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Source Code Not Shared With Pro Members??

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by kingcharizard, Jan 25, 2013.

  1. kingcharizard

    kingcharizard

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    I've always wondered why unity doesn't share its source code with pro members, whats so special that they cant release the source to paying pro members? for $1500 plus you'd think they would...
     
  2. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Because that's not their business model. You can get the source code but it's a separate license.

    --Eric
     
  3. kingcharizard

    kingcharizard

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    Which probably costs a couple thousand more. What I guess i wanna know is why is it the way they do business.
     
  4. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    ?? what? no this must be a troll.

    If they gave the source code then you can build to any platform! even Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.
     
  5. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    Why when they can sell it for even more and get way more? I would most definitely not value Unity source code as low as 1.5 thousand.
     
  6. kingcharizard

    kingcharizard

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    Yeah.. yeah i know.....

    I dont think its that simple..

    Its late, i just had the question on my mind, i shoulda put more thought into it b4 i asked..
     
  7. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Are you kidding? Most commercial graphic engines don't give you source code. To get source code would require $250000~$500000 for most of them (id Tech 5, UDK/UE, CryEngine) even for small fries like Unigine (which cost 5 times more to license - $5000+ last I heard) wouldn't give you source code unless you fork overe $250000.
    As matter of fact, show me one commercial engine (no open source!) that would give you source code for under $1500. With exception to a few low quality garbage engines (such as C4 Engine :D) there aren't many, if at all.
     
  8. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    I would have said Torque, but that's open source now....

    --Eric
     
  9. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    You will find that it is ether open source or very expensive.
     
  10. UNITY3D_TEAM

    UNITY3D_TEAM

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    ya !its true
     
  11. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Actually it's not true; they could simply not include the source for building to those platforms. Source code isn't all or nothing.

    --Eric
     
  12. Ghoxt

    Ghoxt

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    Unity is a For-Profit entity, in today's Social society it's not a stretch at all for their entire Source Code once "Given away" to Pro users to end up on a Torrent and a mod community would openly tinker with their code and publish their own variants IE Unix/Linux, still using some form of the Unity name, and completely undermining all the hard years of work they have put in to this engine.

    Source code expensive Licences also come with Iron clad non distribute agreements, as they are trusting you with the "Baby" of their company. For the current model Unity has in place, it would destroy it top to bottom inside...oh 1 year i would guess if included in Pro License tiers.
     
  13. MarigoldFleur

    MarigoldFleur

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    Why on earth would they give you access to source code for $1500?
     
  14. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    What if some one wrote it(which would most certainly happen)
     
  15. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    What if someone wrote what? Exporters for consoles? That's highly complex and you'd no doubt save money (not to mention a huge amount of time) by just paying UT whatever they're asking for them.

    --Eric
     
  16. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Well, I did also mentioned the ones that let you get source code for under $1500 are usually garbage. :D
     
  17. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    touche.
     
  18. jashan

    jashan

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    Personally, I'm not at all interested in the source code. It would just take days and days ... probably weeks of my time to get into it. And what for? The beauty of Unity is in its smooth abstraction and encapsulation. You want to write a shader with your own special lighting sauce? No problem. You actually want to be productive but need a shader that does some special texture processing? You can use a surface shader.

    There might be some very special use cases every now and then where having the source code might be helpful. "Look, don't touch", you know? Like: How they did stuff with RAKNET would be an example that immediately comes to mind. But the only reason anyone could ever have been interested in that was because they kind of failed a little on providing "just the right level of abstraction" in their networking API (IMHO, they should have made networking a little more complex at the benefit of having it less restricted to some use cases I didn't really care about - but that's just because I believe multiplayer is so inherently complex that trying to do it when you can't handle that kind of complexity will just be frustrating anyways).

    But if they included the source code, in the end, some people might be really stupid and add their own little hacks here and there and then end up in update-nightmares ... and they'd probably congest any support channels that UT has.

    So ... I'm very happy they keep their source code to themselves ... and ... in case I ever really need source access, I know I can get it (plus, I'd probably budget to pay for one of UT's Ninjas to help me do anything useful with those gazillion lines of code ;-) ).
     
  19. khanstruct

    khanstruct

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    This.

    Their source code is worth way more than $1500. So either they increase the cost of Pro to some ridiculous amount, or they sell it as a separate license.
     
    tigerleapgorge likes this.
  20. SevenBits

    SevenBits

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    Why do we need source code access? Unity is like this magic box that spits out awesome. Having the code would ruin that.
     
  21. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Not to mention that it's a huge risk for them as a business for everyone and their dog to be running around with the source code. It's not just a cost thing, it's a security thing.
     
  22. arealperson63587

    arealperson63587

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    People need to learn not to be asking questions like this. Only Trolls question things this way.
    If they wanted you to know, or if it was important. They would have posted the reasons.

    Business has to many people helping to making decisions to be wrong. And you should not questions things like this.
    They know what they want to do.

    If you don't like it, use something else, but don't be acting like the business can be wrong about how they manage there products.
     
  23. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    No, people should question everything.

    Why is it that calling people trolls is something that only happens when somebody wants to shut down and argument nowadays?

