Official Unity 5 Launch

The player is not going to buy unity. The only thing you get when you purposely tell a player that there is a professional edition and you didn't use it is distrust.

 

HAHA I know right! The splash text is a non-issue when it comes to sales because the user doesn't see the splash screen until after they have spent their money and bought the game. As a developer you got your money, who cares what the player thinks about your studio, people should be more concerned about what the player thinks about the GAME they made. Is it good? The splash screen really won't matter then.

 

I agree. No players care about the splash screen anyway. They're furiously pushing buttons hoping that it goes away as fast as possible.

 

IMO, those people would, they do it all the time, on tons of threads where change is involved.
People are Neophobes and want the very most for their nothing.
Interrogatively driven acquisitiveness is part of human nature.

FWIW Personal Edition sounds a bit homey maker, however if they had chosen LITE edition there would have been a huge spew about "What is Missing???" or "Sounds really weak"
""Powered by Unity - Indie Edition" or just "Powered by Unity"" was the only, real, alternative offered so far, the 1st sounds just as Homey Made, the 2nd is what they did before.

Perhaps some really great suggestions might hold more sway than just pointing fingers.

Look on the bright side, You don't have 24 Letters embedded to deal with. Life could be worse

 

IMO this comment doesn't really have any bearing on what we are talking about here. The people complaining ARE the paying customers, not the free users. I would normally agree with you, except that we are talking about a large amount of paying customers who have been loyal to Unity for years who are speaking up. It's not chump change. I have pointed out a number of possible solutions in my comments. Like rather than offer us Level 11 and give us assets we dont need (like the services we don't need with Pro) how about give Pro buyers a credit limit every month - not sure what that number is but a set of credits for devs to spend on what they NEED, not what Unity wants to sell.

 

1) Even if very few game players ever become developers, EVERY game developer was, at some point, a game player.

2) As an example: On the Kerbal Space Program forums and subreddit, Unity gets trashed, constantly, for issues both real (e.g. lack of multithreaded physics) and imagined. Nearly everything that the trash talkers say is flat-out wrong, and I correct misperceptions when I can. However, at a few points, there have been petitions where the community has tried to convince Squad to switch engines, under the impression that being in the Unreal engine would solve all of KSP's performance problems.

I believe that a lot of this impression comes from the third-rate amateur games that have been published over the years with Unity Indie. As far as the KSP userbase is concerned, the games that use the Unity engine are a) the amateur games, and b) KSP. Since KSP is better than most/all of those other Unity games this userbase has heard of, then KSP must be at the very high end of what Unity is capable of, and should "graduate" to a "real engine". These are things I've heard among the KSP community for a long time.

Now I know your question: "So what?" Why does Squad care what its users think about the Unity engine? Well, you're right, Squad shouldn't. But Unity Tech should. Unity should and does care about its reputation among gamers, because 100% of Unity's own userbase comes from gamers in the long run.

And as long as Unity is giving you this engine, free of charge, then it's UT's interests at stake.

 

Okay Tethys well I am confused, I thought you were saying that you wanted it to look "More Pro" for the free version?
Either way, I genuinely apologise if I missed your drift. Sorry.

Bottom line is I bought this business some licenses, under the old system, for educational purposes, yes everyone now has access to the same stuff as us in terms of tech, Yes we could now it turns out have saved that money and offered our students access to all parts of the system anyway.

Should I ask for a refund then? Going to err on the side on No however we could easily have thought Yes and felt misinformed at the time of sale. Turns out we really like our embedded For Educational Use Only letters and are proud to support the educational program. I suppose oddly for us: That's the key point right there. The value for us is not in the tech, or what my buddies TV cost.

Being Positive: Seems like Personal Edition could easily be perceived in a positive light "OOh, it's my own personal copy of the game!", or even "Ah, I am supporting a Lone Wolf" isn't such a bad thing...(perfectly valid misinterpretations) Ask Notch.

Bad, Good, Whatever. My point was all the Solutions (even great ones) in the world won't make a difference unless someone in marketing reckons they have a genuine issue. For the record nothing really jumped-out as world-beatingly better so far.

I personally don't think they do as they just handed over the keys to the kingdom and said "For this huge sum of technology you must wear this slightly different label". People will swallow that I think.

