Unity 4 Details

So what features does DX11 bring? I've never looked into it before.

 

Totally! And NGUI was just 1 guy - Michael Lashenko (sp?) Anyways he's a genius. Probably there are 2 devs on ngui now that's he's making so much $.

 

BTW, the biggest and for now only disappointment of Unity 4 is that they stick with Mono 2.6!
I forgot this one, because it is so fundamental, usually you don't think about. It is a really bad decision to start a new major version with a totally outdated scripting framework. The reason is simple. Within minor version you almost have no chance to replace such a thing because you would just break almost any larger codebase. People expect this when they switch from 3.x to 4.x but not from say 4.0 to 4.1...

So I have fear that Mono 2.6 will stick until Unity 5 and this would be a catastrophe. The latest Mono is so awesome, performance-wise and stability-wise orders of magnitudes better than Mono 2.6...

 

Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZgt4hA4-pc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8

Gives you a dist of it... Even though only few features will make it into Unity 4.0 I suppose. And certainly not all of them are DX 11 only. But what most people confuse is that DX11 does not make these effects possible, it makes them efficient. In theory you could use your calculator to compute a DX11 frame but it would be a bit too slow...

 

Then why would they stick with 2.6? Could they have had any reason? Usualy newer programs are more buggy, maybe they felt 2.6 was more stable.

 

Sorry but I was asking for a native support, not just workarounds like those that I already do, it's very ugly and far from comfortable. Windows version has this feature from ever, I cannot understand why it's not possible to add on OSX

Agree, I'm using NGUI as well, that's why I'm completely out of the new GUI requests here, I don't need any new GUI system from Unity because I love NGUI

By the way back on topic, I would like to know if UT is going to support 3.5 for the near/medium period especially regarding iOS, I mean my main concern (since I don't need any of the 4 features at all for now and I'm happy with my 3.5 Pro+addons): can we expect to have support in 3.5 to be able to release games for iOS6?

 

God knows why... Maybe it breaks some code over at EA games ^^? Who knows. I guess they at least tried it and gave up. Maybe it really break too much code and they wanted to spawn that new release for new money... Not further increase the bar for purchasing it. Once everyone has Unity 4, the time has come for breaking changes

It certainly is not more stable. The problem is that especially libraries like LINQ and all the new stuff is quite unstable and I need it ^^. So it is always a try&hope thing until they upgrade, not to talk about performance.

We should also not forget that they need the new Mono for all platforms... That could be an issue too.

 

Well, you're asking for an OS X feature, not a Unity feature. It doesn't sound like you're using any of the workarounds (which are quite easy to do), since you were complaining about having to manually launch from the terminal. I pointed out that you don't actually have to do this.

--Eric

 

I don't think the pricing is too high or features too sparse. Just that I want the "little" features more than the big ones, so it's not a potential purchase for me.

I'm more than happy to wait with 3.5 for the feature list to become more appealing.

I do wish it was possible to purchase the pro mobile bits without having to purchase the pro desktop version, however. I could afford pro desktop or pro ios/android, but not both :/

 

I will tesselate the terrain so bad, it doesn't need normal mapping anymore :grin:

 

mmh... Touché, may be I still need to become more familiar with OSX, I came to iMac few months ago after 16 years on Windows

 

That's actually the point.

 

Could be awesome but since it was not possible for UT to integrate a normalmap-shader, I'm not sure that the terrain tool would profit from DX11

 

No GUI, no buy.

 

GUI is really the last thing Unity needs to look at. There are various solutions out there. Unity 4 speeds up the existing GUI also. I doubt that the "new" Unity GUI in the pipeline will be ground-breaking. Rather an evolution of what we have today, at best.

For me it is important that Unity adds features I can't add myself, like DX11, animations, and other engine specific stuff that just can't be done via plugins/assets... GUI is a pure asset! If there is so much need for it, why doesn't create someone something really nice... Obviously the need is not that great.

Check out Scaleform, it has Unity support...

