the nVIDIA presentation. The gaming industry breed some very, let's say, unique rituals. Anyway, don't take this too serious...i hate it, when i have to explain myself. ;O)

As for the timing, i mainly meant this for the V3.1 release. That's nothing which was burning on the fingernails. Beside of this you don't want to see my list of wishes which is getting more and more dust, whilst sometimes one of the ideas pops up out of the pile, i more measure them in years than months although i consider them beeing more reasonable.

 

to me unity was and will be used now for my games and that's all that matters

 

The gripes are not because of a dislike of Unity, they are because people care about it, and where it goes.

 

I think that, between the Asset Store and Union, this is worthy of being called 3.1. If you're using Unity more from a hobbyist point of view, it's not that big of a deal... but if you're wanting to eventually make money from it (and want more possibilities for revenue streams), this news is pretty big (and exciting).

 

yeah, thats the feeling, i personally apologize for my rant.

unity is awesome and i think that it will remain to be for long time, but my main point was in the newsletter they said big announcements, then it comes out with very few added to it, i dont care what version it uses, but if the announcement would be, its just a small bug fix release nothing important but with a new feature thats an asset store, it would have been ok, but they say big announcements and a lot of hype and then its just a small bug fix release.. i feel a bit dissapointed about the over hype because look i come from torque, a product which has been savagely false advertised and over hyped to death just to receive more crap over and over again.. i care about unity, and my fear its that it starts derailing with false advertising, and once that starts, its the beginning of the end, but that doesnt change that unity is still a wonderful tool, but more like worrying about what direction it takes from now on, i hope the company keeps that friendly and honest stand that makes them so good

 

Keep in mind that it's possible that for whoever wrote the announcement, maybe the Asset Store really is a big thing - I remember them talking about that more than a year ago, enthusiastically (and I share that enthusiasm). And it's also a big thing for quite a few of the users (a few of which have posted in this thread). Of course, having 10 cool new features makes it much more likely that everyone is happy - but what can one expect only 5 weeks after the big 3-release.

Of course, if you totally won't use the Asset Store ever ... it's disappointing. But I would be very surprised if the Asset Store wouldn't eventually become one of those features that people use all the time and take it for granted - much like the Asset Pipeline ;-)

 

I'm suddenly reminded of crunchy frog...

 

Unity haven't really been over-hyping. Consider that their PR Marketing team is based in UT's San Francisco HQ, in the US. This is bound to have an effect on the marketing approach given that Unity's HQ was previously based in Copenhagen, Denmark. I've noticed an increasing US influence in Unity's approach to its marketing since the move, so a tendency to talk up their product is to be expected. The US of A is, after all, the country that gave us the 'superlatively superlative' approach to sales: "Insanely great!", "Super awesome", etc.

It's rare for a single marketing approach to work well across multiple continents and hundreds of cultures, so it makes sense to focus on those cultures with the largest markets. That means the USA, the UK, Canada, India—the quick-witted among you will have already spotted the common linguistic link between those—and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, among others. Marketing is a cost centre, so it doesn't make sense to have a Sales Marketing team in every single country Unity is sold to.

One key advantage of San Francisco is that it's an ideal compromise location for a corporate HQ when you have customers in Asia, Europe and the US. So I fully understand UT's choice here. But it will have an inevitable effect on UT's corporate culture. I don't think UT can do much about this. The nature of UT's business means most people come across their marketing online, not in the physical world, so there isn't much point having multiple, nation-specific websites full of duplicated functionality. Moreover, you need to have some understanding of English to use a tool like Unity, if only because its programming languages, Javascript and C#, have their roots in English too.

So UT have chosen US English as their marketing focus. This is not an ideal solution, but a pragmatic business compromise.

 

@jashan
What's the Asset Pipeline?

What i like about this business is that if you've F***ed up product A, you just swap chairs and can work on messing up product B.

