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Pathfinder Online: It's UNITY!
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Member UncommonPosts: 3,219
This is an announcement we've been anxious to make for a very, very long time. The core of our software - the beating heart - of Pathfinder Online will be Unity.
We have been evaluating solutions in this space for more than a year, seeking the best fit of performance, code quality, reliability and flexibility. Over that time, Unity has moved to the center of our decision matrix. Yesterday we were able to complete negotiations and now we can make this announcement.
There are going to be several follow up announcements related to this big news - some you may be able to guess, but some will be a surprise! Over the next couple of days we'll be continuing to expand this story to explain how Unity helps us reach our goals and what it means to you, the players.
Our thanks to everyone at Unity who helped make this possible! Here's to a long and profitable relationship!
Pathfinder Online:
Pathfinder Online is designed to encourage human interaction between players. Economics, politics, and diplomacy will all play a huge part in this fantasy world. Originally a tabletop RPG, Pathfinder's world promises exploration and warfare in addition to player interaction. The tabletop RPG roots are influencing much of the character progression, a staple of MMOs. The fundraising goal is massive, but the developer is well on its way to the finish line. gameinformer ks compendium
Series of Unity Announcements:
(1) Unity Announcements: Macintosh Version!
Comments
If that is the same unity engine that BSG uses, then your setting yourself up for fail right off the bat.
I'm not sure it's going to be a browser experience like BSG. The whole Middleware approach needs announcing.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Who cares? And what is the point of the thread?
And to those saying a game is going to be bad because of the engine are retarded.
that is not entirely accurate. Each and every engine has a number of positives and minuses involved with thier use (otherwise there would only be a single engine) and while i share your sentiment, that calling the game bad entirely based on engine is ludicrous, this is fairly founded here. Unity in many ways is a "beginners" engine, which makes it great for indies and the like, but for something that should stand to have a great deal of polish, essentially a AAA title, Unity appears to be a poor choice.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
While the UNITY engine can do some decent things, I wouldn't consider this something to get excited about.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
A good choice. If they go at it in a right way, it's going to be profitable for all parties, and if they don't... well the bestest engine in the world wouldn't help them...
No, really. Unless they go overboard trying to implement "revolutionary gfx" or somesuch Unity will save them a lot of time and energy better spent on the core design - which is that they should be concentrating on anyways, considering the profile of their game. The players nowadays demand original and quality gameplay rather than flashy effects and gazillion polygons and Unity is perfectly suited for that. It's the GM studio of 3D world.
"Polish" has nothing to do with a game being "indie" or "AAA". Duh. The difference is how much emphasis you place on original gameplay itself rather than flash around an aged core. If I had an AAA budget and wanted to attempt a truly original and yet polished game, I'd choose Unity because the slight compromise in performance would give me an enormous return in terms of time spent on fiddling and polishing gameplay itself - and you need that if you want to do something new properly....
And if you manage to do something truly new AND polished, no one is going to give a damn about gfx or fancy shmancy VOs. Hence Minecraft.
Unity is a very good choice!
Open Source for players to add their own content...
"It would be awesome if you could duel your companion. Then you could solo pvp".--Thanes
City of Steam used Unity, and it's turning out pretty good.
I've messed around with it myself and I think what it allows a developer to do is to work on their design, not the subsystems of the game.
If the game doesn't turn out OK, I don't think it'll be because of Unity.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Unity seems like a good choice features wise, although I'm not sure how good it is in practice. Interstellar Marines uses Unity and looks alright, but it doesn't have any big, open areas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LW5GeY7lp7s#!
Generally it's interesting knowing which engine a mmorpg is using (mmo = connectivity of many players, good design, good engine and good implementation) &
... how much the developers feel comfortable disseminating information on their choice, use and other reasons for using such.
Afterall mmorpg players include a large number of technologically knowledgeable people who's opinions are invariably insightful on all sorts of aspects. Eg see diagram of HeroEngine Client-Server Architecture:
http://www.heroengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/heroengine_marketing_architecture.png
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Due to Unity being so readily available to developers on a budget it has a very mixed catalog of software titles using it it. Many of those titles have problems that some people seem to mistakenly blame on the engine whilst there aren't many (any?) games that have truly shown the full extent of what it can do. Their reasoning is akin to saying the Unreal engine is bad just because someone made a bad mod on it... Unity is quite a flexible kit and for the most part the quality of anything built on it is down to the developer.
This has actually piqued my interest in Pathfinder now. It could give the devs an unusual amount of flexibility for development...
They're not retarded. They just lack both the talent and creativity to use the engine beyond the sample code it comes with. In most cases, though, they have little or no knowledge of the engine outside of a game they saw or, at best, tinkering with sample code.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Updated the OP: Update #30: Unity Announcements: Macintosh Version!
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Bloody BS corporate speak.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
I tinkered with Unity, and it seemed pretty impressive. The time to go from zero to something that worked was very short. What could be done seemed limited mostly by how much effort was put into it, not by artificial restrictions in the engine.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Pretty much, like Deacon said, the Unity engine CAN do some pretty amazing things, personally its ability to port to different platforms is one of the best reasons to use it (most especially in mobile development) but I wouldn't really make a big fuss over it otherwise.
Well they plan to provide more updates on the choice coming over the next few days, Brian Fargo and chums have also gone for Unity, probably for similar reasons:
Unity Chosen to Drive Wasteland 2
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
To dream, perhaps to be.
They usually do their updates every other Wed and tomorrow should be their next one. I expect to see a lot more info around Unity and what it means for the game then.
Well that is radically different from my infomation. They are already fully funded from investors. This kickstarter is to add some talent to their dev staff and get the game ready for testing earlir. If they make the million it should enter early enrollment in 2015 instead of 2016. If they make two million (doesn't look likely) it would be even earlier. They have plans ready in case they get 3 million.
To dream, perhaps to be.
Being a Unity developer I disagree. The only direct limitation of Unity as far as MMOs is the server/client architecture and possibly the UI.
There are already solid, professionally built assets for those to be used in combination with Unity. Furthermore, with the experience they have on their team they could just as easily homebrew their own system to tie in with Unity. I would assume they've likely gotten the source code for Unity as part of their negotiation to make it even easier to tie in their own systems.
Finally, Unity has a lot of great functionality and enhancements that you might not get with MMO specific engines that will help speed up their development.