Unity 4 Details

If you don't look forward to it then don't do it.

 

UT, I am going to beg for this feature but WE NEED APEX CLOTH... the cloth we have is hard to manage

 

When did they promise this? Can you quote specifically.

 

16 Jun Unity Roadmap 2011

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/06/16/unity-roadmap-2011/

Also

I'm not sure if there is a definitive "it will be in 3.x" somewhere but I remember it was widely expected to be there.

 

From what you just quoted it doesn't look like a promise.

 

I'm aware of that

 

Judging on my past experience with GUIs maybe Unity is actually testing their new GUI; in which case we should be thankful.

 

You CAN get it for $1500.

 

Expect an email from us.

 

I'm sorry you failed to use any of the "half-assed" features for anything productive. Many others shipped awesome games with it and made quite a few 3.x -> 4.x upgrade costs in the process.

 

I'm thankful with or without the new gui

 

Here's example code I used in a talk earlier this year. Illustrates a way to do node based editors in Unity today:

https://gist.github.com/2935408

 

@AngryAnt So no upgrade to Mono . Does that mean we won't see an upgrade to that before 5.0 ? It seems unlikely to me you would upgrade language support outside of a major release.

Also, are we likely to see Voxel Terrains this release ? I saw no mention but I know the list is not comprehensive. I ask because it's been one of the most requested and voted for features in the Unity wish list for a very long time.

 

Hey AngryAnt, I know Unity 4 is around the corner, but would i be possible to update skinned cloth to accept collisions? I am having some funky issues with interactive cloth... I posted it in the support forum... thanks

 

It should get added automatically to your store account when you upgrade Unity pro.

 

I've upgraded all my pro licenses to v4.0. But where's the 200$ asset store thingy?

 

As much as I like conspiracy theories, Unity ninjas unfortunately cannot live on air alone yet. Our business revolves around actually selling our product. Exchanging dollars and euros for our time, you know.

 

I don't believe there was ever a single "promise" just a number of statements to the effect that it would be out first for 3.0 and then for 3.x and now for 4.x. For example : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/52432-Unity-3-GUI-and-Sprite-Engine

It's a tricky situation for UT because it was mentioned in blogs, maybe even some press releases (hard to know as they're no longer available), and in forums. Which would indicate that something was being done at the time that the UT staff were very excited about and wanted to share, which is great, but which has now rather backfired as the statements are misleading to those of us hoping to get a new GUI, in fact personally speaking that was the reason I upgraded to 3.0.

The problem is this. I (and I think others) appreciate Unity staff being on here and able to post freely and get excited about what they're doing, clueing us in on internal UT developments that we wont see for some time. I don't want that to stop. But at the same time when someone from UT states that the new GUI and sprite system will be delayed till 3.x and then reiterates with the statement that it'll be a free update, then that's pretty much what I expect to happen and treat as a tacit agreement. So folks (including myself) feel somewhat miffed when that doesn't happen. And of course if that blows up in UT's face then they're likely to jam on the brakes of all employee/user interaction which would suck.

So it's a rock and a hard place fur us as users wanting to give feedback and get our moneys worth, and for UT's staff wanting to support and be proactive and open with the community. Do we as users want a possible short term gain at UT's discomfort and forcing their issue but which is a gamble, or do we want a long term benefit by keeping schtum and not handcuffing the UT staff?

As much as I want a new GUI and sprite system I'd sooner have the staff and openness about what's going on inside of UT. But I still want to needle just a tiny bit to get just a teeny little more openness just about the GUI side. I have a bunch of questions there, for a start - What happened to that project? What's it's current status? Was it shelved? If it was, was it some political reason, conflict with a plugin developer? If not then is there any possibility of getting a more reliable roadmap than "It's delayed till 4.x", I'm sorry and I don't mean to be a pain but for an announced feature I hope you can understand why I don't feel that's quite sufficient an assurance right now.

 

Yes. While we claim the opposite, our insidious goal is indeed to steal the monies from the indies and give it to the mean AAA companies.

Seriously, dude?

 

When you complete a purchase containing a Unity pro upgrade, the voucher gets added to your account for use in your next store purchase.

 

Same here, the question is do we do that with Unity or with the competitors.

I quite like U3D - but I'm a little concerned that you guys don't have the *fire* to really compete.