Sorry to those who /are/ for whatever reason upset, if I have an axe to grind it would be about communication not labeling meh but all super-expanding businesses do this.

 

Oh no doubt regarding devs being players. But, your saying by making it so lots more of potential crappy hobby games can come out, that now look AWESOME because of the free pro features, this is supposed to help Unity? Ok so now the engine is free with all the bells and whistles so everyone and their mom can release great looking games that play poorly. How does this help Unity Tech? You said yourself, some people inaccurately think the engine is only for amateurs. Making it easier for amateurs to put out great looking crappy games seems counterproductive, again especially to their paying user base. I get that they want to seem relevant when compared to Unreal Tech, but this race to the bottom is kind of strange. Combine that with stuff like Steam Greenlight and Early Access and you have an even more dangerous recipe for craptacular overload in these places.

 

Oh hell no twobob, I'm a paying customer who up until yesterday, saw the value in buying Pro for the last two versions. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I'm not sure why people are defending Unity when you have plenty of studios saying "Not paying for something I don't need" - and thats all Pro is now, paying $1500 a seat for unneeded trivial extra services. We could care less about the Splash Screen - IMO that might be nitpicking. More power to all of you who are using the free version, we just became one of that crowd until I see a reason to actually pay for the tech again, lol. We are a small studio with realistic expectations when it comes to revenue, I don't expect to break $100k a year, though we might make more than that spread over a couple years. If I make $62k a year for the next two years on that project, I made more than $100k and didn't pay Unity a dime. Seems like a S***ty deal for them IMO. Personally, I bought my last two versions of Pro for the Pro engine features that we needed. Now those don't exist, they are free.

 

omg there is a personal thingy on my splash my life is ruined.... No.

It's the same thing as the Free versions of Unity. It symbolized that you used a free version. I don't see why everybody is crying over it.

 

I suppose wanting something for nothing would apply in this case to UT, not to us paying customers.

It is UNITY that is demanding something for their "freebie", even though it technically no longer makes sense to differentiate the software as if there are different features by calling it "edition"... as opposed to "club" or "class" -terms which typically identify what they are differentiating: income. They might as well have called it "NOCD Edition". LOL

Having spent the money already (after deciding it was worth it), and seeing what I invested in suddenly morph into another product with the unveiling of a super-secret curtain that changes everything, it's odd.... And of course the discussions here - which are mostly about labels and brand perception, yeah it's ironic that Unity is the game engine brand that carries some "amateur" baggage with it. In my industry I am honestly better off not naming what software I develop on. If everyone assumed it is free then I am downgrading my clout. There is value "lost" for me....

If I have to lose any 4.xPro projects to get a refund, and meanwhile U5 is not quite where it will be in say 6 months or a year... I'm pretty much back to choosing between "free" game engines again. The $3000 I spent to pre-order U5 would EASILY smooth over what money I spent on pro-only assets up to now. I could get a refund, walk away to another engine, and still be better off financially - for a while at least (hey, we should all be selling upwards of $100,000 where Unity's business model is the clear winner). It's just something to consider. We all have to make our own business decisions, and this news only happened yesterday so....

 

Well said man. As you mentioned, it's going to take some time for business's to decide if they should get a refund or not. Personally, I am holding off for a week to see what Unity offers in the form of damage control. They did it for the 4 launch, I'm sure with all this buzz going on they are going to have to refine this and come up with something better in the following weeks.

 

This, so much.

 

Maybe this is just a matter of perspective, but anecdotally, I literally use Unity as my career because I saw its logo in a watermarked Web player. I don't even remember what the game was (maybe it was just a tech demo even), I just remember it has a lot of effects and stuff like that that impressed me for being in a Web player. I googled it, I downloaded the trial, learned it over the next few weeks, and had a paying development job with Unity about 3 months after I first saw that Web player.

Maybe I'm the only one. I seriously doubt it. UT does surveys of its developers continuously, and I'm certain they have better data on the question of "what makes people choose Unity" than you or I, and watermarking their Web player this way is the way they've chosen to market their engine.

 

On a more serious note, its starting to seem like Unity 5 isn't ready for prime time.

I'm seeing worse performance overall, worse lighting. Crashes and bugs.