 

I think some forum members are probably a little guilty of raising expectations leading up to the release of 3.1. Nobody had expected you to code great features in just five weeks, but rather it seems some people had given the impression that you guys had some features that weren't quite ready when you released 3.0 and so you was going to release them with 3.1.

 

<scratches head> ... um ... not sure ... <scratches head more> ... I don't remember ... <scratches head even more>

 

taumel scratching as well, hey, let's do this in rythm, tschagatschakschukschagggaggahhschakakahh

Btw i recently ripped the sfx from ECO, weird game but i always liked the fascinating sounds and the atmosphere in there, here is an OGG recording of one of the sounds: ECO

 

Well, I find the Union interesting. 80% revenue is good, the promotion is done for a 20%, the market is (taking hp/palm and Nokia out of picture), virgin. Nokia and hp/palm have a big market share. Other markets (Android, Iphone, web, desktop) can still be addressed. So I like it.
Unity store is functional, I suppose it will be quickly populated, less clicks and searching are welcome, importing of new unity packages is now easier (even for built-in unity packages). I have no concerns on versioning.
A short remark to those dissapointed : Having unconsistent expectations is a sure way to feel disappointed. I dislike the lack of a decent 2d system (as promised) but it is said that it will be addressed in 3.x.
Regarding bootlicking and continiuous complaining : Not a healthy business relationship. If a company suits you, you buy its products. If not, try other companies. I dislike "fans" and "enemies". Such attitude seems more appropriate in soccer than in business.
Taumel, that's a nice demo you have there ! "Amiga!!!" ( I used to be a "fan" )

 

Would it be possible for UT to have a publicly displayed list of bugfixes that are in the pipeline. At least we would then know what to expect. It would save a lot of people coming on here and complaining about their bugs being overlooked and ignored and if a bug hasn't been picked up, people can genuinely come on here and have a rant. Information and good communication goes a long way to keeping people happy.

 

damn, i am "angry",i thought the sprite engine should be in 3.1...but...
yeah,this is just 3.01..

 

This is definitely a good idea if it's somewhat easy for the UT team to do. Is there a reason there's no public list of bugs? (Or do I just not know where such a list is?)

Would be cool if the bugs were publicly visible, and perhaps the UT community could help in hunting them. Might increase reporting as well. Hard to say.

 

From the Unity3D web site homepage:
Unity 3 is a game development tool that has been designed to let you focus on creating amazing games. If you've tried Unity before, see whats new in 3.0. If this is your first time, take a look around or try Unity for yourself.

Sure, you can use Unity for whatever you want, but unity is a game development tool.

Plugins are great. I never said they are not. But a thing like a visual shader editor is an important part of an engine and Imho these kind of features shouldn't be plugins but integrated in the engine.

 

@Piwot - Stimarco is right. Although it's true that Unity is first and foremost a 3D game development tool, Tom Higgins and others on the UT staff have made it clear that they encourage developers of non-game applications to use Unity. I would bet that of the -paying- Unity users, we non-game developers account for a fair portion of the Unity developer community. It would be very short sighted IMO of UT not to encourage non-game developers to use their product.

 

I would very much welcome if Unity finally takes the non gaming sector more serious but before this can happen they have to improve Unity on a couple of fronts. Until this happens, it will more be a showcase for this or that little project but it won't be convincing for really big and interesting projects.

<David can read this as well.>

@Ippokratis
Thanks!

 

Sure, why shouldn't they encourage developers of non-game applications to use Unity? As i said in my previous post, developers can use Unity for whatever they want, still unity is mainly a 3D game development tool. So i think it's normal that peoples make assumptions about unity from a "Game Oriented" point of view.

 

Guys,

First of all it very well known (public secret) that UT has 1001 things which they work on in the background and then release it when ready.

Is 3.1 worth version number 3.1 or 3.0.1 ? Dunno and won't comment on it.

Was 3.0 worth upgrade price: CERTAINLY if you use beast or umbra or ...