    Except Unity has a habit of not posting reasons for things. Case in point: the several year GUI delay or the lack of information on an updated version of Mono that got every excuse from "it would break compatibility" to "the new version isn't that good anyway" until after several years of pestering, we finally got "the licensing costs are too high.

    Businesses make wrong decisions all the time.

    Why not?

    This doesn't mean what they want to do is a necessarily good idea.

    Businesses do this literally all the time.
     
    AcidArrow likes this.
  24. HavocX

    HavocX

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    I get a feeling this is a troll post and I fell for it...
     
  25. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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    Since this thread has been necro'd..

    Well funny you mention it, have you heard about UE4....
     
  26. Archania

    Archania

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    Lol nice.
     
  27. violinbg

    violinbg

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    This topic is from January 2013. Maybe the question was relevant back then, who knows.
     
  28. 3D Omelette Studio

    3D Omelette Studio

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    yup,
    you can pay a 1 time $19 usd and you can access UE4 full source code, so not $1,500 or $25,000 or $500,000.
    just $19.

    i always hated blizzard on their greedyness since they kept their pay to play for long time, and still do milking and draining the cow until they say and feel it is completely dry,
    while pretty much everyone took the free to play route which changed the game industry and indies for good.

    there is always a greedy one pretty much everywhere. lol

    unity, do not fall into the same footsteps of hungry dogs

    change the world, share the source, at least the client sources, keep the editor to your self,
    please give something back, stop fattening your hungry wallets you will get indigestion :)

    do something crazy, free yourself . you will feel great.
    just a concerned game developer citizen.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2014
  29. Alf203

    Alf203

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    I don't think this thread needed a necrobump, but whatever…:rolleyes:
     
  30. Zeblote

    Zeblote

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    Free to play is utter S***. Because it actually means "pay even more to play properly and have fun".
     
  31. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    The customers are the ones who make the model a success, though.
     
  32. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    While it's not necessary to bump old threads, it's worth pointing out that Unity does integrate it's middleware quite deeply. They're not legally allowed to share the source code nor dlls it may use with you, without significant cost. Some middleware worth noting would be:

    - enlighten*
    - physx
    - fmod
    - beast*
    - mono
    * depending on version

    And so on - there's a lot of middleware here and that is only scratching the surface. Unity may or may not actually compile source of these with their own systems - I wouldn't know, but even looking at a small part of that list means it is a very challenging task to provide source to users, and not something Unity is doing to spite you or anything. I think that's pretty clear anyway.

    You would all need to get your own licenses for this middleware since it's integrated deeply into Unity, and a lot of people would be refused licenses for some middleware to evaluate. It would also destroy Unity's pro/free split business. Unity first needs to change the business model from charging to develop to charging to sell to even enable this.

    I think it's clear that it's probably not something that will happen with Unity, but what COULD happen is that Unity provide more access to the lower level workings via dll and C sharp, to the point where it could be beneficial.
     
  33. Gargi

    Gargi

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    I worked several years with Torque. Believe me, it is no fun to modify the source code of an engine. You need weeks/months to understand the basics of the code.
    And you have to implement your modifications (or hacks) with each new official version of the engine. And again and again and again.

    Btw: Having no source code is one of the reasons for me to stay with Unity.
     
  34. kaiyum

    kaiyum

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    +1000, this.

    There are so many per-requisites need to be fulfilled before lurking with an engine source. Depending upon scenario, there are many. Its a hell of complexity. Unless you do know very well of what you are doing, I think source for unity would hardly be needed. I might be wrong, there might be loads of engine gurus, for whom an engine like unity(UE4 ) is nothing complex:rolleyes:.
     
  35. BrUnO-XaVIeR

    BrUnO-XaVIeR

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    Just like junkies; doesn't mean you should go out and sell cocaine just like drug dealers.
    Nice necro by the way. A perfect example of how we was living in another universe back then...

    Maybe someday we wake up in another universe too, where F2P is bad business and the entire industry decides to make a shift from it for understanding that it is not a truly viable way to sell games.
     
  36. saymoo

    saymoo

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    I see no logic in that.. UE4 doesn't require engine sourcecode modification. You can and are allowed to, because they also give the source, but it's not required by any means.
     
  37. bitcrusher

    bitcrusher

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    yep you still can get binaries, it sucks that alot of the cool middleware in UE4 is gone though from UE3, there is no more simplygon, or substance integration, i don't want to see that in unity5.
     
  38. prophet

    prophet

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    That is not the case for all the F2P games. Plenty of games are running that you can play completely for free and be on the same level as people who invest money. LoL come to mind.
     
  39. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    You're right NTSF300; revenue share is non-existent when you never release anything...way to stick it to the man.
     
  40. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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    Actually, revenue share is ~$0 when you revenue is ~$0, though I'm not sure how that could possibly relate to my comment.
     
  41. shaderop

    shaderop

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    I had this theory that the signal-to-noise ratio will drastically improve on these forums after the Unreal Engine 4 announcement since most of the noise will migrate to the UE4 forums.

    I was wrong.
     
