Unity

[Ph4ntom4]

I saw Unity mentioned in a new feature on the homepage, and I just took a look at it and it looks fantastic! Am I right in thinking this pretty much negates the need to know how to code to make games? I watched the demo and it looks easy enough to change the engine and do what you want. Obviously you need to make graphics and models but I think I could do them myself with a bit of practice.

I'm doing a university course next year on game deveopment where I will be learning C++ and stuff, so I don't see any point in trying to learn it before, and this looks like a great way to get ready and get experience, and produce a fully functional game.

Obviously i'd need to buy it, but $200 (probably about £130 in England), but that wouldn't be out of my reach, considering it will be very helpful to my education and stuff. Is the indie version (the $200 one) enough to make a fully functional game? What are the other versions for? I'm just asking because somebody might have experience with it .

What do you guys think about this?

EDIT: Oops my bad, you actually need an iPhone license on top of the indie one which costs an extra $400. Darn, maybe you can get educational discounts.

[Phi6]

From the looks of it, Unity probably abstracts and simplifies game development in terms of graphics and physics, but you still need to code all the game logic using c# or JavaScript. Either way, you can't make a game without code!

It's still easier than ObjectiveC because of the higher level syntax, but its technically still programming.

[CrocStock]

I also looked into this engine earlier on today and from what I saw it looks impressive.. It goes without saying that you need to put in code and your own graphics from other programs but all its capabilities and features sound extremely good.

[mehware]

Originally Posted by Phi6

From the looks of it, Unity probably abstracts and simplifies game development in terms of graphics and physics, but you still need to code all the game logic using c# or JavaScript. Either way, you can't make a game without code!

It's still easier than ObjectiveC because of the higher level syntax, but its technically still programming.

Yup hes right. Still need to program to make games and there is still a learning curve to every engine. You can download a trial of iphone basic for 30 days I believe if you go here. http://unity3d.com/unity/features/iphone-publishing

With my games once everything is setup and ready for distribution its a matter of hitting option-b and it deploys to your iPhone.

[Eric5h5]

Originally Posted by Ph4ntom4

EDIT: Oops my bad, you actually need an iPhone license on top of the indie one which costs an extra $400. Darn, maybe you can get educational discounts.

I'd recommend getting the Indie license anyway. It will take some time to get enough experience to produce a decent iPhone app, and by then you could have the extra $400. The good thing about Unity is also potentially a drawback, in that it abstracts away all the hard stuff. The reason this can be a problem is because it's very easy to overload the iPhone and produce games that get 5 fps at best. It takes experience and skill to be able to do what you want and still get reasonable performance. It's way more fun than learning Objective-C and OpenGL from scratch though.

Unity is amazing, but it has a pretty long learning curve, especially if you haven't coded before (and yes, you need to code with Unity!). Unless you're a genius, it will probably take at least some months before you can produce a nice slick game that isn't junk.

--Eric

[Ph4ntom4]

I quickly realized that there would be coding involved, but that isn't a problem. I already have an idea for a simple game which I think if I do it well it could be quite popular. Obviosly I don't want to over burden myself with a complex 3d game, I'll start so I'm going to start with a 2d game because I prefer original indie games like that.

Thankfully, my mum is a gfx designer and has a spare mac that I have installed the trial on, but it is only the indie one, no iPhone support, so I'll probably make it as a web app with the same resolution and then convert it when I get the iPhone license. Is that a good idea?

[mehware]

You can still download the iphone trial unless your mac is PPC (IIRC). Going the web play route is smart just read in the forums about the limitations of the iphone. (polygon, shaders, etc.)

[Adams Immersive]

Unity does have a learning curve. But I would say, if you have done some other scripting or lightweight programming before (in my case, Lingo and ActionScript) and have a basic understanding of the necessary code logic for a game, Unity's learning curve is surprisingly shallow. (Depends on your game of course.)

Put another way: learning to program = steep curve.

Learning to program + learning Unity = not that much steeper.

I got pretty rapid results with Unity (before the iPhone existed) but that's not to say I got EFFICIENT rapid results. Certainly when I make something for iPhone I'll need to be a lot more diligent about how I program.

Meanwhile, I've bought Unity iPhone, and am looking forward to digging into it!

[Eric5h5]

Originally Posted by Ph4ntom4

Thankfully, my mum is a gfx designer and has a spare mac that I have installed the trial on, but it is only the indie one, no iPhone support, so I'll probably make it as a web app with the same resolution and then convert it when I get the iPhone license. Is that a good idea?

You'd be better off making the graphics resolution independent rather than trying to do 480x320, since Unity is really a 3D engine (although it's mostly pretty easy to do 2D), and getting pixel-perfect 2D art isn't really natural in that environment. Not to mention that 480x320 is going to be a pretty small window on most monitors. Other than that it's a good idea.

--Eric

[Ph4ntom4]

I was going to use sprites as most of the art, it seemed to have worked for that monkey swinging game.