Unity 4 Details

@AngryAnt
Come on, cheerleader is quite spot on and it isn't even hurting, although it is teasing. I guess i've never seen this many smilys in one thread. ;OP

 

... Don't ask questions you may not want to know the answer. oO

 

well,
my wish for v.4 is:
split up Unity in Mobile Desktop Version.

On Mobile you have all the Mobile devices it's much more easy to Maintain etc... don't need dx11 etc... so that we get faster new version for Android iOS to use the benefits of the new OS....

On Desktop you can implement all the features you need there (Flash Linux Support) DX11 etc..... also better to Maintain and do Updates.

So then we have the freedom of choice and you can faster react to OS Updates etc.... much easier to fix bug's so on....

Now i have to wait much longer for Mobile support i don't need Unity Pro... i need Mobile Pro but now i have to buy Unity Pro to be able to use iOS Pro Android Pro... that could be better...

P.S. Roskilde Festival Rocks !!! The best in Europa !!!

 

No don't split Unity, just the licence.

 

YIR!

 

I will add my voice to the choir, wondering:

• Where is a proper, new GUI system?
• Why is Asset Server / Subversion still so painful?

As currently outlined, Unity 4 does not offer anything that makes it worth the upgrade for my company.

 

How much Unity would there still be if mobile was a different application? We've had that with the first versions of Unity iPhone, and it wasn't fun at all! I think UT is planning shorter dev cycles, so the "update mobile specific stuff in due time"-issue is probably addressed.

A combined mobile license with iOS and Android would be cool, though ;-) I'm telling ya: Buy one get one free, and customers will be happy ;-)

 

All I hope is that Uniy 3.x does not break with iOS 6 and that should Apple introduce a new resolution iOS device, the resolution gets supported.

My Unity license is not a year old yet, and I would love it if I was able to get to the year mark without being forced to upgrade (if Misu Misu Kaboom/Bomber Cat sells a bucket load of copies I'll preorder, though )

 

GUI: See a page or two back. I've repeated the answer once or twice by now
VCS: Stay tuned.

 

But what about the idea of separarte licenses without separate code bases?

A scheme that activates iOS Pro features without activating Unity Desktop Pro features?

Right now a Unity Desktop Pro is required for iOS Pro. Some may have zero interest in desktop publishing but be very willing to spill 1500 for the iOS Pro.

 

And whilst we're at it, if the prices increase this significantly, how about that i'm interested in finally a reasonable gui, compute shader support , tessellation and mp4 but have zero interest in the animation voodoo, a new terrain engine or the asset store?

 

Yes separate the iOS pro licence from desktop, so unity free + iOS pro licence should work, or just lower the upgrade prices of iOS pro a bit and were also at a good solution.

 

I would like to request what I requested last year already: Unity has distinct engine libraries for each platform. Could you please start to integrate a proper update mechanism so you can update the editor and the engines independent of each other? Especially mobile builds can't go along too well with the long turnaround of a fully 'all platform QA' with bugs like the screen orientation missbehavior on iPhone in the latest 2 releases (rare on 3.5.1, standard on 3.5.2 - you get startups in portrait even when limited to landscape). I know you are working on it but I doubt it takes 2 months to do so unlike an all platform 3.5.3 and its a pretty major thing that would have needed an update within days, not months.

either that or expose all platform dependent application control code, seperate it from the engine, so we can in general fix missbehaviors and clashes (iOS keyboard especially on text field anyone?). That reduces your burden as the community is capable and willing to help each other but its pretty hard if stuff gets integrated into the engine that has nothing to do with the engine but is an OS thing for which you care less than you should as long as you hardcode it

 

Yes, that!

 

Horrified by the suggestions from people to split mobile from desktop. If anything, it should be even more tightly integrated. Because mobile and desktop is rapidly converging. Soon, within a year, tablets will run windows fine (see ms surface) and already run linux fine. Tablet performance is now beating a lot of netbooks and even some laptops.

Is it expensive?

> no, if you're a serious developer. It's still great value for money.
> yes, if you're not good at development or not too serious about your hobby.
> no, if you're serious about your hobby.

While right this second, it's a lot cheaper to use cryengine or UDK from the outset, and currently in 3.5, those engines are stronger than unity for desktop. This gets fixed in 4.0. Mobile continues to have the edge in 4.0 as well. This places unity in a very competitive position with the other two, and that my friends, might just be worth paying for.

The other engines are cheaper to get started, but will probably end up incurring more expense, not less, over the development lifetime. For a start, there's little to no asset store, so that's extended (much more expensive) dev times for anyone who understands time is money.

Next, where is your prime31 for mobile on other platforms? This kind of rich multiple platform feature set blows the competition completely out of the water, there's no contest there.

