Unity can do iAds and GameCenter easily, no plugins required (there are free scripts, if you can't work it out). I haven't tried the other stuff. IAP looks pretty difficult for my meagre brain. Lol.
The point of this middleware is to make things easier and go faster. The vanilla version is simply devoid of tools which dramatically boost your production capacity. Some other languages or platforms tend to benefit from a huge community that provides open source resources. Besides, it's fine if you don't mind the splashscreen or watermarks, nor the money cap, but I think any indie studio that aims at thriving and expanding a little bit to two or three people, whilst aiming for something better than shovelware, it will require a gross revenue that would need to pop that cash limit very quickly. Unity is a very good tool, especially for 3D, but it really shines if you're ready to pay more for it. Otherwise the amount of time you waste recoding everything is quite epic and might literally make the tool useless if it weren't for the multiplatform support, which is being done by more and more other systems out there. There are tons of pros and cons and anyone thinking about Unity3D (it's the real name) needs to know what he's aiming for: type of game, platform(s) and number of sales. The free version is a good compromise to release very simple stuff, eventually for some extra income alongside your real job. Yeah "some" games, taking some unknown amount of time to make, and perhaps not exactly that advanced. Sure, a port of simple flash minigame, why not. You better count on luck though. Like if luck wasn't already way too important today. I mean, come one, zombieville. Sure, if you limit yourself to that and the kind of 2D action game you see in the Unity demo of late. Hardly impressive. I'm pretty sure most indie devs with a solid gaming background don't exactly dream of making zombieville. Besides, this is not 2008/2009 anymore. Nowadays, you have to do better or more, or do 2048 (and some voodoo magic) which is so simple it would barely require coding. Then again, it really depends on your goals and your targeted platform(s). For a 2D tool where you still have to code, I'd clearly go with the system that's definitely thought to precisely achieve 2D, with the less amount of cash needed upfront.
I totally agree Pixelosis. I think the problem is that most of the people out there just know Unity3d and nothing more. A few might even heard about Cocos and Corona but that's it. Of course you can use Unity3d for everything. Heck I even have seen people in the Unity forums who want to build standard applications (not games!) with it. I've given up to explain people there that this is just a stupid idea, not only regarding the overhead of all that 3d stuff but the fact that this "game engine" just runs on full CPU and drains your battery pretty fast, which is a NO NO for normal applications. Anyway. The Unity team does a pretty nice job when it comes to marketing and I was very amazed about it as well but now I see it a bit more clear after all these Ah's and Oh's there are cases where Unity makes sense and cases where Unity simply doesn't make any sense which is 2d games for instance.
Oh, so everyone using the free version is only creating shovelware! Thanks for clearing that up! To say that The free version can only be used for extremely basic games is just evidence that you don't know how to use it very well. You seem to post a lot of negative comments about everyone else's work. How about putting your money where your mouth is and show us something you've created?
Well I agree that you can make good games with the free version. BUT... What I find really annoying about Unity (Free): 1) The splash screen That's almost a show stopper. The splash is the very first thing a player will see. The first seconds are most important as well as in real life with real people as well as in games. 2) The loading times Just awful... 3) The package sizes Just awful... 8-9MB for an empty project... Ugh... 4) The old Mono version Just outdated. The garbage collector is just 8 years old. The framework is just 8 years old. No new versions which will change slowly with Unity 5. The garbage collector leads to hickups of the game every here and then. 5) The price Well $1500 for pro might be ok, but charging another $1500 for every additional platform is a rip off imho 6) Back to free, missing features: No static batching, no profiler, no LOD system, no render to texture. Right, you don't need these features to make a game but performance wise Unity is NOT the best out there. 7) Missing real 2d support Well I know something has done and things might become better but it's still to be seen how "complete" there 2d-in-a-3d-environment-solution will be in the future. 8) Bugs, bugs, bugs ...which haven't been fixed for months. 9) No native support for stuff like IAP, Ad providers, Gamecenter, Google Play services. IMHO that should be there by default!
