Unity 4 Details

UnityGUI update was supposed to be a 3.x and promised at one point to be in the 3.x series, I can't afford to upgrade my pro license and my plugins anytime this year, going through a custody battle, so hopefully the 3.x version will simply just be locked down for only bug fixes at this point and still will get bug fixes, sad that the GUI enhancement was pushed from 2.x through 3.x into 4.x, I really hate that. Nothing can be done, it is just another thing.

Congratulations on this landmark update.

Read this thread for the 3.x road map where GUI was promised in the 3.x to be updated and again has moved to yet another major release.. this is the ONLY feature that I see should still be included in 3.x
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/06/16/unity-roadmap-2011/

 

I believe it has been established at least a hundred billion trillion times that they did not promise anything. I never exaggerate.

 

Yes we can!

We can at least ask!

Come on join my 'Oliver Twist' style please UT can I have some more 3.x!

All we're asking for is a few scraps from the 4.0 table to tide us over until we can afford the upgrade!

 

Do people not read road maps?
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/06/16/unity-roadmap-2011/

How is that not a promise that 3.5 was to have the new GUI system in it?
Its in black and white as part of the feature set.

Seriously....
This was pushed off, didn't happen like it was stated and now that it has, it landed in 4.0

 

I asked a simple and civil question yesterday concerning version skipping (based on feature desirability) while retaining an ability to upgrade status that was not answered on the forums. Consequently, I engaged my representative kindly provided to me as a pro user and after some pointed questions got a response. I wanted to share what I found out since I think it may be important in the decision making for other 'on the fencers.'

AngryAnt has mentioned that if you don't feel the feature set in 4.0 is worth the upgrade, simply don't upgrade. That's fair, and typically how I approach my other professional software. Companies like Adobe and Autodesk don't penalize this behavior as owning previous versions (within reason) retains the customer the ability to upgrade to a newer version at an discounted cost even if they don't own the version that immediately preceded it. Sometimes there's a scaling upgrade cost, but it at least acknowledges the previous owners brand loyalty.

While my rep could not confirm any sort of pricing plans for the eventual release of 5.0 (again, very reasonable) UT is not providing an upgrade discount to Unity 2.0 users to 4.0. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that if one does not upgrade to 4.0, they will lose their discount upgrade status for future versions of Unity.

So AngryAnt, while you say if the feature set doesn't interest a developer, then just don't buy in no harm no foul, that's not entirely true. Unlike many other professional software developers who are supposedly far less hobbyist friendly, if one does not ride the upgrade chain with Unity (regardless of feature desirability) it is likely that any upgrade discount will be forfeit.

As a hobbyist who became a pro user to learn and develop skills with the software (with its full feature set) and potentially monetize this knowledge in the future, I believe the path UT has decided to take clearly marginalizes folks like me. This is not full of vitriol nor do I think it represents marching with pitchforks and torches towards UT HQ. I previously felt I was part (all be it a smaller part) of the Unity market, and was happy to pay for a pro license because I can and wanted to support the ideology behind the product. These decisions make me feel less so, and that is fine from a business perspective and I certainly don't think my interests need to be catered to.
For what it’s worth, I personally will not be upgrading to 4.0 based on the new features and may consider investing my learning time in an engine that is more conducive to my plans.

 

Yes, they probably are. Mecanim, shadows, render textures, etc... I imagine they're all tied in to the same systems (rather than separate ones that are used depending on your platform). But they're all there by default, regardless of which version you are using. They are simply "unlocked" by the particular license you own for any given platform.

So it's technically probably not too hard to do.

But I don't know about the financial side of it. I imagine, judging by the pricing structure, that the cost of desktop/web Pro is meant to cover the mainstay of the advanced feature support/R&D/maintenance, and the cost of the android/IOS Pro simply helps with that. Perhaps in the future we'll see the Pro versions separated out per platform with the cost of them averaged out so it's the same for each platform.

It's a difficult thing to balance out. Sell less numbers of expensive things or more numbers of cheaper things? Either option can easily succeed or totally backfire.

Who knows... just a thought

 

Yes, Mother Theresa made a bundle!

 

We are a small studio, 2 people making this game "elefantopia:spider garden".

I handle the art portion of the game and can't even touch the animation code because the API is so unintuitive
There is a lot of animation interleaved with the tons of AI.
Wiring in the animation states and making the thing work took 20% of our development time and we have yet to wire in the Golem and Hybrid at the end.
Animation still has hiccups and oddities here and there.

I haven't used Mecanim but I used Filmbox and Motion Builder on movies. These things more than doubled our productivity so I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar improvement with Mecanim. This could means economies in the neighborhood of $7000 which alone is worth the upgrade price.