While I'm happy that you've finally getting DX11 support... you're years behind the curve - and let's not even get started on the GUI system.

Finally calm down, a couple of you recent posts are tad defensive - which I suspect isn't going to go down well with *your customers* that are airing their grievances.

 

I'm not wanna sound like a fanboy but Unity dudes still need to sell copies. Yes. there's some promised stuff (like the new GUI system not delivered) but hey, it will come as a free upgrade later! Is NGUI/EZGUI not good enough? I think they both does a god job till the new GUI system arrives. Also, the GUI was almost rewritten from the ground up. You will easily get 10x speed improvements (depending on how you use it). There's also a lot of new stuff you didn't believe they will get into v4.0 (example Directx11 support). I mean, the upgrade it's truly justified.
If you cannot afford the pro license, get the free when v4.0 came out (at least you'll have a bunch of new stuff to play with) till you can get the Pro.

 

That does not seem to matter to most people. In any case we're apparently in the business of writing half-assed, over-priced software in order to milk the little guy for every penny and give it to the evil AAA's / investors / other overlords.

This hysteria rollercoaster has been fun, but I think some of you guys need to get some air, go for a walk and re-evaluate what you are looking at.

 

Whoa now, that is not what I was implying, perhaps I should have been more clear. What I'm saying is that UDK is much cheaper for people starting out, indies with low budget. $99 a year with a royalty cap of 50k is an awesome deal for this crowd. However the development environment is more difficult for beginners which is where Unity comes in, that is what I think makes it great all around, it is very easy to work with.

Second, I didn't mean to sound as though Unity is extorting money from low budget indies to bankroll AAA studios That's kind of silly. What I'm saying is that AAA studios using Unity would get a great deal because of no royalties. This is much more cost effective for larger studios than UDK, as long as Unity does what they need it to do.

Third, part of the point I was making is that if UDK 4 ends up being as easy to use as Unity it will be much more attractive for indies as $99 a year is very cheap to start out with. So when you compare that to thousands of dollars compared to full Unity licenses that is something of a situation...

The point is Unity is feeling kind of expensive for low budget indies starting out and more competition for this base is on the horizon.

Again if I didn't make it clear, Unity is funded by their target audience, indie, small game studios, UDK funded by their target audience AAA studios, the ironic point I was making is that switching this around could be a great deal for both sides if it does what you want.

 

I was under the impression that Linux, which we are now committed to doing, was the most requested feature? No. No voxels for 4.0 - that is not saying no voxels in 4.x. Same for mono upgrade.

 

This is indeed not the time for 4.0 feature requests 4.x however...

 

August can't come fast enough... I am also very happy to get proper motion blur to really make my game look nice... ... I wonder how creating shaders will be.

 

Mecanim is awesome! It'll save a lot of time.
About the linux support, we will be able to deploy a multiplayer server build and host it on linux? That would be awesome
Good job guys

 

I am buzzing with anticipation... I don't know how many users have used the cloth, but my game uses it extensively... but August needs to hurry up so I can play with Mecanim

 

You gotta remember people tend to go overboard with their criticisms and its easy to get caught up in venting grievances too far. I think some of it is definitely valid, I still love Unity but I'm questioning it, that's a good thing no.

 

Following a trend in this thread, I would like to go: "^ this"

The GUI project has gone through several design iterations and has suffered a few unfortunate project management setbacks. It is indeed being actively developed separate from everything else and is looking very awesome. Although it will not be in 4.0, it is not far away either.

 

As a customer, I understood some feeling of the posts, quite obvious to me those are not hysteria symptom but rather unsatisfactorily about the features of upgrade, which is below expectation, based on what UT advertise/promote in the past. And they expected some feature in 4.0 should be in 3.x, that created the half-assed feeling.

Because many advertised thing still not realize, but need to pay UT for the upgrade, they think it is over-priced -> for something not yet realize.

 

Regarding the business model and people's grievances over paying large sums up front, I can tell you that we're very aware of it and looking at alternatives. Nothing to report yet, but stay tuned.