 

for around 750 USD

 

GUI is not a pure asset. I have to write the touch handling code myself, because Unity can't be bothered.

Does Scaleform's Unity integration support mobile? And even if so, why do I have to pay for something extra that was promised in 3.x?

edit: Whatever, you're just going to cheer on whatever they're doing anyways. I've learned that Unity wants AAA money, and not my money. Fine.

edit 2: Also, Scaleform for Unity doesn't seem to be available.

 

Welcome ... it takes a little while to get used to it, and a few things can be really annoying as long as you're still used "to the Windows ways" ... but eventually, it'll get better. Around end of 2007, I posted a few things about my experiences while switching (and I also got some really good help on the forums - thanks to the folks that took the time back then). I believe there's also a few nice tutorials out there for people that made the switch, and that's well worth the time.

Speaking of Unity 4 ... well ... I'm really glad it still runs on the Mac ... even though I guess I'll need to get Unity running on a Windows installation to get the DX11 stuff. Which brings me to:

Licensing: License Management Portal

When I'm paying EUR 1.950,00 minus $200 for Unity 4, I would really appreciate to be able to activate it on more than 2 machines ... or at least on (Bootcamp + Mac OS X) * 3 machines (home desktop, office desktop, laptop), so that would be 6 activations. I need to run this on two machines simultaneously for multiplayer debugging (so if I'm able to conveniently move my activations back and forth myself, 2 activations will still be fine ... I don't think one person can work on more than two computers at the same time).

Two activations was fine until Unity 2.5 when Windows was introduced. Now with DX11, this becomes even more painful because there is a very valid use case for switching back and forth between OSs, and there's also valid use cases for using different machines.

 

To all those people saying xyz was promised for 3.5 as in quoting a DIRECT linkable source, can you speak up? or are you imagining stuff? cos it did come with a disclaimer saying all or none of these features may arrive. If they *did* promise it for 3.5 then yeah, I think we have grounds to lobby unity for it being 3.5.

As it stands, no matter how annoying it is, they didn't promise it. Unless you can find the link where it says they did.

Now I'm all for rampaging with pitchforks towards unity HQ when it comes to broken promises, but I'm not sure (in all fairness now) that they did promise it for 3.x.

If they did, then I do believe they should as a gesture of good faith, deliver on the promise. But I'll say again, quote your sources or just don't put finger to keyboard because we do need hard facts unfortunately. Anything else is just nothing but a passionate cry for features you wanted but were never promised. I empathise with it but none of us can argue without a quotable source.

Regarding the 3x installs, I've asked for this before, I think it would be really nice to have. I've got 3 machines. Imagine if the unity editor ran on linux? that 2x install would be swiftly eaten

 

All I ask for are normal maps built into the terrain editor! I will throw my money at unity without question if this can happen.

 

But the animation GUI can be done in unity 3.5(you can create editors to do animation, cutscene.....), the workflow changes does not justify the change to unity 4.0. Core features like mono(that the enduser can't do anything about) is the most important thing(performance wise) and should be enough for a major release.

 

Someone actually did, and this was quoted earlier in this thread. However, keep in mind that UT employees are people just like everyone else on this forum. Emil explained the situation with the GUI system in a very understandable manner a few times earlier in this thread. I guess things just didn't work out the way everyone wished for.

Put yourself into that situation: You are employed by UT. You love the engine. You know people are working hard on the new GUI system. You know the GUI system is planned to be released in 3.x. You mention it on the forum because you like the people using the engine and you want to do your best to be in communications with them.

Things turn out to not work the way they were planned.

And then people dig out your old postings and make a big deal out of it, speaking of "broken promises".

Don't get me wrong: I'm as unhappy about not having the new GUI system as anyone else. But the thing is: You can be sure that anyone at UT involved with the new GUI is even more unhappy than any of us is. But that won't make it any more stable or "ready for prime time".

