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General discussionIs Unity still considered as a good free environment create a game or there are better options?(51 posts)(51 posts)
(51 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 04, 2018
if you are looking for something to do quickly, Game Maker is a viable option, especially as it is 2D. There are not many tabletop games made in GM, but a few do exist.
Posted October 04, 2018
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nightcraw1er.488: There are other options if you want a simpler game engine Godot - a free mostly 2d engine with 3D:
https://godotengine.org/
Which is really good, totally free, lightweight, and you can code in various languages.
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Lexor: I've never heard of it and will take a look.
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nightcraw1er.488: Then there is the various click and play gamemakers.
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Lexor: I would prefer something with with more coding involved as I would need to code a lot of AI things.
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nightcraw1er.488: To avoid waffling for too long, unity is now subscription based, and you can see the various missing bits in the free version here:
https://store.unity.com/compare-plans
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Lexor: Unless I'm mistaken that confirms that free Unity had full conding options and the only things I'm missing are like some cloud storage, advisors, hosting, tranings - I'm not so sure they would be things to "must have" for me.

Also - subscriptions yes, but only (as I said earlier) if you earned more that $100k during previous year, otherwise it's free.
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nightcraw1er.488: Me I would go Godot+Krita, then move onto something bigger if needed.
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Lexor: Can you explain what do you mean in the second part? The thing I'm afraid the most is being "locked" in the engine I get into at start and that could be very dangerous if my project will grow up at some time.
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blotunga: What kind of game do you want to do (2D/3D - UI heavy or not)? What is your target platform/what are your target platforms?
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Lexor: As I said in OP, my main target is PC. It will be digital adaptation (probably in 2D) of my paper/card board game.

My main reason of digital adaptation will be (at first) to do more additional tests and gather more funds before releasing paper version as well.
Yes, sorry. Godot as the engine, Krita is a free graphics tool:
https://krita.org/en/homepage/
And if you need 3D then blender.

Unity free has most parts, but (and I haven't looked at it for a long time) certain more advanced features are locked out and most team based things are blocked.

Me too on the coding front, really couldn't get on with click and play ones, however they are very popular and easy to use.
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kusumahendra: I would like to suggest godot game engine

It's a small open source free game engine that supports both 2d and 3d. It uses its own scripting language called gdscript which is basically a strip down python. It is an engine gaining popularity and many hobbyist choose it over unity.

I am making a 3d fps game as a hobby project using the engine and I find it perfect for my need. I once made an unfinished 2d platformer too and find it very easy to do.

The engine however has a unique way of working. You need to adopt "the godot way" to use it effectively. Once you do however, you would wonder why other engines have to be so hard
Just to note that now you can use various languages to code in it, not just gdscript, but c# for instance.
Post edited October 04, 2018 by nightcraw1er.488
Posted October 04, 2018
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kusumahendra: I would like to suggest godot game engine

It's a small open source free game engine that supports both 2d and 3d. It uses its own scripting language called gdscript which is basically a strip down python. It is an engine gaining popularity and many hobbyist choose it over unity.

I am making a 3d fps game as a hobby project using the engine and I find it perfect for my need. I once made an unfinished 2d platformer too and find it very easy to do.

The engine however has a unique way of working. You need to adopt "the godot way" to use it effectively. Once you do however, you would wonder why other engines have to be so hard
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nightcraw1er.488: Just to note that now you can use various languages to code in it, not just gdscript, but c# for instance.
Can you use Rust?

(Incidentally, I have been interested in a graphics library for making 2D games without any dependency on 3D stuff (so it can run on systems that don't have 3D hardware), but haven't had any luck. Maybe I'll just give up and code for some emulatable retro computer instead (like the MSX, which has a free BIOS replacement (though said BIOS has significant limitations) or the NES, which needs no BIOS and for which reverese-engineered documentation is available online.)
Posted October 04, 2018
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blotunga: I would consider libgdx, since your game is indeed UI heavy.
So you think that Unity has some problems when creating UI?

