Game Geek Speak

Whoa. Unity really is going to be omni-platform!

I can’t wait to have a chance to make a web game that I then port to iPhone, Android, and XBox Live Arcade. This kind of thing can’t really be understated for small developers because the best way to maximize your revenue per game is to release it on as many platforms as possible.

Some highlights from the press release:

…major updates to Unity’s rendering capabilities, its physics features and significant optimizations to its core systems… [I hope this means PhysX and Mono upgrades!! Confirmed! Mono 2.6.x!]

Illuminate Lab’s Beast lighting software provides Unity developers with a complete global illumination solution for photorealistic scene lighting.

[Unity iPhone has] a very fast 2D sprite engine…

Global illumination and occlusion culling might be Pro-only features, but it’s still really exciting.

Set for release this Summer. Bring it on!!

It’s nothing mind blowing, granted, but it’s turning out kind of cool. If you have a lot of imagination. Right now it looks like dog pooh. But it’s kind of fun for what it is.

The game is going to be very simple, very shallow, intentionally, of course. It’s one of my “learning” projects to get to grips with 3d modeling, animation, texturing, and of course Unity itself. I’m finding that the art is requiring a lot more time than the code, but that’s to be expected since I’ve been coding for decades and only just started 3d art.

I’ll hopefully post a few more progress shots before I release it. Hope you’ll visit and say hi!

I’ve got most of my Flash work on hold at the moment, because I’m basically abandoning my own Flash game engine in favor of the upcoming PushButton Engine. I invested a lot of time, blood and sweat into my own engine and even built a nice editor. But, the friction of trying to push that forward while also trying to prototype new ideas is enormous–especially after using Unity.

I will detail my thoughts and experiences with PushButton Engine in a later post (I haven’t used it much, and it’s not quite production ready), but I can offload a huge amount of effort and leverage the work of a bunch of really smart people. But, I digress.

This post is about Unity. It’s been about two weeks since I started working with Unity. Because it’s a 3d engine and doesn’t use ActionScript, it had the effect of forcing me to learn more than just the Unity API and editor.

I’ve become a 3d modeler. Yes, I’ve bitten the bullet and learned about Blender. Turns out it’s a really nice tool, it’s free, and it’s a lot of fun! I haven’t animated anything yet, but that’s coming up real soon.

I have created several models during my learning stages (over the past few months in between everything else), and I think one day I will be decent at it. I’ll never be great, but I can probably model most of the stuff my small projects will require. Albeit, this is something that will require a lot of practice. I don’t expect much in the way of pleasing results for a while. But that won’t stop me from making new games.

I’ve learned C#. Unity uses Mono (an implementation of .NET), and I don’t like UnityScript (ECMA script, basically) because that’s how I roll. I prefer a verbose, strongly typed, manly language, and C# delivers. It wasn’t hard to learn since it’s close to C++, ActionScript, and Java, and I know all of those already. I did buy a book, though, for reference and some deeper learning as my Unity projects increase in complexity. Overall, C# has been fun, but not as fun as learning Blender.

Here’s how I would sum up my experience with Unity from a total noob standpoint:

• Realize that almost every core game engine system is already implemented: input, physics, collision detection, rendering, runtime game object management, editing tools, web connectivity, asset management, etc. It’s all there.
• Hit a few annoying oversights: font handling, lack of collision groups/filtering, a very minor particle system missing feature (rotation/spin). Realize that you can still do 99% of what you want to without developing a huge infrastructure of your own.
• Proceed directly to game logic programming. Do not mess with low level minutia at all, other than learning the API.
• Become joyous and explode with glee.

So, yeah. Basically, you just go straight to the fun parts! I am working on a simple learning project which I will release soon, and I honestly think that if I had known how to model, how to code C#, how to use Unity’s API that I could have made this game in a few days, tops. The art and sound will be more time consuming than making the game itself!

This is such a huge change from Flash, especially when I was slogging away on my own engine, trying to get to a point where I could do what I am now doing in Unity. I just want to get the heck on with making a game. I’m not the kind of guy who enjoys low level system programming. Some coders like that stuff, and–bless their hearts–now I don’t have to.

All the hype is true. Unity is everything you’ve heard that it is.

I won’t totally abandon Flash (yet), but at this point Flash has specific, limited utility (2d games that need a specific look and games that require massive audience reach) whereas before I viewed it as obvious and clearly superior choice for web games. No more!

Whoa, this happened yesterday! I usually check their blog, but even today they still haven’t posted on it about the release. I heard about it through another blog. Oh, well. It’s all over the news, so I guess that’s ok.

The bad news for me is that I’m in the middle of a Flash project, and I can’t really allow myself to play with Unity yet! NNOOOOO!

I guess this is what separates the boys from the men. Self control such as this… er, I think I’ll go download it now.

(Yes, the titillating title of this post is meant to incite passion to get your attention. Please continue reading.)

I mentioned a little bit ago that Unity3d is releasing the authoring IDE for Windows with version 2.5. I read in the forums that they would release 2.5 no later than GDC, which is in March.

