Unity 4 Details

What they last said was that they test on Ubuntu and while it will probably run on other modern distros they can't guarantee it.

 

The main part of the Humble Bundle was sold for Windows afaik. And Unity is already able to deliver to Windows. Linux was and is a very small niche market, even with the Humble Bundle.

 

That's a given. It's a niche market, but if the game can't deploy to it it can't be a part of the Humble Bundle at all, that's all I'm saying. No Unity3 games will ever be accepted into the Humble Bundle unless they change their requirements.

 

Not in 4.0: the Raspberry Pi is an ARM device. The player shipping with Unity 4.0 will support x86 and x86-64 architectures.

 

The original poster's point is that one condition of participation in the Humble Indie Bundle is support for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Previous bundles have reported 10-25% revenue from Linux purchases, which is not something to be ignored.

 

It is but looking at the stats for the HIB you can see that on average Linux users pay more and overall they make up nearly a quarter of the revenue made: stats

They may be 'niche' but they are a great revenue source for Indies.

 

OK so if we get an Android port for the RPi would it work with their chipset?

 

I think someone played around with that for a FAFF project, but no we're not actually planning on officially supporting the Pi out of the box at this time

 

Linux is niche market because there are almost no games for it compared to windows. If more AAA games would come to linux it wouldn't be nearly as niche any more. Many people I know don't switch to linux because they game a lot, and that's the only reason they had. Sure linux won't be as big as windows, but it could grow a lot of support from developers was given to it.

 

I don't know how anyone actually gets the Raspberry pi, everywhere is sold out 100% of the time cant get my grimy little hands on one.

 

I think Valve were talking about a Linux based games hardware specification as well something to do with the direction Microsoft are going with the Windows 8 OS?

 

Awesome... was that there when I posted yesteday? I could have swore that on the main Unity page at studica that the price under the Student Commercial page had a yellow "$749" button and not a pricing button. I wonder if they just changed it. lol... either way I'm just happy to hear that I can continue as planned and look forward to Unity 4. Thanks for pointing that out plz.

 

Really! I've already bought 3.x that's great so I'll get 4.0 for FREE, Unity you are too kind I love you ;o)

 

Will Unity 4 support Mono 2.8/2.10 so that we can use .NET 4 code?

 

Not to begin with it's shipping with Mono 2.6 see FAQ under features http://unity3d.com/unity/4/faq

 

oopsa

 

"Buy 3.x now and get 4.0 for FREE when it is released!"

 

You hit upon a key thing here. Almost 20 years ago I spoke in front of a university class in Oklahoma and that university used Linux exclusively to train their computer science majors.

Since then it is in use by many businesses and government entities, moreso in Europe then America.

The Linux deployment was added in my opinion, not because of it's potential as a customer gaming platform, but because of it's Linux use by governments and businesses in day to day business and Unity's desire to rework it's engine to be a 'presentation client engine' (that thing java clients failed so miserably at) and not just a 3D gaming engine in an oversaturated market.

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I have a question regarding this new GUI and 'looking into' 2D engine. Will it be possible to deploy using those resources and publish a much smaller stripped executable then if the 3D engine was included (I'm guessing of course with a pro license)?

Once this tech is in place are you going to be able to trvially add in support for less capable phones (think java and symbian) to enable your customers to reach markets in India, China, Africa, and similar places where Nokia is the biggest player (I know about Marmalade / Shiva)?

If the questions sound naive it's because I've never taken the time to study in the least how the Unity engine is constructed.

 

Regarding Editor integration.

Will be there a "visual editor" for editor inspector or window content?
Like the VisualStudio or Mono UI editor for applications they have?

It would be nice to drag and drop to assemble my custom inspector and save the layout to be loaded when I try to edit my Asset!

Something like that:

 

Failure imply that there is an attempt; which is not the case; you expressed your opinion based on your knowledge about me (which is 0); and I was just explaining you that I do not live in the basement with my mom, at 40, trying to make the next call of duty game using Unity...As you can see I didn't boast any title nor company names, so I don't get your point.

I do have experience with Unity paid product, since as I mentioned; I've used it since when it was not free, same for the partner with which I worked with, since I was the one suggesting them to use it.