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blotunga: Here's my game for example (4x strategy): https://blotunga.itch.io/birth-of-the-empires
It looks very nice - did you create all graphics visuals / sound effects by yourself or you just programmed the game code and added some publicly available assets?

Are there any restrictions with commercial usage of libgdx?
Posted October 04, 2018
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nightcraw1er.488: Just to note that now you can use various languages to code in it, not just gdscript, but c# for instance.
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dtgreene: Can you use Rust?

(Incidentally, I have been interested in a graphics library for making 2D games without any dependency on 3D stuff (so it can run on systems that don't have 3D hardware), but haven't had any luck. Maybe I'll just give up and code for some emulatable retro computer instead (like the MSX, which has a free BIOS replacement (though said BIOS has significant limitations) or the NES, which needs no BIOS and for which reverese-engineered documentation is available online.)
"Can you use Rust?" - yes but you would need to compile to intermediary step using. Brainfuck, before moving the byte code....of course not only you and a guy over at Mozilla with too much time on his hands has ever heard of it ;op

Each to their own I suppose, once I get home from a day of coding I really don't have the effort or time to write games, let alone engines or renderers. That being said a nice simple 2d engine is always good, too often 3D takes over. I assume none of the Love2d Lua, monkey or those types are of no use to you as they tend to be based on other libraries like SDL.
Posted October 04, 2018
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Lexor: Full (and corrected) title of this topic: "Is Unity still considered as a good free environment to create a game or there are better options?"

I have some plans to create/release a game for PC - should I go for Unity or there are better options? It will be digital adaptation (probably in 2D) of my paper/card board game. My main reasons to make digital adaptation are: (at first) to do more additional tests and (later) to gather more funds before releasing paper version as well.

Is Unity hard to learn? I used to write some programs in C++ for DOS.

Which version of Unity should I use? I've heard that newest one is not always considered as the best one.
I'm using/learning Unity/C# and it seems fine (I have trouble understanding coding logic/math but that's not an engine fault of course), but the only comparisons I have are some GameMaker and Flash/Actionscript 3. Flash/Actionscript 3 I liked better for the adventure game I was trying to create at the time but I want to stay focused on learning only one engine right now.

There are lots of tutorials for Unity (start w/ the official ones on the Unity site, YouTube and written ones) so I doubt you'll have a hard time learning if you stick with it. It may be daunting at first but be patient and I think you'll get it.

Sometimes new versions of Unity can break people's older projects, apparently, but since you're starting out in Unity w/o a previous project, I think the latest official version is fine. Personally I'm on Unity 5.6.2f1 but will have to upgrade eventually to be able to follow some newer tutorials.
Posted October 04, 2018
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Darvond: It depends, just how lazy are you? If you want to put in real work, then there are several other engines which would be far more fulfilling to your needs.
I will work solo, so it's probably not the matter of laziness but rather amount of time I will need to learn the environment and to code. I'd like to have control over engine details (that's why I'm trying to stand away from "point and click game makers"). I'm expecting that "the best environment" should allow me to connect my coded AI with sound and graphics and make it playable under Windows for other user.
Posted October 04, 2018
For a simple 2D tabletop card game, Unreal Engine might be overkill.

The free version of Unity has all the functionality of the professional version, just excludes official support (aside from help files) and some extra training and services, and has a "Made in Unity" splash at the start. It is a totally feasible system to make your game in, and in fact, you might even find some card systems for free on the asset store you can tweak and use.

Gamemaker mentioned here is also a good, much simpler and lighter option than unity.

I've ordered them in decreasing order of code complexity.
Posted October 04, 2018
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kusumahendra: You need to adopt "the godot way" to use it effectively.
What's that?

