A Look at Unity

So I went ahead and looked at another possible engine over the previous week (sorry I missed Friday, long story I may get into another point).  The engine is Unity, which comes in two versions much like UDK: Free and Expensive.  Of course, from what it looked like free was really free, where UDK was one hundred dollars.  Unfortunately though, this is not enough of an incentive to use this engine.

Let us start with the basics.  Unity can be written in JavaScript of C# or some combination (though each language needs to be kept in separate files) and has an environment to view the work inside.  What that means is instead of compiling the entire program each time when only one or two little things were different, you can compile the files specific to the changes and run that.  This should theoretically speed up workflow and enable multiple people to work on a project simultaneously without needing to have access to the continually updated files.  The latter happened to be the circumstances of the person I was watching work in Unity, where he was working on the UI and only needed a skeleton framework for the rest of the game areas.

Now the downsides.  While this engine is a fairly strong possibility, there are a major flaws that I know would drive me crazy before I finish this project.  The compile button does not always do what it says.  The person I was watching needed on some occasions to hit compile six or seven times before the new information he wanted updated would appear in the work area.  Whatever needing to only compile small areas or single files to check the program would save in time is lost when you need to flip back and forth three or four times checking if the file compiled and then going back to hitting the compile button again.  My only other complaint is my JavaScript is weak and I have not done anything in C#, which I could probably learn, but that would add more time to an already very delayed project.

So I know I am not using Unity.  I was hoping to also have my review of the Source engine but it is taking forever to set up and get to where I can change actual code, right now all I seem to have access to is a map-builder.

Again, I apologize I missed Friday, I was cleared for work which I start in the morning, so I went out with a few friends and did not get back until the next day.  Hopefully I have some more modeling done for the next post and the texturing for the Sunday post after that, though who knows how much time life is going to give me now.  Until next post,
~gunnah