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Unity 4 Details

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by MattCarr, Jun 18, 2012.

  1. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    Yea that is the one that sticks with me as well. However what I remember it for is how they used the organising/graphing of their animations like that to plan exactly the animations needed and which were superfluous. I remember the diagram primarily as an awesome management tool.
     
  2. n0mad

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    I'd prefer that way too. I understand that S*** can happen, and it seems to have with GUI project management for any reason, but deciding to play "defensive communication" by being silent will lead to even more problems, just like we saw in the Developer Preview forums a few monthes ago.
    When you guys decided to start sharing your moods again in there we all felt happy and reassured again. Don't drop that please, Unity's high forum interaction with users is partly why I was seduced by the product itself 3 years ago. And I'm sure it's why the community became so helpful and good overall, as the "big daddies" were around.

    Instead of turning silent on unsure internal projects, do the opposite like NPSF3000 suggested, that'd be super interesting for advanced users. The only change to do to either protect yourselves and don't deceive us with postponed releases would be to far more clear about a feature's realistic release. Like, talk about it all you can, but keep being very formal about it not being released anytime soon until you're "110% sure it is done".

    Cheer up guys, we love your work and your dedication to constant technological evolution, and we understand you need money to survive.
    Just be even more communicative with features progression (including deadlines).


    offtopic : it's obvious you do need to meet higher financial milestones now. I suggested an additional business idea (that you certainly already thought about) in a survey a while ago, which would answer to a big demand in general : managing, hosting and renting Unity specific multiplayer servers. I personally would widely prefer my game's multiplayer to be hosted by game engine maker itself, than from yet another third-party provider. Plus this would allow some neat Unity specific server control (Unity driven controller/validator, etc). Maybe it's a silly idea, just putting that out of my ass now ... But it could give you some extra monthly/yearly cash.


    That's exactly what I suggested back in 2009 : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/25529-A-Pro-license-with-new-advanced-bundles
    But the thread was derailed into yet another Pro pricing debate.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  3. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Humble bundle is split from 4-7 ways between developers and further split before then between humble bundle inc. and charity. It is also very exclusive (pretty much invite only) so anyone thinking they'll target it is an idiot. Plus it reads 5 million but far closer after all those splits, is 50-200k in your pocket. Then there's tax. At the end of it, if you have 50k, its a nice bonus. If you have more, even better. But that assumes you're good enough to get on it. Most are not. Can you make limbo?

    Humble bundle is a store, an exclusive one at that, and just about the only popular one. The linux stores (ubuntu etc) are also possible, but you'll have no more luck there than anywhere else. It's all about the product, your marketing and the usual biz things long before sales are an option...

    I don't know why people try to argue for or against linux. For us its a "nice to have" bonus. I expect for most biz minded people it'll be the same answer.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  4. taumel

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    @Aras
    I think S*** happened on a number of fields with V3.

    As you wrote i expect Unity to learn from those experiences but especially in such a situation you normally do it the other way around and make concessions to balance things out again. By increasing the update price Unity acts quite the opposite and shows a lack of understanding how quite some people were burnt with V3. If you're taking this into account than it's a weak promotion. I'm unsure about the $200 voucher, does this apply to Unity itself or is it only relevant for the asset store?

    As a customer i learn as well and V1/2/3 all had nice features listed in the beginning but when they actually arrived or did not arrive or the quality and reliability they were delivered in, it was a complete different kind of story. Dunno, i somehow sadly don't feel excited.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  5. seon

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    Linux is just another platform in our arsenal. If you can monetize OSX and Windows, you can monetize Linux. If you can't monetize other desktop platforms, you won't with Linux either.

    I am pleasantly surprised that it's not a paid update, and would have gladly paid $1500 for a Linux addon.
     
  6. Dreamora

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    why would it save you money? You would still sign yearly contracts, you won't get a month on - month off license.
    Not even Adobes Creative Cloud offers that.
    All it does is split one massive fee into 12 in the end even larger fees due to the interest and risk coverage.
    If its cheaper than using your Credit Card or a credit heavily depends on the country and exact 'on top fee' you would be paying
     
  7. Wolfos

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    In which case I retract my statement. Some people around here are literally saying that it has been a promise. Also, no new terrain? GUI and terrain are the two most broken things in Unity right now. Whatever, once my license ends I'll buy Unity 4 regardless but it's not a real must have right now. Unless you're going to be using the animation system that is.
     
  8. nipoco

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    Don't say that too loud.
     