In addition to the economics, it will look better and allows the artist to step in and add subtleties.

So there no question here, we're upgrading.

 

Man that was an upgrade!



http://www.luxology.com/modo/601/tour/

Service Pack out already.

Oh yes i forgot, Unity isn't the only software you have to upgrade from time to time.

 

I've had a look at the features list and wrote a small blog post about it from our point of view (a company specialized in game prototyping):
http://www.previewlabs.com/unity-4-announced

 

So they said they were working on something. Developing for a program like this is a very technical thing, not everything they aspire to do will work out easily. The road maps are just to give you insight as to what they are working on, not to serve as a sales pitch. And they didn't lie, they really were working on the GUI, but for whatever reason it didn't develop the way they wanted and they pushed it back it. Oh well, that's life, they don't owe you the GUI, they never entered into any contract agreement that says they will make good on all things mentioned in the roadmap. It's the nature of software development, deal with it.

 

Well, you have to understand the basic principle of the crowd. They always get used to their environment and when you feed them with gold, next day they want diamonds... And the day after they want to get money for you feeding them diamonds...
It's just like that with everything. So forget about them.

 

Seriously? By clarifying it in the same document:

 

zumwalt! How dare you quote mine Unity!? You say you're sorry to them right now!

 

In our defense, we did say on that very same page, "Please note that the features in this roadmap are not commitments! They may or may not end up in a final release. If a feature isn’t ready in time it will not be included in the release." Granted, we've learned that adding a disclaimer does not change anyone's expectations, and hopefully we won't be making that mistake again. We're sorry that GUI has taken so long, but I'm still unaware of anywhere the GUI was guaranteed for the 3.x cycle. The 4.x cycle is going to be an awesome cycle, with the features shipping in 4.0 and the features yet to come in later 4.x releases, and we won't hold it up because the GUI is not yet ready for prime time.

We feel confident that our customers will be pleased with the new GUI when it finally makes its debut.

 

Please UT could we just have some more of that GUI optimisation in 3.x as well as a dash of bug fixes, polish and dollop or two from the Unity 4.0 buffet. Just to round off this meagre portion of 3.x and fill out poor bellies before the economic winter sets in?

 

I am more than just a bit disappointed, I purchased unity pro and android basic early this year, normally I would be excited and happy to hear of new upgrades but this time I have to admit I feel like unity is leaving me in the cold or al least somewhere coldish.

Upgrade prices are outrageous! after 6 months I am now am facing a 50% upgrade price tag.. where's the love unity.

In comparison to other software packages for example adobe 6 ultimate upgrade from 5.5 is 525.000 where as the full product cost 2599.00

If the upgrade prices were of similar percentage rate I wouldn't be so upset, but at present conditions I feel this is a bit to ask from unity.

I believe that client loyalty should be valued for something, one should not forget Unity cannot exist without paying customer, so unity please be kind to us as we are kind to you.

I would simply like to point out to that there are enough people here that don't feel very comfortable with unities upgrade policy and I hope that there will be some solution that we will profit all of us.

 

Adobe have changed their upgrade policy, you can only do it from the most recent version (although it may still be in the grace period before the change). That has caused quite a stink. EDIT: Forgot to add my point: Adobe obviously didn't feel that was working for them. And I don't think they are a good example anyway as their software always seems a bit light on new features in each update, it was easy to skip a few versions without noticing much change. Unity are much much better in this regard.

My only worry about staying with Unity 3.x is that the ability to do current iOS builds can break quite quickly. But it looks like that will continue for a while. I certainly hope so through the transition to iOS 6.

The new Unity 4 features do seem quite sparse, but I'm not surprised they are holding back on announcing other details until they are sure they will be ready.

 

I think some people did ignore the disclaimer, but I also think that other people (along with me) assumed it meant that the other features were coming in a 3.5.x or later 3.x release, not in another major release.

 

Please continue to publish intended roadmaps. It is useful for understanding where Unity wants to take the product and helps all developers be aware.

I wish there was a GUI solution, but seriously, if you upgrade and get the voucher, go on the asset store and pick up NGUI for $45 while it is on sale. It has an atlas maker. It uses Unity's texture packer.It dynamically creates your geometry. It is component-based like the unreleased Unity GUI. It works and it is on sale. I am about to release a game that uses NGUI and it is more than adequate and the forum support is excellent.

So how about that 4.x roadmap

 

The voucher isn't valid on the Asset Store, it is only for further licence upgrades.

 

A great feature to add to the API page would be a comments section in the API documentation the way PHP.net does it. That would allow people to post about specific API calls right in the docs and highlight any issues that come up.

 

I think we've learned our lesson for the time being ;-)

 

I disagree. I don't think most people ignored it, otherwise you'd have the GUI uproar at the time of 3.5 release.