It's clear unity felt this was worth paying for. I for one will pay, but I do want to see 3.6

I also don't think flash should be a 1500 license addon for the following reasons:

1. it's still desktop (mac, win, linux, web)
2. it's a dying tech
3. adobes fees on top are hardly inspiring for the platform, and frankly it's why I pause regarding flash. If I get to develop in flash for unity, I will make some impressive stuff with it, and test it... and decide if it's worth the license fee but currently I am on the fence with that one.

That brings me to another point of reasoning: why is mobile the same cost as the base platform? It does not actually make any sense. No matter how hard you push, shove, cry, wail or whatever, mobile takes up less company resources than the base platform, and is cheaper. For the most part, mobile does actually use the same code base as desktop. Does it warrant a full price upgrade just for an addition platform deployment? I don't think it does for hobbyists.

For people in biz, its easy enough to afford.

It was nice of AngryAnt to point out 3.5x will still be supported right up to after 4.0 bug wise. It's easy to try and pin the company down on promises but all you're really doing is making the company be more stealthy and interact less with it's users.

Is that what you want when you're in the throes of a tantrum? It's your choice of course. But there's smarter ways of talking to unity staff and more reasonable ways.

If we users expect to talk to unity in a mature way, we expect to be listened to and interacted with. Don't let that stop unity, because the moment you stop talking, you start building user unrest and frustration.

Even apple has multiple forums where apple staff happily chat with customers. I'd hate to see that stop here.

 

HEAR HEAR!
Completely agree with you guys there. I wish they would allow just iOS PRO license be purchase. Right now I have zero interest to publish to desktop.

And price seems to have increased too. Wasn't upgrade price used to be HALF of full product price? which means, Unity upgrade price right now is up by $100 ($750 vs $850). And also in the past, UT have end of year sales and that usually brings the prices down a bit too - so I am guessing in the past you can get upgrade price for $600.

Tessellation is most likely to be supported since DX11 is now announced to be supported. And I think Compute shader will follow. The REAL puzzle is the GUI. It seems UT can't get its act together for GUI since v2.0 and promise and promise for 3.0 and now 4.0 and its still nowhere in sight. FOR SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS GUI.

 

I would have to disagree there. Just because you're passionate about something, it doesn't make it any less expensive. It may be more worth the money, but if you can't afford it you can't afford it. Passion != money.

 

I think the main point a lot of people are complaining - is that Unity mobile doesn't have feature that is worth the upgrade price. Look at it - The only mobile feature they are touting is SHADOW. 1 feature. The majority of the effort seems to be on desktop - DX11, Linux, Mecanim. So, basically, mobile developers are carrying the development cost of Unity for their desktop users. Its unfair. We are forced to buy Unity Desktop (Unity Pro) for features we don't want and don't need.

 

Don't let me interrupt, but I'd just like to point out that Mecanim and its workflow and runtime performance enhancements are available on all platforms - mobile included.

 

You can be serious about your hobby but not have much time to work on it because you have responsibilities in life. Some people are serious about their projects but they move slowly. For them the upgrade is not worth the price, better off using 3.5 until they have more time to work on a project. I'm not saying this is unity's fault, it's nobodies fault and I accept how it is, but I don't appreciate this sweeping statement people are making that if you aren't willing to invest the money you must suck.

 

Passion != Serious.

Someone that is very serious will make money. I will admit I myself am not as serious as I should be.

 

They should call this weird major update "Unity Wasteland"! If you know what I mean.

 

@I am da Bawss
What i was trying to say was, that if they come up with a 50% price increase then i also would prefer a more modular approach because then i prefer to pay for the components i also only need.

As for if pros can afford it or not. The issue is that it comes out of nowhere and due to certain shortcomings of V3 doesn't seem to be justified. I also wouldn't continue to buy a beer if they increase their price by 50% from one day to another without a convincing explanation.

 

Yeah, I don't see why the mobile crowd don't understand this. I currently avoid animation in my projects (of which the personal ones are mostly mobile) because the tools and skills required make it so darn costly in so many ways. The Mechanim thing looks like it'll relieve a good deal of that.

 

It is no bullshit that this tech is another example of us taking something which was previously only available for the big boys with the deep pockets and making it available for free.

Yes some of the more advanced aspects of it is pro-only, but does that really overshadow the value of what you're getting?

 

Oh for F's Sake... learn to read!

New stuff that works on mobile that's AWESOME....
- DYNAMIC FONTS ON MOBILE - save MASSIVE MB's in un needed font bitmaps!
- HTML MARKUP on fonts on Mobile... !!!
- Mecanim on mobile!!!
- Faster optimised skinned mesh renderers ON MOBILE
- SHADOWS on MOBILE
- Improved GPU Profiling ON MOBILE

And thats just from their short list of highlights... and I haven't even added the editor improvements that EVERYONE gets to benefit from!