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nightcraw1er.488: Yes, sorry. Godot as the engine, Krita is a free graphics tool
Oh, I already work in Adobe environment and I have all graphics tools I need. :)

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nightcraw1er.488: Unity free has most parts, but (and I haven't looked at it for a long time) certain more advanced features are locked out and most team based things are blocked.
I'm still wondering what so significant "could be locked" out of my use in Unity free? As babark said:
The free version of Unity has all the functionality of the professional version, just excludes official support (aside from help files) and some extra training and services
...so will I have "advanced and useful features" or not? :D

Anyway, are there any restrictions with commercial usage of Godot?
Post edited October 04, 2018 by Lexor
Posted October 04, 2018
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Lexor: So you think that Unity has some problems when creating UI?

It looks very nice - did you create all graphics visuals / sound effects by yourself or you just programmed the game code and added some publicly available assets?

Are there any restrictions with commercial usage of libgdx?
Unity is geared more towards artists, but it has limitations when it comes to UI.
I just programmed the game, the assets were created by the community.
Libgdx has no restrictions, can do whatever you want with it, it's Apache Licensed.
What is nice about it that it has already lots of stuff that you will find useful (table's for organizing UI, scrollpanes, buttons etc etc). It needs a bit of coding, but all the necessaries are there and since it's written on top of OpenGL it's also pretty fast.
Posted October 04, 2018
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kusumahendra: You need to adopt "the godot way" to use it effectively.
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Lexor: What's that?

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nightcraw1er.488: Yes, sorry. Godot as the engine, Krita is a free graphics tool
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Lexor: Oh, I already work in Adobe environment and I have all graphics tools I need. :)

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nightcraw1er.488: Unity free has most parts, but (and I haven't looked at it for a long time) certain more advanced features are locked out and most team based things are blocked.
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Lexor: I'm still wondering what so significant "could be locked" out of my use in Unity free? As babark said:

The free version of Unity has all the functionality of the professional version, just excludes official support (aside from help files) and some extra training and services
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Lexor: ...so will I have "advanced and useful features" or not? :D

Anyway, are there any restrictions with commercial usage of Godot?
Well, they used to lock out certain features in the free version before they went subscription based, thinking lighting and such like. Haven't really kept up to date since the subscription based model, although I still get emails.

There are no restrictions on Godot, you can even edit engine source if you want:
http://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/about/faq.html

If you can adore Adobe then perhaps paying for unity won't be a problem ;o)
Posted October 04, 2018
What about the telemetry ?
Posted October 04, 2018
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idbeholdME: IIRC, base Unity is free but there is Unity Pro that you have to pay for which has some extra stuff.
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Lexor: The thing is (as I said above) I'm not so sure if that "extra stuff" will be useful for me at all.
As far I know, the free version of Unity3d has all the same features as the professional version. The big differences is, that with pro version you get a help desk, access as well as access to Unity source code if you want to do some really hardcore alterations.
Posted October 04, 2018
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nightcraw1er.488: Well, they used to lock out certain features in the free version before they went subscription based, thinking lighting and such like. Haven't really kept up to date since the subscription based model, although I still get emails.
I registered Unity account before they changed t subscription and I still do not remember any important differences.
But, anyway, it's good it's all clear now. :)

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nightcraw1er.488: If you can adore Adobe then perhaps paying for unity won't be a problem ;o)
Adobe is part of my work environment so it is there independently. :) I'm also still using last boxed version so it has no subscriptions. Paying for Unity won't be a problem if I earn $100K on my game but for now I just can't see the reason to do that.
Posted October 04, 2018
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Lexor: I will work solo, so it's probably not the matter of laziness but rather amount of time I will need to learn the environment and to code. I'd like to have control over engine details (that's why I'm trying to stand away from "point and click game makers"). I'm expecting that "the best environment" should allow me to connect my coded AI with sound and graphics and make it playable under Windows for other user.
Fair enough.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionIs Unity still considered as a good free environment create a game or there are better options?(51 posts)(51 posts)
(51 posts)