  42. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Probably because a bunch of people already have time/money invested into Unity and now there's a massive alternative to the engine that's making continued use of Unity look like a less than ideal situation and they want Unity to have a chance to respond before they're forced to switch.
     
  43. 3D Omelette Studio

    3D Omelette Studio

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    exactly right,

    i mean there is no brainer here,

    if you put both in the spot light,
    - Unity: well known and easy to develop with, massive amount of assets is what makes it very appealing, no source code and still developers manage to create plugins to enhance the engine.

    -UE4: the famous top notch engine, high quality graphics and fully featured editor, same deal easy to learn and use, no plugin assets yet tho,
    but with full source code release, meaning editor and client platforms source code, meaning the sky is the limit for developers, you can enhance it and add plugins to the core as you wish.


    seems that UE4 was superior rendering engine than unity even when it was black boxed, but now that provides fully source release to the public for only $19
    to be honest and as much i hate to say, it really makes unity way inferior.


    so the question is:
    - will unity try to live up to the standard bar UE4 has just raised?
    -will plugin developers and game developers be able to wait for unity to do a massive comeback to meet up with UE4 standards?

    I just dont think that unity 5 will make any exiting difference with the new enhanced audio among others features ???? :-(
    i mean unity on its 4.5 version and still uses external user created plugins for GUI editor???? i mean come on.

    to be honest what makes unity engine awesome is not the engine itself, but the community and addons they create, and with a black box engine, imagine what the community do with source?

    Unity, free up your self and be competitive, unleash the source, it is about time. unless you think you still feel confident about your self. and let time decide Unitys fate.

    Mr Unity3D president "Tear down this wall!" :) unleash the source code to your fateful followers before they stop and turn around.

    just a concerned citizen :)
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2014
  44. Archania

    Archania

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    And yet people still do not understand why unity can't release the source.
    Unreal removed all exterior licensed material! No scaleform, no enlighten, etc. Anything and everything the required licensing is out. Epic couldn't do it u3 or udk. Tom even said that.
    Unity is unable due to the same restraints. Beast and now enlighten plus whatever. The software is integrated.
    Of course you can get the source under certain circumstances and I'm sure money.
    But unless they strip it all out and make it themselves you will not get it.
     
  45. Fuzzy

    Fuzzy

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    I thought there was a Unity license for source code you could get right now, just for some extra money. So it seems to be possible to give the source away. But i don't even want to know the current price for that and if there are any limitations.
     
  46. Ostwind

    Ostwind

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    They probably only sell it to companies that get/own the required licenses.
     
  47. TheDMan

    TheDMan

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    They do, for a very large price (which probably covers licensing costs of all the external additions/licensed solutions).
     
  48. im

    im

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    actually i'll tell you the truth from personal experience when working with unreal engine in a commercial game like the kind people buy on steam everyday you need the full source code cause what they give you sort of is not really all that flexible. so you have to take their source code and change it as you need it for your specific game.

    without unreal engine source code its like trying to get the square peg you hear about in the round hole. its setup to be that you really needed the source code like originally with microsoft foundation classes (mfc) you needed the source code cause what microsoft gave you was often not enough too limited, broken, incomplete, not fully documented, ect.

    on the other hand for unity apis for the most part you dont need the source code cause they have a pretty robust well documented set of .net apis which are both very easy to use and extend.

    anyways just my thoughts after working with unreal engine source code for commerical projects and now having worked with unity engine for over 9 months...

    sure i would love the unity source code, but i have better things to do than play at that level since the apis give me what i want, ok except for gui ones which are in bigtime need of replacement (pray for 4.6) and if they dont do it there are lots of dirt cheap assets in the asset store which does what unity does not do... so i dont really want to waste time changing unity source code when i can just find an asset to do it.

    the only thing i would love is them to upgrade mono or drop it for microsoft .net on platforms where there is microsoft .net... cause of the gc / performance issues of mono...

    also would love a new gui and more work on mecanim so it surpasses legacy animations

    but i think a lot of my needs will be satified by the time 4.6 - 5.0 comes out...

    also would be nice if they dropped the price of pro for people such as my self who play around and dont make money on it so i can get access to some of the pro features which are sorely needed even for indie...

    and if i ever do make any money i dont mind paying them for a license to do so.. its just for hobby/playing its expensive. i use the money for assets... ;)
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2014
  49. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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    Thanks for that experience im, it's appreciated :)
     
  50. Partel-Lang

    Partel-Lang

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    Its not all that bad to have a closed engine.

    How would you ever be sure that your modifications work with the next version of Unity? You could change something seemingly innocent and then months later find out that it doesn't work on all the platforms like it used to. And the support can't help you, because you can't upload your entire engine with the bug report and hope that they'll fix it. :)

    Also, open source would be terrible for the Asset Store ecosystem. If everyone in the community would be running their own custom modifications of Unity, how would we ever develop any assets for the Asset Store and be confident that they work the same all around? Or how would you ever have any confidence, that a 5-star rated asset also works with your own custom modifications?

    If Unity was open source, people would probably start rewriting some bigger chunks of it and perhaps sell them somewhere as well, and from that point on, nobody on earth would have a clue on what works with what.

    Just my 2 cents :)

    Pärtel
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2014