I am so over the drama and Unity Bashing.

If you don't want to upgrade - DON'T.
If you want to jump ship to a new engine - CYA.

Otherwise, enough with the repetitive bashing and complaining!

PLEASE!

 

@AngryAnt
You know that Indie != Indie formula? Same applies to Pros...

 

Dx11 is garbage... Bring on real time raytracing already! Ow yeah

 

Seon, there are two things to note. One: how many of those features are available in Unity Free? At least a big part of the Mecanim system is.

But thats not the only issue. A bigger one is that some one that wants to make Desktop only software pays 1500 for his pro license.

Some one that wants to make iOS only software pays 3000 for his pro license because he is forced to buy Unity Desktop Pro to be able to buy iOS Pro.

In the same way, a current Desktop Pro user only needs to pay $850 for his upgrade. A mobile Pro user needs to pay $1500. If you are only interested in mobile, are the new features worth $1500? Some may say yes, others would feel it's unfair simply because Desktop Pro Only developers get to run home with a $850 upgrade.

Mind you: I am interested in desktop too, but until Windows 8 comes out, and Unity apps can be accepted in that market, not so much. Mac deployment may be enough for me to want to retain Desktop Pro, though.

 

@Joe Robins
A Porsche is cool as well, but do i need one? In 90% of the cases, nope. So, do i want to pay for those 10% of usage 100% of the price? Nope.

And contrary to Unity's engines so far Porsches do really work the way they are advertised and they don't get outdated this soon.

And what happens if V5 will be even cooler than V4? You know it will feature technology only the big boys have, etc., another 50% price increase or maybe 100% then? I always said that things can get expensive pretty soon if you own several licences. Now is the first round when it's beginning to hurt some.

 

I'm not arguing the issues of needing Regular Pro to get iOS Pro... I am specifically calling BS on a few people now that have claimed that Mobile has gotten no love in 4.0.

By my count, only DX11 in the current advertised features (to date) is non mobile and everything else works on mobile, improves mobile or improves the editor for ALL users.

The OP's comment was only 1 mobile feature added and mobile customers are paying for desktop users development. I am calling BS on that.

 

GUI is more than just an asset. GUI is not just some fancy graphics or sprite batching. It's also input, event handling, flexibility required to display the same menu on different screen aspect rations, not just on different resolutions.

They had years to work on it, still it's not done yet, because they wasted their resources on less useful features, i.e. Shuriken. While Shuriken is nice (though incomplete), it's far less essential than a working GUI system.

Every platform has 100 more sophisticated GUI system, be it Sun's Java (where you write the GUI in code w/o some fancy editor), Android (where it's described in XML files but can also be done in code), WAML in Microsofts WPF - even .NET's dialog based UI system was 100x more sophisticated than current Unity GUI - or iOS UI.

Each of them offers features, to make the UI more flexible, easy to work with (can't comment on iOS, don't have it but I have all of the other one UI systems). You have events, OOP GUI programming, etc. where you can configure your object once and you're done with it w/o having to set the properties of it with each GUI update or having to set the properties in the correct order to achieve the effect.

Unity GUI is just a huge mess, and if you get more complicated UI you ultimately end up in a huge mess and spaghetti code.

That may be true, but you have to bite the bullet and bring it out then, instead of pushing it even further back AND asking more money for it, whether it be by making 4.0 upgrades free, maintaining two code bases until new GUI is introduced in 3.6 or postponing 4.0 until the GUI is done.

Your CEOs did a wrong decision by postponing the GUI update, now they have to fix it. It's called responsibility.

It's the guy who made Boo (and UnityScript)

I don't see this going in the right direction either, as it would waste even more resources (unless the fixes are very easy to apply), when it's going to get replaced anyways soon.

You don't have to maintain it in the long term, just until you finally finished the new GUI system. The faster you get it in, the less you will have to maintain two different code bases.

But tbh, critical fixes aren't enough. Critical fixes won't bring new GUI to 3.x

 

The more I think of it, the better I like the idea of paying up for components (if they are at reasonable price).

This way, the customers would be able to vote with their wallets for features and UT may finally stop introducing features, in which the majority is not interested in and instead add features which are useful for a huge customer base.

This way, adding less than useful features wouldn't be as rewarding as adding highly required features (new GUI system ffs.

 

We don't have to do anything. We appreciate feedback, but we are not going to ship half assed features (wait, were you not accusing us of doing just that a few pages ago?) and we will not let one feature hold back others.

Again, your feedback is appreciated, but restating your desire to have the new GUI system in 3.x does not make it so.

Nothing has been postponed. That is exactly what I wrote in that exact piece of text you chose to quote me on. S*** happens. We do not let that stop the whole train. We learn from it and keep moving.

