Wasteland 2 - Engine Revealed: Unity

Maylander said:

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.

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Yeah I think if MCA didn't try to talk them into his company's engine then it's either because they're not licensing it to third parties or it would fall short in some required area. I'm guessing the most likely shortcoming would be in the ease of cross platform releases - which happens to be one of Unity's strongest selling points.

Unity is a fine engine though and as long as their team does the presentation/atmosphere and UI right the engine should have no negaive impact on the game experience; the most likely effect of chosing Unity will be that there should be fewer platform specific bugs at launch and less money wasted on getting each of the ports working.

A lot of those games on the list are ios games, and they are great and run well.. I'm pretty sure this is a solid engine.

tolknaz said:

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.

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2D Graphics can be made in a 3D program, rendered and put into a 2D engine. Baldur's Gate and many other RPG's did that. I don't think it would take longer, it's just that a 2D game wouldnt sell as good i think.

Unity is a good choice imo.. It can look quite nice too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unh-JxFQgOQ&feature=related

vurt said:

2D Graphics can be made in a 3D program, rendered and put into a 2D engine. Baldur's Gate and many other RPG's did that. I don't think it would take longer, it's just that a 2D game wouldnt sell as good i think.

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I know that a lot of the art for Infinity Engine games, Fallouts etc. was created this way (3d models were first created as a source and then rendered into sprites and other neccessary objects). It wouldn't make much sense to do it this way anymore though. There were a lot of needless technical constraints and hurdles created this way (animated sprites take a lot room on the disk and this room will grow fast depending on the amount of the animations, how many directions the sprites should be able to face etc.) and the only real benefit i.e. reletively good performance for how detailed everything looked wouldn't matter much with what todays hardware is capable of.

If anyone was still curious Fargo just tweeted

We have been supplied the source code to Unity for the express purpose of making the Linux version.

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Well, that clears that up, sort of...

LuckyCarbon said:

If anyone was still curious Fargo just tweeted


Well, that clears that up, sort of…

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so they're going to make a Linux version of Unity so they can make a Linux version of their game?

If anyone has any doubts about Unity then please download the demo to Rimelands. Absolutely great game made with Unity.

If you have iPhone or iPad you can buy it now. The PC version is in development right now….I think. Indigogo (like Kickstarter) doesn't seem to be doing so well. Hopefully they'll still make it for the PC even if they don't get funding.

I just found out about this game yesterday. Loving it ever since.

If a couple of guys could make a game like that for the iPhone then I'm sure some hardened professionals can do wonders with it.

wolfing said:

so they're going to make a Linux version of Unity so they can make a Linux version of their game?

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Exactly!

Who knows what kind of deal they worked out with Unity Technologies but let's hope for the good of the community that the Linux version inXile develops gets kicked back and rolled into the Unity distribution for the rest of us.

I think it is a smart move to use unity, chances of them finishing the game increases a lot. If you use a heavier engine with higher quality the amount of work also increase dramatically.