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Unity 4 Details

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by MattCarr, Jun 18, 2012.

  1. digitalsoapbox

    digitalsoapbox

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    I wouldn't mind seeing these concerns addressed by a Unity representative.
     
  2. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

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    Glad someone likes what we're trying to do here ;-)
     
  3. hasullivan

    hasullivan

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  4. digitalsoapbox

    digitalsoapbox

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    The rest of us would just like questions answered.
     
  5. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

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    NavMesh was introduced in 3.5 because we thought it was a cool feature that people would find useful. Would it have been better if we waited to release it for Unity 4?
     
  6. refoor

    refoor

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    Just to make sure I read it correctly... I currently have Unity 3 FREE and the standard iOS license. If I choose to upgrade to Unity Pro now I will get both Unity 3.5 PRO and Unity 4 PRO?
     
  7. pivotraze

    pivotraze

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    Yes. You will :) You can use Unity 3.5 Pro right away, and Unity 4 Pro as soon as it's out.
     
  8. Bruno Gysin

    Bruno Gysin

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    some web player "Mecanim character animation"?
     
  9. refoor

    refoor

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    Awesome. I almost bought it last week... I would be kicking myself right now. :p Will be grabbing Unity 4 soon! :)

    Thanks
     
  10. pivotraze

    pivotraze

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    Anytime :) And welcome to the forums ;)

    And I would be shocked if the Unity devs would have screwed you out of Unity 4 because you bought Unity 3.5 pro a week in advance of it's announcement lol
     
  11. digitalsoapbox

    digitalsoapbox

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    That's cherry-picking from a larger question. To repost:

    "Back then I already knew, that the 3.x product line is going to end with the next major update, 3.5. Though since 3.5 didn't included the promised GUI rehaul, I was at least expecting that you guys would have the guts and bring 3.6 before switching to 4.0.

    This is the real issue with the current announcement, as it reads like: "If you don't want an half-assed NavMesh and crappy GUI system, you have to pay for upgrades".

    Basically it all about two features, either halfway introduced in 3.x or advertised to come in a 3.x update
    * NavMesh
    * New GUI system, which solves the performance issues and allows making resolution independent/flexible UIs.

    The current GUI feels like anno 1995"

    We don't have features in 3.x that are fully implemented, or were features those upgrading from 2.x were expecting in 3.x and are now being told to expect "improvements," instead of the promised GUI rewrite, in a new version that costs extra - and more than it should, in all honesty. The upgrade to 4.x isn't nearly as significant as 2.x-3.x, yet the costs to do so are apparently higher.

    This situation reminds me very much of what happened with Caligari trueSpace upgrades, promising much but not fully delivering (if at all), and it's a slippery slope to travel back up after the leap to releasing a new version earlier than it should be to placate investors/deal with the reality of the costs of keep a 100+ person company in business.
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2012
  12. n0mad

    n0mad

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    The GUI setback is indeed a serious issue.
     
  13. devbr

    devbr

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    Good point. As long as DX11 is supported, the metro frontier seems to be overcome. It has been already discussed earlier in other threads the HUGE opportunity windows 8 app store could open to Unity developers.
     
  14. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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  15. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    yes but for this and all future projects. Once you hit $50k all your UDK generated revenues are part of the Epic share model independent on if they are the same project, new project, different platform and whatever. Unless you can do a 1 man show, you will pay more within 12 months than Unity will cost upfront (and given the complexity of UDK and its lower productivity you will need 3 or 4 people)

    Its nice that you can start out with 0 but if you have to pay your bills and people then it will within no time be much more expensive (there are example calculations that show you that even 4 man teams with a nothing of $40k income per head already would pay you 9 full pro + ios pro + android pro licenses)

    To me UDK only makes sense if you want to create a prototype to grasp investor interest to get into UE at some point or want to fill your portfolio.
    but there is no successful game created with UDK out there and that for good reasons (the only one who started there, dungeon defenders, switched to UE long ago)
     
  16. Mikie

    Mikie

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    I was just getting ready to buy Pro 3.5. If I put down the $1500 for 4 will my Android and Iphone add ons work? Good thing I waited.
     
  17. relational

    relational

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    3.5 Added a lot of new features to Unity. It was a dot release and didn't require an upgrade fee from 3.0. What should UT do? Keep giving away features and not charge you for them? If you want to calculate what you are getting in 4.0 then the only real comparison is to compare the features from the 3.0 release to the 4.0 release. That is what you are paying for. The last thing any of us want UT to do is to not release new features in dot releases and then add them to the next major release to justify the upgrade pricing. You got the 4.0 features early in the dot release. They are being refined in the major release. This is how every other major software company does it.
     
  18. Lars-Steenhoff

    Lars-Steenhoff

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    Unity 4 is shaping out to be nice, I like the asset management improvements and the shadows for mobile!
     
  19. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

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    Yeah!
     