And when mentioning something you believe to be true on the forums will give you this kind of result, eventually, you'll leave the talking to the PR/marketing people. I just really really hope that this will not happen to UT because that would be losing one of my favorite "features" of that company ;-)

 

http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...onstrated-Live-for-the-First-Time-1566595.htm

edit: And to jashan above: It was in a press release, so no loose lips on this one.

 

Just as a hint to you: Apple expects all programs on OS X to be instantly available, that is, when you click the icon, it should start up and not differentiate between opening the program and opening a new window. Because of this, OS X does not allow you to have more than one instance of a program running. In other words, as was kindly pointed out to you, that is a "feature" of OS X than Unity is not able to change.

 

It does, but you have to do it in some way other than clicking the icon. Which is how this discussion started.

--Eric

 

I was worried when I re-quoted the promise post that it might lead to Unity staff posting less. But I think it is because they already seem to post less than in the past, despite having more employees, that whatever they do say is picked apart more.

The "this is what we are working on, but we don't know if will lead to something" posts are brilliant. We get to know the team and how they communicate, and so know better the tone of other postings. Just as I know what to expect of quite a few regular forum users, so I understand when they are angry or happy about something as it is a deviation from their normal tone.

So I hope Unity employees continue to post here, even if it means them adding a signature to their posts along the lines of "Specific new features are not guaranteed unless we explicitly say they are."

 

I stand corrected. On the other hand, that press release says it was shown at Unite, which as far as I remember wasn't the case, either. So while that's the pr/marketing-crew's "fault", it's still obvious that something just went wrong. They wouldn't have put that in there if they had known it wouldn't work out. So, someone made a mistake - that happens to the best of us. We're lucky the wormhole of the gamasutra article didn't make the Universe collapse. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation now.

Probably the "right" thing to do from a customer perspective would be to simply stay with 3.x until the GUI is ready, deliver the GUI in 3.6 or 3.7, make sure all glitches are fixed in 3.8 or 3.9, and if that still doesn't help, come up with 3.9.1, 3.9.2, 3.9.3 and so on. But that might be a disaster from the business perspective. And when that's the case, it would put tremendous pressure on the guys working on the new GUI - not exactly the best environment to create something really awesome. With 4.0 out without the new GUI, the pressure is off, and creativity can flow ... doesn't sound so bad to me, in the end.

As much as I dislike paying EUR 1.950,00 to get all my licenses up to 4.0 in good faith that 4.1 will bring the new GUI system, I'd rather do that than have UT become more dependent on outside money (i.e. money from investors aka "sticky money"). I just hope that for Unity 5, we'll get an upgrade offer that actually is fun for people owning Pro + "some platforms" (something like "buy one, get two free" would be very much appreciated ;-) ).

 

GUI is a major component of an engine, not an asset.

Also, it's one of the most requested features right after Linux support if I remember correctly. I don't remember too many people asking for a new animation system.

 

Another option would be to move ahead with Unity 4, but still have a Unity 3 update that adds just the GUI, or at the very least the performance improvements for the existing GUI that are planned for 4.0, so that there is a performant option in 3.

 

I strongly disagree ! N-gui is great for simple things and for prototyping but if you need a more complex UI it becomes a pain in the neck especially because its not a very friendly tool ! The docs are weak and only explain the really basic things that need no explanation (placing a button, making a slider) etc...The advanced stuff is not that well explained so the guy is obviously not a genius when it comes to documenting his product.

Anyways, Unity are probably working on a UI solution that is way better and integrated with Unity's animation system and like most unity features, user-friendly ! I'm also looking forward to Scaleform on Unity, a proven solution even if I have to pay.

 

The same question went through my head when I read what he said. I think it's funny people think a DX update will inherently make their game "better looking".

 

^ Indeed. To me, as cool as it is, DX11 isn't really a massive plus. To maximise my casual games I want them to work on a whole bunch of platforms and look the same on each, so features that'll let me add graphical features in a platform-specific manner are by the by. For people making a PC-specific title, on the other hand, I bet it's a big plus especially if you have a dedicated shader programmer on hand, so it depends on your use case.

