Game News Wasteland 2 to use Unity

[DarkUnderlord]

- Unity popularity: reason for many sub-par titles out there - with 1 million people creating games a lot of crap will come up.
- Unity amount of Titles Released: Portfolio, proof it works - safer bet. From FPS to MMO, from RPG to Puzzles. 2D,2.5D,3D.
- Unity team and funding: they weren't waiting for Fargo to drop the cash - also safer bet.

None of those points are really all that relevant to a team of computer programmers who make games for a living though.

What does popularity matter?

EG: CD Projekt built their own engine for Witcher 2. A game which has probably sold more copies than the entire Unity catalogue combined has. And yet only one game has been made with it to date.

BioWare built their own Aurora Engine (which morphed into Odyssey for KOTOR and then Eclipse for Dragon Age) and made a series of highly successful games with it. Again, selling millions of copies.

That's also proof they work. And they're even RPGs in the right sort of visual perspective too.

But neither of those engines are as "popular" as Unity apparently is, and yet the games made with them have, arguably, been much more "popular" than anything done on Unity (IE: How many people have heard of Dragon Age or KOTOR vs how many have heard of "Basket Dudes", "Blood and Glory", "Jetpack Brontosaurus" or "Dead Within" ?).

None of them need to be "popular". They just need to have the necessary support, source code access and be available for the right price.

This list here should tell you everything you need to know about Unity's "popularity" (why is it only 4 games?). IE: It's popular among the uneducated, non-professional masses. If I wanted to be disparaging: Artists who don't know much about actual programming. In other words, it's not used by many "serious developers", making "serious AAA titles".

And that's pretty much the resistance you're seeing.

(And just for the record, I'm not bothered that the game will use Unity, simply because inXile do have source code access and will hopefully know what they're doing. I just think you're making the wrong sort of arguments.)

 

[koyima]

- Unity popularity: reason for many sub-par titles out there - with 1 million people creating games a lot of crap will come up.
- Unity amount of Titles Released: Portfolio, proof it works - safer bet. From FPS to MMO, from RPG to Puzzles. 2D,2.5D,3D.
- Unity team and funding: they weren't waiting for Fargo to drop the cash - also safer bet.

None of those points are really all that relevant to a team of computer programmers who make games for a living though.

What does popularity matter?

EG: CD Projekt built their own engine for Witcher 2. A game which has probably sold more copies than the entire Unity catalogue combined has. And yet only one game has been made with it to date.

BioWare built their own Aurora Engine (which morphed into Odyssey for KOTOR and then Eclipse for Dragon Age) and made a series of highly successful games with it. Again, selling millions of copies.

Neither of those engines are as "popular" as Unity apparently is, and yet the games made with them have, arguably, been much more "popular" than anything done on Unity (IE: How many people have heard of Dragon Age or KOTOR vs how many have heard of "Basket Dudes", "Blood and Glory" or "Jetpack Brontosaurus"?).

That's also proof they work. And they're even RPGs in the right sort of visual perspective too.

None of them need to be "popular". They just need to have the necessary support, source code access and be available for the right price.

This list here should tell you everything you need to know about Unity's "popularity" (why is it only 4 games?). IE: It's popular among the uneducated, non-professional masses. If I wanted to be disparaging: Artists who don't know much about actual programming. In other words, it's not used by many "serious developers", making "serious AAA titles".

And that's pretty much the resistance you're seeing.

(And just for the record, I'm not bothered that the game will use Unity, simply because inXile do have source code access and will hopefully know what they're doing. I just think you're making the wrong sort of arguments.)

Again the comparison was between C4 and Unity, a fact you manage to avoid again and again. Between those two, yes it would be a contest of actual titles released.

CD Project made Witcher 1 with a licensed engine. They got enough money to then embark on the journey of creating a custom engine.
They didn't have access to something that compared when they started. Unity was still fresh, UDK may have just come out, CryEngine wasn't there for sure.
What would they use? Gamebryo? Bethesda did this and their trials are well documented.

Bioware developed it's engines with future titles in mind. In this regard it is a massive investment with massive returns. They didn't start
to make an engine from scratch when the game they were supposed to release was due in 18 months and they had nothing up and running.
They did this even earlier than CDProject, there weren't any engines that did what they needed. So obviously they had to make it.

Are you still advocating they should create their own engine and deliver wasteland 2 in 18 months?
If they had a team of coders similar to the Bioware, CDProject team and there was no product that could do what they needed, then maybe yes.
They have 3 million bucks and an 18 month deadline, playing coder hanky-panky is not in their best interest.

Please compare things in context, if you don't you seem like a fool.

 

[Davaris]

Also, Kaese is a corporate spy with 1 post trying to slander Unity, I can identify them from a distance! Take my word for it.

Nope.
But I thought it would be nice, when this thread has a counterpart to Koyima who registered here only to praise/defend Unity.

And btw. He is not an employee of Unity Tech. Just one of Unity's many fanboys. I know the Unity community quite well.

