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What's new in Unity 4.3

unity3d.com

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Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#41

Post by Tiktaalik »

xsmasher wrote: post #35

Anyone know how "mergeable" the project files are? Are they git friendly?

They are technically mergeable because they're text based, but they're not super easy to comprehend. I've found that .unity scene files seem to develop dramatic changes between check-ins that make it difficult to isolate problems (ie. giant blocks of text removed from one part of the file, then put in another part of the file untouched).

In general I feel like the best practice is to touch these .unity scenes as little as possible, and spend most of your time iterating on prefab files, which are easier to read.

Haven't tried git with unity so I dunno if there are any special case issues there.

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#42

Post by Cacti »

xsmasher wrote: post #35

Anyone know how "mergeable" the project files are? Are they git friendly?

They are pretty git friendly. There's instructions floating around for how to do it but it basically works as you'd expect once you get your .gitignore file set up properly.

The Editor loads assemblies dynamically as well so you can branch/checkout and the Editor will automatically recompile everything without a restart.

Only problem I've had is with scene objects but I think I recently fixed that once with a tweak to my .gitignore.

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#43

Post by Tiktaalik »

zura wrote: post #2

I'd be more happy if Unity goes toward being more programmer-friendly. Fully code-only projects support, no need to waste a lot of time tinkering in that complex UI, etc...

You'd be throwing out the differentiating strength of Unity though. The whole point is that non technical designers can put stuff together incredibly quickly.

It feels at times a bit dirty to give up control and do things "The Unity Way" but the payoff in productivity from non-programmers on the team makes it worth it.

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#44

Post by aryastark »

zura wrote: post #2

I'd be more happy if Unity goes toward being more programmer-friendly. Fully code-only projects support, no need to waste a lot of time tinkering in that complex UI, etc...

Unity has probably one of the best UIs I've seen. I also use Blender, so I know how complex UI can get. But with Unity, they encapsulate everything into game objects and components. That's it. It really can't get much easier. Even their animation system is sensible and fits nicely with the overall architecture. I was up and running within a few days. In a week I had what could arguably be considered a working game. Watch a few youtube videos and you'll have working cloth, triggers, and particles.

As a programmer, I still have not reached the point of feeling that I lacked control over the game and engine. And I doubt that easily happens with indie developers, as Unity is incredibly well-equipped to deal with small-to-medium sized games.

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#45

Post by bloodorange »

malkia wrote: post #31
CmonDev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's targeted at scripters not professional programmers though. I think in their paradigm professional programmers are focused on creating components for the store and everyone else (level designers, gameplay scripters etc.) just consume components along with some scripting.

Professional game developers are exactly the people that would use a product like Unity, Unreal, CryTek's stuff, etc.

As a professional game developer, I can tell you that using Unity was the least pleasant experience I have had (to put it mildly). I don't see it being a tolerable experience for anything more than simplistic games (like a typical casual game). If you were thinking of something like NFS or Unreal or Dues Ex for mobile, it is very painful and you are better off using a decent engine in its place.

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#46

Post by CanSpice »

Cacti wrote: post #34
zura wrote: post #2

I'd be more happy if Unity goes toward being more programmer-friendly. Fully code-only projects support, no need to waste a lot of time tinkering in that complex UI, etc...

Source: me. I don't work for Unity. Software engineer and use Unity for a lot of 'traditional development'. You'd be surprised... there isn't a ton of documentation about it, but most of the engine is pretty well exposed for programmers. You can punch into the rendering pipeline (down to immediate OpenGL mode if you need to), the compilation pipeline (recompiling on the fly or setting up a custom preprocessor), hook…

Are there any plans by Unity to improve the documentation outlining this?

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#49

Post by kleiba »

rbanffy wrote: post #47

Am I the only person who opened the link expecting something about Canonical's desktop?

Yeah, the naming has always been unfortunate, but given that the URL after the headline says "unity3d.com" it's kinda clear which of the two was meant.

Re: What's new in Unity 4.3

#50

Post by Cacti »

CanSpice wrote: post #46
Cacti wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: me. I don't work for Unity. Software engineer and use Unity for a lot of 'traditional development'. You'd be surprised... there isn't a ton of documentation about it, but most of the engine is pretty well exposed for programmers. You can punch into the rendering pipeline (down to immediate OpenGL mode if you need to), the compilation pipeline (recompiling on the fly or setting up a custom preprocessor), hook…

Are there any plans by Unity to improve the documentation outlining this?

No idea. I'd hope so... learning it for me was a bit of a pain as all the relevant facts are split across the manual, the reference manual, the scripting manual, the forums, and answers website, some random websites, the google groups, the mono documentation and references and resources, etc.

I mean, it's not really that bad, just that some things that should be easy to look up are hard to find, and some things that are easy to look up and easy to find have to then be translated from "scripting and drag/drop/click" into actual code (particularly frustrating when you're just starting).

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