Unity 4 Details

I feel to need to say that as a whole Unity is a great tool and I like the direction it is going! ( besides the iOS pro upgrade pricing )

Here are a few things I love to see in the next version.

- Full Wacom pressure and angle support, this would be great for painting and placing assets.
- Unity trees optimised for mobile.
- Unity terrain optimised for mobile
- Included layered shaders for mobile ( 2 and 3 textures )
- Prefabs in Prefabs
- Shadows for mobile ( confirmed )
- Dynamic Fonts for mobile ( confirmed )
- Bathing of dynamic objects ( ? )
- Texture Painting from ninja camp
- Voxel Terrain
- Visual Scripting Editor
- Texture Streaming

I hope some if this will make it

 

why would it need to change?
The builds never were license bound and thats the only thing going to linux

 

Sadly the more vocal people may have shot themselves in the foot because I don't see any public roadmaps ever happening again from unity. I just hope unity will otherwise keep us informed of things though.

Again, AngryAnt already answered this.

 

I think you misunderstood AdmiralAckbar's post before. We are only doing critical fixes for 3.5.x. There will not be a 3.6. All he was saying is that you are free to make feature requests via the bug reporter. That is very different from us wanting suggestions for features for 3.5.x which, I'll state again, is only for critical fixes.

 

Hey Antenna, I need to pm you about an issue that has been present since Unity 3.x... and it is really hindering the progress on my current game project and I really don't want to see it happen in Unity 4...and I truly want to make a lot of people aware of it... I don;t know if it is a bug, a limitation, or neglect on my part, but it is something that SERIOUSLY needs to be addressed... thanks

 

Well... I hope you guys take a future broken iOS deployment as a need for critical fix.
Show us love with your actitudes then we show you love with our money

... ... I think that didnt exactly sound good, but you got the idea.

 

Since everyone else is coming out of hiding...
In the Unity survey I originally wrote about my need for a convenient GUI solution...
Now that I see Mecanim in the workflow video, I realize 2 things:
Unity has added a feature I didn't realize I needed so badly for a 3D game workflow, AND...
Unity is primarily focused on providing solutions to 3D game developers (and I would guess they always have been).
If Mecanim works as advertised, I want it over any GUI solution. I see nothing like it on the asset store.
Mecanim is a potential game changer to the other game engines.
Still in shock at seeing all the skinned meshes running and jumping around on the iPad in the video. Wow!
Also, if that little "mirror" button does what I hope it does, Unity saved me a purchase of 3DS Max, or at least Modo! Thanks for that.

 

I think I understood perfectly what he said "submit feature request" via the bug reporter. And previously in a thread requesting a 3.6 release your staff mentioned that there was going to be an update in the 3.5.x line.

We have helped pay your salaries and bug report your beta releases then you slap a higher price on features we were given to believe would hit a 3.x release (some were even slated for a 2.x release).

Wow if Unity had wanted to alienate their loyal user base they couldn't have picked a better way to do it.

 

They said they would make bug fixes in 3.5, if they said they would do more, cite your source.

 

What part of "SUBMIT FEATURE REQUEST" in a thread requesting some optimisations, polish and fixes to the 3.5 Unity product line is unclear to you!

Snassing Frassing!

 

Cite.

Don't bother I will:

Where does it talk about adding features for 3.5?

 

cited!

 

Beat you.

 

@Khyrid do you own a pro license for Unity 3.x?

 

Guys, it's starting to feel like I'm reading someone's PMs on this thread. Can we get it back on track or let it die?

 

I don't want to answer that question out of fear that the answer may incriminate me.

 

OK Unity 4.0 features sound great but it's a pity they appear to be features that were on the 3.x roadmap and even partially released in the 3.5 build, and that the upgrade price is so expensive for Pro+Mobile users.

Discuss.

1. Amazing new features.
2. Mourne the 3.5 release may it RIP

 

i really like how unity team are more avtive after 4 announced

 

Perhaps you should read it a bit more closely:

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.

 

Ok so I'll clear up this confusion. That quote has been taken slightly out of context, I was replying to a question you'd asked regarding certain features being included in future 3.5.x releases. I said I was unable to provide you details about specific features, and suggested you submit a Feature Request if you so wished. This was so you'd get feedback about the features you wanted included, our users are always welcome to submit feature requests this is not a new initiative.

I closed the thread you opened as we want to try and keep the feedback in as few places as possible. It makes it far easier for us to understand the feedback that way. I'm not trying to silence anyone, and we do want to hear what you all have to say.

I hope this has cleared things up.

 

Some people complain too much, some people don't complain enough. I complain just right.

Summary for the griping of this whole thread pretty much, tl:dr:

-Unity 4 is going to be released due to big features being added, entirely reasonable.

-Unity 3.5 will receive some critical bug fixes.

-3.5 Pro users who want better GUI, Path-finding, etc. can download user made plugins or upgrade to 4.0.

-Unity had in the past kept us informed as to what they were working on and were careful to warn us that these are not commitments.