Unity is tempting me to completely ditch Flash. But there’s one factor making that a bad decision for the moment. Although I think eventually I will make games in Unity exclusively (assuming it all works out as dreamily as it seems like it will), Flash can’t be abandoned yet.

What’s so great about Flash?

Adoption. Everyone and their granny’s dairy goat has Flash installed. Adoption by itself, though, isn’t what makes adoption so great. Its really about…

…distribution. I can get a game in front of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in a week using Flash. A lot of folks would think, “Gee, maybe you could make a few hundred dollars from ads. That’s not so great. Jason is stupid, and I hate him.” And then they’d go back and continue working on their C++ downloadable game. But I beg to differ.

It’s not about the ad money. It’s the traffic, ya silly persons! Why would I care about a few hundred dollars of ad money when I can get ten thousand visitors to my website each week or month? And I don’t mean putting Google ads on the site and earning from that, either. No, no, no. That’s still small potatoes.

I’m talking about harnessing the traffic machine that is Flash games and then upselling to those visitors with bigger ticket items, like stand alone games or (much more likely in my case) getting them interested in games that utilize microtransactions and/or subscription services. Now you’re talking about significant income.

Make money with ads? Pfft! I use MochiAds because I like their version control, easy encryption and especially their distribution network that sends games out to millions of people for me!

There are some other neat things about Flash, but the real reason I use it is because of distribution and other services that have risen up around it.

There’s this cool idea of sponsorship, where developers are in control, and portals pay us to show their ad to drive traffic back to them. (Did anyone notice these portals are driving traffic back to their sites? See! It’s about traffic, not ad money!)

The thing I like about this sponsorship arrangement is that it is in diametric opposition to how things work with portals that sell downloadable games. There, developers are like slaves who beg for any tiny piece of profit their own work can earn. Portals call the shots, make the money, and generally drive the industry into the ground to the point that now it’s going to be flailing around and coughing up blood for a long time until (hopefully) it finally dies some day. It’s just like the retail games business, where publishers lead developers around by the nose, take all the earnings, and drive the whole industry into the ground in the process.

(I have a lot of friends in the downloadable casual games industry, and I’m not speaking here about anyone in particular. I’m speaking about the industry and the patterns of business that are currently dominant. I certainly don’t mean that I want my casual games friends to lose their jobs! I just think that industry needs to and will evolve away from how it currently operates.)

Wow. Sorry, I was digressing passionately there for a minute.

So now here comes Unity.

Unity lacks that distribution power, and although technically it is a dream come true, the real dream come true is when that technical capability is coupled with distribution and reach on par with Flash. Now that is going to be a sight to see.

I hope that existing portals and services based around Flash will integrate Unity support. Then we can keep the existing structures in place and add Unity games among the Flash games. Oh, let me dream, would ya?!

Now. All that having been said… I am not convinced that adoption itself is a problem for Unity. I think any game that’s good enough will cause players to install the Unity plugin without hesitation. I don’t mean something like a Simon Says clone or some other shovelware game made in three days–it’ll have to be a good game.

Because of Unity’s appeal, which will make convincing players to get the plugin easy, I will start to develop with Unity as soon as I get my shaking-with-excitement hands on a copy. Building more games can only mean more adoption and, eventually, more distribution. Distribution = earnings = I make more games without a day job. Yuussssss!!1!

I keep lusting over this amazing looking tool. You can bet that I will be getting my grubby paws on it eventually. There’s simply too much potential there!

Unity3d is one of the many reasons I wonder why big companies are still making boxed retail games at all. For that matter, I often wonder why small indie developers are making downloadable games at all! I will never make another non-browser game in my life, unless there’s a huge incentive or it’s an optional download version. It just doesn’t make sense anymore to put up a barrier to entry like forcing a download and install.

There are two things I don’t like about Unity: 1) the development tools run on Macs only, and 2) I can’t use Java even though the tools use Mono (which supports Java).

First point, I have nothing against Macs (heck, I own one). It’s just not my development platform of choice. I have a bunch of nice tools already that I’m comfy with on my Windows machines. I don’t wanna have to build all that up again. That said, Unity holds enough potential that I would.

Second point, I don’t dislike C#. It’s a lot like Java, maybe even better in some ways. The reason I don’t want to move away from Java is because that’s what all the server code is written in, and it would be really nice to only write the classes etc for one language! Again, though, I think Unity has enough potential that I would bite the bullet and do it anyway.

Oh, point three: it costs $1,500 bucks. Ouch. I know there’s a cheaper version, but it’s too crippled for me–you can’t even publish to Windows! So, really there’s only one price point. Like the other two problems, I think I can overcome this one because I am so enchanted by what I could do with this engine. Lila Dreams in 3d? You never know….

Well, I was just distracted for a few minutes (again) by the tropical demo, so I wanted to get this off my chest.

Update: Sweet goomba! I just learned that Unity 2.5 will be the first Windows release for the authoring tools! *weeps with joy* But also the indie license will allow publishing to Windows now. And the indie version costs $200. *faints* Discovering Unity has blown my mind. It solves so many problems. I must have it!!