I gotta agree, Unity has a better workflow, but I found Gamestudio easier to use, and to be honest, I'm in love with Lite-C.

Well guys...Its not usual for me to post, but since I own Gamestudio commercial for quite a while, and been messing around with unity for quite some time I have to say this :

Gamestudio is (in my opinion) by far superior to unity in terms of flexibility as an engine and is extremly inferior in terms of workflow.

Having said this means that you can produce better products with Gamestudio, but that also means that they will take way longer to complete.

If you are aiming to do something simple...unity indie version may be the way...but after you learn unity and you want to make something bigger you will realize that's when the problems start...then you need something better..maybe Gamestudio ?

I must say that working with gamestudio tools is a pain..It took me almost 4 months to understand and create an acceptable workflow..and I say acceptable as I still face ocasional problems in this area.

On the other side, working with Lite C...is a dream when compared with most other engines.

Unity is a dream in terms of workflow...Everything works ok, at least for me...but sudenly when you need to tweak something to work the way you intented to...puf...it either cant do it or the amount of work involved is so high that you quit...plain & simple...unity free version simply cant do it

So what I would like ?

Unity quality tools in the Gamestudio Engine. Thats all I ask....and I strongly believe that the next 12 months of conitec should go into this area..Improve the tools first...improve the engine later..

A7 with quality tools..would be by far the best option for indies...cause if you give us A8 with the same tools....things wont change much.

If you guys can do an engine as A7..you surely can do better tools in a breeze, and what can take 2 or 3 years to create could be done in 1 year....

Thats my thoughts on this matter..I will keep using Gamestudio...Although I may do some test scenes with unity as I can do them in a couple of hours instead of days.

If at the end I will change....time will tell

I like scripting in lite-C too but I don't see why Unity is supposed to be much less flexible in this regard? Can you give any details?


lite-C has the disadvantage that its chinese programmer doesn't seem to be around anymore and JCL doesn't understand the chinese comments in the code like he said in some recent thread. Using Mono for Unity really was a wise decision. It has tons of developers and it's more modern than C.


In my experience, if you do something bigger then you will get problems with any engine since bigger projects are a lot more tricky to do.


I agree about the tools. Gamestudio with an editor like Unity has would be nice. I don't see this happening though. Over the last years they only seem to have changed some buttons here and there in WED and MED. It's unlikely that they will be able to come up with a user friendly competitive editor anytime soon. GED isn't competitive by far.

let me say it:
who needs multiplatform?
you cant afford nice looking models, how couls you afford a license to develop for consoles? get real...

the only other plattform besides windows 3dgs should support is mac. out of the box. from comercial upwards and go with it. just add openGL and be good with it. that way, it can easily be ported over to Wii aswell, if you know how. the wiimote plugin is already here...

anyway, i dont care who declaeres war on who. in the end, WE win. because either we get a better engine or 3dgs loses the battle. in that case we just need to switch.
and since this is a no-go for most, idoubt conitec just says: nah, screw it, lets letthis thing die and instead buy a parcel of land on the mars... or kansas...

"just add openGL"... easily said. The core of Acknex is built on d3d since A5 or A6...

I had an problem with my browser ( damn plugins updates -.- ) and posted an answer for this topic into another one so here it is:

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=296419#Post296419

of course only answer here lol

then its time to update. how come some freeware programs that are coded by a few people manage to get both directx and openGL with max and even linux ports right, while conitec doesnt?

Well they of course could make Acknex multi-platform but it'd have nearly just disadvantages (except for ports to the consoles). Introducing OpenGL as an alternative wouldn't just eat a lot of time to do (months of no engine improvement that Acknex imo cannot afford) but also would slow down the development from that point on (which they also cannot really afford imo). Then even if it were done there's next to no real advantage. The amount of Mac / Linux gamers is extremely small so there's no real gain at all...

Only for multiplayer hosts a Linux compatible client might be interesting but you could do that as sort of a standalone programm instead of porting the entire engine over to something that runs on Linux too...

Ports to the consoles of course might be interesting but I guess the question is if it's worth the effort / worth the costs. At least I see next to no games here that really would be worth porting to like the Xbox360 and with the main focus on newcomers in the game making business I don't see any real change in the near future. Plus this again would slow down the overall engine development which without additional manpower imo isn't really affordable...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

This is not true. I have read lots of sales reports of indie devs and they often make much more money on Mac. The mac demos have a better converion rate (trial to sales conversion). And there is almost no competition on the Mac platform.

The Mac games-market is too small for the big developers, but it is a very good market for small developers. That is the reason why many devs at GarageGames fought for Mac support.

But this is only important to business developers. If you want to have fun as a hobby user, then this is not an issue.

Supporting multi platform from beginning on makes sense for sure and linux/mac/iphone are great markets for indies, but it is difficult to port an engine which has been direct3d only for approx. 7 years.

As toast pointed out it will mean quite a while no new features as time will be needed for porting the core.

I guess a port for A7 will only happen if there's someone who funds this port so they can hire additional developers just for this task.
Due to amount of possible customers this will most likely happen for one of the consoles. Then again most of the consol developers have different (more expensive) tools.