Pretty sweet web racing advergame for Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by C4RL05, made with Unity. Carlos Ulloa is of course the same dude that made the Unity HelloRacer. He is also famous for starting Papervision3D for Flash but has been doing some amazing work in Unity for more immersive 3D experiences.
The game is another example of how when you need really immersive experiences for advergames or brands, Unity is looking like a great choice. Unity isn’t perfect for many things that Flash is such as video, 2d games, mixing media, mic/cam apps, and data, but for games where 3d is required it seems to be the way to go.
Google looks to be making a gaming site to compete with Facebook only kicking the gaming up a notch? By the comment from Mark DeLoura, head of developer advocate for Google gaming, it appears they/he also favor going 3d or native client with WebGL or Unity wrapped in the native client.
Check the comment by Mark DeLoura on the gamasutra post regarding the rumored Google Me Facebook like gaming/social site:
I think Flash will continue to be a very viable platform. The Flash toolset is pretty frickin’ amazing, and there are a ton of happy Flash developers out there, and great games galore.
I would like to see higher-fidelity 3D content on the web though. It’s been a dream of many people going back to VRML days. WebGL and Native Client are two solutions to this that will be integrated into the Chrome browser. At Google I/O we talked about Unity running inside of Native Client, which combines the hardware acceleration and security of Native Client with the fantastic toolset and runtime from Unity. It’s peanut butter and chocolate (well, for me). This is a platform I’m really excited about for 3D web games.
Indeed peanut butter and chocolate is mighty tasty.
Mobile games are on slower hardware, similar to later 90′s computers so native is a great way to go for 3d and 2d game development because of this limitation at the current time and well into the next few years. Take this time to learn you some native gamedev. andengine isn’t native directly as it is Java based but compiled with the Dalvik JIT virtual machine. Another way to go native on Android is the Android NDK which allows C and C++.
The pipeline is not yet as streamlined as as Unity 3D as Torque has many legacy formats and components such as DTS models, DIF interiors and DSQ animation files that are specific to the Torque Engine. But they have added support for COLLADA models and the community is strong for Torque 3D. Also, since Torque 3D is built on an older engine but updated for modern uses, the file formats and loading is streamlined for low poly and web based games that need small asset sizes but still have quality.
Like Unity 3D there are many paths to truly get your game published and available to many platforms from desktop on Windows and Mac to web players in all major browsers (and iPhone, Wii and XBox with more $$$). This is an amazing time in game development.
When I initially got into heavier game development in early 2003 after moving from Half-life to Unreal and then the affordable Torque, there were two major things missing, a web player export and a good editor with intellisense. Torque 3D provides the web player export and Torsion is a great IDE for TorqueScript beyond using Visual Studio or XCode for C++ source editing.
Some really nice tools include the River Editor and Road and Path editor that complement the great terrain editor and scene and asset editors that make production fairly quick in the Torque tool chain.
The good news is there is now two quality toolsets in Unity 3D and Torque that for about $1500 you can get a good pipeline and engine that will enable you to create great immersive games for many platforms and the web. If you got the skills the platforms are there to get your game out to the world whichever platform you choose. Similarly to the Flash vs Silverlight vs Canvas progress, with competition in this area it will keep both platforms innovating and supporting developers needs first.
For more immersive games that require hardware rendering beyond Flash capabilities Unity 3D and Torque 3D are now here for your creations.
Electronic Arts is using Unity 3D to develop Tiger Woods Online. The game is currently in beta. It was announced that they were using the engine in June on their blog but only on the reposted version here not the original post where the engine was just deemed “new technology”.
This is a major shift in the game industry and how it is being expanded into online properties that rival or better the console and desktop versions through online communities. Quake Live from id software uses their own system that wraps existing games (originally developed by Gaim Theory then bought by id Software) and instant action technology from garage games that runs instant action. All these systems have provided us browser based triple AAA style gaming fun. It looks like that movement will continue as more and more game companies and publishers see the valid capabilities of Unity 3D to deliver when you need really deeply immersive 3d experiences in the browser. Also other systems like Torque 3D, Quake Live technology and more will be seeing this trend continue when it comes to games online. It is also becoming a choice for online web based 3d MMOs such as Fusion Fall and Marvel Super Hero Squad.
