Lite-C is a strength. Being a programming language instead of a scripting language, it should be faster than Unity's scripts (although the Unity devers reckon their script (used properly and optimised well) can be as little as 50% slower than a compiled language), and since Lite-C supports just about all traditional C syntax, it is no obstacle to a programmer beginning with the engine whatsoever.Hmm... there's a fine line between comparing A7 with another engine and going off-topic talking about A7's capabilities. I would call this particular chunk off-topic simply because it is unsubstantiated. If you want to talk about A7's capabilities in this thread, it should only be done in comparison with Unity, and those comparisons should only be made if they are also backed up by feature comparisons between the two. This isn't some rule I'm pulling out, it's common sense.

Similar to you, WDID: It's all well and good to discuss the impact of Unity Indie going free on Gamestudio, but most of your two posts here is paying out A7 without any reason behind it. I'm not going to say you're wrong; I'm just saying no one is going to take a seasoned A7-hater seriously if there's no "this is why I say this"

Jibb

I think there are 2 groups of customers to consider if you want to sell an affordable game dev technology (like Unity, GS, C4, Torque, Shiva, Leadwerks):

- hobby users
- experienced developers with commercial projects

Hobby users want to have fun, want to learn and want to have fast feedback. So they need good tutorials, easy to use tools, fast response (play it while developing it) and they want an easy way to generate the final game. They are interested in already prepared effects, shaders and some model and texture libraries. So they need a good and documented studio.
They will not look at technical features like scene-management, lighting-approaches or speed. Often they even dont know some of these concepts.
This is what Gamestudio and Unity advertises. This is what FPS maker does perfectly.

Experienced developers will look at features, options to extend the technology, power, speed and available platforms to increase the final success.
In the end the project matters. If they want to make a 2d game, then they would use TGB, they would use Wintermute for a 2.5d game and for casual 3d games on different platforms they would prefer Unity, Shiva or Torque3d. For a bigger project with a team, bigger game worlds and scene management they use C4.

What about Gamestudio? It is very similar to Unity, it is designed to be a good value for beginners and pro users. To satisfy the beginners, it needs an aggregated tool (med, wed, sed and real-time editor in one application). It needs some very good documentation, and an integrated new material editor with real-time feedback and shader support.

To satisfy the pro users it needs some optimization, an indoor scene-management (e.g. portals and zones) and more available platforms for publishing.
At the moment it is a good choice for friends of scripting, for web-developers, experienced with HTML, JavaScript and similar, people who are not experienced enough with C++, C#. They will like LiteC and will feel comfortable. In most cases they will be hobby users. And they could easily wander to Unity.

So it is indeed a dangerous situation and GS needs a niche, like TGB with its 2d approach. It needs a feature to prove that it is unique at the market.

I think the makers of game dev suites can learn a lot from 3d modelling and rendering applications. There is a similar situation: many hobby users and some pro users. The ease of use of these tools steadily improved. Documentation and video tutorials are often integrated parts of new features.

I agree, machinery

there is no difference between "scripting" and "programming" languages. that's a totally arbitrary distinction.

mono uses jit compiling and is very optimized and lite-c is not very optimized. lite-c also only has about 50% of the performance of really optimized c-compilers like the microsoft one.

i would say mono and lite-c have about the same performance but with mono you can use more modern languages (like c# and boo) which will result in more productivity.

I agree

I'm not sure where you got that but that is completely wrong, most of the people who use gs use either comm or pro. so its not the other way around. one of the other forum posts about unity was just talking about that.



it did not devastate the other engines, gstudio com kills unity indie still and as far as ability, with enough skill, it can do as much as unity pro. I'm not sure where people keep acting like unity indie is a threat to people that were planning to buy a7 comm or pro, unity indie blows about as much as lite-c blows. yeah unity pro might have some reallllly crappy predefined shaders, but at the very least lite-c free can be extended which is wayyyyyyy better in my opinion.

You wrote some false comments in your last post, lostclimate. Here is an interview where you can read that the indie version did not made too much money for the Unity makers:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25840
"Unity Indie isn't generating a significant portion of our revenue, and we've always had this vision of democratizing our tools."

And here is a blog about it:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/
"Unity Indie was a cool product... But also it’s not been a significant part of our business at all: Unity Pro, Unity Wii and Unity iPhone for the bulk of our (rapidly growing) livelyhood."



Yes, and the same pro users can make it with Ogre, Irrlicht or Unity Indie, while not spending money.
The point of spending money is: getting a better work flow or a more powerful engine, better documentation and access to more platforms for your final product. You get what you pay for.

I think the 50% efficiency are valid for C-Script.
Lite-c should perform faster, but I doubt that it has the speed of a grown up C compiler which has been improved and optimized for many years.

But imho the speed of the scriptinglanguage is not that much of an issue for a 3d engine unless you do sth really cpu intensive, like pathfinding.

I fear I have to agree. I just can't imagine any way they can compete with the Unity team which in the meantime consists of about 80 people. And this team contains some of the best people in the industry and basically the whole Ukrainian demo scene.

I made a short test with my textures in Unity Indie (right click to zoom or click here: http://www.dexsoft-games.com/transfer/unity_test.jpg):



It is not as good as what you can achieve with C4 but it is similar to my tests I did in Gamestudio.