Unity3d engine

posted on August 15th, 2012, 8:06 pm

The Future...

Recently Star Trek Infinite Space was canceled... as I am sure many of you read this sad news. In many ways this game would have been a modern day Armada 2. What is most interesting however this game was developed using the Unity3D Engine.

Unity3D is a free engine for anyone to use, and it made Infinite Space look stunning! I have read many times on these forums that modifications to Armada 2 is difficult at times because not having the original Engine 'Road Map'... if you will (You'll have to excuse my lack of correct terminology). I was curious to see if anyone had given an open source Engine such as Unity3D a serious look for porting all the programming, AI, etc to give Fleet Ops a fresh lease of life that will last for many more years.

There are some great ideas floating about and some great art work all over this site. It would be great to allow the artists a way to express themselves on an Engine that will show off their talents to the fullest.

I would love to hear everyones thoughts on this.

OneN7

posted on August 15th, 2012, 10:07 pm

Fleet Ops then would be browser-bound... I don't like....

posted on August 15th, 2012, 10:36 pm

As I understand it you have the option between browser based or old school disc distribution based. So for example you could have the game on www.fleetops.net and download the full game to be played offline on your PC.

Star Trek Infinite Space chose to go down the Browser Online game distribution, they were not restricted in any manor to distribute via any other format.

So technically nothing would change on Fleet Ops only the flexibility in the development process would be greatly enhanced.

posted on August 16th, 2012, 9:20 am

well, in the first place there would at least be a three year break before anything close to FO runs on that engine in the state we are now. And I don't see much fun in spending years for recreating something we already have

posted on August 16th, 2012, 12:49 pm

Personally I'm not a fan of the unity engine, and any serious game will just end up being limited by this kind of thing.

posted on August 16th, 2012, 12:54 pm

i am constantly searching for solutions on how we could free fleet operations from the limitations it is bound to now. unity 3d however is not what we are looking for.
Besides unity follows a completely different logic on how to integrate features (scripts). We'd be stuck in developing a playable armada-like gameplay for a long time. Proper AI support is another topic. Not really an option for us now.

posted on August 16th, 2012, 2:49 pm

First off, Unity isn't limited to the browser, but it does have a convenient plugin. Secondly, Unity is a little script happy when it comes to actually writing game code. Now I haven't used it enough to be sure, but unless it compiles it to some binary form, scripts will run slower than compiled code. And when you have 100+ objects in game all at once, that get's slow. So Unity would really not by my first choice to replace the A2 engine.

So yeah, as ancient as A2 is, I'd rather not wait the better part of a decade for the next release. Now you guys are welcome to work on this secretly behind the scenes while still updating the A2 engine

posted on August 16th, 2012, 6:09 pm

Great idea...

Realistically not possible...

It was worth a try.

posted on August 16th, 2012, 7:36 pm

It's alright. I suspect that something will have to happen eventually but it will probably be a while.

posted on August 27th, 2012, 3:04 pm

Even if Unity 3D were superior to he A2 engine in every way, it would still take a really long time to port over things. And since it doesn't have a lot of the features of the A2 engine, they would have to be recreated entirely.