  9. superpig

    superpig

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    I think a number of the posts in this thread are showing the inexperience of their authors. All this stuff about buying 3.x because it was "promised" that something would be added to it later... it's simple, really:

    Do not run your project on trust.

    It's not that UT are devious liars out to get your money. It's that they're human people who get things wrong. Whether it's a big-ticket item like a new GUI system or just a particular bug that affects your project, all the good intentions in the world do not change the fact that it's not done until it's done. UT can talk about their future plans all they like, but they've not added value to the product until those plans are actually implemented and pushed out the door. That UT intend to offer a new GUI solution in the future does not change the fact that you need to ship your game with a GUI solution now. Waiting for that promise to come true costs you time and money, but once you've spent it, your situation has not changed.

    When Unity talk about their plans for the future, it's an interesting insight into what they're prioritising, as well as a gentle warning about which third-party packages might get rendered obsolete sooner rather than later. But like everything else: believe it when you see it and not before. Even if they say "this is fixed in the next version and will ship in a couple of weeks," it's still entirely possible that the fix leads to some showstopper bug that either delays release or requires reversion. Plan accordingly.
     
  10. OmniverseProduct

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    jinx jinx jinx! lol
     
  11. MattCarr

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    That's a strange way of thinking about it. If the Humble Bundle or similar precludes entry to Unity applications, developers building with such aspirations in mind would therefore not use Unity. David Rosen, the programmer at Wolfire which the origins of the HB can be traced back to frequently uses Unity to develop prototypes and game jam style games. I'm sure they'd be more likely to consider using Unity on future larger projects with the Linux support so they can target their Humble Bundle.

    And there are many professional developers that use Unity and not having that Linux limitation should take away any thoughts in the back of their minds about limitations of the revenue streams of their game. Personally, I'm really glad the option will now be there. I'm prototyping new features for Lunar Flight with Shovsoft at the moment and I know they'd feel the same way.
     
  12. Morning

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    Steam is going linux soon, so that's another distributor to check out.
     
  13. hippocoder

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    That's hardly the point. The point is the quality of the game, it's immaterial what you use for it. Realistically, a large % of this forum doesn't have what it takes to get on the bundle (assuming the number of users using unity is correct). Same for UDK, Cry or anything.

    They're going to favour what will sell, not because it was made in unity.

    Trying to point out linux support is this magical gateway to riches (which is a running theme with linux support) is just stupidity (not talking about you, but in general). It's tough for anyone to make a decent game and linux has nothing to do with it, that was my point.

    This does not mean linux support won't get used though, I suspect it will provide quite the boost to linux in general support wise.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  14. AngryAnt

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    Oh, well in THAT case... ;)
     
  15. MattCarr

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    Watching your London Usergroup sessions I was surprised by how similar the topics you covered were to what I'd been doing at my previous full time job with Unity. Also how similar our Unity coding methodologies seemed to be. Now I see that we also think alike as this is what I was getting at earlier. Now I just need to grow my beard a little more and speak in a british accent... :)
     
  16. whydoidoit

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    It looks to me like Mechanim is going to be very useful for me, so I will be upgrading on pre-order. The workflow improvements also look good, but I think the real point is that you aren't paying $850 ($1.7k/$2.5k etc) for just those features, you are paying for the updates that will take us to the end of the version 4 product too.

    Yep it sucks that I bothered to buy an extra pro license on spec (hoping for a version 3.6) to get the $400 discount on IOS Pro when I haven't really needed that license, but in the scheme of things this is really not expensive for a game engine with royalty free distribution. Over the course of a number of years of working with Unity I will have to pay for upgrades at some point, that's the cost of being in the business (or you do it for free with standard), in the fullness of time the cost is evened out...

    Whenever you build product based on 3rd party technologies, in any industry, you are always reliant on them having the features you need, relying on features that haven't been released is something you could do, but then you are taking the risk and should be aware of it. Paying an upgrade fee for a bug fix is not good, paying it for a feature that didn't make it is just business - Unity has to make money too.
     
  17. superpig

    superpig

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    Well, good project management practice follows from logic and laws of physics, so it's convergent.

    Beards also follow from logic and laws of physics, so they're also convergent.

    Edit: also what Whydoidoit said.
     
  18. npsf3000

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    So you want to be hosted by uLink, or Photon, or SFS or Electrotank or Player.IO etc.

    Hosting isn't that profitable, and U3D aren't the experts.