Since I don't get "prioritized bug handling", I'll leave it to the "Pros" to keep reporting them.

 

I'd don't know if you'd call the problem serious but I have some of those problems. Unity workers in these forums told other Unity users it is due to PhysX 3.3 not supporting that and you either need to check a box to disable/enable that on the colliders or create overlapping box colliders. If you search the first part of the error message you'll find the link to the forum thread(s) that direct you to the solution.

 

If you needed a series of 1 digit random numbers, would picking the 1st number off PI and advancing to the next digit for the next be considered random since the digits never repeat?

Would a random number generating the same two number for two consecutive tries be considered proof that the random number generator was non-random?

It's easy to see how to get a random number of 1 digit from PI (even if some of us have memorized the 1st few digits and some very many of those digits) but how does one construct a random number generator of size n, where n is the needed precision of the number? Just choose the 1st n digits of PI for the first random number of PI and advance n digits for the next random number generated by PI? Or would advancing 1 digit in PI for the next random number off precision n be considered good enough, even though the prior random number and the current random number have n-1 digits in common? Or would it be better to use PI to randomly choose your index into PI for a random number of precision n?

How can one calculate PI once the computer runs out of precision for new random numbers?

Given that random number generators are period why don't they just use the definition of PI for a random number generator. Is lack of memory? Is this discussed anywhere?

Nevermind, my download is finished.

Answer, PI really is the best random number generator but computing more digits becomes problematic. I still wonder though if it wouldn't make a better random number generator have a swapped PI that a periodic pseudo-random generator.

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/26942/is-pi-a-good-random-number-generator

I'm off to search for a random number generator using a swapped value of PI and seeked into by PI.

Ciao

 

Yeah, although, no one has said it: License Model - Dying (or saturated) - People leaving, Subscription Model - New Way - People maybe willing. Likely near the truth.

Whatever, any model that supports the technology that we need having a future? We support. Here's hoping for a bright and shiny feature-crammed future.

 

Thought that might be it! On that note, time to create awesomeness!

I did notice several errors in the docs, mainly some references to the old Beast Lightmapper that haven't been removed yet... But at least we have what we've got right now, that's all that matters!

 

HUH?! There was a button for that? Talk about spoiling newbies...

EDIT: I know a friend of mine who would use such a button!

 

Try the official torrent - worked fine for me, and included the CacheServer.zip; you can even JUST download that, I think.

 

A question: how does one sample lightmaps now? I had a look at the standard shader, but there's no code anywhere I can see...

 

Yes, that model is profitable games and apps made with Unity that exceed $100K in sales.

 

I see the same thing. I guess I won't be updating from Unity Pro 5.0.0f4 to Unity Pro 5.0.1!

 

This check box you're referring to is probably either to make the MeshCollider convex, or the rigidbody kinematic.

Both of which don't work well for my game.

Also the model is too large and complex for multiple box colliders. Even cutting down the model into 5 or more convex shapes would be hugely.. painful

Unless there is something I've missed? I can't find anything else on the topic.

 

I see, that's a nice way to repay Unity for giving you freebies. Well done, there.

 

Giving "freebies" ?

See, maybe I get where this whole "Personal" thing came from. There's a misunderstanding on how to treat the customers. The respect level should be similar to both levels of users. One is using the software as an indie or is on a project/team that has no revenue. The other is using it as a successful company with $100k revenue.

The first group will convert to the second group either by force ($100k revenue) or through respect.

There should be no class divide. One is not getting handouts "mercifully". Both should be primary tier customers who are creating a name for Unity.

The idea of an "Indie" tier is to onboard and ramp up users to convert to the Pro. There should actually be more effort put into converting these free users into buyers than vice versa as Tier2 is forced anyway by $100k revenue.

 

I was thinking of software in general, including the editor itself. However either works
Drip feed is the new Sharks Fin model satiater Executives know this.
It makes me happy to not need to know this stuff anymore. *Gets Comfy.* explores possibilities of further beverages.

Frankly, companies come and go: Think you are complaining now about your little logo issue or particular pet hate bug. Wait until you get dumped mid-game because the company who makes your Editor just went bust through sticking to antiquated price models and bending to vox populi over sound, hard, unpopular business decisions..
Dark future. I'll take the inoculation, thanks.

Enough prattle, where's my tea...