This is about the same question as asking of you need to upgrade a flash cs4 to cs5. It all depends if you need (or find nice fit for) the extra features.



I'm very confident that there will be a lot of nice additions to unity in the 3.x cycle. I for example am waiting for flasdh integration (scaleform would do to) in unity since 1.6.2. It hasn't arrived (yet) but that doesn't mean unity is bad

Ok the date for unite2010 was set and something had to be announced. Maybe that deadline made it difficult to announce HUGE features and not every feature has the same importance for everyone. But at least I think its not up to us to say if this release is 3.1 or 3.0.1

lets wait for 3.1.1

meanwhile, a couple of my friends are SUPERhappy with assetstore

 

Hmmmm

One big problem is that indeed people price their assets around 30% higher in the assetstore then in the real world, so its the consumer who is going to pay the 30% share for UT and consumers are not stupid, so this could be a very nasty thing for the assetstore. Soon everybody will know that you lookup in the assetstore, but BUY outside of assetstore.

Examples ??? Well the items shown on the keynote video are allready all raised in price.

+ big things like EZ GUI (http://www.anbsoft.com/middleware/ezgui/) is charged at $199 on the main site and $250 on assetstore.

bad bad bad ...

 

Not very community friendly :/

 

That's indeed going to hurt a lot, if everyone starts to do that. I was almost convinced to buy EZ GUI for example but if they go that route... it certainly won't be from the asset store.

I think the asset store is a great idea, but it will depends how it is used (and mis-used) by the community.

 

It's $200 on the Asset Store.

--Eric

 

Just checked and it really is $250 here.

If your price is not MY price then something strange is going on ...

 

Hey guys.
I hope sell some stuff in Asset Store. But, When I click below place, I cannot see anythings.

Is it bug? or something do wrong???

 

That's something that has been asked for previously.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/37444-Your-thoughts-about-reporting-bugs

What you are seeing with a lot of the users complaining is an long-standing undercurrent of sentiment in some quarters of the community.

Because of the past where it has come close to taking an Act of Congress for Unity to even admit there's a problem with core features such as networking, threading, etc... it's had a cumulative effect. That being a feeling that Unity has put product maintenance in the back seat and concentrated on feature-creep as the company has grown larger.

Some of you with low post counts might not be aware of all that. The x.1 release with a lack of bug fixes is only reinforcing those concerns.

A public bug tracker showing developer activity would go a long way towards healing that wounded trust.

 

VAT?

--Eric

 

Hrm was $200 for me as well. I'm in Canada. Perhaps this is due to regional currency differences? Anyone know if the prices listed are in USD or perhaps in local currency?

 

Well if they charge vat on top of it then assetstore is certainly a no go for a lot or european customers.

Even then, I am registered as company so shouldn't see vat + 250 dollars is 25% more then 200 so thats even not a valid vat percentage in europe

 

I got charged 25% VAT when buying Unity iPhone. Not sure if it is the Danish rate, or a cross-border rate.

 

25% is indeed valid, that are scandinavian rates.

But if you are a registered business entity in the EU you indeed shouldn't be charge for VAT, but you will potentially have to order manually

 

I also agree that Unity 3.1 is just a minor bug-fixing not even a major bug-fixing. I still having the same issues with Unity iPhone. It should be called 3.0.1 as others already pointed out.
Unity Asset store is a cool feature but it cannot be called a major engine upgrade. We can have basically have the exact same asset store on a web page, buy unity packages and integrate the same package easily. What would change this to the engine? Nothing, just one drag away (to import your new package).
The Union is also cool, but is not an engine feature (wish I've paid for). And is not even ready.
I know its a bit late to change 3.1 into 3.0.1 but right now there's a lots of Unity unhappy customers and lots of competitors laughing at this decision...
I just hope Substance tools don't make Unity version jump from v3.1 to v3.5.

