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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.)
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!
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
I was going to use sprites as most of the art, it seemed to have worked for that monkey swinging game.
Unity does have a couple ways of doing real 2D, but neither is particularly suited for gameplay graphics--they're mostly intended for stuff like menus, HUD overlays, etc. What works best is to put the sprite graphic on a simple plane model (2 polygons), and move that around. I did that with this Space Invaders clone I made a while ago. You can also use 3D objects but just keep the gameplay pure 2D, like this Asteroids clone I also did. --Eric
Hey guys. I've been using Unity for about 2 months now. I had very little programming experience before jumping in, so don't that let deter you from trying it. Unity's version of Javascript aka "UnityScript" is pretty easy to pick up. The online docs and iphone/scripting forums are gonna be your best friend, so if you do decide to go that way, bookmark those sites now. In regards to 2D game design, while Unity definitely leans to the 3D side, 2D is still doable. All the games I've designed were 2D, using the same methods. Orthographic cameras, movement along the Y and X axis, and alpha textures on 2D planes. Finally, the overhead of the engine is a bit of a problem. I've yet to see a Unity game on the App Store that's under 10 megs. You have to manage your assets and scripts well, making sure to compress your textures as much as possible, minimize the amount of draw calls and optimize any physics related code. Sorry to hijack the thread lol, just trying to help. I know I would have killed to have someone tell me all this when I got started!
Let me get this straight, does this mean Pixel graphics will not look sharp generally on iphone, or is it just unity issue?
So you're saying that if I want to make a top down shooter, I need to create a flat plane (2 triangular polygons)? Wouldn't that take up a lot more processing power than if it was pure 2D? Also, I have top-down sprites that I want to use, how would I put them in? I want to make something like Crimsonland, just to give you an idea of what i'm on about.
It's a Unity issue, if you use the "sprite on plane" method. If you use the 2D methods in Unity, it's easy to have pixel-perfect graphics, but as I mentioned, they're not really suitable for game graphics for various reasons, but are meant for score readouts and so on. Yep. Yep. A pure 2D game would be more efficiently done without Unity. Although if you did use Unity anyway, you can mix in 3D effects for more "bling" as long as you're using a 3D engine. The same way as you would with a side-view game...it really makes no difference; it's just how you draw the sprites. --Eric
Also, you have to ask: does it matter to you if a 2D game in Unity uses more processing power than if it were made from scratch in pure 2D? If the iPhone can handle the game fine either way, then processor usage really only affects battery life. And lots of games draw battery, it's a well-known factor, and that doesn't stop people from gaming. (Some games I prefer to play plugged in, that's all.)
Thanks for all the replies guys, I'll probably stick with Unity. Does anyone know any good tutorials on how to make art for games?
JUST TO CLARIFY You NEED to buy the Unity Indy license AND the iphone standard version ($600 all together not $200) I was new to programming. Never written any code before in my life (except for some basic AppleScripting). Got unity and unity iPhone about two months ago. With A LOT of help from the Unity Forums (the sole reason Unity succeeds) I was able to get ROLLY out on the app store. I'll admit, it isn't stunning and definitely isn't the best game in the world but it just goes to show what two months of learning and some hard work does! Unity takes a modified version of JavaScript or C# by the way, so don't think you won't have to learn how to code.
Here's a great video tutorial to learn your way around Unity and get a fairly decent game going. http://willgoldstone.com/learn/#
