Unity is a free (as in beer, not open source) game design and deployment platform. Until April 8th, you can also get a free license to export your games to iOS or Android. Enjoy!
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About the Author
Bart Veldhuizen
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.
18 Comments
is that to keep for ever...? or until april 8th? like a trial version.
For ever. http://twitter.com/#!/unity3d/status/176767532936605697
@d10ca8d11301c2f4993ac2279ce4b930:disqus
You could check yourself what are the differencies between free and Pro, but I agree the author of the post could post that, well here is your answer :
There is a free (limited) version and a Pro (full featured) version.
What is new and free now that is not free as usual is the option for Android and iOS.
Here are the features that the PRO version OFFERS and the FREE is LACKING :
GENERAL
Audio Filters
Video Playback and Streaming
Fully Fledged Streaming with Asset Bundles
May
be licensed and used by companies or incorporated entities that had a
turnover in excess of US$100,000 in their last fiscal year
DEPLOYMENT
Custom Splash Screen
GRAPHICS
Lightmapping with Global Illumination
Static Batching
Render-to-Texture Effects
Full-Screen Post-Processing Effects
Low-Level Rendering Access
Occlusion Culling
Realtime Shadows
Deferred Rendering
CODE
Native Code Plugins Support
EDITOR
Profiler
External Version Control Support
Script Access to Asset Pipeline
Dark Skin
Hmmm... I cannot download those licences - they are displayed on the web page but they are grayed out. Do I have to do anything special?
You need to tick the free version of Unity first. Then you will be able to choose the Android and iOS licenses.
I ran across the same thing months back. i'm sure we're not the only ones who couldn't figure it out immediatly :)
First click on the unity free, and than check ios and/or android version. I'm downloading them now :)
Thank you so much for sharing this!!
The important thing is to make blender have these abilities stated above. Overall happiness.
Hay Jonathan, does this mean Eat sheep will now be on Android?
YES!! Thank you for posting this! I have the iOS version, but now I can deploy to Android as well! :-D
Aw, dang it! If I'd known this was going to happen, I would've started an iOS/Android project about two months ago!
Oh, well. At least now, I can start one! Thank you, Unity!
Awesome news. As it was, Unity seems like a good platform to get to mobile games, now I can test it for myself.
....cept, downloading will still time-out my hoser internet.
Whats wrong with blender game engine?
Nothing, as long as you do this as a hobby, just for the fun.
But for commercial games, Blenders game engine is not mature enough and too antiquated. You also can't deploy games for mobile devices.
There is a reason why nobody use BGE for commercial games (except Dead Cyborg AFAIK).
Unity on the other hand is a pretty good cross platform engine, which works well with Blender.
Sure, Unity has some flaws too. But all in all it is perfect for indie developers. And it is really easy to handle. Something I can't say about BGE.
For experimenting BGE is quite nice. And its good to make your first steps into games development. But not for serious commercial games. Alone the licence terms of the BGE are a deal breaker for commercial games.
Thank you so much you guys rock!!
Someone give a medal to whomever posted this article!