I also don't understand Fargo's decision. Maybe he got the source for free. I mean Wasteland2 with all it's buzz would be great marketing for Unity.
And apparently, one Unity user is close to Fargo and convinced him to use that crap. Click Click here (It is also the thread where our friend Koyima brag about this thread here)

Unity is just a big hype. Nothing more. And it makes one thing pretty clear. If you have the money and the marketing you rule the market. No matter how shitty your product is.

Thanks for dropping in again Kaese. Unfortunately your last couple of sentences are a truth, no one can argue with.

 

[Davaris]

Please compare things in context, if you don't you seem like a fool.

You need to read DU's posts properly before you comment. He is not a C4 user or defender.

 

[koyima]

A user with over 30 years of development experience.

 

[koyima]

Please compare things in context, if you don't you seem like a fool.

You need to read DU's posts properly before you comment. He is not a C4 user or defender.

He is using my comments against C4, against every possible scenario. That is not context.

 

[koyima]

A user with over 30 years of development experience.

Not in C4, that I have heard of. A few people here use Unity, other engines, as well as mod.

Look man you can use Google, google his name, find out who he is, understand his experience. C4 isn't even 10 years old, he has 30 years experience developing software.
Are you seriously comparing people using engines, with people that have made software for 30 years? Let me put this into perspective: Wasteland 1 was released 24 years ago.

Let me google this for you: http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinlloyd

 

[tiagocc0]

It doesn't matter if DU didn't talk about C4, you made your point why you think Unity should be chosen over C4 being popularity and number of released titles. You can't just go back now and cry saying this is just against C4 argument, don't go 'don't yell at me' when DU had made some very good arguments.
You can't just argue against those with no arguments and then run away from those who do have good arguments.

 

[Kaese]

Haha yeah, the last posts didn't make any sense Koyima.

It's all fine and dandy that a experienced developer uses Unity. That doesn't justify Unity's drawbacks and issues. There are dozens of uber- developers with decades of experience who don't use Unity and think that Unity is crap. I know people at Naughty Dog that work on Blender's Game engine in their spare time. And now what?
So hiding behind JustinLloyd doesn't make your claims here correct.

You come always with the same arguments like popularity, market penetration, amount of developed titles.
Do yourself a favor and read what DarkUberlord wrote a site back. Because that pretty much nailed it. And he is not a defender of C4 like Davaris already said.

Get real! This is not the Unity forum where you can impress teens with your stuff.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Since it's all programmer art and since everyone here is assholes, I won't bother to post screenshots, but basically (though this was not the original goal) I have ended up remaking Buck Rogers: Countdown to doomsday in 3D with more tactical combat and a different storyline and basic theme. I thought at one point when I released my game people here would give some respect instead of treating me like shit all the time, but of course that was delusional. No matter what I release it will be the same, probably worse.

It's breaking my heart. Please, kids. Don't be so mean to Drocon, can't you see he's suffering?

 

[Davaris]

You come always with the same arguments like popularity, market penetration, amount of developed titles.

This is why I was convinced he was a marketing guy. Normal people just don't talk about that kind of thing.

 

[Ulminati]

It's breaking my heart. Please, kids. Don't be so mean to Drocon, can't you see he's suffering?

no

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

CD Project made Witcher 1 with a licensed engine.

An enigne they changed so much you couldn't tell anymore it was Aurora.

 

[SerratedBiz]

And Fargo has the source code to Unity so, as DU said, we probably won't recognize it by the time they're done.

So are we about done with this discussion?

 

[Alex_Steel]

But the link he provided is not.

Alex, you going to behave like a pre-schooler? Please let me know now.

Maybe I should have been more clear. In that particular sentence, I was being sarcastic. I wrote it separately and used the emoticon in an effort to show it. I don't really believe Kaese is a corporate spy. Really, I don't. I actually read the link he posted and have already answered to you what means "safe choice", based on the fact Fargo has 18 months.

But you can call me a pre-schooler if you want. It's a very good argument, like the one you used for Koyima...

Found the origin of Koyima's entrance into this thread. Seems he is a Unity fanboi defending Unity's honor.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/135827-Brian-Fargo-Wasteland-2-using-Unity

Well, who would have known? He may not be an employee after all. But you can still judge him based on that, I mean some of you guys are so certain about it!

 

[Davaris]

@Alex_Steel
Yes we have established he is a weird fanboi, that is obsessed with market penetration.

As for sarcasm, sorry, I often miss it in text.

 

[tiagocc0]

@Alex_Steel
Yes we have established he is a weird fanboi, that is obsessed with market penetration.

As for sarcasm, sorry, I often miss it in text.

Yes we have established he is a weird fanboi, that is obsessed with market penetration.

that is obsessed with market penetration.

market penetration.

That explains a lot!

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Again the comparison was between C4 and Unity, a fact you manage to avoid again and again. Between those two, yes it would be a contest of actual titles released.