-People felt the upgrade cost are steep, understandable, but Unity has a right to charge what they want.

-Some users felt burned that features they thought would be in 3.x won't be and feel "lied to".

-It was explained relentlessly that those features were NOT promised.

-Some users refused to accept this and continue to gripe.

-All the while Unity staff kept up to beat with people's concerns and answered their questions openly.

BTW post below me... THIS

 

Here is a real world example of why Unity putting unreleased features in the Roadmap is good:

About a year ago I started working on an AI based game that needed pathfinding. I spent some time deciding whether or not to build my own nav mesh system, prototyped some A* stuff, took a look at the pathfinding tools that were available at the time. The plugins seemed great but I really wanted something that was integrated into the engine.

Shortly after the Navmesh appeared in the roadmap. I decided to work around the AI and finish other assets in the game instead.

Then it was in the 3.5 release. I was able to abandon the solutions I was looking at and use the Navmesh functionality directly. This saved me at least a month of programming and integration and I was able to divert those resources to something else. If I had not seen it in the roadmap I would have wasted a month working on that instead.

We don't as a community want to discourage UT from telling us what they are working on in the roadmap. UT is one of the most forthcoming companies I've ever seen about what is coming in the pipeline. The point about the GUI, while I can see users being frustrated by if they are in need of it, pushes UT into a "don't tell anyone until we release it" methodology. How would you feel if You spent a few months working on a GUI system and putting it into your code only to have UT pop it out in a release in a natively supported form? The complaints in this forum would be: "Why didn't you tell us about this. I just spent 2 months working on it!"

 

Offering a roadmap always is a very good thing and in most cases it doesn't cause any harm.

The GUI is a special case because it was needed very badly and instead of putting more efforts into getting it done right we got a bunch of other features which ended up being half baked implementations and that's just a waste of development time on both sides.

 

Think you meant to say "it was* needed badly" You fixed it immediately, never mind.

 

The Roadmap: Problems
*** REMOVED *** 1 disclaimer at end
1 not updated it's a fixed in time roadmap

2 Unity could use a nice 3D flash/2D web dynamic roadmap on their main page as long as they update it with relevant information regarding items and status it could be a great tool for developers working on longer projects or choosing projects.

It's all about good communication!

 

It's not at the end, it's at the top! Go look at the link. It's right at the top of the 3.5 section. In bold. And italic. OK, not red, but surely bold and italic (and being a separate paragraph) are enough. At some point people really need to accept some responsibility for being careless. UT did everything right in this case and doesn't deserve any blame for how it was handled. For other things, sure. But not that.

--Eric

 

So now there has been question raised if roadmap is good or bad thing? UT has said dozen of time that all features on roadmap MAY OR MAY NOT be included in next release of Unity engine. Roadmap is good thing if only 50% features are being done, or even less, becouse it gives you some perspective what you can except in next Unity release. Usually roadmap is only for big releases like v3 or v4, which means that technically they are not robbing anyone. If someone makes purchase only becouse of promised roadmap features then i must say it is quite naive. On other hand big features that are being worked over 2 major releases and still not released are little different story, but in this case only GUI is on that list if i remember correctly, long story short....any way you turn around roadmap is great to have.

 

I think that what UT will take away from this uproar is that they should never ever push out any kind of roadmap or announcement of new features ever ever ever again.

Which is a shame for those of us who like to drool about what's coming.

 

Totally agree. Of course people would still feel some disappointment if a nice feature didn't make a release, but they only feel outrage when they feel an essential feature was delayed to work more on a just-nice feature.

Though I can understand Unity Tech wanting to bring out some major nice feature that puts them ahead of the competition in some way, and maybe they had to jump on an opportunity to acquire mecanim. Many game engine companies I've looked at do bring out major just-nice features while delaying very essential ones.

If the new GUI was ready for 4.0, I would have been excited about all other features too, but I've just been very distracted by the lack of a new GUI to care much about the other features.

 

any comments on the real time shadows improvement? its the only reason i got the ver 3 pro .

 

Something as simple as this could be used, as long as it is updated regularly!

 

They promise the GUI for the V.3 (several forum post + press release).
They probably had a big internal issue (some programmer not doing the job properly and management not checking it. or something like that).
They are probably rebooting the dev. And that's totally undestandable.
But they could at least make a commercial gesture.

Everybody were pleased upgrading to the V3. Just a very few complains. They had probably missed something, because you have a forum post of 60 page with 3/4 of complains. (new customer pay less than old and faithful customer)

But now they are in a tricky way. They can't do a special promo afterward, and they can't make a GUI overnight.
They still need cash to investe in tech and attract AAA market with to notch features.

The only thing they were able to do is to miraculously activate the possibility to upgrade just some of your licences (what a miracle..)

 

I've been reading this thread for awhile and i see so many people complaining...