 

And as for reporting the bug, I'm discussing it already in the Android forum before you posted I just figured I should reiterate my solid basis for removing or changing the "personal" text as well as giving the bug reporting functionality to Free users. I honestly believe "Personal" on the loading screen is hurting BOTH Unity and its customers.

If you would like to reproduce the errors I'm seeing, please load this asset in Unity 5. It makes it go Haywire, especially if you load it up for Android :

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/8000

When you load it in Unity 4, its beautiful. But, in Unity 5, I'm even seeing weirdo stuff saying I can't use Image Effects because I don't have Pro. Lighting seems wrong/worse, and batching is totally broken on it.

 

Fx
MobileBloom.js<-- This? Isn't it ripped from Angry Bots?
Misc
MobileBloom.mat
MobileBloom.shader

From a cursory glance over the contents on the asset store I would check if that is the issue.

(https://code.google.com/p/shadow-force/source/browse/trunk/Assets/Scripts/Fx/MobileBloom.js?r=28)

(and there is a comment on there from three months ago about it, so not likely to be "soon fixed" upstream, I would contact the author myself first)

 

My editor has locked up. Where did the RIGHT CLICK - BUG REPORT go?
Please can someone tell me that? Or do educational license holders not get this facility.

Many thanks

 

FYI for those that missed it, they still prioritize by severity first, THEN Pro.

I'm also inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that they will deal with bad bugs as appropriate regardless. There are always edge cases and they are rarely spelled out, sometime you just have to trust to common sense/self preservation/etc.

 

It seems old cache server doesn't work with Unity5.
I was tryng to download new cache server 5, but the cache server downlod link is broken.
http://unity3d.com/unity/collaboration/

 

I'm running last beta 5 cache server. that one works okay if you still have that lying around.


Aye link is dead ATM.
Seemingly you could get it in the torrent (and just grab that one bit by judicious torrent client wangling) if you are desperate

 

mmm look nice ehmmm. im always fan of unity but... unreal 4 its now absolutely free so... i will check it first... you know unity 5 indie looks nice, maybe i will return...

sorry for my poor english

 

I don't get it... Unity lifts almost all limitations from the Free version, effectively making it the same as Pro if you qualify for it (essentially if you are not part of a large and profitable company). So you get man-years of tech available to you, for free, essentially enabling anyone to produce (again, ffor free) what until 2-3 years ago was available only to AAA studios. And all of this in exchange for a simple splash screen. And, on top of that, they offer full refunds for people that are getting now more than what they paid for originally (after all, they are getting everything promised for Pro, plus Cloudbuild, analytics and stuff).
And people get mad because...? This is mind boggling...

I pre-ordered a perpetual license with iOS and Android SDK add-ons. Yes, it is expensive, but I plan to use it for at least 2-3 years, and it will pay for itself many times over in time saved, I am sure. I still do not make 100k year making games, but for me this is a way to support the company and be sure they keep up delivering great tech. After all these things are not build and improved for free, you know. Someone has to pay the engineers

 

Wasn't going to comment on this issue further but just wanted to chime in with a simple point when I saw your apparent confusion.

I don't think even one single person has an issue with the Unity splash screen. Not even one person.

It is the phrase "Personal Edition" underneath the Unity splash logo that is worrying some people. And they are worried because they they are afraid it will affect the dollars they ultimately make with games they release bearing that phrase (through public perception, customer confidence, investor perception, etc).

Personally, I think MOST game players don't even see or care about the opening splash logos and try to mash buttons to get past them as soon as possible (as Jaimi wrote above). So I don't think it will really hurt developers financially. But who knows, I could be wrong.

But that is why people are upset at that phrase... because they FEAR they will ultimately earn less dollars because of that phrase, all things considered.

I think it's understandable that people might get upset if you potentially take away some (even a little) of their potentially earnable income. I think they would rather endure a 1 minute long splash logo whenever starting up Unity rather than having "Personal Edition" splashed on each game they release.

Maybe Unity is worried that the Unity company itself will somehow earn less dollars if they REMOVE the phrase. Maybe Unity sees it as a way to recruit more game players to download Unity, or to "shame" more Personal Edition users to buy the Pro version. Who knows. I personally don't think it will hurt Unity one bit to remove the phrase "Personal Edition" from the splash screen. I don't think it would hurt anyone to remove it.

