The A7 engine is pretty damn good as far as capabilities is concerned. Where it falls over face first into the mud, then thrashes spazmodicly while screaming "Aggrighdl-liggg-norggirinnn-stashh-blinng-patooie!" is asset pipeline.
What Conitec needs to do is 'simple': make it so one can build a model, uv it, texture it, and animated it. Then open MED and hit "Import". Choose the fully uv'ed, textured and animated model. And have it show up in the engine; fully animated with color, bump, spec, transparency, luminosity and normal maps intact.
Next on the list: the engine tools need to be able to figure out where needed assets are, or at least ask the user for them. ONCE. After that, it remembers the path to the folders. I want to import that animated normal-mapped model and, if one of the textures isn't in the models structure, ask me "Hey, I can't find cooltexture_nml.bmp. Where is it?". I find it, using the normal windows file dialogs you see in other windows programs, and that's that.
Last on the list: GOOD TUTORIALS AND MANUALS IN PDF FORMAT! The ones supplied with A7 are out of date and thusly confusing. That they aren't in an easily printable format just adds insult to injury. Oh, and when the PDF's do get made...set the permissions to allow copying of text and pictures. Oh yeah, one more thing about a PDF...on the front put "(C) Conitec ###. Permission is granted to photocopy/print this manual for personal use only". That way we can easily take it down to Staples/Kinkos/Whatever and get it printed ourselves, hassle-free.
Wow. What a digression! Sorry guys...but, yeah, I think that is one thing that is making Unity such a tempting morsel. It' looks good, and promises customers the ability to simply hit "Import" and see a fully textured, normal-mapped and animated character in the engine.
^_^
"We've got a blind date with destiny...and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."