That's all true. But hopefully you can create something awesome with the free version and make enough cash to go pro, like what happened with Impossible Road etc. Or of course you can just purchase a month's licence when your game is nearing completion and release with the pro version. It's $75 for 30 days, that's got to be worth it. EDIT: There is native support for GameCenter and iADs. It's in the docs, even
Hehe, that's the plan for my 3d sub game. Again: I really like Unity3d, it's a great tool for the right purposes. I think there subscription model is way of fair pricing. Paying $225 per month to just get Pro for iOS and Android (I only need the mobile stuff) is a no go for me. I'd more prefer a royalty share like Epic does it. $19 per month and 5% is ok for me. Ouch, my bad! Thanks for clarifying!
That's my plan with my current racer, too. Been approached by a big publisher, so hopefully I'm on the right track Good luck to us both! Oh yeah, I forgot they charge for each licence. You're right, it is pretty steep. I might actually look into Unreal at some stage.
Congrats on the publisher Polygame. Any thoughts on which IDE to use for Monkey-X? The recommended one costs money for anything other than html5 dev.
Personally I love to use (and recommend) Jungle IDE Another very good one is Mollusk (which works on Windows and Mac OS!) I agree that the "basic" IDE Ted is just ... well not that good. It does what it does.
Well there is no "Cocoa X". There is Cocos2d (3d?), Corona, Monkey X and other solutions. IMHO there isn't "the best" solution out there. It depends what you want to do. Again: I(!) prefer Monkey which is an awesome language which gives quick results. If you are more a visual guy like to click, drag&drop then go for Unity.
Some other reasons why Unity resonates with me over other solutions: * Large community / well-known: This is an important factor when choosing a platform. A rich, vibrant community means that it's easy to find help. It means that the time you spend learning the platform is well-spent, and means that your skills are more portable * Uses languages you already know. I use C#, but you can also use Javascript. MonoDevelop (IDE that ships with Unity) is admittedly, quite bad, but you can use the absolutely fantastic Visual Studio for free as well (assuming you're on Windows) * Say what you will about charging for Unity plug-ins, but I like that there is a big enough community in Unity to fund development of useful plug-ins. For the most part, you don't need them. Unity's Social plug-in supports Game Center out of the box, and Google provides free support for adding Google Play Services via plug-in. There are tons of amazing free plug-ins, such as HOTween. * People think Unity is just for people who drag & drop -- false. The visual editor is nice when you need it, but 95% of my work is done from code. The other 5%, the visual editor is useful for laying out UI and creating prefabs, that are generated at runtime. If you're doing something similar on other platforms, you're using an external tool anyway (or you're crazy, and doing it 100% in code with no visual feedback)
I agree to these points totally, beside that the large Unity community has a "rookie rate" of over 90% (which is just a wild guess I have to admit, but reading there leads to that).
Thanks Though I need to decide whether to go that route or go it alone. Pros and cons to both. And no idea about the IDE. Lol. As for the other points above, yup, the community is awesome. I don't know where I'd be without Unity Answers.
Thus far it seems your reply is in reaction to something I didn't write. I'm sorry you took my remarks so badly. I talked about revenue targets and time, as development time. I didn't say you could only do basic stuff with the free version. But clearly the free version encourages limitations. I also talked about shovelware as something you want to avoid (or not, it really depends on your tastes, objectives and your definition thereof), and less tools and less resources means you'll have to make sacrifices. With no spending, either you consume much more time or you clearly reduce the quality of your app. There's no arcane stuff at play here, the balance is very basic. As a pro studio that aims higher and bigger, time is of the essence. You won't cut test and research, nor reading boards, I never said that, but high quality verified plugins do save an darn ton of time on tool search, integration and development around the enhanced tools. Plus considering the extreme competition on the stores and an absolutely minimal objective of $50~60K at the end of the fiscal year, plus the objectives for the next two years, to me the deal is pretty clear. Ok, on the figure I gave for plugins, you could probably shave off $100~150, but that extra money was well spend as far as I'm concerned and allowed me to focus on testing game ideas and I'm counting or more revenues to acquire some more add-ons. Are you stalking me or something? Just asking. I post what I want and have no obligation to approve or share anything. If some people can't stomach negative yet fair opinions, perhaps they shall grow a thicker skin.
If you use Unity, GameSalad, Corona, Monkey, probably several other dev kits, yes, you can build for multiple systems. I have found Unity to be brilliant for that