And you are lucky to be able to work with pro and free....when I started you have to code your own 3d engine, because there was nothing that would cost less than thousands and thousands of dollars (if I recall correctly, the top was the 3d engine used in Quake...which was out of reach of 80% of the hobbits-indie companies). So your mentality is based on a product, not on how the industry works (not sure if you are aware of this, but all the major companies uses either the top tier engines or write their own, with all the respect for Unity)

Do you mean "these things" (it's plural right?); yes you can.

In the design phase (yes, not the one where you write in your little notebook), people sits and set tentpoles features; then when everyone is about to kill themselves because there are bugs, and gotta release the game; the features are either left in the code dormant (aka no function calls them, if it is safe, otherwise just comment them out...nobody will see them other than you and your team, while reading at the source code), or are scaled down.

Then IF you have the chance (and the person that finance your project...or daddy has a lot of money to allow you to play more with this thing called game development), you put them in and deliver the product.

If you ever work with pros, you will see what it means; I would suggest you to stay in the small circle, because out there is quite different from how you imagine it.

Indeed I never said that you pull out of the hat a feature half way the process...we are diverging from the main point, which is

- if you have a big team with experience you get all the license and go on with your crusade of fame and fortune; in that case money are not an issue.

- if you have a small team and have enough money, buy the whole set of engine + extensions for mobile platforms and hope that you get your money back selling enough.

- If you have a small team, and no experience; you start with the free version and the base of the mobile platforms and learn...then if you make money and get experience move up.

People can make games without pro features just fine; I've seen stuff sold on the store that is ridiculous, and anything made with Unity base scripts and features may be better than that and sell for 50 cents a pop.

You seems to not get the whole point here....you talk about technical requirements when the main point is not what you put in a build, but what you take out of it; to make it good enough.

If you want to compete and make great AAA games, have a lot of experience and a big team, then go back to point 1 and you are good to go, buy all pro and stop complaining about the prices, since you are so good that you will get back the money invested in very little time.

a) depends from what are your plan: if I have a ferrari I go racing in F1, if I have a Yugo, I praise the deities that it will continue to take me from point A to point B...I don't buy a Ferrari without knowing how to drive and expect to go racing in F1. Fly low, keep up with your pocket and keep the expectations to the minimum, until you get to the point where you can afford the pro and use it's features, or you just get into a big team that can help you to make your dream product come true.

The rest is just words flying in the air; for which I do not have time to waste

b) You talk about using pro; I talk about learning pro, same as you do with all the 3d software. Legally if you don't release anything there is no problem. and I doubt that you can make your game and then release it with the trial of the pro version and have Unity team happily allow this. Don't mix "educational purposes" with "let's rip off someone and be the parasites that use something without paying for it".

c) Never said that, nor even implied; if you mention it probably you are familiar with that stuff.

Anyway; the whole thing is going nowhere; your mentality is something different from mine; so enjoy your job, I have real work to do.

 

I don't think introducing games on Linux will be the sole answer to the problem, actually. There are almost no real companies advertising Linux these days, with the exception of Novell and Canonical:

I've worked with Linux, and believe me when I say that it's going to take serious marketing to introduce Linux as a competing OS to Windows and OS X. It's not a lack of software, that'll come with time, it's to me a lack of knowledge.

They are produced in small numbers of about 500 at a time. Try on the website. I know, I want one too.

Well, the low memory of the models would make running a serious game not feasible. They can barely run GNOME or KDE, fairly standard Linux desktops.

 

its the lack of a platform.
As long as there are half a dozen+ major distros competing for the same platform there is neither a common target, nor advertising nor even common documentation, desktop behavior and other things.
Linux is like android, a messed up fragmented environment that shares a common core but not much more than that.

It is and with this way of handling will remain a tinker platform.
The two Linux OS with the highest potential out of my view are Meego and Chrome OS, cause they are the only two really trying to be a platform and not just 'another linux distro'. Unity realized that kind of as Chrome NaCl is supported, the most relevant path to Chrome OS.

Ubuntu could reach that too, unsure if they really want to leave the rest of the breed behind though to finally emerge as a serious enduser platform and not a 'more known geek thing' like the other linux distros.

