I could probably help you if you want as I am also courious to see the differences. I also think that hummel would love to help me . Even though I currently believe that in such a quite small(?) scene there shouldn´t be many differences. And I wonder where the shadows are on your screenshot. Are they static?

I made this corridor yesterday, so yes, it is still small. But the upcoming pack will have lots of parts to construct a level. So I want to have several rooms and corridors.

There are shadows as you can see behind the big pipes. The small lights at the bottom don't cast shadows to save performance.
And yes, there is a static flag for lights in C4 to not calculate shadow volume each frame. Such optimizations could make a difference. We will see.

a great example of my point. for instance right now I'm using unity for a web-based casual puzzle game. It's great for that, but on the other hand, once I actually find an apartment in Las Vegas (just moved) then i can get decent internet again and start working on my morpg again (its less than satisfying having the wifi around here cut out constantly).

all that said, I prefer the programmability of A7 (btw everyone talks about work-flow this, work-flow that, the work-flow is a piece of cake if you know how to do it, and stay away from wed.... I mean anyone who tries to use wed then complains has to have some sort of mental deficiency of some sort). Anyways, I need shaders, I need decent multiplayer and database functionality, and I need a decent programming language for my morg and I'd like to not pay 1.5k for a project that is the type that tends to fail in the end. I'd like it to not, but life might just bend me over like it does from time to time.

It's easier to drag&drop some image onto a script in Unity or simply load it into your assets folder than define multiple (hardcoded!) BMAP*s in your scripts.
Also the possibility to write your c# scripts in Visual Studio (with runtime debugging) and have access to most of the .NET functions is a nive to have.

In my opinion Unity speeds things up a lot!

drag and drop for assets is nice, i have to concede that unity definately wins there but blender's interface isnt too bad for assets if you know how to use it correctly, and thats what i use for my level design. and to be honest it wouldnt be that hard to set up a resource file system for a7 if someone spent a few hours on it. That would make it so that you dont have to hard code it.

Thats the point that makes a7 nice, for much cheaper you get the core features to work with and create cool features, JCL for some reason just wont make any standard libraries of those systems, unity admittedly does have a nice resource system, list of included shader, already made shadowmapping system etc..... but cost 7.5x as much for the same abilities, and if you want to customize them you'll probably still have to rewrite lots of stuff.

To make it very short:
If you are an indie game dev then you dont have much time. You will not earn much with a small game. You have to make them fast and efficiently and release them on many platforms if possible.

If you are a hobby user, then all this does not matter and you have all the time in the world to customize, learn, optimize, plug-in, add-on and trying to keep pace with the other ones while not really progressing on the actual game. But as Slin told, some of these users dont want to make games, they just have fun with technology. And I understand this, I love technology as well

@Machinery_Frank :

You resume very well the situation
People like me that would want to make a game and sell it, even
little games, don't want to waste time writing tools, plugins ,
or missing basic today standard stuff.
A7 is already good in it's actual state, and allow already to do
lot of things even if it needs more work.

well i didnt wanted to be the killjoy but after reading all of this i thought i had to share some thoughts too.

Reading all of those excitement posts regarding the new unity i still keep wondering one thing: Where the hell are those fabulous state of technology projects hiding that cant be finished and released because of some indy game engine limitations.
It sounds like all of us cant make the next mass effect, unreal or wow just because we cant get gs or unity or averagejoeengine to run some basic shaders.
we are all just waiting for this engine that will make it possible for us to beat high end high payed professional gamedeveloper studios out there.

What the hell happened to "design your project and pick the engine that fits your needs". not worth anything anymore?!

People here are complaining about tools and useability while at the same time there is not one gs project or even indy game project on the way that would require any better workflow then we already have.
There are no huge landscapes or levels out there for indy games. The reasons is simple: WE LACK MANPOWER

I totally disagree with the statement that indys dont have time. If we have something then its time. Compared to big studios we are Tiger Wooding in time.


The only reason why indys fail is very very very simple. It has nothing to do with shaders, or leveling tools or engines. Its all about STAMINA.
Finishing your project requires hard hard hard hard hard work.
And most of us here start gamedev because they wanna have fun and not hard work and sleepless nights.

You guys argue about the color of the hammer you want to use to hang up a picture while on the other hand you dont even want to paint it.


Unity is as good as any other engine. It offers a few more tools. It has a decent coding language but in no way will this make games for you.
As far as i am concerned i dont like the pricing politics of unity. Paying everything extra and having to upgrade the engine every 6 months aint my way of developer symbiosis (the engine was released barley a year ago and now its already version 3? how about some free updates here)


First game then game engine. At lest thats the way i see it.
if you like features and shaders get yourself a game with modding tools and create levels and mods for it. dont waste your time and health trying to create games. you will fail anyway.


Goooooo engines! The holy grail and main excuse for unfinished projects.
May you live forever!

cheese

Actually Unity's 2.x branch was released autumn 2007 and all the updates were free afaik. Just the free Indie version is pretty young so I don't think there's a totally short upgrade period but a pretty reasonable one (I don't know anything about upgrade pricing though)...

Concerning Unity itself my opinion is that it's the by far better choice when you actually have a small team and want to get serious. When your goal is a game you can sell those investments for a full license shoulnd't be a showstopper. For Lone Wolves or people on an extremely tight budget ... well I think those have to choose for themselves which engine they like better. I'd prefer Unity over 3DGS right now especially when having in mind that the 3DGS development seems to have about stopped except for some MMO capabilities which might make it into everyones engine due to their work for those guys hiring the Conitec devs to help them on that task. Without wanting to be dismissive I still don't really understand that move neither from the client side choosing 3DGS as basis for their MMO nor from Conitec thinking that this is what is the way to go for this engine but maybe it's a pretty profitable job. Anyway in my opinion 3DGS is designed for newbies, hobbyists and Indie's taking their first serious steps. MMO really isn't compatible with this as sort of the "champions league" of computer games both in terms of know-how or difficulty as well as money to run your servers. But oh well maybe they'll surprise us all...

this, i absolutely agree.(In fact that's what i have been trying to say for years, but could not put it this simple.)

so what we are arguing here is that is some engines require less MANPOWER in some parts of development, other engines requires less MANPOWER in other areaes. So yes, first project then the fitting engine.