Of course people were disappointed that the new GUI wasn't in 3.5, but most didn't complained that much, because they expected it to come with 3.6 or at worse with 3.7. After all, the disclaimer was only referring that certain features may not make it into 3.5, which GUI in fact didn't made it.

There was no mention that these features won't make it into 3.x.

 

There was no mention it would either.

Most of this was revealed in Unite 11 and they also announced 4.0. There were plenty of threads from people pondering if there would be any more updates in between 3.5 and 4.0.

In fact, with the announcement of 4.0 and the roadmap only reaching 3.5 the safest assumption (if there is such a thing as a safe assumption) would had been that anything that didn’t made it into 3.5 would not make it until 4.0.

 

We said "They may or may not end up in a final release." A final release means any release... ie, these features may never show up, ever. Of course our hope was to get it out in the next release, but that disclaimer was to make sure that it didn't blow up in our face with false expectations. Obviously that didn't happen.

 

If I am not mistaken the GUI updates were also in the 2.x road map then pushed to 3.x road map so it bounced two releases, either way, as with most people, I only read to the point that I want to see, as in the GUI is getting enhanced, I was happy then I closed out of the road map didn't read to the very bottom, put the disclaimer at the top in bold red letters, why on earth everyone on the planet puts disclaimers at the bottom of pages is beyond me, put them first to set the expectations, just general bad design of layout on wording, goes beyond here but into the world at large.

 

There also was no guarantee that they would. We hoped it would, and we really tried to make it for 3.5. We failed miserably in that regard, and we're sorry. I can promise we have our best guys on it -- even borrowing guys from other teams. We're trying hard to get it out there in your hands. But we can't release it before it is awesome, especially after all of this hype.

And the host of features introduced in the 3.x cycle is absolutely no short list.

 

What the F*** are you talking about.

The Unite 11 was in September, the roadmap was released June last year, even before Unity 3.4 was released (back then Unity 3.3 was the current version). The roadmap was for 3.4 and 3.5, definitely showing features of the 3.x product line. Not a single word about 4.x

 

I hadn't heard of this. Did some research. Interesting and relevant to this discussion, it looks like Adobe reversed the policy based on user fever.

Link: http://prodesigntools.com/adobe-cs6-new-upgrade-policy-changes-postponed-cs3-cs4.html

 

Go go maturity levels!!!

That changes little. The roadmap may have been there earlier but 4.0 was announced in September before 3.5 came out. There was no more mentions about any additional updates in between. Again, the only safe assumption, if any, would have been that it would not make it if it didn’t show up in 3.5.

Zumwalt, I sympathize with your situation, but the disclaimer was not at the bottom of the page. It's right after the introduction to 3.5's potential feature list, right before the list itself. Before any mention to the new UI framework.

 

I read somewhere in this thread that 3.5 is not abandoned, I wondered if I can know what and when will the next 3.x be?

 

That's what I was saying. There are a few people who are claiming that the features were promised for 3.5, which they weren't, hence the ignored disclaimer. Many people interpreted the disclaimer as "these features may not be in 3.5, but they will be in 3.x."

 

That is not worded very well, but if you read it again you will see they haven't reversed their decision, they added the grace period I mentioned, which runs until the end of this year. The new upgrade policy will be in effect from then.

 

Unsure on that otherwise at least the OnGUI enhancements would be backported to 3.x to make the problem at least little bit smaller.
We all know that the gui system was overdue for an update with 2.5 already cause Unity iPhone branched from Unity 2.1 with Ongui as GUI solution yet OnGUI is not even touch aware (the only reason it works at all is cause touch 0 maps to mouse down and up - but ongui has no multitouch detection capability at all, that makes i a 0 love period for over 3 year and 2 major versions on Unity iPhone addon through which this shortcoming was not adressed and now for the first time Unity iOS and Unity Android start to adress their platform, somewhen in the future, it will cost ...!)

Don't get me wrong, I love unity and will continue using it.
But given that this will be the 3rd time I have to pay for the Unity iOS addons I would expect that we get a special condition on the pricing on that end at least as you kinda missed and underpriorized a basic core feature (touch capable UI for a UI touch centric device) for 3 years and a good $2000 of my and many other peoples cash. I hope you take that into account when you do not understand the uproar on the GUI itself, cause at laest the mobile and especially the iOS side got burned for years now with that hide and run tactics on the GUI upgrade.

Would all likely have been less of a problem if the announced (gamasutra 3.0 press unveil) 2D system for mobile would have landed with 3.0 or 3.x at all to build upon it. But that is not even mentioned any longer.

 

we will see.