But just wanted to clarify things on both sides of this issue. And honestly I don't think Pro users should care about this issue at all right? Because this doesn't affect Pro users at all.

 

TANSTAAFL Hee hee hee

Seriously though, Unity 5 rocks. Competition rocks. What a week -- I think the big winner are Indie game devs.

 

This is just awesome. The entire suite available for free for us indie developers. Looking forward to growing up soon so that I will pay for the pro version soon. I have no problems with the splash screen though I liked the old one better.

Surely, what Unity has offered us is way beyond anyone's expectations so HALLALULLA..lets make something awesome with it.

Cheers.

 

From: xxxxx@msn.com
To: support@unity3d.com
Subject: Educational Team License holders
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 10:24:58 +0000 (and again today)

Hi as outlined below, please could you advise me of the changes to our terms? Have there been some?​

We don't seem to have level 11 access, we certainly cant right click to report errors anymore.

Might someone confirm that we still have a "pro" license? As currently we don't appear to be treated as such.

Kind regards,
...​

Hope that doesn't sound too grumpy... Does anyone know? Please?
I did try contacting the dept that sold us our licenses and they said to contact support

 

Hi.

Where can I find link to download Unity editor 32 bit version?

 

http://unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive ?

 

It's actually on the main download page: http://unity3d.com/get-unity/download?ref=personal

Click "Platform: Windows" then choose "Additional Downloads For Windows" and you'll see the 64 & 32 bit version. Here is a direct link for your convenience:

http://netstorage.unity3d.com/unity/5b98b70ebeb9/Windows32EditorInstaller/UnitySetup32.exe

Edit: Seems some are having trouble getting to the right links, so here's some others for good measure:

http://netstorage.unity3d.com/unity/5b98b70ebeb9/Windows64EditorInstaller/UnitySetup64.exe

http://netstorage.unity3d.com/unity/5b98b70ebeb9/builtin_shaders.zip

http://netstorage.unity3d.com/unity...dAssetsInstaller/UnityStandardAssetsSetup.exe

http://netstorage.unity3d.com/unity...ProjectInstaller/UnityExampleProjectSetup.exe

http://netstorage.unity3d.com/unity/5b98b70ebeb9/unity-5.0.0f4.torrent

 

OK Thanks

 

IT works on page http://unity3d.com/get-unity/download?ref=personal

But I when i go there myself from main page I have got this page http://unity3d.com/get-unity/update and there additional downloads button dont work.

So I must to go to this topic copy direct download link and be happy

 

Well brush up on your English cause unity 5 is full featured and free. But whatever.

 

Turns out Education users don't get Level 11.
Pfft.
Still waiting to see if we get to Report Bugs.
Sigh.

 

Everyone gets to report bugs equally. Beta doesn't really have priority in the sense you're thinking. It's not "oh this beta guy... he's got more rights"

it's more like: beta is a higher version of unity, and therefore these bugs need to get fixed before unleashing a broken horror on the world.

Again, if people have a bug on personal or pro - just report it. If you don't, it's you, and your game that remains buggy. You can fix this by reporting. Nobody is treating you like a second class citizen.

The beta access is just a nice touch, some people enjoy having an early sneak peek, and a bit more insight into Unity. It doesn't mean personal users shouldn't report so their own bugs can get fixed

Other people don't want the risk of beta, they just want something solid that works every time they update it. You can contribute to that just fine with bug reports as well.

 

I'm assuming Personal Edition will receive cycle point updates too correct? So when 5.1, 5.2, 5.7........etc come out, personal edition users will get all these updates correct?

And do you foresee this being the trend in the future. For instance, do you think Unity 6 will have an editor that is fully featured for free? The reason I'm asking is because in the past, those who purchased a pro edition were getting a huge discounted price on the next full release (i.e. from Unity 3 to Unity 4 etc.), however if Unity's payment model is now free, this doesn't really matter anymore.

 

Correct, there's only one version of Unity. Only the license changes.

Regarding future trends, I would assume that it's the same as present, ie a pro owner can get a discounted upgrade, and personal will still be available. That's for Unity staff to clarify and I think it's too far in the future for even them to think about right now