some of the programmers they have employed are very well known. for example the creator of boo, or some of the best people of the ukrainian demo scene.

i think their shader system is a necessity. if you wanted to cover all the necessary combinations (different shading languages, lighting types,...) on a lower level then you probably couldn't finish any project without at least having one dedicated shader programmer.

http://aras-p.info/blog/

@JulzMighty:

Ok, in fact like lot of people using A8 you like programming, and doing shaders.
But don't forget there are lot of people that are most 3D artists, they prefer to create visual things than coding.
In that part Unity is a lot better for 3D artist.
For my part i find its structure incredibly good.
For shaders, Unity have the common ones, it's very very sufficient !

What is the advantage to code a shader if you don't make a game using it ??

I know A8 people like to code and realise tools, shaders.
But for people targetting game making, and that are more 3D artists, believe me they really prefer to create the game and use common existing and sufficient shaders directly !

Perhaps you would want to say : Well Far Cry editor have lot of panels and things , i don't find it's struture really good ! And i'm not sure Far Cry team is a good team !!

Unity is a solid engine for INDIE and PRO domain !
With Unity it is possible to do all in C# , and you'll can use a professionnal editor from Microsoft , its far away from SED !

If we should dress the list of Unity advantages, it would be pages of them, just browse their description page


It's like any engine, or modeler, you have to do some projects under it, to begin to be at ease with it !
But if you're not at ease with it; no problem don't use it, but don't say , it's not so good.

Well it's not comparison A8 and Unity.
It's Unity features , don't forget !

-selling it
-learning from it
-allure to implement different physical/self-conceived/etc. concepts
-artistic aspects
-fame

all i can say is: lighting lighting lighting

thats gamestudios major flaw, we've been working on scion for a while and noone can give me any bullshit excuse to say gamestudio cant pull of AAA titles, it can, atleast in terms of setting the game up...

ragdolls - fine
physics - fine
good animation - fine
movement - fine
network code - fine

level design - problematic
lighting - ERROR!!

scion froze when we couldnt get a decent level lighting pipeline, all we hear is bake this, bake that, ooo, use models instead of blocks, so on and so forth

workarounds and more workarounds

if i could get a decent level lighting pipeline up then doing a better demo than that unity thing would be a laugh..

all i've been seeking is, basic normal + spec + shadow mapping [dynamic or static] with support for standard PP effects

every passage i look at seems to have a roadblock, lightfrong is looking good but i think its incomplete? no PP effects YET? and i think i read that it uses something like 50skills? LOL yaa..

and boh_havocs shaders have been rather fast but hes been busy lately comming up with the finishing touches

and am yet to find a stable/complete solution, i imported a level into unity and added a few lights and.... i was done, normal maps reacting to lights and all, UN-fckin-BELIEVABLE, something i've been spending months to get right in GS..

now am sure you may all come with suggestions and stuff that i probably havent looked into but am quite sure i have, probably just too lazy to state them all here.. but go ahead..

+1.

However, Gamestudio is mostly oriented for the programmer while Unity is for the graphic whores that don't want to touch the dirty stuff.
I had a lot of problems with Unitys scripting pipeline and I never got anything good working because it just sucked. It was such a pain doing something which wasn't covered inside this crappy editor (yes! The Unity editor sucks. It just sucks so bad that I wish that the guy who did this would die. NOW!).

Sooo... thats my little rant against Unity. All I wish for Gamestudio is a better compiler. Please, Conitec, throw WED, GED, MED etc away. Remove everything from the forecast that isn't a compiler feature and I will buy A8 Pro asap. (But I guess no one else would buy A8 then =/)

Hello

I wonder why shaders are supposed to be a so important stuff
They are just ribbons and whistles
Succesfull Indie games make little use of special effects

gameplay still win and it alwayes will

If so a game programmers hould not spend so much time in shaders unless he target special applications

Every prefabricated , visual solutions are welcome, in my opinion

i am with Sid here. I once joined a little team using unity, editör may be shiny and pretty, but the situation the otherway around in Unity. Level design lighting etc is good and easy but this time you have to workaround stuff in coding part. Then i figured prototyping with unity was not that fast i protoyped stuff in lite-c then gave them flowcharts and algorithm explanations and working lite-c demos, got my money and ran the hell out of there.

First i thought it was because i am more familiar with lite-c and it was not unity's fault, but then i started playing with UDK and figured it was indeed unity's fault.

Great example of this would be Torchlight.
However, the thing that keeps pulling me to unity, is the fact that I can make iPhone games with it real easy...
That said, I wont ever leave GameStudio over any engine, but I might just learn how to use Unity besides GS
It never hurts to have some more general knowledge.

regards,

hmm, we dont all want to make childlike or having to use certain styles because we need to work around the engine, am not aiming for nextGen, am aiming for acceptable and blocks with flat textures just wont cut it