  20. Wild-Factor

    Wild-Factor

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    Hey but if you fail (90% of project ??), you loose 3000$ more (pro + ios)
    The risk of loosing money is a lot higher with Unity.
    And for small ios game, if you use UDK you can have 3000$ of cash flow to hire some PR guys (or a better freelance artist or ....) . It's better to have a game with some advertising that may be successfull or not, than a game without advertising because you spend all your budget on Unity. So 30% of something is sometimes better than 99% of nothing.

    Well clearly Unity corp is changing from a small indie dev, to a big mass corporate wanting lot of cash flow.

    I pais 400$ for unity ios -> other guys get it for free. Now to compensate the free give away, they have increase the upgrade price!
    Heyy thanks for customer that bought the licence full price :) 400$ + 250$ instead of 400$ + 150$ like before, when other pay only 250$...

    If you have other brillante marketing ideas like that, takes some vacation...
     
  21. MattCarr

    MattCarr

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    In this case it probably would have been, I'd suggest. Releasing unfinished features and using them to advertise a product in order to get sales and then charging people again for the finished version doesn't seem very fair.

    Obviously it's not as simple as that and "unfinished" is not a fair term either, but my opinion is that the NavMesh does not provide enough scripting interfaces to be useful on its own and the agent pathfinding without dynamic obstacle avoidance is only useful in the minority of projects.

    That said, I'm loving the features coming for Unity 4 and I can accept the upgrade price. I don't like making negative comments, but just wanted to share my opinion in this case :).
     
  22. Jessy

    Jessy

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    I'm really liking this release. The lack of interesting features means that I can hold off until a sale, unlike the previous two releases, when I preordered. It really helps ease the blow of the 150% price increase!
     
  23. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    You don't lose anyhting with Unity
    The license is per seat lifetime not per seat and project or per project only.
    So you can continue to use it for other projects in all eternity.
    Thats a pretty big difference to 'pay for all eternity even if you stop to develop with udk'

    There are still devs and projects running on 2.6.1 for example, which is about 3 years old.
     
  24. n0mad

    n0mad

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    http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/06/16/unity-roadmap-2011/
    (and considering the UI was teased and announced way before that point)

    Anyway, I'm off with this UI stuff, this won't stop my future releases. But I'm really sorry for people who started a game lately and were expecting it to be released in 3.x.
    And personally, I won't read the announcements and teasers anymore.
    ___________

    edit to answer Relational's post below :
    From the very post you answered to :
    (and considering the UI was teased and announced way before that point)
    _______________

    edit 2 to answer LittleAngel's post :

    You forgot the part where we have to spend 1500 more dollars ;-)
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2012
  25. relational

    relational

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    From that blog post:

    Please note that the features in this roadmap are not commitments! They may or may not end up in a final release. If a feature isn’t ready in time it will not be included in the release.
     
  26. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

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    The worst you can say about this is that features like the Nav Mesh were released when they were ready and not held back to beef up the 4.0 release. There are quite a few features and advancements that were released for 3.5 that could have simply been kept internally until the 4.0 release. This might have made 4.0 LOOK better, but wouldn't you rather have the use of something when it was available, rather than have it postponed for marketing reasons?

    The new UI system seems to be a case in the other direction. Should UT hold up the release of 4.0 due to an incomplete and unfinished system? Release a system incomplete or unfinished? Or, which makes sense to me, delay that one feature for a future release?
     
  27. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    While thats right, the UI system was overdue for an update since Unity iPhone 1.0 or Unity 2.1 cause its not touch capable at all.
    And that a 2D system was announced for Unity 3.0 already which still didn't land nor is it mentioned on the 4.0 list is a thing nobody added to the list so far either.
    And that Beast and Umbra took 21 months from release to production usability at all (first public 3.0 beta till 3.5.1) is a fact that not even UT can deny and that for two of the major features of 3.x which is a pretty displeasant situation. It got fixed in the end but more the 'garagegames style' ie short before the end of product (as back with TGEA and T3D), not in the timely manner a super hyped pro license selling feature would legally require.

    So there is an understandable amount of displeasure here. I personally cope with the situation and accept it and only need to see what to cut to cope with the $1000 higher fee than projected, will likely result in a pushed back yet overdue upgrade of my desktop hardware
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2012
  28. Lars-Steenhoff

    Lars-Steenhoff

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    Hope the texture streaming will make it in Unity 4
     
  29. goat

    goat

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    True, but how often do you buy trousers and ask about the inseam?
     
  30. goat

    goat

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    Actually I coded in OpenWindows with a better GUI than what Unity offers now but OpenWindows was always full of initialization and buffer bugs. And without the almost WYIWYG generator it would have taken hours thumbing through API manuals.
     
  31. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

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    I'll take my admin hat off, and within reason, agree with you re: the UI. I'm unclear exactly what the issue is as to why it's not available yet, as I'm not privy to that at all, but yes, a new performant touch sensitive sprite based UI would be very nice. And I have been waiting for one as a developer. I'd be happy to stop temping things with scripted GUITextures! On the other hand (and this does not excuse the situation), there are some fantastic Community based solutions for this; EZGui and NGUI being two off the top of my head, so it's not as if there is NO solution for the dedicated developer. Lastly, tho' as much as I want one, I don't want one half baked.