Recently added include, you can now use RADIANS or DEGREES to manipulate objects in the engine, also adding standard yaw, pitch and roll methods.
There is a mouse interaction now available with a MouseConstraint class to allow the user to drag a 3d element with the mouse which is great for gaming and interactive 3d physics scenes.
New class: MouseConstraint
There has been a new class to the Papervision3D plug-in called MouseConstraint and a new example to the Papervision3D examples folder. The class basically allows you to attach a world constraint to an object and simulate dragging.
AngryAnt brings us a nice library for pathing and behavior trees in Unity3D with excellent editor integration. Path library I reviewed and is an extremely deep and complete library with autocomplete node collections from colliders, ability to connect different networks and detection from mesh as well as GUI tools using Unity3D editor scripts. The release is solid with documentation, video samples and is very easy to integrate. If you have a need for AI, bots, scripted animations or other madness in your game be sure to check out the pathing library and or the behave library from AngryAnt to implement or research.
Path Features
Specs:
Available for unity indie as well as pro licensees
Can run in webplayers as well as stand-alone
Requires no additional installations
Features:
Easy to use editor interface
Navmeshes
Waypoint networks
Cached pathes
Distributed processing using coroutines
Tag-filtered pathfinding
Hierarchal “grid network” pathfinding
Auto-recalculate on runtime network changes
Tutorials
I recommend you study the “Editor demo” unity project available on the Path download page. This project will be used in the tutorials below and contains an example Path setup.
The Demo project is a complete unity 2.5 project with Path already added, a sample Path collection set up and example scripts requesting path calculations and following them.
Behave Features
Specs:
Available for unity indie as well as pro licensees
Can run in webplayers as well as stand-alone
Requires no additional installations at runtime
Features:
Implements behaviour trees
Re-use common behaviour by reference
Drag and drop editor interface inside the unity editor
Simple connection to character actions via C# interface
Designed trees are built to .net assembly code for maximum performance
Runtime debugging features
Powerful stand-alone editor – including web version
This hotfix solves a few critical issues with Behave 0.3b and unity 2.5. It’s still quite buggy and I’m working on a more extensive rewrite. Stay tuned.
The Demo project is a complete unity 2.1 project with Behave already added, a sample behaviour tree designed and compiled plus an example script showing how compiled behaviour trees are integrated with unity MonoBehaviour scripts.
Behave builder is a stand-alone application offering the behaviour tree editors (excluding the compiler) outside the unity editor. It is currently OS X only. This application is also available in an online version – check it out in the “Preview” section of this page.
CitySimulation.behave is the library used in the demo project – saved as a Behave builder file. You can use this file directly in the online and offline version of Behave builder or import it to a unity project via the Behave “Assets” menu.
I have been a garage games torque developer and member since 2003 and worked/bought with each engine they have put out from the old school Torque Engine, to Torque Engine Advanced for various game development projects and now they are throwing in on what appears to be based on their instantaction.com technology but using the Torque3D engine. This is very interesting, they might even have a channel/appstore to release games on instantaction.com?
Unity3D has recently taken my time in the full immersion 3d for the web space, the mono engine that runs the scripting is a huge feature. Coding in C#, Boo and javascript is great, and the pipeline for Unity3D is unmatched.
A bit of history, I have been interested in this since Director introduced 3d in director 8.5 in 2001 (how was that not a major revision I don’t know) and the killer Havok 3d physics engine within it. Way ahead of its time. But Director 3d was extremely limited with w3d (not even a decent blender exporter) and it literally has not advanced since that time in terms of ability to develop better for it and the IDE. It was trapped in this little IDE and quirky Lingo language. They tried to save it with javascript, a valiant effort but it still withered due to lack of openness of development for the player (a mistake they aren’t making with Flash now at Adobe). So making full immersion 3d games was not really ready for the web, Director was notorious at crashing browsers and took way too many broken plugins to get a basic engine.