 

I wish to see something like this too...so far Visual studio has the best user interface creation tools among the other competitors (included Xcode and many others).

Creating UI should be easy and straightforward....the age of positioning elements via coordinates instead than visually are an heritage of the past (and no, it does not make you look more knowledgeable or professional )

 

I've haven't messed with VS UI creation but all the other UIs always come close but no cigar. And it's always been that way. If Unity created a UI where you finally didn't have to dork with the coordinates I'd be thrilled.

Imagine, create it once and it gets scaled and aspected on any device and looks good.

Who am I kidding? We may not get the VS style tools but obvious we expect visual WYSIWIG, auto-scaling, auto-aspect, and auto I/O detection.

 

Like struct and anchors directly in the UI of Unity....yup

No more time writing functions to resize and adapt; it should be automagically done once

 

This is one time being 'diverted' to other interests has paid off.

 

I respect Linux, but, do we really need to have a deploy for Linux? I would rather prefer an editor environment for Linux..

Linux game market is kinda like the Mac market in the early 90s; to me is not worth to develop on it; but if you can make the game once and deploy on all 3 platform, then why not, but only because it gives more visibility to a product, not because I would realistically include it in a sales projection.

 

Congratulations on failing to read once more. Nothing what you write here, has to do with the original post, which was referring to multiple (re)activations of the Trial version. I never mentioned a single word about releasing stuff with a Trial

As for b) it's highly (legally) questionable that multiple enabling of trial version on the same machine is allowed by Unity, otherwise everyone would do that, finish their game for free and get one single pro license the moment before they publish the retail version and safe 1500-4500$ per remaining seat.

 

You were answering to me, right? If you didn't even read what I wrote in the beginning and just went for the tangent in your reply is not my fault...you quoted me, and I assume that you are replying to what I write.
I am keeping up with what I conveyed in my posts...no idea if you go for a tangent or what.

I never mentioned multiple reactivations...this is a forum, not a chat, so if you address to someone with a quote of one of his posts, it is assumed that you are talking to him/her, not replying to some other post. I think that the miscommunication here is pretty evident, and I am not the one at fault imo.

I simply said that would be beneficial to have the chance to use multiple times the trial, like you do with ALL the applications.

I am not talking of using the trial to make anything other than learning...this is not like 3dsmax where you can learn on a book where the commands are, what the icons means and how to do a certain action. Here you need to know how to access API and features, and how to use them in code, which is a bit different since there is not one way to do something in code; and you cannot code on paper (technically you can write code; but you cannot compile as the compiler will do in your brain)

Making a test project that makes you exercise with code and features of Unity pro is not something that I consider illegal, even if it is done multiple times; since there is nothing produced and released, so you are not going against any rule in the EULA.

Plus I am not saying "hey guys, spend days and days on this!"; if you have nothing else to do a month is plenty to learn how to use it, in the worst case you may want to do it twice. Hopefully this time is clear that what I am saying is not "use the trial for pro as much as you want"

I've seen people making the whole game with free, then buy a single pro license just to build the final release of the game and work with the pro features...it is a nightmare but I don't see how this would be a problem, if only 1 developer is assigned to the pro license, and you never use the pro license for any other member of the team.

Not every developer in your team works on the same thing; if someone works on a pro feature, you get for them a pro license, otherwise if they gotta code something else they can use the free version.

Take as example this: you have a pro, you look for a collaboration for your game; the collaborators code for you chunks on their free version; you put the code together, work on the pro features and release the game....did you asked every collaborator to buy the pro version? (not talking of hiring; talking of occasional collaboration for free, like you see in the collaboration area)

In your hockey team, if you have a goalie, you buy goalie gear for everybody in the team or just for whom will play as goalie?
(Unity team: correct me if I am wrong please: 1 license per person; if a game is published with pro features; EVERY single developer working on the project, not on the pro features, has to have a pro license?)

You are implying that someone wants to take advantage; while I don't think that this is the case, most of the times.

My suggestion was simple: Unity may be nice enough to release a student version of pro, kinda like many software companies do: full release software, no trial period but you can to use it commercially (plus a horrible watermark just to be safe).

