

Unity game engine 3.0 will support Android, PS3 and IPad - tomh-
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27558/PreGDC_Unity_Announces_30_Platform_Support_For_PS3_iPad_And_Android.php

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illumin8
This is awesome. I've been learning 3d game programming on Unity 2.6 and found
that I can rapidly prototype things in only minutes and publish to Mac,
Windows, as well as a number of browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari).

The only thing they seem to be lacking somewhat is the ability to integrate
well with 3rd party source repositories. Using git or subversion is a no-no,
but apparently they have a "Unity Asset Server" that is used as a source
control mechanism.

Honestly, with their liberal indie license (free if you make less than $100K
per year), multiple platform support, and dead simple rapid development
environment, I can see Unity becoming the platform of choice for most indie
developers.

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windsurfer
Can I ask what the problem is with source repositories? Are the source files
just giant binary blobs?

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illumin8
Apparently the project directories contain a number of pre-compiled bytecode
files that tend to get moved around a lot as you make changes in the editor.
This makes it difficult to track assets like you would with a typical source
control system.

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clayrab
I use SVN with unity pro... it's a bit of a pain but it works, you just have
to ignore conflicts in .asset files.

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tomh-
This will be the first serious game engine to be released which has Android
support. Hopefully we can see some ports of the popular iPhone games running
on android in the near future :)

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sadiq
No announced Linux support though?

An Android port would make that far easier but it's not a given.

Linux is well and ahead as the top requested feature too:

<http://unity.uservoice.com/forums/15792-unity>

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teej
> Linux is well and ahead as the top requested feature

Likely requested by the fabled "vocal minority".

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SwellJoe
I've upvoted you because it's probably true...it probably is a vocal minority
(Linux users _are_ very vocal and a minority).

But, I also think it would increase the appeal of the platform for a _lot_ of
developers. Developers love Linux at a rate far beyond that of the population
at large. I see maybe 20-40% Linux users at even non-OSS oriented gatherings
of hackers. I do all of my hacking on Linux, and wouldn't have any interest in
working on any other platform for development (even Mac OS X pales in
comparison, for me, due to the oddity of its UNIX environment, and the
inflexibility of its windowing system; also lack of middle-mouse button paste
is a minor but frequent impediment to productivity for me). So, while I've had
a few game ideas over the past few years, and would like to have a nice, fun,
environment to work in for building them...I'd never take the plunge if it
didn't work under Linux, because developing without Linux is like a day
without sunshine.

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pmjordan
Unfortunately, realtime 3D graphics programming on Linux is something of a
sisyphean task. Even the best drivers (the proprietary nvidia ones) are
somewhat buggy; the intel ones and both the open source and the proprietary
AMD ones are even worse. That's if you can even get them working with your
hardware and distro. I say this as a long-time Linux user and graphics
programmer. It's pretty sad, really.

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SwellJoe
I agree on all counts. I have machines using all three graphics drivers, and
the state of play, so to speak, is abysmal. Linux can't even play full screen
HD Hulu on an ATI 4850 video card without stuttering. While we're on the
subject, audio is in just as sad a state. I've been trying to use Linux for
prosumer level audio recording for a dozen years, about once a year, and every
single time I've gone wimpering back to Windows for audio work. So, yeah, the
state of multimedia on Linux, while dramatically better than its ever been, is
still embarrassingly bad.

So, yeah, I probably wouldn't want to be the developer tasked with making
Unity work on Linux (even a very limited subset, like "just nVidia and ATI
provided drivers"), as it would probably suck. The guys at id software managed
to do high end 3D gaming on Linux in the past, but they also complained loudly
and frequently about the state of things.

I wasn't suggesting I blame the Unity folks for not supporting Linux. Just
saying that developers like Linux. Unity likes developers. Maybe they could
hookup sometime. But, it might be more trouble than it's worth for them, and
I'd understand that, too (it's why we don't have an installer for Mac OS X for
Virtualmin, despite the fact that more than a handful of our users like having
a development environment on their Mac at home that is similar to their Linux
server). If it existed for Linux, I'd almost certainly give it a try; I've
considered it in the past, but the whole rebooting thing just makes it less
likely that I'd ever get around to hacking on any games.

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pmjordan
Yeah, the audio thing is weird. ALSA actually has drivers for the vast
majority of hardware out there, but somehow this doesn't translate into an
acceptable userspace experience.

I've never used Hulu (yay, geolocation blacklisting!), but I was under the
impression that it used Flash; this is probably why it's so slow. Mplayer,
Xine, VLC, etc. can generally handle HD video playback on a reasonably recent
CPU.

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lutorm
I wonder how long they are going to be using the "Unity" name, given that
there exists another engine which has had the trademark name "Unity 3D" since
1999 or so... Don't people do at least a little basic research before naming a
product?

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teamonkey
This engine has been sold commercially since 2005. I can't even find any
reference to the other engine you mention.

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lutorm
The other has been used since 1999.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_Online>

EDIT: appears to be USPTO trademark reg # 75824303, filed on Oct 18, 1999.

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ZeroGravitas
Does Unity for iPhone support Vorbis and Theora?

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Raphael
The compiling process likely converts media appropriately.