    1) We have no idea what they'd charge or on what terms - it could even be cheaper than now!

    Example: In addition of their $800 license photon now sell cloud hosting starting at $9/month.

    Now I'm not saying it should be cheaper - but it shouldn't be off the drawing board. U3D's goal is *hopefully* to make money, not some arbitrary price point.

    2) Having debt is bad, and even then there is a limit to how much credit one can have.


    But the problem with that is people are saying they ALREADY paid for those updates when they bought v3... so why do they now have to buy v4 for them to be realized?

    Be careful with your expectations.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  19. MattCarr

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    No disagreements with what you're saying, but I'm just not sure who you're arguing against. Unless I missed it no one has suggested anything contrary to what you're saying there.
     
  20. Deleted User

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    My 2 cents:

    -Cost:

    I have Unity Pro + iOS Pro + Android Pro and the upgrade price is high for me.

    -Features:

    Unity 4 will support Windows 8 Metro?

    Mecanim is awesome BUT what about facial animation?
     
  21. Ippokratis

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    Hi,
    I have spend some time looking the license comparison page.
    I would appreciate some information regarding the following topics :

    1. Inspector GUI for custom classes
    2. Gradients for Users
    3. Improved Cubemap Import
    4. Mesh topology
    5. VBO Refactor / Vertex Streams
    6. Shuriken: External Forces, Bent normals, Automatic culling.

    Thanks in advance,
    -Ippokratis.
     
  22. SkaredCreations

    SkaredCreations

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    The new features looks interesting: Mecanim looks the best animation tool ever (even if I will hardly use it because being a pure programmer I'll ever prefer to buy animations from professional artists), improvements on mobile (shadows and whatsoever else), DirectX11 support and..yes may be also the Linux support (which I think will never use, since I'm completely convinced that it has very few market because they are too tied to the idea of open source and "everything for free", I already read some posts yesterday about Unity4 on few Linux forums where people were crying about another proprietary software coming out on their open source world..bah, they did never worth companies' interest and probably will never do with such behavior!).

    Though I think as many other here that the upgrade price ON PREORDER is higher than what I usually see on other software, which usually costs lesser than half of full version (e.g. Photoshop, just to make an example of a well known product). What I expect from a PREORDER is usually an advantageous direct discount on the price (both upgrade and full versions), not a voucher to buy other stuff, so I probably think that it would have been more fair to cut off those 200$ from the upgrade cost instead of giving away a voucher. I know that probably for someone it would have been the same, but I probably will upgrade gradually, earlier my Unity Pro, later my iOS, later my Android, so I would have preferred to save my 200$ from my very first upgrade that is what is a reasonable amount (850$ is nothing for an established company, but for a startup freelancer it's not really cheap after having spent other 1800$ [I bought Pro when I hadn't a VAT so I was charged of a very much higher VAT than I ever had, 25%? it's huge!]).

    However, I will definitely upgrade to the new version some day along the current or starting of next year, since I chose Unity as my main platform to make games and 3D interactive, so keep up the good work UT! ;)
     
  23. AngryAnt

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    As mentioned earlier in the thread. Not for 4.0.
     
  24. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    We'll be going more in-depth on the release on the website and the blog as we get closer to release.
     
  25. MattCarr

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    It seems like there are a number of features that have "Read more" links pointing to the Unity 4 info page which does not actually contain information about those features. I presume they'll update the feature descriptions at some point, but it would be good to have some more technical information about new features.

    I'd like to know more about how Unity are handling compute shaders. I'd heard before, I believe it was in the GDC presentation that some/all compute shader logic could be written in regular scripts (e.g. C#)?

    Edit:

    Thanks. Looking forward to it.
     
  26. ikriz

    ikriz

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    Emil you have an awesome perception of your reality :)
     
  27. Aras

    Aras

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    Compute shader is a new asset type. You write them in DX11 HLSL. From a script, you can set up parameters to them (much like you can setup material parameters), and invoke them ("dispatch" in DX11 lingo).
     
  28. AngryAnt

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    I've been in this community for a while. By the time I'm not feeling welcome we'll all be trading bottle caps and balancing rads.
     
  29. Deleted User

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    Maybe i have missed something but i have not read a clear answer on these features in the previous pages.
    Anyway i hope we will have Windows 8 metro support and facial animation support in the next release.

    Good Work.
     
  30. Morning

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    I'd share my purified water with you any time.

