@V_Software,

i guess that will be all extra features because, people who bought extra in past couple of months are offered $50 off for comm edition upgrade. that would make comm edition $150 at total for them. And that probably means a $99 version wont be offered anymore.

Another victim of Unity:
Darkbasic Pro is now free for home use.

Taken from the other thread. Why do we have three threads for the same topic btw?

yes it's logical but now they are still different products, we don't know how the situation is with license between atari and conitec so we can only wait. but it makes sense that it would become with most of extra feutures, u're right

JCL wrote something about this. It was only a single deal for a free tool and an Atari community project. Atari is not some kind of an investor.

For our last model pack at Dexsoft I did a lot of renderings in different engines. The shaders in Unity are similar to the ones from Gamestudio, but the material editor is much more easy to use.
The possibilities in Torque3D are better, I could create some quite realistic materials and the new material editor is easy to use.
But the best results are made in C4. I have additional features like microfacet shading, spec bloom and good control over lighting and shadows. So this brings a bit more reality into play.

But if you are concerned about scripting, then Unity and A7 are more easy to get into.

Martins

What you said, it is quite interesting
At a first glance everybody is on Unity side...me too

Actually I have had some problems in importing FBX files but I am the only one in the world complaining about this issue...I was told by unity's moderator

Getting back to your post I must say that I have got the same impression

After falling in love with Unity I wonder whether it is really that easy to develop relatively complex games


May you make some pratical examples of what you mean for " Flexibility" ?
Thanks in advance

Please note that I am refering in my post to Unity Indie version (the free one)..

Without going to much in technical details, I must say that with unity if you want custom shaders or some special effects you will need the pro version...and that means more than 1000 USD spent...while with 199 USD (I use Euros, but I think in USD is somewhere near this), you can have A7 commercial that already include all this features.

If we go a litle deeper just take a look at Unity API and A7 API and the way to use it, lets say in vector calculation..Its much easier to work with A7 and Lite C that with Unity and C#.

Now try to explore unity in vector operations....code a little and put some pressure in the engine...do some experiments and compare the speed of execution...you may find something interesting.

Yes..you can create your own stuff in C#, and improve the speed...but if we use an engine, is precisely to avoid having to code from scratch a bunch of things that (otherwise we could write our own engine).

I like to have an idea...implementing it and follow ahead to the next one...with A7 commercial I can do that...With Unity free...I have to stop..and say..OK I will add this little feature when I buy the pro version..so my final product will be inferior unless I spent the full amount.

Last but not least...you really need to learn C# if you want to use Unity...While C# is not a nightmare, it has a higher learning curve to become confortable with than Lite C, so a beginner can start to produce some interesting results sooner with A7 that with Unity.

Unity is very good...but with the indie version you will get a good learning tool for your complex projects (nothing wrong with that)...but you will have to move to pro version when you start to go deep into those projects..or they will lack the quality you have in your head.

I dont know if anyone has understood what I said (I am doing 3 things at the same time !!).

Best

Martins

you are wrong. unity free does support custom shaders.

and i find some of your points a bit vague.

why? i find the vec_* commands a lot clumsier than being able to use operators for example. with operators you get shorter and more readable code for vector calculations.

what may i find?

hm... why would doing it yourself in C# be faster than native methods?

As far as vectors are concerned I agree with Ventilator however up to a certain extent I have also got the impression that, generally speaking, 3dgs is more flexible
By the way I mean flexibility in term of gameplay
Ok graphics is important but games are not virtual reality
Interactivity is the key point

I planned to make my first Unity game : An hovercraft race

A Unity member asked how to change the friction factor in the run time

As you realize it would be quite inportant also for me since an hovercraft can move over any type of terrain

Well apparentely in Unity it is not possible

3DGS supplies new commands in any new releases

Well, if demo to sale conversion rates are higher than on the PC platform, this certainly doesn't mean they will make more money on the Mac platform.

When it comes to performance, don't forget the newer Macs are actually packed with good hardware. These are not low-end machines compared to the PC market. I think many games that run through Bootcamp could run a thousand times better if they had natively supported the platform.

It's probably why demo to sale conversions are so much higher. Mac users tend to play more and more games.

So truth be told, Mac is really starting to take off and has become a very interesting fast growing market for Indie devs.

why is bootcamp supposed to be slow? hardware-wise macs just are normal intel pcs now and i thought that bootcamp isn't an emulator or virtualization solution but just helps booting windows?

you mean different physics engine friction values for certain level geometry or terrain parts? i am not sure about unity but gamestudio's physics engine doesn't support this either and it's buggy, outdated and didn't have an update in years. newton does support it though.