Just saw this news at GameDev.

Has anyone here played with Unity and what are your thoughts on it's coming to 360 as well as Visual Studio support.

http://www.gamedev.net/

Allan

I've played with Unity for another project. It's a reasonable engine, especially if you target more low-end or casual users (although it can look good enough with the necessary art, too).
I view it as a smaller, lighter, cheaper version of what you get with Gamebryo.
If it's free for XNA Game Studio users, then I see no reason to keep plugging away at the low-level engines we're all building right now. As opposed to Garage Games, Unity generally supports their product.
However, the article seems to not say that, but to say that:
1) It costs $0 *on the PC and Mac* for Indie developers.
2) It can be had for Xbox 360 *if you have a "pro" XDK*, for money.
Sadly, you can't have both at the same time :-)

I think this is really cool, but that's because I want to play with their PC and web plugin. For the Xbox this makes no difference to me because it's for XBLA and retail games; it's not involved with XNA Game Studio at all.

I really like Unity. I've played with their demo before and the time has been great. The editor UI is easy to work with, the physics seem good, and scripting in C# is fantastic. I'm definitely downloading a copy to play with. I think making web games with it could be pretty fun but I also think it's an interesting way to prototype ideas for XBLIG games. It won't represent the final look and feel, but I can test out certain game mechanics potentially faster with Unity than I could coding it all in XNA GS.

It's a very cool thing they did, giving it away for free. I had looked at it last year for iPhone stuff but the price tag scared me away. :) When I get some time I'll definitely take the PC version for a spin.

Downloaded and installed about 5 minutes ago.

I've recently tried Unity, and the graphics portion of it seems really good (for 3d, 2d not so much), the scripting / documentation leaves a lot to be desired.  I created a script, attempted to add it to a game object and it just gives a generic 'unable to compile script' error, doesn't tell you which line number had the problem or anything.  So then it becomes a guess and check process.  Which code doesn't the compiler like?  Time to start remarking out sections of code.  I also tried to edit the scripts within Visual Studio using C# (their code editor sucks), that seemed to cause a bunch of different problems.

I've eyed Unity for a long time back when you still needed a Mac to do development with it. Then played around a bit when it was ported to windows, but haven't tried anything serious because of the price tag. I guess it's time to take a closer look and maybe try creating a small game :)

Some of the posters above sounded like Unity wouldn't be good for bigger games. Is there anything specific that makes you believe it won't be capable of bigger titles?
Doesn't it scale well? Or do you think it's not flexible enough for a larger game?

Just asking. As I said, I don't know enough about Unity yet.

Social Loner Studios:

"Unity 2.6 include full integration with Visual Studio"

Hmmm, I looked real quick and didn't see this.

I spoke with the Unity guys at GDC this year and they are very enthusiastic about their platform. I haven't tried it out yet, but it does seem that they support it well with updates and you can't beat FREE!

What i'd really like to know is whether you could use their editor's maps with your own XNA engine.

Probably not, but one can dream.

Jim Perry:

Social Loner Studios:

"Unity 2.6 include full integration with Visual Studio"

Hmmm, I looked real quick and didn't see this.

Heh, that's not what I meant. I meant I don't see integration with VS in either VS or the Unity editor. :) Of course, I've only spent a couple of minutes looking.

Jim Perry:

Heh, that's not what I meant. I meant I don't see integration with VS in either VS or the Unity editor. :) Of course, I've only spent a couple of minutes looking.

jwatte:

I view it as a smaller, lighter, cheaper version of what you get with Gamebryo.

Interesting, I've never followed Unity, but you had me at "Gamebryo".  This is something I'll definitely look into.

I've been working with Unity now for a couple months and the news release that it is going to be available on the 360 makes me really happy :) If you're doing 3D development I would highly recommend checking out the free version of Unity but if you're just doing 2D I'm not sure it will make development any easier than straight XNA.

John

Oesis Inc:

the news release that it is going to be available on the 360 makes me really happy

Again just remember that this likely isn't available unless you're a registered developer with Microsoft and have the native Xbox XDK; it's not built on XNA GS as far as they've said. For most of us, that means that the 360 support does no good, sadly.

If you want to do anything beyond making a PC or Mac executable, it will cost you. Web publishing, $1500. iPhone, $400. If you want to optimize for the iPhone you will need unity pro, $1500 and unity iPhone $400. Unity iPhone apps are at minimum over 10M so you cannot download them from the iPhone store over 3G. The free unity doesn't optimize or remove unused code. Basically what they are giving away is what they couldn't sell anymore. Its a nice gesture but has nothing to do with XNA. When they add XNA to unity I'll be interested again.

Big Daddio:

Web publishing, $1500.

Where are you seeing that? I don't see any price attached to web publishing anywhere and I know the free Unity can build the web project just fine (just tested it). Not saying you're wrong, but since my main interest in Unity right now is web, I'd love to know if that's going to cost a bunch of money.

Interesting, a few days ago they were not including web publishing. I am mistaken. Sorry about that.

Well it may be worthwhile, however it still has nothing to do with XNA. Perhaps we should petition their forums and ask for XNA?

Big Daddio:

Well it may be worthwhile, however it still has nothing to do with XNA. Perhaps we should petition their forums and ask for XNA?

I had thought about emailing them directly about it but perhaps a forum discussion would be good. If they somehow were able to support and XNA GS path for XBLIG they'd probably become the main engine for the service since the tools are so good. Even if they charged, like with iPhone, an additional fee, I know I would pay it.

I just tried the VS integration, doesn't seem to work so well if you only have the express version installed, I get this error.  I have VS 2005 Pro, but not installed, maybe I'll try that in a bit.