 

Should 3.5 happen without proper mobile support (performant, multitouch capable UI) and major bugs like the "magnitude bomb" Texture2D.loadimage still be there by then, then you can expect that the hype around Unity will find its way to a rage around and against unity as they then would follow the Torque path of hyping "feature list capabilities" while not deliverying anything solid at the same time. just worse than torque ever was as we don't have sources here to fix the hyped hot air ourself.

But I don't hope that this is going to happen, the UT staff so far was reasonable


I agree on the versioning, partially.
It was no major engine enhancement but an editor enhancement.
Thats why I would prefer having engine and editor versions and releases split to prevent such trouble and to prevent enforced "engine upgrades" that do not even qualify as reasonable bugfix releases (as long as the texture load memory bug and the bugs in stripping of gui are present, no iOS release can be taken serious at all!).
It would also allow the various platforms to be updated independent of the others to fix pressing needs without forcing other platforms to release then too and at worst cause the frustration "Windows - OSX" only users expressed in this thread

 

Totally agreed.

 

I'm sad you're not happy about the asset store - to me, it's one of the most important things we have shipped in a long time; now there's a medium for people who want to make games without having to fullfill all roles of game production - sure you could go to a lot of different sites and hope what you bought would work directly inside Unity - if it didn't, you'd have to dig up a copy of some 3D package and hope you could fix it. With Asset store, you know it will work inside Unity.

So for new users, it's a huge thing. For existing users, it's a nice way to earn some extra money.

On the version number scheme, nobody ever said .x releases had to be angine features. E.g. the jump to Unity 2.5 was essentially the (rewritten) windows editor - there might have sneaked a small engine update in by mistake, but that was certainly an editor upgrade. It got a jump in the version number because we felt that it represented a substantial step forward of the Unity platform - to us, editor and engine aren't really separate things (just like we put a lot of effort into editing tools for a lot of the 3.0 features like lightmap previewing occ. cull).

I think this tea-leaf reading into whether something is a .x or a .0.x is a bit silly. It doesn't make sense to attach a lot of meaning to which digit gets modified - I'm actually thinking maybe we should simply switch into just using major.minor across the board and get this over with - after all, nobody says we can't do a 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, etc.

The Unity Editor is completely integrated in the engine (e.g. all editor text rendering ultimately goes through the engine's DrawMesh code) - so splitting up editor and engine releases isn't feasible and wouldn't make sense.

 

I don't know if I represent the other dissatisfied people but here goes.

I like features that help me do things (also bug fixes), I don't like things being already done for me.

Unity is middleware, I am already cheating my way into game making, I don't want more middleware for my middleware.

Still there are a lot of useful scripts and shaders out there, but for me, searching for them in the forums was just perfect.

So to recap.

The asset store:

1) Is not helping me do more things. And if I'm willing to give money for things I don't want to do, why don't I hire someone?

2) Is (for me) only slightly more convenient than searching the forum.

3) Does not accommodate donationware, which I think is the way to go for scripts and shaders.

4) Gives me the impression you waste development time on things I don't want, and that you are going in a direction I don't like.

 

I guess the asset store isn't for everyone... but it definitely will help many budding studios out, as well as bigger studios who want results instead of time wasted on reinventing the wheel everytime they need it. Worst case scenario for those that don't use the asset store... is that they won't use the asset store. But to those who do, it's a huge boon to editor extensibility, the centralization of common tools.... and a great place to know where to find some quality products. The only danger will be if the store is flooded with everything that is submitted... though some would argue that the concept of supply/demand will manage itself.

The Unity team members who have posted here have already mentioned that bug fixes were being worked on in parallel by another squad of programmers..... did I misunderstand this? If not, than that means the bugfixes are coming.... this was just an additional project to add to harness the power that Unity has... it's community. To me, this really shows that Unity understands what will set it apart from all other engines.....if they were to not use the community, I would call that a massive failure on their part. With the asset store, they've offered the community a way to generate income by improving their platform.... while at the same time they can earn revenue off of this as well. It's really win-win if you ask me.