Just because you were talking about C4 doesn't make my points any less valid, or your argument any more valid.

I said popularity doesn't matter. C4, Unity, Unreal, whatever. Who cares how many people make games with RPG Maker? Does it mean RPG Maker is a good "game engine"? Look, RPG Maker games have even sold over 2 million copies!!

Just look at all those games! Sadly, it doesn't mean it's any less shit.

Once again, popularity (certainly in terms of number of people using it or number of games released) is irrelevant for a game engine.

RPG Maker is also dirt-cheap! I mean hot-damn. It's got lots of support too, since it's been around since 1988. That's 24 years of development! That beats Unity's 10 years of development hands down!

And they're all RPGs, with turn-based combat! Meanwhile, the only game on Unity's list under the category "Desktop" and genre "RPG" is something called "Rimelands: Hammer of Thor".

CD Project made Witcher 1 with a licensed engine. They got enough money to then embark on the journey of creating a custom engine. They didn't have access to something that compared when they started. Unity was still fresh, UDK may have just come out, CryEngine wasn't there for sure. What would they use? Gamebryo? Bethesda did this and their trials are well documented.

So basically, Unity has been shit for a long time (it's been around since what, about 2004?) and it's only with the release of version 3 (2 years ago) that it got good? And if not 3.0, then at what point did Unity become "useful"?

And if it's only become "useful" in the last couple of years (or months?), can you really say that it's good and that its history is worth anything, given in reality, we're almost back to square one in terms of "Has anyone serious actually used this engine"?

Are you still advocating they should create their own engine and deliver wasteland 2 in 18 months?

No, I never advanced that (I think this is the point where I call you an idiot for not reading what I said - I guess that's how you get cool points at the forum you've come from? Oh yeah and by the way, didn't you say you were leaving). My point is that most of the arguments you've made are utter crap. It doesn't matter how many years it's been around, or how many people use it, nor how popular it is.

What matters is: Does it do the job?

And, as I said, that's the reason inXile asked for the source code. They know what they're getting into. And if they didn't have the source code, I bet your bottom dollar they would've looked at something else.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

I hope that inXile will release code churn stats on the Unity source, so that we know how much did they have to change it.

 

[tiagocc0]

They are trying so hard to prove Unity is worth that they don't realize that Unity will be worth only after inXile finishes the game.
With hacks of their own and from telling Unity development to fix/add things.

The proof of this is that they had to get the source code. If Unity was that good they wouldn't have to get the source code at all.

 

[EG]

Leave koyima alone! If his white suit of armor tarnishes, how will they recognize him back on the Unity forums?

I guess this explains why I mistook him for a marketer: He's here to fight the good fight and nothing else.

 

[St. Toxic]

Once again, popularity (certainly in terms of number of people using it or number of games released) is irrelevant for a game engine.

I have to disagree with this generalized statement. A completely new engine will not have its strengths and weaknesses as fully explored as one that has seen a good deal of use, so in terms of having to select an engine for game development it's clearly less attractive to go for an engine that has yet to penetrate the market. Nothing to do with the quality of the engine, naturally, but it's def. the safer choice to use an engine that has been thoroughly tested by other developers.

 

[tiagocc0]

Once again, popularity (certainly in terms of number of people using it or number of games released) is irrelevant for a game engine.

I have to disagree with this generalized statement. A completely new engine will not have its strengths and weaknesses as fully explored as one that has seen a good deal of use, so in terms of having to select an engine for game development it's clearly less attractive to go for an engine that has yet to penetrate the market. Nothing to do with the quality of the engine, naturally, but it's def. the safer choice to use an engine that has been thoroughly tested by other developers.

It depends on how it was used and who made it.
An engine made by a respected company may never been used before but it has credibility, an engine that has been made by a nobody even it was widely used a lot in small/medium projects won't have that much credibility.
Because only big projects will really put the engine for a real test and who made the engine counts a lot!

EDIT: Because the inner bugs, those that arise from the very structure the engine was based on, those are bugs that can't be corrected with a small nor medium nor large fix, something has to be remade entirely to fix this. When a big respected company makes an engine, it was planned to be big. Contrary to an engine that was small and evolved very quickly into an medium/big sized engine.

 

[St. Toxic]

Right, but I'd still take an engine made by a no-talent loser over one made by God himself if it held up for 100+ games v.s a couple of tech-demos. I can understand if we're talking in-house engines, or you know and know you can depend on the coders, that you might go for option B, but since it is untested and you are in uncharted waters it's still objectively the less safe choice of the two.

 

[tiagocc0]

Right, but I'd still take an engine made by a no-talent loser over one made by God himself if it held up for 100+ games v.s a couple of tech-demos. I can understand if we're talking in-house engines, or you know and know you can depend on the coders, that you might go for option B, but since it is untested and you are in uncharted waters it's still objectively the less safe choice of the two.

If those 100 games were good then I have to agree with you.
EDIT: Good as in complex and well developed, not just popular or fun.