To be fair, there is a performant option in 3, it just isn't very designer-friendly.

To be clear, I'm not talking about OnGUI, I'm talking about the fact that you could always create your GUI in-scene as its own layer and camera. (This is in fact how at least one of the popular Asset Store solutions works.) The downside is that you then need to implement even the low-level functionality for yourself (which is, oddly enough, pretty much all that the Asset Store solutions do - but don't let that devalue them, it's a great time saver and helps make it much more designer friendly).

 

DX11 is a very big buzzword, I know people who buy games just because they support DX11.

 

I've been working with Unity--learning it and making sample games with it and I think that it's one of the best engines out there and they are tops, so if I have to upgrade my basic license, I will and am looking forward to the improvements whatever they are and have patience to wait for whatever they aren't. : ) As long as I can get help in the forums for any code that needs fixing until it's officially fixed---and that's been there so far. : )

 

I have a question about the flash support. I have Adobe CS 5.5 Master Collection (I'm getting CS 6 soon), would there be any point in buying the license? I do plan on learning actionscript 3.0 and possibly Stage 3D with Starling.

 

That would be pretty reasonable for me. Either that, or skip the paid upgrades for the 4.0 line and learn from it.

@DX11: Sure, DX11 support is great... for the bigger companies which want to make AAA games, but most Indie/smaller devs have little use for it. This is an "excellent" feature for a major version upgrade. It's very nice for the big players, but not absolutely necessary for the average user. This way the big companies can be early adopters of 4.x, while the other devs can move to it some time after it's release.

Mecanim same. I'm sure that's important and interesting feature for the bigger Unity players, but is less interesting for the average indie developer.

This is similar how other developers do it (i.e. Max/Maya etc.). New versions usually bring new features, mainly interesting for their professional users, while the "hobbyist" or "freelancers" stay with the older versions for a little longer

 

Okay everyone, Time out...now the past 30 or so hours, we've Argued, Complained, Rejoiced (Some have), Joked, said many mean things to the UT guys and made AngryAnt even angrier. Mistakes were made lessons were learnt. it still does not change the fact that:

We'll be migrating from the half-baked 3.5 to 4.0
4.0 won't ship with the much awaited GUI (GUwhy?)
Transition is going to come at quite a hefty price
Scripting will remain at 2.6 for at least the next 2 yrs (Ouch, so long SGen see you in 2 years)

UT, announcing the road map was probably a bad idea... Aras already acknowledged that. Although if more priority was given to finish up the features in 3.x and released 3.6 (without mechanim) would have made a lot of us happy. While we always look forward to the next major release, we do so with a pleasant kiss to the outgoing version and say "It's been a joy working with you time to move on". 4.0 simply feels like a forced Upgrade it this point. You've got a couple of months before BETA Final release. We can only hope you surprise us.

 

Hmm, I'd say that anything which makes animation more accessible to indies is a massive plus. Good quality custom animation is hard to come by, and while they're great you can only go so far with tools like Mixamo. If the new animation tools allow my team to get more value out of a small set of animations that's awesome news to me.

 

That's right. For most of the projects I work on it's largely irrelevant because of the target platforms, but there are definitely some larger PC focused projects I'm working on or have worked on that would have really benefited from at least tessellation. My main interest in DX11 support is in working with compute shaders. I also am looking forward to seeing if it will allow more efficient ray marching and combining that with 3D texture support. I do similar stuff already in Unity 3 (e.g. volume ray marching. See the next version of Advanced Surface Shaders for cloudy fog effects, etc within volumetric shapes), but there are so many more great effects that can be achieved.

If you'd like to see some of what should be in the Unity 4 DX11 demo then check out the GDC2012 presentation. I can't say for certain that everything they talk about will be available in 4.0, but you can see various cool effects they're doing (e.g. hair rendering system, sexy volume ray marching explosion effects) and also Apex Destruction integration.