If this is not clear I don't really know how to make it more easy to process honestly. Feel free to ignore my post if I bother you so much...you seems to have problems with what I say, I am totally cool.

 

Check out studica, they do have a student version of the full commercial version. I may have misread, but I think David Helgason mentioned that it's good for commercial use as well, which is pretty excellent in my opinion.

But also, I don't see it as a good idea for Unity to allow re-use of the trial except for on release of new major versions (which I think you can already do anyway, from memory). You can use the free version as much as you want, and the only things you might need to trial outside of that are building for mobile devices, shadows, and access to some of the more advanced API functions, none of which you should need more than 30 days to evaluate. After all, time has value as well, and if you value Unity enough to still want access to the Pro stuff once you've invested 30 days into playing with it, surely it's already demonstrated $1500 of value by then?

 

Forgive me; I was replying to Tseng, so the thing went a bit out of the original topic.

The initial idea was this: pro features requires a bit of trial and error before that you master them; so I was thinking that would be beneficial, to give the chance to whom does not have 1500 dollars to pay in advance, to explore the product and create something tangible, that can give them a better feeling of the final result and let them decide to do the big step and go on buying the pro license.

I would not propose in any way to re-use licenses made for trial purposes....the only problem here is the nature of the product.

While 30 days trial in 3dsmax or word or whatever else is fine; here 30 days is not really working conceptually. Imagine to use visual studio, and get a 30 days license...would make sense? Same with Xcode or Eclipse or whatever else IDE used to code. At least VS gives 90 days, after that you can extend for 30 more days and then you must buy a key; which seems to me totally legit and noob-friendly (altho the example is not totally right, since you can learn C++ with any free compiler, same for C#, so what are you really testing is just the IDE and not necessarily the API).

You are not only learning the IDE part (for which the 30 day period is totally fine), but you are also learning API, which would not work unless you have the product in configuration pro.

While you can learn from a book; is when you code and fail and find creative ways to achieve what you want to achieve that you learn something and improve your skills with a product.

In some software they just disable the feature to export of save; unless you buy the pro license. I would like to see this kind of approach with Unity; so even with the free version you can use the pro features, but you can just run them in the editor, and the project is locked to a specific machine (so you avoid to give the full project to someone else and circumvent the system, getting an advantage out of it). In this way if someone wants to try pro can do it without putting upfront 1500 dollars.

I totally agree with you, that 30 days are enough to check some extra features, but if you want to just run a simple test is easy, while if you are assessing if your game would benefit from using that specific feature, or you are trying to discover the limits of that feature, you may need a bit more of time; especially if the feature has to be done via code.

Then the total newbie that comes in can also learn without the hassle to have the trial to expire; not everyone has the same amount of time to dedicate to Unity, nor has the same "brain speed" (not saying intelligence....everybody can do it, if they have enough time) to grasp things quickly.

I remember when maya had PLE in V7, and it was awesome to be able to use that without the hassle of the 30 days trial (then they cancelled it); same goes for Gmax, that was a pretty good intro to 3dsmax, but the list of programs given as full featured with limitations is long; you can see many of them on the market today (not necessarily in the game development area thou).

I was just looking at different models and thought that probably the 30 days trial for a product that requires coding is not the best choice...not saying that the product is not worth it

 

This is way, way early to discuss or commit to optimisations like this. What we've been focusing on for GUI is workflow, functionality and runtime performance.

Regarding us supporting phones older than our current range, that is unlikely at this time. Note that in China and the rest of Asia, there's already a market of locally made mobile Unity games. If you are looking to punch through this market, I suggest you find a localisation partner.

 

Not for 4.0. Please use http://feedback.unity3d.com for feature requests. This thread is long enough as it is

 

I would like to know how much of what people ask is actually ever even considered?

 

And what when i can`t use it because my ten votes are gone?

 

I can tell you exactly how much:

Under review:
- http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/status/69275

Planned:
- http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/status/69276

Started:
- http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/status/69277

Completed:
- http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/status/69278

Declined:
- http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/status/69279

 

The concept of the system is that you vote for what you find most important. If your priorities change, you should change your votes. If not, leave them where they are.