One thing I find that would really help, is if we could get a public list of bugs... it would improve bug reporting, as well it would increase transparency to avoid inflammatory times like this in the forums. Unite2010 has ushered in a lot of ill will and naysaying. Regardless if it's founded or not.... the feelings are there and this should be addressed. Anyways I wouldn't be so quick to doubt their direction unless a staffer posts and says they will no longer be fixing bugs, but only changing the editor's colour every 6 months.

 

@nicholas: I'm happy about the Asset Store, its a nice addition

But I've to agree that 4-5 persons focusing on finally making my Unity 3 iOS investment working would have been preferred over it as a nice addition will always lose against "broken to the level of unusable" which reflects the current U3 iOS state more or less perfect as I had to backport all contractor work the past months aside of a single one which is near exclusively based around plugin.
The bugs are not new ones, most of them have been reported months ago and are real showstopper bugs like the bugs in stripping, the memory explosion when touching Texture2D.loadimage (be it from bytes or in form of WWW.texture), framework support thats that badly messed up that various previously working things not working anymore and that although mono was upgraded which is a clear indication of a Unity error and naturally the about a year old ongoing issue of reflection on iOS which is unhappily still not adressed and that although it has been broken with .Net 2.0 targets since day one (although its technically possible as monotouch shows)


I agree that 2.5 was an editor focused update.
But with U2.5 there was no forced along android, wii, iphone, XXX update, it was just desktop and that part has now changed considerably with the unified editor. This makes it at least to me quite a bit more annoying especially when releases happen that don't adress major issues that have been pending for months (not just since 3.0 release), which just causes frustration and grief, I'm not immune of that either as the toning down on my posting shows from "heated up enough to ripp of some heads due to 'big new thing' hype and then coming around with nothing major on getting it to work"
And I personally don't see this situation getting better with enforced updates due to required immediate updates for mobiles (bet for it, you will have to as android 2.3 + 3.0 in parallel + iOS 4.x and 5.0 in parallel will ensure that you will get in a near monthly release schedule, either that or you will get flame threads here pretty regularly as mobile platforms don't tolerate 3 months to market turnarounds for problems.

In addition I'm pretty sure that neither you nor anyone else of the UT staff is going to tell us that you internally don't have distinct branches or comparable for the editor as well as each of the 8+ distinct platforms you push ;-)

But I will wait and see on how this problem is tackled.
So far it seems like all are thinking that going the previous "we are just one platform" way of releasing is going to work out and its a matter of time before the "apocalypse" happens not a matter of if and I would date that at the intersection point of android 2.3 + android 3 + iOS5 release dates where it will show if you are able to be on time with the required adoption this year or hope for our goodwill again cause you are months late as the past two iOS upgrades

 

Just to make things clear, i don't really mean that i'm unhappy about 3.1, the asset store is quite cool, what i mean is that 3.1 with none of my iPhone bugs fixed... That's my only frustration.
If you understood something else, forgive me then.

 

So Photoshop shouldn't have plugins either? Every possible feature should be integrated into the engine, whether you need it or not? Nobody else can write half-decent code? (Also, middleware is "cheating" now? So essentially all modern games are made by cheating?)

I assume this isn't serious.

Why don't you just buy something that already exists? It's far cheaper than hiring someone. Pay $20 for something that is sold to everyone, or $2000 for custom code that does the same thing. (Of course, sometimes you need project-specific code and have no real choice but to hire someone because there are no pre-made solutions, but on the other hand sometimes there are perfectly good pre-made solutions.)

OK, apparently that was serious.... You get an exact list of all contents (including previews for models and textures), everything's organized into categories and you can see other packages at a glance, reviews, ratings, screenshots, automatic upgrades, a central download manager for all UnityPackages, consistent payment interface for everything...and that's only "slightly" more convenient? Sorry, but no.