Mastering DirectX 11 with Unity (Presented by NVIDIA)
PDF of Slides
GDC 2012 Video Vault (Search for "Mastering DirectX 11 with Unity" to find it on the page)

 

Nice Feature Have a cost! so GUYS STOP to BLAME about the price of upgrade or pro license!!

The Beast (unity lightmap system) cost for other engines and developer, somethink like 70.000,00 US$ per title!

HumanIK is our mecanin, the same guys developed humanik and motion builder are behind the mecanin, human ik if i´m right cost 130.000,00 US$ per title

Occlusion culling UMBRA3 is another very expencive software!! 5 digits per title!

so i think 1500 unity pro license or 850 for a upgrade is more then a big deal!!

cheers!

 

The guy from brazil is right!!! The guy from colombia backs him up!!!

 

Especially when Unity has said (not promised) they are looking into a subscription plan to buy licenses.

I reckon the GUI was shelved several times because Unity doesn't see the point in doing something that doesn't match or exceed ScaleForm. You think the delay is because they are trying to emulate nGUI or onGUI 2.0?

 

Nope. I think if they wanted something that existed and was being maintained by an active community member, they'd hire them and be done with it.

 

we are using a simple solution for our GUI in the game, they are all 3d plane objects, with simple shaders and effects rendered with a camera excusive for UI.

some times people need to think outside of the box

For sure unity will put a new GUI system to exceed scaleform!

august 2011 built.. a little old

 

There are several issues with the price.

a) No one said, the prices as they are are not fair.

It's the upgrade prices in conjunction with one major announced featured missing: new GUI system and other systems only being half finished in 3.5. If they'd have added the GUI system and wouldn't have introduced 3 halfway done subsystems in 3.5, I'm sure half of the people wouldn't be complaining about the price.

While NavMesh is nice, it only has the very basic features. In order to fully utilize, you need to put reasonable development to make it work. While the "NavMesh Basic" is still better than nothing at all, it's still worse (because incomplete) than an out of the box solution like Aron's A*-Pathfinding extension.

If they wouldn't have added NavMesh in 3.5 and kept it back, it would have been better, because you then wouldn't had a half finished product in 3.5, and the finished one in 4.0 line.

b) The current system literally makes no sense. I am primary Android developer and I'm playing with going for iOS too (though I don't have a mac or iOS test devices, which actually prevents me from doing so).

But the issue is: For my next project I need Unity Pro features. Ok, $1500 isn't less money, especially since I'd probably need at least two licenses (for me and a mate who is working on it too), so that's $3000, which is quite a lot for us two as indies, but it could be manageable. What really bugs me is that I have to pay not only $1500 per license, I have to pay $3000, because Unity Pro is requirement for Android Pro, even though I don't even plan to use Pro features for PC/Webplayer anytime soon.

 

But that's the nature of purchasing an add-on, you need to own the base product first.

 

I think you could argue publishing to PC / Mac / Linux is an add-on that is included by default. How about just publish to IOS.

 

I agree with Tseng. With Unity Desktop Pro being a requirement for Pro mobile editions, you basically shovel out loads of loads for each developer. Still, that's how Unity makes its money, I suppose.

 

Logically the current system doesn't make any sense.

When you purchase Unity Pro, you pay for the pro features. When you buy Android Basic, you purchase a deployment for Android. But if you want Android pro, you must pay $1500, though you already paid for the Pro features by purchasing Unity Pro. So technically you pay double.

Imho the dependency on Unity Pro should be removed. Then you would have
Android Basic = Unity3d Free features for Android
Android Pro = Unity3D Pro features for Andorid
iOS Basic = Unity3d Free features for iOS
iOS Pro = Unity3D Pro features for iOS
Unity Free = The basic free features for PC/Web/Mac
Unity Pro = Pro features for PC/Web/Mac

This has a clear and logical upgrade policy, one base version and one which enables pro features, where you don't pay twice for the same features, when all you want is just one plattform (Android/iOS or both of them w/o PC/Web)