That can be done with good lighting. You dont need post processing to do that. Look at an offline rendering software. You can create fantastic images there without a single post pro effect. The same counts for real-time 3d sceneries.

You have to find a good choice of ambient color / light and local lights (dynamic or static). This works everywhere and does not need a magical kit, just some color theory, practice and trial and error.

all the color theory in the world isnt going to make the full scene wave like you looking through a fish bowl.

Someone should recreate this island in A7 to see the difference between the two visually. As far as I am concerned, you need Unity Pro for a game which requires basic stuff like shadows for ambience. Like I said, without all this basic stuff the games would have worked on Mac but on Windows you will compete against a lot more high end games with equal or better engines. When you go 3D, you open yourself to AAA market audience, who are graphics whores, whether you like it or not. Hell, Quake 3 engine will make this island demo look like Quake 2 demo..





SO, the tools are good and will let you create a kickass, fun game, esp. if you are an artist. Just be prepared to actually purchase the pro version before releasing anything 3D using Unity.

BTW, the editor crashes a lot, esp. when working with high res textures on-screen (probably memory issues but this happened when saving/importing/updating as well).

Also a really annoying problem is how the FPS controls just stop working when you try to play the level. I had to exit the program and restart it just to get the FPS controls working.

Same goes for camera. Sometime it would get stuck in specific position whenever I tried to play the level. I had to open and close the program over and over to make it work. In the end I just said "fuck it" and made a build for the game. When I built it, the lighting changed back to default compared to what I had setup in the editor itself, no idea why (maybe a script is doing this? but I didn't find any that controls the daylight)

So yeah, a lot of issues with stability and functioning. I also don't like how there is so much empty space wasted without adding a small shortcut button to hide different panels instantly (without using keyboard shortcuts or menu).

I see a bigger issue with performance then. This Unity island demo scales very well on every kind of hardware. I tried on high and low end systems and it always runs smoothly (sacrificing details, lod appears early on low end).
This is impressive.

I am also impressed by the shader system. It has to generate shaders for many platforms and several hardware, not only PS 3.0, 2.0 and so on, also HLSL, CG and others. This is a very flexible architecture and I believe it will be the best choice for small and casual games all over the world.

For bigger games, like Ortucis mentioned, I would rather use something with impressive scene management like C4.

I noticed the performance script that runs to lower the quality when your system start lagging (I pretty much maxed out quality in the demo, like the screenshots I posted again) due to low FPS. That was really cool (though I wonder if you have to customize the script according to a game or is that automatic for every game?).

I am thinking that I will have to create a small, DARK, level to actually see most shaders (like bump mapping) in action. The Island demo is good enough to show the scale and the vegetation.. I want to see the shaders in action properly though. Oh well, it will help me learn if I do it myself.. :P

I have to agree with Ortucis. I put this engine thru a lot over the weekend including trying to get their tuorial working. I had many hang-ups, glitches and it just wouldn't work without restarting. It was very annoying. Also, as has been mentioned. You are going to need the pro version if you really want to do anything with this seriously. btw: I used a brand new dual core system with 9800GT card to test with. Just not all that impressed.

the windows version of unity altogether is not that good, which is mainly caused by windows being not that optimized as macos.

any pre-2.5 version of the engine was just a dream to work with on mac os, no torque and no A7 came even close to reach the flexibility, performance and the features of the engine. the 2.5 version has a few glitches, especially in the windows version, but also the mac os version got a little slower as the GUI is now completely drawn by the engine (both on win and mac os).

unity is just easy - easy to handle, easy to extend, easy to master.

this engine definately is the strongest package out there at the moment for indie developers and also larger development teams aiming at fast, multi-plattform release-cycles with lower budgets at their disposal.
the engine is cheap for getting started with it and there are no strings attached. the main competitor in this sector will most likely be the new garage games torque release, but as I checked out their first announcement I saw that the licensing model alone is just a mess.

well anyway, i will stop rambling on now. the engine won me over last year after only 2 weeks evaluation. anybody who is fed up with A7 and its limitations, problems, bugs, etc. really should spend the 200 bucks and take a look at unity.

Windows not optimised as OSX? Uhh.. ok.


What about the limitations, problems, bugs, etc. we posted about Unity? That makes it better somehow? Also, do you know how much 200 USD is in other parts of the world? (HINT: Not cheap).


Reminds me of how Torque users go around posting "Torque is best, buy it" on every possible forum.

Yes, there are many fanboys of Torque tools. And if you get into it, it will be fun to work with Torque. Wicht and Kiyaku can tell you stories about it

But even Kiyaku as a Torque "lover" now creates a game in Unity3d. It is just an easy to use tool with great workflow. The upcoming Torque3d still provides the same old DIF, DTS and a new Collada2DTS mechanism. The tools look better but are almost the same. They will not beat the ease of use of Unity.
Torque3d also comes with web publishing, but only in the expensive edition (about $1,000). The cheap basic version is useless, most kits will not work there. But it will be a good starting point to learn this technology and save money for the bigger version.
And if you want to make a multiplayer game, then Torque3d will be a good choice.

The Indie version of Unity on the other hand allows to finish games and has only minor restrictions. It will be perfect for smaller and casual games. You wont need post processing in a casual game.

But if you are dreaming of big ambitious projects then you need something like C4 with great optimized scene management (portals, zones, occlusion geometry) and latest technology, voxel space terrain, full editors and optimized engine.

A7 as a Windows only engine without web player is a bit behind the other ones but is an interesting and cheap starting point to learn 3d and to save some money for students and hobbyists with not too much ambitions. And then it proved to be extendable if you have a lot of experience.

So it just depends on your project and your needs. But I believe that the ease of use will win in the long run and will attract more customers. 3d game dev is hard enough and beginners will take whatever will help to ease this way.