Sure it does. The author makes it free, and has a link in the description to his site, where you can donate if you like.

You're not the only customer. Unless you've hired a team to write an engine just for you, there will always be features you don't want or use. Lots of other people do want them and do use them.

--Eric

 

@nicholas, don't worry, I am very grateful for the asset store. I am sure others feel the same way. Revising the update, I feel it was an extremely good update, which is definitely worth the .1!

 

I swear I meant to put cheating in quotes as well. Anyway I had models and textures in mind when I wrote that and not scripts, should have made that clearer. So yeah Photoshop should have plugins, but I could live without templates for it

That isn't my experience. I once wanted a dialogue engine. I found one. It cost 100$ and I didn't really like it. It did more things than I wanted, and the ones I wanted not in the way I wanted. I paid someone roughly the same amount to write me a (admittedly much much) simpler script that did what I wanted. So yeah I can't hire someone with 20$, but it seems I can't buy anything from the asset store either...

Still, obviously there are good projects out there that are worth the money or are free (most of them aren't on the asset store yet though..).

But that's not the point I'm trying to make. I feel about the asset store the same way I feel about amazon's one click order. It's making something really convenient that I'm rarely going to use (I shop from amazon twice a year and I go over all the steps anyway).

Since I don't care all that much about downloading and purchasing assets and I don't do it often, yeah it's slightly more convenient *for me*. Also, I'm not planning to sell anything on there.

Not really. I'm not saying optional donations, I'm saying that you have to donate to get the asset. Like that motion blur script.

Well, obviously. But does that mean I should say nothing when I'm dissatisfied with something?

 

No, but...is it actually accomplishing anything? There are some things in Unity that I don't care about, but I can see why other people would, so I don't waste time complaining about them. I reserve my complaining for things that I think are actually bad or broken.

--Eric

 

Fair enough, I probably have said more than I should.

Peace

 

for a complete noob in 3d modeling like me, the asset store is great thing. I hope to see alot more stuff on it.

 

I can't see, from a serious developers standpoint, why you would ever use 3rd party assets for your products that weren't explicitly tailored and managed throughout their creation - such as employing the services of an outsourcing studio. I've worked on a range of games from next-gen down to little iPhone games and never would you consider just slapping in someone elses work that has been finsihed and done and up for sale without you being able to direct it's creation for your project.

Every game is soo unique in terms of content and the context of the content that these "asset stores" (Turbo Squid comes to mind) are close to useless if you're serious about your products and serious about the image your products paint for your studio.

I can see two scenarios... one is the 'quick buck' contributor that pumps out garbage (from a commercial point of view) that no serious studio would use. The other is the serious artist who puts some very good assets on the store which are too expensive for noobs/indies but not tailored well enough for a serious studio, who would most likely contact the artist for specific modelling tasks after seeing his work.

Yes - if you're a noob or want to slap a prototype together I can see the benefit and principle of these sites. But I don't think this justifies an engine middle-ware company trying to integrate this. Let noobs/prototypers get their free models from elsewhere... please spend time on the important things such as a rock solid enigne for us to release games to market on. iOS seems to have some problems? Memory leaks? Stripping bugs? These are very important in such a competitive market and contrained platform where memory and product size are paramount. These are more important than letting begginers share a .unitypackage file.

...all just my opinion of course, I'm not running the show


On a related note... is it possible to license 2.6 Pro and iPhone 1.5 any more? This thread, and others, and the fact that I don't believe that "Shaders Must Die" at all has led our team to feel far more comfortable with 2.6. So can we license older releases anymore?

 

urgrund,

I think you may have missed the mission statement. It's widely accepted that Unity is a 3D engine for hobbyists. Most hobbyists can't afford to have models custom made for them. Custom made models can cost 10x as much as marketplace models.

Unity Tech wants their engine to appeal to hobbyists. The store will be a part of that plan.