    A question on future facial animations, how will they work? Will they be bone animations or will we finally get morph target support? I hope morphs as that could be used for more than just facial animations.
     
  31. tatoforever

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    I know this is not too much related to Unity4 but here is what i would like to see (if possible) at the Unity4 launch.
    The Asset Store needs to have a gaming section where people can publish web games, desktop games and why not mobile games (Android) on it. It must also be open for Browser search, so external (non Unity) users can buy games on it. The asset store already have the basics foundations, why not open it to the masses and add a gaming section on it? ;)
    This is my third prediction about Unity (I've already predicted the Asset Store months before it was announced). ;)
     
  32. Ippokratis

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    Looking forward to it too :)
     
  33. AngryAnt

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    We have no plans for facial animations in 4.0. We'd love to support them later and when we have info we'll let you know ;)
     
  34. Morning

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    Yeah I know they're not for 4.0 but I was hoping for some info overall. Though no info isn't surprising.
     
  35. thesaint1987

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    Where is this freaking comparison chart, which shows the feature matrix for Unity 4 and different versions? In this thread there is only an image, but I'd like to expand the "plus" signs ^^. Unity, please make the link more obvious!
     
  36. AngryAnt

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    Go to http://store.unity3d.com - click "more info" on a product and flip to the "license comparison" tab.
     
  37. rstorm000

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    As a Unity Pro owner, having a release date for the Beta would justify the Pre-order much more. The 200$ voucher doesn't matter much to our development at the moment and probably won't within 12 months. It would be amazing if you could put that towards the asset store.

    With that said, will my 850$ pay off for me in 1 month or 4months or 6 months? I don't know at the moment and it's a good chunk of change to throw around before knowing when it comes back. So if you guys get a beta date before the 9th it will be very helpful.

    I am a big supporter of Unity and the new developments in 4. I've converted many colleagues to using it and I was recently featured in an article advocating the use of Unity for small developers: http://www.indiegamemag.com/unity-4-reveal-indie-game-developers-are-ecstatic-but/ (Rob Storm, quotes in the last few paragraphs) I still support you guys 100%, and providing some of this info for us developers as soon as possible will really ease our minds.
     
  38. Morning

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    Any reason why it's so hidden? The comparsion link should be on the front of the store. Just nitpicking here, ignore me.
     
  39. AdmiralAckbar

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    Who said that? ;)
     
  40. Craig_OZ

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    I am interested in when the beta will be available as well before I put down my money.

    Also, will the mobile shadow feature be available in the iOS Unity version or the iOS Unity Pro version please?

    Thanks
    Craig
     
  41. AngryAnt

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    According to the comparison link which was posted four posts up and quoted two posts later, it is an iOS pro feature.

    It should not come as much of a surprise though as realtime shadows on webplayer and standalone are also a pro feature.
     
  42. Craig_OZ

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    OK, thanks for that and the beta availability???
     
  43. superpig

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    Well, that's the problem: they didn't pay for those updates. They paid for what was actually in 3.x, and took it on trust that UT would fix the missing bits. Which is a very bad idea even without the observation that UT almost never made specific, detailed commitments to features or timeframes.

    Similarly, I don't think the "$850 buys you the whole 4.x line" argument is very sensible either. We have no idea what actual features and fixes that's going to entail, and when; that they'll have feature X in 4.1 isn't much good if you ran out of money two months before they shipped it, and it's not much good at all if it's a feature you don't need to use. That $850 is buying you the rest of the product line, but it's very open-ended as to what exactly that means, so it's damn near impossible to put any dollar value on it.
     
  44. Aras

    Aras

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    It has to be worth at least two cents?! ;)
     
  45. nipoco

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    Damn Seon. That is your fault :D
     
  46. seon

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    Don't fear, no one at UT ever *really* listens to me :)
     
  47. SkaredCreations

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    What I could be ready to pay more for is the possibility to open multiple editors on my Mac without having to manually launch from terminal console! I hate to have it on my Windows and not on my Mac :(
     
  48. Moonjump

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    The promise was in this thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/52432-Unity-3-GUI-and-Sprite-Engine

     
  49. npsf3000

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    Yep, I adhere to your logic on this one.

    ----

    Kinda feel sorry for the U3D team, they haven't even finished 4.0, they've got some highly requested features [linux, dx11], a whole bunch of improvements... and a disgruntled audience bashing them on their own forums.

    I think a little bit more communication will go a long way to resolving the situation :)
     
  50. Joe-Robins

    Joe-Robins

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    Yup!