Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
in the dedicated forums, and by the developers, as Unity comes with very detailed
and extensive documentation.
Unfortunately, there are also reasons why not all developers, especially the true pro-
fessionals, are so fond of Unity 3D. As it often happens with many engines, once the
initial enthusiasm for its intuitive interface goes down, problems start arising. First of
all the quality of lights and rendered graphics in Unity is not as good as other tools,
unless you know how to code your own shaders. Shadows tend to look low resol-
ution, and as we already mentioned, dynamic shadows are only available with the
Pro version. The terrain editor looks dated, as for example, it doesn't allow creating
destructible terrains. The physics engine is blamed for creating performance issues
and there's no native pathfinding, nav-mesh, or AI support, unless you turn to the
latest pro version of the engine or third-party middleware. Finally, as we stated pre-
viously, Unity is not cheap for the average indie developer, to create games for the
mobile market you are required to invest not less than $3000 in licenses.
Before ending this section on Unity 3D, we would like to mention the Asset Store. It is
a collection of asset packages which contain 3D models, textures, materials, sound
effects, particle systems, scripts, and networking resources which can be bought and
then implemented in your game. The Asset Store allows the community around Un-
ity 3D to share contents and has turned this engine into a perfect tool to begin the
game developing business.
In the following screenshot you can appreciate a popular game developed with Unity
3D:
CSR Racing
by Natural Motion for the iPhone.
