Unity

It’s been a year since I discovered Unity and I’ve been itching to get my hands on a license ever since. I downloaded the demo last year and had a go at putting a Routine404 3D model into the engine to see what I could do. In just under two days I had it running around and colliding with terrain, transforming into a ship and flying around!

I was amazed at the power, design and ease of use of Unity, and have been confused about whether to invest my time learning it, or wait and see what MicroSoft’s XNA would be like to use.

After considerable internal conflict, I’ve decided to purchase a license for Unity for several reasons:

1) The IDE is beautifully simple and integrates seamlessly with Maya and Photoshop. Check out the insane ease of importing assets in this short Video Tutorial.

2) Unity supports development for Nintendo Wii. Whoopee you might say if you’re a fan of high res graphics games, but the makers of Unity have chosen the Wii because the chance of indie game developers creating games for it are so much more realistic. Nintendo are quite obviously pushing for innovation in game play mechanics, and less concerned by top-end visual effects. This is important for us as Prism is retro by design, so simple geometry with fluid game play and an ace story is all we need 🙂

3) The demo’s created with Unity are stunning:

i. Phoenix Final Screenshots and Mac OS X Preview Game Download
ii. Avert Fate – Screenshots and Gameplay Video Demo
iii. Visual Effects Demo – Web Plugin
iv. Visualisation Demo – Web Plugin

4) A Web plugin that is set to wipe the floor with Director’s SW3D (as seen in two of the demo’s above).

I’ll still be taking a look at the four XNA books when they are published, but for now my spare time is going to be used to work on a Prism 3D demo with Unity.

The question that has to be asked now is, does anyone want to join me on this indie mission?