I don't really understand why people are so agressive with this.
Yes they said the new GUI system was coming to 3.x but like many software out there, it can get delayed due to problems or simply not ready for a release.
It's not like they don't want to give these features to us costumers, they just want to finish the best software they can make in a short period of time, and when they have problems with the development or don't think it's ready for a release, then the best way is to delay it and make it better.
I want to be honest that the version 4.0 is looking great but it's lacking some features that the majority of users want (new terrain system, visual scripting tool, visual shader editor, etc) , but they will announce the rest during the next few months and add more features in future versions, so no problem there.

I don't really have the money to buy the Pro license for my game, but if i had the money i would buy it. It would help us alot to make the game way better than it is right now.

I hope you guys agree with me on this matter

 

Unfortunately software development doesn't work that way, it would do more damage than good to try to be that transparent. They mentioned the GUI system and other features that were coming and now getting attacked for not finishing them in time. This kneejerk lashback by many users sends a loud and clear message that mentioning any incomplete features will result in hostility. You wouldn't tell a child about their present before it's bought and wrapped, and given the maturity level demonstrated by members of this community a similar approach is probably required here.

 

I would actually like to see Unity embrace their own idea of the asset store. Why not make pro a onetime fee and free/minimal upgrade pricing. Then sell new features on the asset store. You want Mechanim, Beast, new super gui system? then pay for it. Why should a developer making a 2d iOS game pay the dev costs of features they never use?

Can I get an amen? or +1

 

This! I didn't know if the GUI was coming in 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, but I expected sometime in 3.x. And, if it was released as part of 4.0, I could even see it. 4.0 upgrade is $1700 per seat, with no GUI. I do not feel like a valued customer. Not at all.

 

I say if UT were to go this route it would be modular licenses without one pro license.For example, if somebody needed just realtime shadows there would be a realtime shadows bundle on the asset store by UT for maybe $200. If they needed a new GUI (if it ever comes out) they can purchase it for $200 on the asset store. Maybe also one full pro pack for $1500-2000.
I don't know if this would be the correct route, though.

 

that's exactly what I was thinking. Just make it all modular! It's part way there with the different build licences.

I think it would be the best route for developers. Is it a sustainable business model? That's a different question.

 

They need to shutdown the fire on the forums.

Modularity?
Dream on. What they have done to unity has no simple come back.
It jumped from indie friendly to "very expensive" for indies. Many users will look for alternatives after 3.5 breaks, that is almost a fact already. Thanks to their new AAA focus...

 

Excellent, I guess they can stop bitching and moaning about it then.

 

I don't understand this, how are they AAA focused?
By adding stuff that PC developers actually need to release games in 2012 and not 2004?

 

I don't think anybody is upset that there are new features coming. It's mainly the price and lack of finished features in the 3.x cycle that people are peeved about.

 

If you dont read the news, Im not the who is going to argue about it with you.

I think they are crying about it because they like the tool, but are clearly being forced to look for something else.

This update is what it is because of their partnership with Wasteland2 makers. It has nothing to do with Unity's community and what the community said they want.
And yes, the prices are very high for those who need to pay for 3 to 4 licenses just to get features they will not use at all, maybe the shadow for mobile only, some wont even need to use that too.

 

Let me tell you the truth that why I'm not happy about Unity4.0

Unity4.0 is great, the animation is impressive, new GUI system and dynamic font on mobile are also the things I need.

But, just look at the "Developer Preview" in the forum, here: http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/33-Developer-Preview

You will see that, there are really many problems in 3.5, and they are not little problems, but important problems that make people down grade to 3.4 so they can launch their games.

3.5 is not complete. And you can see from there that, there used to be more big problems in 3.5 because of the new features, so, how about the new features in 4.0? Will they cause problems? And will some of the problems keep alive until 4.1 or even 5.x?

I think some of us are not actually agressive with the GUI system, in fact I'm not using the GUI system at all, but using some 3d models in front of the camera that looks like GUI.

We are just worrying about that they will leave bugs and problems which are big and will hold the release of our games, but just introduce new features. As far as those bugs exist, that we cannot release our games, what are the new features for?

GUI system is just an example, since it is so important, but it is delayed.
The important new GUI system can be delayed, so you can imagine what would happen to the others.

 

I dont really get it, I use unity 3.5 the minute it came out and it never crashed, and i didnt see one bug... Am I special or something? O-o

 

I'm special along with you because it never crashed on me or anything.

 

I'm also special...no problems here whatsoever.

 

I know two issues that make me hold my games:
https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?465089_p9tblobha0176ol6

this is a crash bug in PowerVR phones running android 2.3.6

https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?462731_43f4kam3egj9lj6s

this is another memory issue that I just get a work around from them yesterday. But without the fix of the first issue, I will still have to hold my gams.

I think there are more, you can see from http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/33-Developer-Preview, it is true that 3.5 is slower than 3.4

 

for example:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/136083-Unity-3.5.2-Released?p=924915&viewfull=1#post924915

 

Also something about the normal of vertex buffers. I cannot find.
I also saw somewhere in the forum that a memory issue of profile may be fixed in 3.5.3