So I went to mods in HL (quake 2 engine), Unreal and when I realized there was no way me or my friends could foot the license fees of either engine we went to Torque in 2003. It was great, large terrains and highly compact engine because it had to run Tribes with 64 players years before anyone else approached 64 players and arguably still played better than 64 player fps now. It was affordable. I have been interested in the movements to make torque an active x control in 2005/6 and Think Tanks did just that. It was very nice, I thought soon after it would be everywhere. But it has taken until now and a new engine called Torque3D before this has been realized years later. This is hard stuff to get right creating a plugin that works cross browser and performs well (browsers had to catch up as well). The culmination of that technology progression has happened and 3d on the web for game development appears to be bigtime in 2009.
Unity3D meanwhile since 2005-6 has gotten it nearly all right so far for a few years now, especially the pipeline and the webplayer. Torque has always had an poor pipeline, not as bad as writing your own engine from scratch and all the tools but in the early days pretty close. Proprietary formats like dts for models made finding the right exporter tasking. There were just so many walls in what was supposed to be a pipeline, largely due to support for formats that were small enough for slower networks and machines of the past. Unity3D gets all this right from the start, pipeline is not an issue. Torque3D seems to address this with their new tools, support for Collada, but unfortunately still scripted with TorqueScript. If Torque3D could wire in Mono and the capability to code in Javascript, C#, Boo or other Mono languages this would have been cool, or at least a semi-standard scripting language like Javascript, Python etc that would be great. TorqueScript was a big feature and UnrealScript is very similar in how it interacts with the engine, but these days we want standard languages that have engine features built in. Maybe this will happen down the road, but the format support is very nice.
For 3d, prior to Unity3D, the web was still owned by Director but that has changed in the last few years. It won me over for immersive 3d games that are web capable and able to port to other platforms and markets. Casual is still done with Flash and mobile space is targeting iphone. Unity3D can run on web, iPhone, Wii, desktop. Torque3D can run on web and also has paths to desktop, iPhone, Wii, XBOX360. You see what is happening here? It is very cool indeed. No doubt the competition in this area is getting to a point where some good innovation and happenings are taking place, what are you going to do with it?
The unity3d platform is about to realize about 900% or 9x more possible market for selling their wares and I believe will blow up with unity 2.5. Unity3d 2.5 will bring a windows IDE and development environment to unity3d developers. Many game companies are heavily invested in Windows and having this option is breaking down a huge wall to get this development platform and engine into many new hands and companies.
The best part about unity 3d development is the hardware acceleration, the fantastic pipeline, the ability to publish desktop, web, mobile (iphone) and console (wii) is pretty amazing. All using the powerful mono open source .net framework as a base.
Unity 2.5 adds full support for Windows Vista and XP, with 100% feature parity and interoperability with Mac OS X. The Unity Editor has been rebuilt to look, feel, and function identically on both operating systems, each running the same underlying engine. The best part? Unity on either platform can build games for either platform — cross-platform in the truest sense.
A Whole New Look
Find the tools you need quickly and easily. The Play buttons are front and center, clearly visible and inviting you to play, test, and improve your work. And when you do, they light up, dimming the rest of the application, drawing your attention to the most important things in the play experience you’re creating.
Precise Navigation and Placement Tools
Improved Usability
Snap any object to customizable increments of position, scale, and rotation values. Drag objects around, clamped to any surface collision. Manipulate objects in local or world space. Use the new flythrough controls to get around easily. And did we mention the completely redesigned rotation tool?
3ds Max Importing
Drag and drop your .max files right into the Editor, including support for all skeletal based animation, multiple UVs, and vertex colors. Autodesk 3ds Max now joins the existing support for Maya, Blender, and all other 3D applications that integrate with the latest FBX plugin on the Windows platform.
Completely Customizable Editor
UnityGUI, Unity’s own GUI creation system, now powers the entire Editor and allows you to integrate your own unique level design tools, AI control tools, debugging tools, difficulty tuning tools, or anything else you need. Over 130 new API entry points enable you to create specialized, customized editor tools and build them into the existing Editor interface.
Tabbed Interface
We took cues from the best designed applications, and the rewritten editor has received dozens of improvements. The most visible change is the tabbed interface, where every part of the interface can be moved, undocked to a secondary monitor, and even stacked to achieve logical grouping.
Information at Your Fingertips
We’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that you always have the info you need, when you need it. Model files have previews right inside the inspector. Audio Clips show their waveform with click-to-play behaviour. Meshes show the detailed rendering stats – and that’s just scratching the surface.
