Wasteland 2 - Engine Revealed: Unity

A jobs post at inXile reveals Unity will be used as Wasteland 2's engine:

If you have a passion for post-apocalytic goodness, experience working with Unity and amazing programming skills, please send your resume to jobs[at]inxile.net. We thought we’d put this out on our blog and forums first, before opening up the search further. Feel free to spread the word if you know of the perfect person.

We are looking for experienced engineers and engineering interns.

More information.

Dont get me wrong, i pledged so looking forward to this game alot. But that engine… what the hell.

Wasn't Wasteland 2 supposed to be a 2D game?

I'm not complaining though. Unity seems to be an extremely flexible engine. This list of games is certainly impressive.

It is a popular engine but the list only confirms my initial thoughts about it not being in the AAA league. I've not played a single game on that list and only know a few by name. This however doesn't make it a bad choice for W2. Not many engines out there has the same feature set together with multiplatform support.

Unity is a great choice in my opinion. That's what I would have picked if I were making the game. It's very flexible, covers all platforms, and it's a very modular engine which will make the mod kit easier to implement. Unity is very capable of doing 2D games, but I think they are leaning toward making Wasteland 2 in isometric 3D anyway. Graphics-wise Unity can do just about anything one would want.

Another advantage Unity has over something like Unreal is that it's not tied to the FPS paradigm, which would be useless for Wasteland.

I don't see any problems here. Flexible engine as JDR and Myrkrel pointed out, now it all boils down to the creation of assets…

I do not believe many of us expected (or gave a toss about) an AAA engine with the Kickstarter budget, did we ?

There's only one big problem i see with with Unity. It doesn't run on Linux yet and inXile clearly promised a linux port among other things.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Wasn't Wasteland 2 supposed to be a 2D game?

They were always talking about some kind of top-down view, NOT about the game being 2D. In fact in this day and age creating a 2D game would take a lot longer than creating a 3D game due to the obscene amount of work needed to draw everything a creature sprite can do for example. Once you create a 3D model animating it is a lot easier.

Originally Posted by stealth
It is a popular engine but the list only confirms my initial thoughts about it not being in the AAA league.

Huh? What gave you the idea that it could be an AAA game in the first place? I always envisioned the graphical fidelity of say Fallout Tactics at most.

Originally Posted by stealth
It is a popular engine but the list only confirms my initial thoughts about it not being in the AAA league. I've not played a single game on that list and only know a few by name. This however doesn't make it a bad choice for W2. Not many engines out there has the same feature set together with multiplatform support.

Noone ever expected a AAA game.

Given the lack of eyecandy I found this revelation a bit counter-productive. From a developers standpoint I am sure it's great but the engine-trailer didn't tell me anything nor did it rise my expectations rather the opposite. It looks like the atmosphere in Wasteland 2 will end up with the artist and the audio department, not the engine.

I think anyone who's disparaging the Unity3d engine isn't very familiar with it. I would be shocked if you miss any of the features it's lacking in an isometric environment and there's rumors of a lot of those features being introduced well before Wasteland 2 is due out. Unity3d is a good engine and very easy to work with, a great choice IMO. Don't confuse current indie titles and phone games with what Unity is capable of producing. Talented asset creators and game makers (like Fargo and MCA) will do great with Unity.

My biggest question is does inXile know something about Unity on Linux I do not ( very likely ) or are they planning on porting this after the Win/Mac release. I'm hoping for my own benefit they've talked to the Unity team and a Linux publish option is in the works as well.

I'm very tempted to apply for one of these jobs…..very tempted…..very.

Like I said in a kickstarter discussion… developers overextending their scope by promising their releases in multiple platforms (Mac/Linux). People said "oh, things just need to be recompiled, takes a weekend!"… yeah right. I bet several of the funded project's starters are biting their lips by now when they realize what it really involves.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Like I said in a kickstarter discussion… developers overextending their scope by promising their releases in multiple platforms (Mac/Linux). People said "oh, things just need to be recompiled, takes a weekend!"… yeah right. I bet several of the funded project's starters are biting their lips by now when they realize what it really involves.

Well with Unity, publishing for PC & Mac really is that easy. At least in theory, I've never published for Mac because I don't own one but the difference between web and PC builds is a button push away. It really is "that easy".

Again, Linux is the different story there but I read a rumor this spring that Unity on Linux is coming out this fall. Again, rumor, take that with a very big grain of salt. Perhaps there's a plan to somehow integrate with Google's native client to get a standalone Linux build.

I think you misundestood me. I never implied W2 was going to be a AAA game. It was solely a comment about Unity not being used for AAA games even though it might actually could.

Not being an AAA game usually increase my interest these days.

Originally Posted by JemyM
Not being an AAA game usually increase my interest these days.

I agree. AAA usually means they spend more money making almost the same game (just shorter) as last time.

Originally Posted by stealth
I agree. AAA usually means they spend more money making almost the same game (just shorter) as last time.

Yeah, AAA to me is a genré that means that the game is 3rd person, over the top, usually a shooter, usually with a minimap in one of the corners, usually have a cover system and a couple of other features including highly simplistic gameplay.

Originally Posted by JemyM
Yeah, AAA to me is a genré that means that the game is 3rd person, over the top, usually a shooter, usually with a minimap in one of the corners, usually have a cover system and a couple of other features including highly simplistic gameplay.

… and auto healing or a faster pace automatic regeneration.

Originally Posted by JemyM
Not being an AAA game usually increase my interest these days.

+ 1

Originally Posted by LuckyCarbon
Don't confuse current indie titles and phone games with what Unity is capable of producing. Talented asset creators and game makers (like Fargo and MCA) will do great with Unity.

This is a great point to consider and one I meant to mention. Unity is very popular with indie and mobile devs so far, but based on some of the tech demos and tinkering with it a bit, I'm convinced it can make very high-quality visuals, in the hands of a good art team. You can use all kinds of complex shaders, write your own shaders, etc and produce AAA graphics.

Though I hope inXile doesn't go for high-end graphics with WL2. I'd much rather they spend that time making solid gameplay content and world building.

I see nothing wrong with using Unity. It's roughly what I'd expect, as making one from scratch or using CryEngine and similar would be far too expensive.

I suppose they could've used the Onyx engine, but for some reason they decided not to. I assume that means Unity is the better option, as we're not exactly talking about novice developers here. They know what they need.