 

I always thought publishing to Linux was the quickest way to get your program reverse engineered and PDed. Disclaimer: I've only ever decompiled poll.o

4.x requests: for the GUI: iOS / Windows Metro / Android (if there is a standard: what I've seen a ajax and not so slick) recommended standards GUI and Handicapped Accessible (which I am sure the 'official name' varies by whatever law on the books various national and local governments have passed).

LOL, the comments about half-assed features: I wish I knew enough about all of these Unity Engines Features to even make such a declaration.

 

That is encouraging news, hopefully you'll follow that up.

 

You then must hurry up.
There's a bunch of people out there making pretty good amounts of money with their first/second games using Unity (i can name a few iOS titles if you want), i was one of those with Dead Strike. Imagine if you can get a cut of that pie by lowering the up front cost? I though you guys where aware of that hidden pie.
BTW: What about people upgrading multiple pro licenses? Will they get 200$ for each platform upgrade (Unity pro, iOS pro, Android pro, etc)?
Keep it up!

 

You do it with the tools which are most effective for the job at hand. And, 90% of the time, that's the tools your team is familiar with, not the tools with the most impressive feature lineup.

Regardless of what engine you use (and I've used a few), it's rare that a generic out-of-the-box feature does exactly what is required for a specific feature in your specific project. You guys are calling things "half-assed" because they don't suit the specific needs of a specific project... yet. For starters, it's often (though not always) stuff that you could implement yourself.

But more importantly, nothing would ever get released if the developers always waited to just add one more feature. If they kept holding off for one more feature, you wouldn't have the things you're calling "half-assed" which other people are using successfully right now. You'd have nothing. I know what I'd prefer.

I don't know about asking whether UT has the "fire" to compete. That's a no-brainer to me. The small-studio shift may have already been well underway, but Unity are the ones who started the trend amongst software technology providers of supporting indie developers with pricing models that support zero-budget developers. The question isn't "can Unity compete?". I don't know if you noticed, but UDK didn't even exist until after Unity became free - and Unity had indie-accessible budget options for a long time before that. Sure, Epic supported Indies - if you met the right guy at a trade show they'd happily help you out with engine licensing. I'm not complaining, it was awesome of them to do that, but it clearly wasn't their core business. It didn't scale. Individuals would help out other individuals they met, and there's clearly a limit to how far that can spread. But Unity turned it into a business model, and then everyone else followed suit.

 

We are and will. You can take that down as a promise and flame me for it later if I break it

 

whoehoe David still has his nice collar!!! hahaha
Loads of great stuff in the next release! Keep doing the great work your doing already!

 

The voucher is given after core Unity pro upgrades - not add-ons.

 

Alright!
Tanks.

 

OK, thanks. Is there any possibility of something more concrete, e.g. this year/next year? Or some hints as to what to expect from it? (Sorry to be a pest, but it's just for me the most important addition on the roadmap).

 

It's not far away. That is as much as I can give you without risking ritualistic homicide at the hands of the community

Edit:
On second thought, who knows how this might get quoted later? I'm doomed!

 

You bet,
Now you much watch your back! XD

 

True.

Which is why we are currently porting an application from U3D to Monotouch. Because the tools we are most familiar with as programmers is C# - and Monotouch does it better. While we are on the topic, another engine we are evaluating has lua that doesn't look too hard, and Crymono looks like it'll be worth a shot in a very short period of time.

Of course, we are not the only people on the team, artists very much like UDK - so the investment in learning C++ Kismet is starting to become very viable.

I like U3D, but I no longer love it.

No one's saying unity shouldn't release new features - in fact we are saying the opposite! What is happening though is that people are getting frustrated at the business model. When people put down a large lump-sum payment into a 'version' of a software product they expect a lot of work to be put into creating more value BEFORE the next version is released.

I'm lucky in that because of the move to monotouch for a couple projects, we delayed the lump-sum payment. So I don't have any great feelings either way, though as mentioned I believe a subscription based model would be far more friendly.

And xerox largely invented the PC, but failed to capitalize on their work. PS MS got there first.

------


For clarification, I'm not ranting or raving [I'll leave that for other] - but I question my future with U3D. I certainly see me sticking with them for the next 6-12 months.

 

@AngryAnt cool thanks. Hoping to see it.

PS: I said one of the most - not the most

Anyways I'm excited by this news, don't mean to appear like I'm moaning.

 

Why on Earth are you buying something based on what isn't there yet? Surely you buy it because of what it has now and how that suits your current needs?