 

If unity starts selling Pro features as plugins for the free users, that would be nice... to some. There are people who sell their own plugins to the free user market on the asset store, such as a path-finding mod, they wouldn't be able to compete with Unity's path-finding pro features. I wonder how many pro users neglect using Unity features and buy a third party plugin from the asset store? Just a thought, no conclusions, just thoughts.

 

Aw man, just saw this and the update list and thought this might be awesome.

But as i read on it seemed getting worse.

-Like, lightmapping with normal maps, AWESOME!. But then... not for mobiles, Android?!

-Also "Improved Cubemap import pipeline" is not checked on Android's editor features?

-Old Mono
-Still not THE new GUI-system?
-Animation sharing, what is probably nothing that couldn't be done with any 3D editor of your choice.

And the "high" upgrade price... i'd rather save the $200 for the purchase than getting a $200 voucher to spend for things i probably won't need.

 

I think some people actually believe you guys DID spend all your time playing Starcraft and the delay on the GUI system is not just because it's taken longer than expected.

I do got to ponder how many in this thread (complaining about this stuff) have actually worked on their own projects... anyone that has worked on a moderately complex project should already know that things rarely go as expected and you must push back or slash features all the time. Even on the simplest of game project, sacrifices are part of all development cycles.

In 15+ years as a developer I have seen absolutely no project that didnt get either delayed or forced to drop features (and I seen more than I worked on).

 

3 years here and still thinking that Unity is extremely difficult to manage for one-man bands wanting to release small polished games fast: native 3D environment, quality art required, GUI performance issues, concept to avoid the usual Unityish terrain Lerpz, and so on. I'm still at Unity 2.6 level in terms of programming capability, really, but do not feel hampered or left behind: it's not me, it's UT that accelerated a lot, way beyond my needs.

 

I would be ultra interested in the new animation system if it somehow supported video based motion capture...
But judging by what I see in the videos, I still need to work tons of hours building keyframed animations so in fact it is still the same to me.
Also, I do not like much the idea of buying animation clips... But I may consider selling the ones I create

 

To everyone saying DX11 is non-mobile, keep in mind that it WILL BE "mobile" when Windows 8 (Windows RT) is out. Not sure about Windows 8 phones, but Windows 8 tablets will be DX11 and they are mobile.

 

The only modularity I would support would be to separate the requirement to own Unity Pro to get iOS Pro or Android Pro.

Any deeper than that (going on a feature per feature basis) becomes a support and maintenance nightmare, not to mention a potential gateway to bankruptcy.

 

This.

I was thinking about the same thing, too (and I'm sure the folk at Unity have considered it at some point). But it could quickly become a quagmire of catches, support and maintenance. Not to mention the (near guaranteed) endless bickering on the forums about just how modular it should be...

 

"Specific new features are not guaranteed unless we explicitly say they are."

Just read the SW Licensing Agreement. They always says something along the lines of:

This software is not warranteed as being fit for any specific use and no responsibility is taken...

Can't be more avoidant then that.

 

Are any of the features for iOS or Android dependent on features in the Pro version?

 

Well, short and sweet... Just want to offer my feedback.
I think the update cost is too expensive in particular for the add-on's (iOS/ Android).

I think $500 for Pro and $200 each for Android/ iOS for a total upgrade cost of $900 would be more reasonable pricing.

Been using Unity since it was first starting out and a mac only engine and it's the first time since then that I'm considering exploring new engine choices. Not as $1500 is unaffordable right now; it's just the scale of which the pricing has increased compared to that of the last updates cost makes me weary about the potential future update costs and it's future viability for my business.

 

Well then if it was never shelved then it really much be very sophisticated. I can't wait.

 

+1

But regarding DX11 you do realise that the next generation of mobile gpus* will have a DX11 level feature set in OpenGL ES 3.0+, so hopefully Unity 4 mobile will be ready for this.

*Apparently some of the high end mobile GPUs already have a DX11 feature set, the latest Tegra, Mali ect.

 

I really dont understand the complaints people are giving. Is unity lacking in some features.. of course. Its $1500 engine. One that you can do top of the line stuff with. I mean what id give for some tools to layout decals and variation like crytek or unreal or any of those, but u know what...they also want a lot more money for their engines.

Unity guys are not obligated to give you any features just like your not obligated to buy it. You can pout all you like, but you know your going to end up buying either way because there are no other relevant options for the price. So give it a rest, they did us a favor by introducing new features. Heres hoping they keep them coming.

When I decide to make a full pc game and or console title, ill probably go with cryengine 3 and let them take 20% of my project.. just for the quality, but unity is awesome for anything else like apps, simulations and even full games if u can take the time to build the stuff they are lacking yourself.