Thats the plan but Adobe is feeling the fire on the OSX side where more and more equally and more capable programs, which met some real UI designer to create an intuitive and productive UI, pop up at a fraction of adobes price.
If they really put the new policy in place they will likely see a significantly lower number of upgrades and that not only for up to 3 generates as in the past but up to 5 until they finally added enough to justify the full price fee again. so in the end it will end with reasonable prices on the creative cloud or their packages moving there with 'web premium cloud' and alike cause nobody is gonna upgrade the licenses at all anymore for years to come.

They did horrible in their communication and handling of loyal users since early 2011 and the flash premium strike against anyone stupid enough to stay with flash instead of alternatives is definitely not gonna make it better in the 2yr+ run

I wouldn't go as far as drawing parallels to unity here, but there definitely were some communication problems along the 3.x lifecycle, especially in the context of the UI which by some staff members was assured to land in 3.x even if it doesn't make it in 3.5. Unluckily its hard to proof that so there is no legal enforcement here and even if it wouldn't help, it would end with a broken implementation just to perform the 'forced port'

 

Probably cause it makes no sense, announcing features for a version which may come in 5 years (slight exaggeration) from now on?

"Hey, Unity is going to support OpenGL 6.0 [...at some point in distant future; like a decade from now on]"

 

No big deal at this point, I just got to figure out how to come up with the $$$ to upgrade all stuff I got..
Once again, congratulations

 

But they were working on it back then, that's why they mentioned it. It got pushed back.

 

As a hobbyist, the upgrade price is just a little too steep for me. I am going to fall back to free. No big deal buut I would rather have had the extra toys. Under $500 would have been my price point, especially considering the shortish time between upgrades. Blobshadows don't look so bad when you have $800 in your pocket !

 

Agree with you (and I have the same situation as yours). I know this has been said many times, but I honestly believe Unity needs to look at the upgrade price. I am not looking for cheap or free. I really enjoy using the Pro features, but 50% increase does not look reasonable to me compared to other upgrade prices of other SW packages.
Don't get me wrong, Unity. Love you lots...but I feel that as one of the "little" guys I am at a disadvantage here.

 

Not trying to insist, but... to insist, actually :

If new features were no more bound to given release numbers, would people mind so much not to see (for example) the announced new GUI arrive at a certain date ? probably not, if they were not forced to pay for it in advance.

Personally, I would be happy to pay for this new GUI the day it comes out, exactly like we have been doing for almost 2 years with assets in the Asset Store...

Why, from a logical point of view, should there be any difference ? I really like the new model introduced by the Asset Store, it gives you so much freedom : let's keep going that route, and forget the old software upgrade model... it's so 90's !

Just kidding

 

Unity are going to do a 3.x update and are asking for us to request new features via the bug reporter...

Cheers Done!

 

I know emotions are running high but can you please not post the same thing three time on forum threads again. Users are always welcome to make feature requests.

 

Sure, I can understand that. Although, I don't think it is too unreasonable for the Unity Team to see things from our point of view either.

We can argue for days about what was technically promised and what was only planned for the future. However, when a company starts telling its users to go read the fine print you know things are starting to turn bad. What is clear is that many of us feel Unity 3 is incomplete.

Again, you can say that the 3.5 version will be worked on, but for how long? Will mobile versions still be getting enough support for things like iOS 6? If they're not, my iOS Pro 3 license will become pretty much useless. That really seems like your trying to force us into re-buying our licenses.

Which brings me to the increase in upgrade costs. Lets use my Unity 3 Pro/iOS Pro licenses as an example. It would cost me $1700 to upgrade my $3000 purchase(I'm not even going to include the cost of previous upgrades). That isn't even a %50 discount. You can say that other software companies have a similar business model, but most of them give more severe discounts to previous owners.

The business model you have now encourages people to use the free version of Unity until the last minute, while not rewarding previous supporters. Its only going to get worse when you continue to add new engine addons.(Like flash and maybe windows phone/tablets)
You guys NEED to rethink your upgrade costs and the way you handle addon licenses.


Of course, I don't want to be overly negative or bash the Unity Team. I just think this is Unity's first serious misstep.

 

Here's something a little different in this thread, an actual question

With Unity 4.0 bringing Linux deployment support, will the limit of 2 activations per license be raised to 3? I am actually in the process of getting Unity to use for work, and one of the main reasons we are actually using it is for multiplatform deployment (I am actually building applications with Unity, rather than games at the moment). As such, it will probably need to be installed in 3 machines, at least.

It just seems as if the 2 activation limit is a little low these days.

 

Wat?

 

I think it's very important at the moment please unlock my thread started to help raise awareness of your request for us to request features for 3.x via the bug reporter.

 

Unity editor does not run on Linux.
Why would they increase it to 3?

 

Seems like the features you want is 3.5 are more than critical needs.