Unity Comparision?

Hi,

Pleaes forgive the post, but I'm looking to possible get into Game Development, and rather than re-inventing the wheel and going about it myself (creating an engine, which would probably take me my life time to get anywhere decent!) I was looking to possibly get an engine - but have only just really started to look at them.

I've seen Unity (which looks so impressive), and also just recently the C4Engine - the price difference is quite a lot, however I was wondering if anyone here had used both and could give a run down on how they compare?

Unity's UI looks more geared to ease of use, though the graphics produced by C4 looks equally as impressive.

Not intended any offence here to anyone - just after a clear run down on the best path to go down.

Thanks

 

Hello, I don't have C4, but I am looking at it as an _additional_ engine to use in the future. With the C4 engine, all of the graphics code is taken care of for you, but you have to program all of your game code in C++.

The thing with Unity is you can create things extremely fast. There is no 3D game software I know of that can get such great results so fast. You still have to program your game code of course, but it is a lot faster. I love it.

That being said though, there are a few things that Unity is missing which many people consider standard features for any level game engine produced now. Unity for example doesn't have shadows of any type. You can get around that by using a projector with a blob shader to project a shadow-like effect onto a surface, but it wont be correct. Another thing to be aware of is to do most high-end eyecandy you need Unity Pro. You can't do glow, reflections, refractions, ie: anything that requires render-to-texture, or any full screen post processing effects like blur, ect, in Unity indie. You need pro for that.

Unity does have a full shader language (in both indie and pro) that you have access to though, and you also can write vertex and fragment programs and such. Very powerful.

Unity doesn't have a portal or LOD system, but with a little creativity you can work your own out to a fairly large extent.

Unity also doesn't have built-in multiplayer support. You do have full access to the microsoft .net networking classes so you can write your own network communication code but you will have to write network code for every thing you need to send yourself (object position, effects, physics, etc.). I am sure it can be done, and some are attempting it, but it will be a lot of work.

Unity's sounds system is very basic. It has 3D sound, but no controls over it besides volume and range. You can't for example play a certain part of a sound file at a certain speed, or apply post effects to the sound. You can just play, pause, stop, and adjust volume of the sound. Fine for some peoples uses, not enough for others.

With Unity indie you can only do stuff within the scripting engine, you can't reference any external components (other than .net of course). You need pro if you want to interface your own C/C++ plugins. (like a better sound system ) Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

Unity is far easier to use than C4 would be, and I personally love it. Some things I am waiting for, (like some kind of shadows, shadows have been standard in games for a long time) but all in all I love Unity.

I think at this point it all comes down to what type of game you are going to make, how much control you want over the engine (you still get a lot with Unity), and what effects you want to produce. If you want an outdoor game with huge terrains, C4 would be a better choice, but you would have to write your own terrain system (until they build one), but if you want to build your game or demo quickly, Unity is probably the way to go.

I hope that helps,
-Jeremy

 

I have to ask, what kind of physics engine does C4 offer? I was playing through the "demo", which btw shows me nothing about the game creation tools, and I did not see any physics interactions other then the bullets that bounced when they hit a wall or the grenade launcher, both rather dull. Also even on my Dual 2.5 G5 it seemed to crawl in areas, and I got stuck on the geometry in several places. I would much rather have seen the editor with the option of running the level like they did with Unity's demo, so I am a bit biased atm. C4 just looks like it would be cludgy. But from what ive seen it has shadow and multiplayer support out of the box which is a big feature for fps type gaming. As jeremyace said depends on what kind of games you want to make.

/Rant End

 

You can activate the world editor in C4 in the demo through the command line. What build of the C4 demo did you try? C4 (like unity) is still quite new, but updates are released every week or so.

I can't really speak for Mac performance, but it runs very nice on my PC, and Eric (the dev) told me the performance is the same on osx. It is a next-gen engine so maybe your vid card isn't up to it? Or an old build maybe?

As for physics, that is the kicker. I forgot to mention in my first post that C4 doesn't have a full integrated physics engine yet. Unity wins there for sure. Eric has done tests using ODE with many many objects with shadows, so I am sure it's coming. The general way people seem to do it is integrate whatever physics system they like (which appearantly isn't that hard with C4).

As for the clunky-ness, the demo is programmer art, and is mainly to show off the tech of the engine, not create a proper full fps level. When you use the engine you program your own controls and such however you want, that was just one basic example. C4 is not a rapid game development tool. It is a game engine. Unity is somewhere in between.

I would say C4 is more an engine for people who need more control, more next-gen stuff, and expandability and are willing to program.

Don't get me wrong guys, I am not leaving Unity for a long long time if ever, I just like having a large toolset available. And $100 for a lifetime license is worth it for me.

-Jeremy

 

A few more question then. Does C4 have the ability to create a web based application? Can the mac version create a windows stand alone?

And I have an ATI Radeon 9600 XT (128 meg), on a Dual 2.5 G5 with 2 gigs of ram. And it was still running sluggish for me. It was whatever build was hosted on the main page.

I had another question but I can't think of it right now.

 

Web based app: not built in, but you could do it yourself. Remember that C4 is full source code and you write games in C++.

When you buy C4, you get full source code, and it will compile on mac OSX 10.4x using xcode, or on windows. I think you are mistaking C4 for a R.A.D tool. It is not, it is a C++ game engine. So therefore you can make it do whatever you want on either platform.

Here is the devmaster page about it: http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=42

And looking there myself I see that they do have basic physics integrated now, and several other things like cloth and fluid surface simulation.

As for the sluggish demo, it all depends when you downloaded the demo from the page. They are constantly improving C4 and I seem to remember them fixing a mac osx issue semi-recently. Not sure though. The min specs for the demo are at least a 9500 or GeForce 5200 so slightly sluggish performance is to be expected. The 9600 is an old card. Recommended 9800 (which I have on my pc.) As I said this is a next-gen engine.

-Jeremy

 

Hi,

Thank you for the replies. I'm currently looking into all aspects, as for my final year dissertation/project I'd like to create a game (starting to come up with some ideas now) - but finidng it hard to justify approximately £530 for my uni project, when I've spent enough on halls, and books as it is heh.

What sort of estiamted prices shall upgrades be to the next version (not point release, which I've read is free) - the total cost, or a discounted cost?

 

In the United Kingdom, Unity costs £169.98 + what ever the bank charges for oversea charges for Indy. For pro, you get £639.863 + bank charges. I recommend choosing Euros as an option because even though the dollar exchange rate is in our favour, the euro one is cheaper...

Mac Game Store also sells it, so that might be a way not to pay for 25% Danish VAT.

Either way, it isn't £530.

The Indy version is very capable, you just can't always do all the pretty stuff that the pro version can... Shadows have been supported as a projector for a while now in a lot of games (such as UT2004), with the other alternative being stencil shadows, which looks pretty crap or, if soft blurred, runs quite slow.

And the free ODE engine common in other engines is a lot worse than the professional PhysX engine that Unity uses... And apparently Unity used to use ODE, so you can probably wait for an OTEE guy to tell you how much better PhysX is.

 

Hmm, according to xe.com:

Edit:

And using the same site, the conversion to euros (and to cross reference it against GBP is a few pence cheaper). But thanks, i'll have a look at the mac game store and see if my department shall offer a bursary towards it

 

Nope, our resellers offer the same price as we do. So please buy Unity from us instead of our resellers.

d.

 

Your resellers also charge 25% VAT thanks to EU laws? Taxes suck.