Definitely, as would royalty-based options. I'm always happy for options. But, I personally want the options which are currently there ($1500 per platform, flat rate, unrestricted projects) to remain. Comercially speaking, that's a fantastic deal, and I think it's worth the upgrade costs each year.

Of course, that relies on doing something commercially viable with your licenses such that they sort of end up paying for themselves. And if you can do that, there's little reason not to be able to start with the free version and use that to bankroll your initial upgrade.

As such, once you're rolling it doesn't really matter what the pricing model is, as long as the price point doesn't move too much.

Exactly. Xerox only created a product. My point was that Unity also created a market. [/QUOTE]

 

@AngryAnt - don't get too discouraged by the negativity. I think the fact that everyone is so concerned about whether or not they can afford the upgrade just goes to show how passionate all these people (including me) are to get their hands on the latest Unity awesomeness.

I personally feel that the upgrade price is a little high, but I'm going to pay it because I have committed to Unity and absolutely want to continue using the product. I may grumble about the price, but in the back of my mind I know that in the long-run it's a small price to pay.

Plus, I'm much happier now that it's $1500 instead of $1700. The wife would have called $1700 "Almost $2000!"... I'm fairly confident she won't be able to round $1500 up with any sort of conviction

 

:O

I don't think you've got anything to worry about, can't misinterpret or mess up a quote, right?

*Unnecessary Disclaimer: Note to anyone that skims the thread and sees this but not the original quoted post, the top-most quote is purposely mis-quoted by removing sections of it as part of a bad joke. For example of a similar bad joke: read this disclaimer.

 

Hi,
I just wish to share some thoughts.

I think that there is a nice deal here, that would be a shame to be obscured from the negativism most posts contain.
The deal is that you get an established game engine and updates for 1-2 years at a ridiculous price. Also, you get a substantial cut off the next update price.
By investing into an "established" game engine you get community support, proper documentation, low cost third party middleware solutions. When I see digital tutors, noesis, mixamo, allegorithmic, scaleform and many other third party companies investing in unity, that makes me think that there are good chances that Unity will be around in a couple of years.
1500$ ( unity pro ) is a ridiculous price. 3000$ ( unity pro + ios pro ) is a ridiculous price too. You do not get only the game engine. You get the entire "ecosystem".

The creation of Unity asset store made it possible for me to buy unity pro. It is a new "platform" ( = a place to make money), along union, pc, mac, linux, ios android, flash, chrome. More platforms - more chances to make money. Access to those platforms is one part of the ecosystem.
Many worthy titles get promoted as "Made with unity". Promotion costs a lot and getting promoted by Unity means saving $$$ ( another part ).
Freelance jobs requiring unity knowledge are all over. Expertise in one area ( models - programming - shaders - whatever ) pays back. Academic positions do exist and keep appearing. ( guess what, another part of the ecosystem ).

So where is the problem ? Problem lies in wrong expectations. What most people seem to forget though is that to make money you have to spend money. A lot of them. Making games costs. A lot. To turn your game idea into reality you have to work, pay and adapt. And chances are that you can spend much time, money and effort and still fail. Nearly 1000000 people use unity. I doubt someone can count 100 well - done indie games made with unity. Why ?

In my opinion it is because most people are bloody amateurs and they do not realize it. I am worse than that, I am a bloody hobbyist. The good thing is that I am aware of this. There is a chance that you will make a super game and make thousands of dollars out of it. It is just too thin. I do not expect to make a fortune out of unity yesterday, I expect to make 4k - 8k this year ( and I expect this after I have already made 3k ).

Overall unity is a nice product, not a "dreams to cash" converter. Take it or leave it as it is, not as what you expect it to be. I would appreciate gui, working navigation meshes, hardware cursors etc as well as others do. I just adapt until they appear.

I am not affiliated with unity. I do sell assets in unity asset store but I do not get money from them to promote unity. What I write is my personal opinion.

-Ippokratis


peter_on :
I did exactly the following : Bought Unity Pro, took the voucher nr from the email I received, entered it in the Unity Store Rebate/Voucher code field, bought IOS Basic for 50$. ( I already owned IOS basic licence, so the upgrade cost was 250 - 200 = 50$ ).