How can u compare Unity to GS?

First off, this is kind of a Rant about a Competitor Product (Tool) so I apologize if this post is in the wrong place.

On to the rant...
I've read hundreds of posts here about aspects of Unity being compared to Gamestudio; the editor, the coding, ease of importing various formats, etc. But I sincerely don't understand how you can compare the two products. Gamestudio is made (for the purposes of this argument) for creating PC Games. Unity can make games for various platforms, but everything I've read (mainly from forums) indicates that it is not at all ideal for making PC Games. Similar to GameMaker, your Unity code is packaged with the EXE and can be ripped right out of there in its entirety. So why would an indie developer (or hobbyist in my case) even think to compare these two products if the PC market is their main goal?

Thanks in advance for any insight that is sent my way.

- Q

Is it their main goal? I use 3DGS because Lite-C is the only programming language that I am accustomed to.
I wouldn't mind to publish my games on as much different consols as possible - and so do many others on this forums.
That's the reason for such discussions.

Very true. I guess everyone has their own reasons for using either program. I've actually used both programs, but maybe my point of view has been a lil too narrow when it comes to comparing the two.

Thanks

- Q

But if I read this question then I ask myself: What is the best indie engine to create a good PC game, to use the PC platform perfectly? From my experience, Unity is not that bad even on PC. It uses a lot of techniques to render big worlds, better than many other engines. But still it can not mess with UDK, where you can use even bigger worlds and bigger textures and more lights and whatever. So is UDK the best PC development platform? It is also cross-platform. Theoretically there could be an even better solution if it would concentrate only on PC and use DX11 at its best. But there is not such an engine and also Gamestudio does not even try to become the most advanced PC technology available.

So actually everything is just a second best solution.

Isn't it a question of what platform so much, as it is what kind of game you want to make? It's much easier and more artistic freedom to use flash over 3dgs, but if you need computing power you don't want flash. Flash and 3dgs both have the advantage that you can produce test environments and prototypes with them really quick and easy, where with UDK you'll spend lots of fun learning the ins and outs of their kit before you can mash up anything reasonably called playable (this is from very short experience with it years ago, forgive me if this is not true). Unity allows publishing heavy games to the web browser, which used to be their main goal. Something yet to be achieved by 3dgs.

So each engine has its advantages and disadvantages for any specific project, but also share many areas with eachother to be compared. An engine is a huge collection of elements, which can be improved by examining/comparing other engines'.

You should choose the engine that suits best to your project. But since people are often too lazy or incapable of learning a different engine than they're used to (I'm no exception), they hope their engine will adapt to their needs, and so start comparing ideas/elements from other engines in the hope it will be developped for their engine too .

... and what really pisses me off... that ist javascripting. The biggest advantage of lite_c is the easy usage. Littel example:

my.x+=5; my.pan+=5;
//Gstudio - very easy an clear to understand

gameObject.transform.Translate(5,0,0); //Unitiy WTF?!?
gameObject.transform.Rotate(5,0,0);

I think that the key to every engine is simple the script language. Even if unity has these very cool optical Editors... but this full shit javascript really beats me hard central into the face.

edit
if we would have an offical webplayer exporter in gs and if we would have an offical exporter for - let me say - minimum android... I swear, i never would have me bought unity. I think that the majority of us do not need XBox / PS / Wii Exporters for Hobby-Development - because you need licences from Mic and Sony. But a web player and handy exporters for the main systems... that would be very comfortable

unity doesn't only support unityscript (it's quite different from javascript!) but also c# and boo. there you could add your own properties that wrap the transform methods and then you can also do:

my.x+=5;
my.pan+=5;

maybe you could... but not me. I am just a non programmer, hobby scripter, which is lucky to make some stuff.

@alpha_strike:



It has nothing to do with JavaScript or any other scripting language. It is the architecture of the Engine-API.
By the way: I dont like the API of Unity. The component based workflow is a nightmare for me.

You can even do that in JavaScript. You can create any variable and they can also contain components. So you can define your variable at the beginning as a component that you need more often and you have very little text to write. JavaScript/UnityScript is really powerful, you have classes, enumerations and a variable can contain everything and is easy to create, no hassle with memory and type assignments like you have in C or C++.

The scripting language is really no issue at all. The difference is that you have to learn a new API. But I find these APIs ok. They might have longer names but are better to read and better to understand. Much better than each vecforanything. Or take set and reset in Gamestudio as an example. Reset deletes a flag while the meaning of reset is re-set, setting it again. So it should actually set the flag again and not delete it. The API names of Gamestudio are often really bad English and hard to understand for a newbie.

Passt doch?

I think that the Unity API is quite okay, it needs some time to get used to it, but then it is actually pretty good in many ways.

Slin: Yes, I agree. Reset also means setting it back to the default value, and if the default value is zero, than it makes sense. But this is a bit of an indirect meaning. Anyway, this was never a deal-breaker, just a simple side-note.

At the end the programming language and the API are just tools to access the rendering, physics, editors, sound and everything else. The pure functionality behind it makes the business. Our customers in the end dont see the language nor the API.