Unity 3D killers?

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Published: September 8, 2009 | By admin

Posted in: Apple, Business, Development, iPhone

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So there’s plenty of hype being pushed around the interwebs of which engine or framework is best to help build the next best app/game for the iPhone. Point blank, Unity 3D is the best! Now if your one of those l33t developers out there who belittles developers that are using frameworks & engines instead of getting dirty with Objective-C, I say screw you and get off your fake high horse. Although Objective-C isn’t all that complicated, it’s not nearly that easy either, especially when it comes to developing games for the iPhone. Also as a second note, plenty of gaming companies use gaming engines for one of the simple facts that it wouldn’t be cost efficient to reinvent the wheel when it’s staring right back at you. So as an Indie developer trying to compete with big companies, these gaming engines may be worth it. It’s an investment. So if your game is crappy, it doesn’t matter what engine you used, it’s still going to be crappy. However if you have a solid idea(s) and plan to invest the time needed, it’ll eventually pay itself off.

With all that said let me get back to my point, here are some of the top ‘Indie friendly’ game engines out there; Unity 3D vs Shiva vs Torque. Now my first initial thought will of course be that Unity 3D is the best, as previously stated, however this is a very biased statement. Not because I’m on the developmental team, but because I’m now invested into it { don’t forget to download Feed Meh!! }, so it better be the best for good while. Nevertheless, after actually reviewing the other competition out there I’m sure you’ll be agreeing alongside with me too.

Below are a few pro’s & con’s for each engine:

Unity 3D

http://unity3d.com/unity/features/iphone-publishing

iphone-feature

Pros:

  • Feature Packed!
  • Full support for native Objective C (for whatever reason if you needed/wanted it)
  • 3 scripting language options: JavaScript, C#, and a dialect of Python called Boo
  • Scripts are compiled to native ARM assembler code during build
  • I already have a license

Cons:

  • Price! Indie+ iPhone: $600 |  Pro + iPhone: $3,000
  • Forced splash screens for Indie licenses
  • No 2d platform

Thoughts: The price and the forced splash screen almost insticivly makes me want to say no, however when you dig deeper you’ll see a solid engine that’s only getting better & better. In addition, it’s more approachable, and has an easier learning curve because of the 3 separate language options they allow you to use.

Shiva

http://www.stonetrip.com/

shiva-editor

Pros:

  • iPhone publishing for FREE!
  • Price; Indie: $250 |  Pro: $720
  • No forced splash screens

Cons:

  • Works on Mac OS under parallels
  • Lua scripting language, which (most likely) wont be used anywhere else
  • Language is interpreted
  • small(er) userbase and still a bit rough around the edges

Thoughts: Shiva isn’t even available for the mac yet. So although its really enticing with its price, it’s not really meant for the iPhone. You’ll pay for it with the longer development time unless you buy or already own both a PC & mac, to switch back-and-forth.

Torque

http://www.garagegames.com/products/consoles

torque-2d-iphone

tge-iphone

Pros:

  • Both 2D & 3D platform
  • Developer store; buy source code and/or game assets
  • Feature Packed!

Cons:

  • Price! Indie 3D: $900 Indie 2D: $1,000 | Pro 3D: $2,750/ $4,750 Pro 2D: $2,750/ $3,500
  • Individual prices for 3D & 2D engines
  • TorqueScript is a C++ like scripting language

Thoughts: 1st the price is just outrageous. It seems as it it just keeps on climbing. 2nd, although Torque does have plenty of features, it’s not really a ‘pro’ for me simply because it’s written using a language similar to C++ which doesn’t make for smooth learning curve.

Conclusion

So there you have it, the Top 3 iPhone gaming engines compared to each other. You can make up your own mind, and every situation is different, but I’d still have to say that Unity 3D is still above the rest. If your already knee deep with C++ & or Objective C, and you don’t mind loosing $900-$4,740 ( I say loosing because, as any investment is made there is always that chance of not breaking even, and loosing your investment ) then Torque may be for you. It has plenty of features, and a pretty solid community. However if your not familiar or fluent with an Object Oriented Language already, and maybe you know a few scripting languages and you want to develop something for the iPhone but Shiva’s low price is calling to you, I say don’t do it yet. If your targeting the iPhone, why would you develop on a PC? And if your crazy enough to run it through an emulator, than you have every right to lose your investment. Nothing against them, the upgrades are looking great as I’ve been following them since I started researching for an engine to use before I bought into Unity 3D ; but it’s still a bit too rough. With all that said, go check out Unity’s demo & I’m sure you’ll love it. Oh, and did I mention that I made a game using Unity 3D, Feed Meh!! Ah, I did actually. Silly me.

