Reviews - Jupiteron

Unity has changed my life. It's a powerful, free system used to create any sort of game for any platform you can make games for. I had always thought making games was something only highly trained, highly funded individuals could ever dream of doing. While it wasn't my first attempt to learn game design, I'm happy to know that Unity Engine is where I've chosen to hang my 3d modelled hat. Sure there are issues, all justified because reasons. Many topics are not well documented, and you tend to find those are just the fields you have to trudge through in order to make the game you want to make. There is a very vibrant community that surrounds the Unity engine that you can learn alot from though and sometimes they will even answer some questions too (if you get stuck just watch a thousand youtube tutorials, if you're still stuck watch a thousand more). Sometimes the tools fall short (looking at you pathfinding!) but the beauty of the structure of the engine is it is infinitely customizable, so if you're not liking the texturing/ animating/ shading/ physics, then with enough determination you can just go ahead and write your own version that fits your specifications. Better yet, go surf the asset store, this marketplace is a real internet gem. I've been having more fun surfing the asset store than I do surfing steam. I mean these are digital objects you can buy to create your OWN worlds, as opposed to playing in someone else's. At the end of the day though if you don't want to get in there and work with the code and assorted software then what are you doing trying to design games anyway? And sure, the engine code is hidden so you can never understand or fix the problems you encounter, instead you find ways to maneuver around the many bugs you are sure to find creating your Unity game (remember to save early and often, if necessary make back ups even. Either that or get used to redoing your work. This program WILL shut down on you when you least expect it. Although in another way this makes unity like a giant RPG). Some tools do work though, and those that do can be spell binding. I suggest Downloading Unity just to play with their terrain editor software. It's a paint program that creates height maps. You can even paint textures, or grass and trees. There is really nothing like drawing up a world in ten minutes, dropping in a first person controller and exploring the world you just drew. Unity deserves 6 stars just for that alone.

So sure, there are problems. You'll have to get your hands dirty and it's not always going to be fun, but that is mostly beside the point, and the point is that this **** is most certainly the very definition of punk rock. The software is an attempt to get the tools of multi-million dollar AAA studions into the hands of the public without charging them a dime (or advertising or anything, it's just free). In fact, Unity allows you to make money from it, if that is what you wish. You can make a small fortune (cap is $10,000) and Unity Technologies will not so much as lift a finger in retribution. If giving people the tools to make worlds of their own creation if they so choose isn't punk rock, then nothing is.

So three cheers to Unity for making grass roots game design more possible than ever. I want to make special note of some software called makehuman, it seems these two teams have successfully won the internet several times over. Ya'll are fabulous, seriously though.