Raise hands, who uses Unity?

Xaron · June 10, 2017, 20:19:47

Hey there,

I've released one game with Unity (3d submarine simulator). Quite a nice cross platform thing but for 2d still too heavy for my taste. Any others here?

EdzUp · June 10, 2017, 20:58:54

*raises hand*

I've been using it for a while now

ENAY · June 12, 2017, 02:27:48

Nearly six years now, it's in a way sadly, everything I wanted BlitzMax 3D to be, but 12 years ago too late by Blitz standards. If only Blitzmax or Monkey was as good as Unity.
I guess though when you've got hundreds working on Unity and one man on Blitz, can't really be helped.

EdzUp · June 12, 2017, 06:22:50

Back in the day it was said "a cross platform blitz3d would be a killer product" we got max and the debacle that was max3d. It was at this time that I knew Mark didn't know everything and after JoshK stepped in a showed what max could do people started to ask questions.

Mark then slowly posted less and less till one day monkey released and he stopped altogether to the point where he couldn't remember his account and had to create another one.

I looked at what was out there then and started using Unity for simple stuff but didn't take it up in a big way till 3.5.

Rick Nasher · June 20, 2017, 21:48:54

Using Unity off-and-on. Love it for the x-platform, physics and multiplayer networking features (still trying to decide between the inbuilt stuff and Photon... )

Bit put off by C# for it's not as easily readible as Blitz3d to me and I find it hard to get it to do even the simplest stuff, which in Blitz was a piece of cake. And its fair to say I'm not the greatest coder in Blitz even though I did some nifty stuff I feel pretty good and amazed about(never published; too messy, large and unfinished).
So I guess one could say it's not in my comfort zone.

Also I find the bug-hunting is a *crime*, even though it shouldn't be that cumbersome. Plus doesn't scale down to lesser spec systems very well(found lastest version is a bit better/speedy).

*Still really hope someone skilled enough will one day make a wrapper round Monkey2(once Mark is done) to Blitz-syntaxify the whole ugly thing.

Xaron · June 21, 2017, 07:23:42

Quote from: Rick Nasher on June 20, 2017, 21:48:54
*Still really hope someone skilled enough will one day make a wrapper round Monkey2(once Mark is done) to Blitz-syntaxify the whole ugly thing.

Dream on.

But yeah I know what you mean. Monkey was already not so easy to use but Monkey 2 is almost so similar to C#/C++ that I ask myself why I should use it instead of C#/C++ itself. Ok, it's still easier to use for sure language wise but the non existent documentation doesn't make it better...

Rick Nasher · June 21, 2017, 18:25:20

If one doesn't dream, how can they tell the difference between being awake?

Steve Elliott · June 22, 2017, 11:01:05

I've played about with it in the past, but never really liked it.

However I am thinking of giving it another go.

Qube · June 23, 2017, 01:56:29

I've tried it a handful of times. I even bought Unity + iOS way back on version 3.

I just struggle to get into it.

1.. Drag and drop madness
2.. Properties boxes galore
3.. Looooong lines of OO code

Half of me wants to press on and learn it but the other half just screams "I'm bored!!!" - Perhaps one day it'll just all gel and I'll be singing the praises of Unity

EdzUp · June 27, 2017, 21:20:17

I used to be like that Qube but to be honest with all the uncertainty surround BRL and all the 'unofficial' versions of Blitz stuff coming out its starting to look like Unity is the only thing left to use in any official way.

I use the C# side of it and it gets easier as time goes on.

Steve Elliott · June 28, 2017, 10:18:35

Quote
its starting to look like Unity is the only thing left to use in any official way.

I'm thinking the same.

EdzUp · June 28, 2017, 10:53:37

For indies it's always going to be there which is something that BRL have recently proven isn't the case their end. With them pulling the plug on over fifteen years of community spirit it does show that if they wanted they can shut down anything on a whim.

It's also going to be one thing that will be a stain on BRL's credibility for years to come. I'm using Unity as it stands because yes it's a pig sometimes to work with but I know it isn't going anywhere soon. Yeah there's Unreal engine but that is not as easy as Unity.

Steve Elliott · July 03, 2017, 20:41:37

Decided to go with Unity/C#.

LineOf7s · July 04, 2017, 04:33:21

Quote from: EdzUp on June 28, 2017, 10:53:37
With them pulling the plug on over fifteen years of community spirit it...

That. Closer to 20 years if you include the forums that came before.

They announce they're going to close it for reasons. Okay, that's a commercial reality. They say it'll happen "at the end of the month" or so. Fair enough. Time to get some people together maybe, reminisce, relive some favourite times over the decades maybe. Go out with some sort of bang.

Or no, they could pull the plug in less than 24 hours and tell everyone to go use Monkey2. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW IT WORKS. "You know that thing you enjoy? We'd rather you use this thing we're trying to promote. It doesn't do what you want it to do? You're happy with what you have? Bad luck."

I was comfy with Blitz and it did everything my casual hobbyist programming heart wanted, including having a community of similarly-minded people and many many years of history. If BRL are so keen to kick me out into the big wide world, then maybe I'll just see what else the big wide world has to offer. Maybe it's Unity, maybe it's AGK, maybe it's one of the multitudes of other free, supported and popular languages and engines. Maybe it'll just be Blitz3D, Syntaxbomb and Socoder.net.

It sure as hell won't be Monkey2.

Steve Elliott · July 04, 2017, 10:51:11

Precisely.

As far as Monkey 2 is concerned, Mark has been moving closer and closer to languages such as Java, C# and C++ with every language he writes. So what's the point using a non mainstream language like Monkey 2? When you can use something that's widely supported like those other languages (with a selection of engines) and the learning curve has narrowed so much between Marks languages and those mainstream languages.

For myself I have lots of semi finished language, engine code and IDE's, but I really don't have time to complete and support it. So have decided enough is enough, you can't rely on these one man band organisations (language-wise). Mark's fiasco that was the BlitzMax 3D Engine, and after Matthew with his Nuclear Fusion/Nuclear BASIC...I really lost interest in coding after Matthew became distant and eventually AWOL (has now returned I hear). The Nuclear Fusion Engine was very fast and made C++ painless for producing games. I was gutted when bug fixes stopped being fixed and he left.

So now it's good to be part of a professional well supported product in Unity. I've had reservations about Unity in the past - too clicky and so on. But really it does seem like the best option for indie's, even though I'm expecting some frustrations along the way - and no friendly Blitz BASIC.com Unity Coders to ask questions...But hopefully more and more Unity coders from the old bb site will come to SyntaxBomb. Good to see a few already.

So I've downloaded and installed Unity and Visual Studio 2017 Community, bought a book on C# and written my first C# program. I like to have a book to reference a language, rather than a ton of online tutorials. It's a good book and is easy to follow, but covers quite a bit. A fair few changes I notice from C++, more wordy than C++ for a start. It's called "C# Programming (in Easy Steps)" - by Mike McGrath. I picked it up in WHSmiths for the UK peeps.