Let me know what you think? Love Unity too? Hate it? Think Shiva is going to tear the market right open? Let me know and sound-off.

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  • Roger
    Lua: Are you kidding? Lua is used throughout the game industry.
  • burtonposey
    I agree. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I worked on an MMO that used Lua for all of the menu scripts.
  • Aidan
    World of Warcraft was created with Lua
  • Rob
    I’ve compared Unity3D with Torque3D. Everything about the Unity3D environment is so much better (documentation, scripting (Javascript and C#), tutorials, support, and features). Torque3D is so full of bugs, it’s practically useless. You will definitely need the source code, because you have to fix their bugs. Don’t buy the Torque3D binary, because you won’t be able to use it to build a game. Don’t listen to the hype or make your decision based on the pretty pictures you see on their site.

    I built a complete game using one of the Unity3D tutorials in a few hours, and it looks great. I used their assets. In the same period of time, I got nowhere with Torque3D. It kept deleting my terrains, and would not save the changes.
  • I would not say that Unity's price is a "con". There are not many solid "low-cost" but profeessional 3D-authoring tools available - as it takes time and plenty use-cases for a platform to mature. The first generation could probably be the following tools: Virtools, Quest3D, Director. If you look at their prices you might understand what I mean.
    Torque3D is pretty new, Shiva3D is a bit older but still quite new though it seems to progress in a solid way.

    Unity has become a good platform, still tons of stuff to improve but for the price it's a good platform. Even more
    if you consider the improvements of the free upgrades (2.1, 2.5, 2.6)!

    I've been looking over many years for a 'real' alternative to Virtools. Unity is not perfect (a mix of both tools would be though), but it's the first "real" alternative I can suggest!

    Shiva3D is doing a good progress and I am looking forward to what they come up with in the next years.
  • Don't get me wrong, I completely understand your point; but it just happens to be one of those 'damn if you do, damn if you don't' type of things (at-least for me).. Considering everything that comes with the Unity package I'd agree that it's value makes it worth it, yet not having deep pockets I'd still have to rant about how much it hurts to give that much money away.

    This is the same for any real professional tool I use. I could run a linux box and use GIMP, but instead I shell out the $$$$$$ for Adobe Photoshop because it's better and worth it (IMO) and so-forth with other apps.
  • krys64
    You can make 2D games with Unity 3D. The trick is to use the orthographic camera like on my future game : http://www.spotnik-tv.com/ximista/
  • No, I agree. I wasn't trying to imply that Unity couldn't do 2D games; heck, I plugged my own game a few times within this post { http://feedmeh.cbmumedia.com/ } and I created that as a '2D' game as well. What I meant though was that it's not really meant for 2D, you have to restrict cameras, movements and other things to portray the 2D look. Whereas with the Torque 2D engine, it's build specifically for 2D.

    With that said, your game looks really solid. Congrats, it looks great!
  • If you want some bias added, I'm on Unity development team and I'd also say Unity is the best of those three! :P

    I like Lua BTW. It's actually used quite a lot as a scripting language in the games industry.
  • haha... nothing wrong with more added bias, esp. toward Unity. Its an awesome product, you guys are doing an awesome job!

    As for the Lua language, I've heard of it being used for another framework but I guess not being solely in the game industry I'm not too familiar with it. Would you say you strictly use it only for that industry, or you apply it toward other things as well?
  • Lua is liked in games because: 1) it's very small (matters a lot on some platforms), 2) for a virtual machine language, it's very fast (and there's LuaJIT for compiling to native code), 3) it's very easy to integrate & extend. In other words, a small, lean & mean language.

    Of course you don't get full .NET stack like with Mono, but on the other hand Mono is much harder to integrate and much larger.
  • oh ok... more than likely I won't ever really touch Lua, but I was curious, as I'm not a 'game developer' per-se, but I dabble in things I like. But that does remind me of a post by another unity developer who was talking about the pro's & con's with JavaScript & C# { http://blogs.infiniteunity3d.com/kraken/2009/09... } ... he makes the argument that for larger projects C# is the way to go...
    where would you place Lua? It seems that it's great for medium size games, however is it worth it? Because if(when) it grows then would you kick yourself for not using C#?
  • Johan
    Lua is actually used quite a bit in bigger games, most notably Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft, for the UI and most likely some internal scripting. The major pro with lua is that it actually isn't as big as C# and is dynamically typed. While dynamically typed languages are generally frowned upon they can be quite awesome to work with when you know how to deal with them.

    I use Unity myself atm for games, so this article wasn't really something I needed to see to "convince" me, but if it was only for this article and I had to pick an engine, I would probably choose to ignore the article entirely partly cause of you admitting to being biased, but mainly cause of your claim that Lua probably won't be used anywhere else while its usage is increasing rapidly.
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