    What I find difficult is knowing how to respond logically (with any hat on) to a criticism that mixes complaints about features that appear "unfinished" being included in a release with complaints that "unfinished" features have not been included.
     
  32. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Just finished watching a video on Mechanim, and I feel it help my current project especially since it is a fighting game... and I saw that it has automatic retargeting... another interesting plus... now since it is ways off, and I shouldn't jump the gun, I hope I will be able to sync up animations like hitting and throwing, and blend into ragdolls...

    And I am glad that I got my pro licence in April...I will not have any issues once Unity 4 releases...
     
  33. MattCarr

    MattCarr

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    I don't think anyone has or would complain about unfinished features not being included. What people need to understand though is that as has been stated previously, roadmaps are not set in stone and there are any number of issues that can arise during development that delay a feature short or long term.

    I never get frustrated by features not being included that may have been expected because I never get myself in a situation where I require them. The NavMesh/Pathfinding system for example was something that with the features coming in Unity 4 would have been useful on multi-year project I recently finished. The team knew it it was coming and so did the client and as the lead programmer it was my job to mitigate any potential risk and I focused our efforts towards handling it not being utilised. It was the right call because in it's state in 3.5 it wouldn't have provided what we needed. On a multi-million dollar project like that one I made sure we were never beholden to future Unity updates (except in the case of requiring an SSE2 skinning crash bug to be fixed) and I suggest the same for anyone working on a project of any size.

    Don't plan on features you haven't yet received and be thankful when you don't get them because it probably means it wasn't ready and will come out solid in a future update.
     
  34. Merries

    Merries

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    What a shame, there is no way I can afford an $800.00 plus upgrade price for Pro. The features seems really good and yes I voice my concerns about the GUI upgrades not being completed for this version. Good luck folks. Out of the Indies (except Free version) and onto the Pro users. :)
     
  35. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    Not for 4.0.
     
  36. holyjewsus

    holyjewsus

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    I'll say I would really like to upgrade from 3.5 pro to 4.0 pro, I will not be able to at this time, but I'm looking forward to it in the future. I don't think the upgrade price is that high, but I do think it is hesitation worthy at this level.
     
  37. VeraxOdium

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    I think this is a reasonable explanation. I'd like to add that S*** happens, and that is what happened here, and sometimes there is no practical solution to make things "right".
     
  38. Nooch

    Nooch

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    Could one of the Unity guys please reply to this? I have the same concerns, and it's been asked a few times throughout the thread. What is the iOS support looking like for 3.x moving forward?

    Also... perhaps this is a dumb question, but are we jumping from 3.5 to 4? Are there any planned releases in between?
     
  39. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    3.x will receive critical fixes, but no new features. This goes for any of its platforms.
     
  40. SteveJ

    SteveJ

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    +1 to this - I've been a little disappointed in UT's lack of updates to keep up with Xcode/iOS as it is... wondering if things will get a whole lot worse as 3.5 is quickly left behind.
     
  41. lazalong

    lazalong

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    Could you give us an estimate when it will be available?


    I need to know if I buy also a GUI or if I can wait and concentrate on other stuff first?
    Btw I will need a lot of tabbed windows scrolls lists so I am not even sure NGui or others solutions are good for this so I am not so happy to buy another package.


    Good 4x upgrades apart that.
     
  42. J_P_

    J_P_

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    So we can count on 3.5 remaining incompatible with Xcode 4.5? As far as iOS6 beta goes, Unity devs left in the dust?
     
  43. playemgames

    playemgames

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    I completely agree with this. I was really floored with the announcement of 4, when we are still waiting on fixes and updates to 3.5 and the price point for the upgrade for Pro users isn't justifiable.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  44. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    No official date on the new GUI system yet.
     
  45. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    No specifics on which fixes go into 3.x yet. Stay tuned.
     
  46. rstehwien

    rstehwien

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    Best news all day. I was one sad monkey before hearing this. I have pro all around and upgrading everything at once was going to be a killer.
     
  47. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    Note that the fix is live in the store.
     
  48. lyh1

    lyh1

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    If I have a unity 3.5 Pro+ Android pro then the price 850+850 will still apply after 4.x is out?
    If so then I can just left the news here and stay tuned until 4 came out.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2012
  49. MattCarr

    MattCarr

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    Since the main site is still failing to load for me I'm not sure if it shows these, but the full size versions of the shots in the details page are available.

    Looking forward to seeing the DX11 demo. Enjoyed watching the Unity/Nvidia DX11 presentation given at GDC and am keen to see more of what cool stuff has been created.

    DX11 Demo (Click to see large version)




    Mecanim (Click to see large version)




    Project Browser and Add Component System (Click to see large version)




    Mobile Shadows (Click to see large version)
     
  50. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

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    The upgrade pricing is not changing. Upgrading Unity pro now gets you a $200 voucher to the Unity store.