One thing is for sure, thinking that we can keep track of random feature requests interleaved with forum threads is a pipe dream. Please use the system we have put in place for exactly this communication

 

Sorry for the shameless plug, but I made a tool that does exactly that for your custom inspectors: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/136727-Inspector-Meh-to-WOW-inspectors
Take a look, hope that helps.

Also, for the Game GUI. I'm sure unity will have something like if not better than that. All the replies in these topics have made me pretty confident about the GUI, although we have to wait for it. I'm sure they will take some inspiration of the VS GUI.

 

Consider that the functionality for the player is a strict subset of the functionality for the editor...

 

Thanks AngryAnt

I have one more question, when will we see a linux web player???? (i googled and couldn't find anything)

 

Tomorrow at 1342 CET - that's totally a promise! Naw we'll let you know when we have a better idea if and when we'll do it. Let's see how the Linux standalone takes off and how it works for everyone.

 

Hmmm, have Unity ever though of making it so when you download a Unity game EXE it comes with the web player?

Cause I would think (I would) people may wish to have a demo using the web player then people could play the demo before downloading the full game? and that would not be possible if the web player was not available at launch.. I guess they could use flash but not every one has enough money to snap up a licence for that.

 

That doesn't really make any sense; it's up to the person making the game if they want to put up a web player or not. If they do want to put up a web player as a demo, there's nothing stopping them. When you download a standalone, that's what you want, you don't want a webplayer. Anyway Unity already does NaCl deployment, which runs in Chrome on Linux.

--Eric

 

Before you confuse yourself (and everyone else reading this) even more, that's your original quote

Since I'm a nice guy, I highlighted the important parts of the quote. You clearly said "get the trial more often". Plural. Or literally reading (and a bit exaggerated : Ride on the free Pro train until your game then spend money.

And that's what I was referring too. I highly doubt that it's in UT's intention for people to activate trials more than once, otherwise they'd implemented a way to extend the trial or make it longer in the first place. You just seem to be very uninformed, which your other quotes proof too (see below)

It amaze me how you can still post about a completely different think no one asked. It was never said, that making a project with a trial is considered illegal. It's the multiple activation of the trial feature (people are actually eligible for one Trial (per major version that is), that is unlikely to be legal.

And that a proof that you haven't informed yourself a little about the license, as the Unity license agreement clearly states, that you are not allowed to mix Pro and Free versions. If you work on a game/project which requires a Pro license, everyone working on must also use Unity Pro.

Reread your quote at the beginning of the post. It's no suggestion, it's kind of a instruction "...nobody stops you to get the trial more often so you get proficient with all the features in the pro version, and then buy it when you are ready to use them".

Also I said nothing that it wouldn't be nice to have longer trial period, most of my answers was about your statement about the multiple activations of the trial.

 

@cgguy and @Tseng: I'm sure you are both pretty cool guys and I can understand that your ongoing discussion is really important to you. But would you mind taking this to a private conversation?

 

ETA for Mono 2.8 or 2.10?

 

Just to confirm, this is in relation to not having to upgrade iOS and Android at the same time (i.e. upgrade one first, then later do the other at the still-discounted upgrade price), right? I.e. You can upgrade one for $xx at upgrade pricing, then later on choose to upgrade the other as well at upgrade pricing?

Thanks! I'm pretty sure I saw this clarified in the thread but I can't remember where, so wanted to double-check.

 

Taking this in private, indeed. It is not something that pertain the thread anymore.

It seems that I have used bad words to communicate the concept, and I don't like when I am told that I am saying something that I am not really saying.

I was wrong on the license terms; I will read it again because I don't recall to see this few years ago on the EULA.

Sorry for the noise.

 

Is there no discount for pre-ordering Unity 4 when you just have iOS Basic and want to upgrade to iOS Pro? I can't seem to see any discounts unless I'm missing something.

 

You get a 20% discount (until end of July) for upgrading, so your iOS Basic upgrade costs 100$ instead of 125$.

Basic > Pro has no discounts, as the discounts only apply to upgrades. But you get a 200$ voucher if you buy a new Unity Pro 4 license (i.e. if you currently have no Unity Pro and no iOS Pro and buy Unity 4 Pro, you will get the voucher after the purchase, which you could use to get iOS Pro for 200$ less)