Distance & Unity 4

elanthis · #1 3rd November 2012, 10:29 PM

Some good friends of mine have announced full Linux support for their upcoming game, Distance - A Next Generation Arcade Shooter. The team has already proven themselves with the spiritual prequel to the game, called Nitronic Rush, which has been the most popular student game released to date. The core team working on Distance are excellent folks: Kyle is super passionate about game development, Jason is one of the brightest engineers I've ever met, and Jordan is an extremely driven and talented developer. These are good people, working on a good game, and they're excited about being able to deliver a Linux version with Unity 4.

Unity 4's beta is out this week, and it has working Linux deployment support. The Distance folks have already tested it out and found out it's working great, hence their ability to commit to Linux support. Even if by some crazy happenstance you're not interested in Distance, at least send a thanks over to the Unity folks for getting Linux support working ahead of their own posted schedule.

Obviously if you're opposed to non-FLOSS gaming on Linux, this probably isn't news you care about.

kpedersen · #2 4th November 2012, 08:15 PM

We have been evaluating the Unity 4 beta Linux support at work, it works much smoother than the mobile platforms (which usually need tweaking of code / assets).

I still don't feel that Unity will be used for AAA titles any time soon, and for indie stuff, the Linux community already have some pretty awesome stuff (Irrlicht, Ogre3D, pure OpenGL etc...).

What really pisses me off though is that Unity (including the free version) requires online activation. Which means it will not be around in about 4 years so I ain't happy about spending my time learning it.
It also means that there is no Free version of Unity, only an unspecified time limited demo.

A note for hobby games developers... don't waste your time leaning Unity, you wont improve your game development skills, you will only learn how to cobble things together for Unity. Learn OpenGL instead, every company will respect that a lot more!.