I’m sure many of you heard of gamesalad and App Inventor (google dropping it soon).
I was wondering of unity has any plans to provide application to make games/apps without coding?
For those who prefer to code, especially complexed stuff can do so, but for casual developers an option to build without code?
Not gonna happen or should I cross my fingers?
There are extensions in the asset store that let you “visually code” (I don’t use them so I don’t know how easy they are)
Otherwise, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Personally I don’t think it’s that hard to learn how to competently code. Unity is pretty easy and I went into it with next to no coding knowledge and I can now hold my own making scripts.
I saw your quote, and what was your path to enlightenment. Where did you get your best learning from?
I’ll look into visually code, thanks.
I understand but i just want to make casual games/apps. I’m just not a programmer by heart.
I was hoping Unity had something for people that don’t prefer coding.
Well, Unity will never support such a thing… Unity’s one of the main appeals is that it can easily create ANY type of game. If they were to support no coding games, then they would lose that. And they never will.
I am not talking about eliminating coding all together. Coding will always be there and should be there for complexed games.
I was wondering if Unity supports something to make casual games/apps with no coding involved. (ie gamesalad, app inventor)
You could look at custom made prefabs or custom visual coding plugins like playmaker/vizio/uscript. And some others, can’t recall all of them.
if this starts happening then game industry might loose programmers… i mean, programmers will exist only as software developers, hence they will make the softwares like you said, but this could make less people be intrested in programming, since there are many people becoming programmers just for game developing.
What I’ve seen in my experience, is that the easier the programming method, the less control you have over things.
Depends on what you want to make. If you want to invent new creative gameplays, you’re going to want to have control.
Ironically, the lack of control that “easy game makers” give you, makes it harder for you to make complex things, because when something fails, you’re not in control, and how can you fix something you don’t control?
Unity has a nice balance of control and… “easiness”, I wouldn’t ask it to be simpler or more automated, at the expense of control over things.
If really want to use Unity, you can find scripts that do what you want, without needing to code things yourself. But I’d recommend that you tried getting into coding yourself, you might find it’s super fun! X)
I don’t think you know how to use unity well enough yet. For example in my app, I wanted a ribbon, which was attached to something in the game world so I created a boned mesh exported as FBX then clicked the bones and added physics components to create a chain. Then I clicked the top bone I wanted to attach it to and added a script called myparent.
The code is:
var parent:GameObject;
function Start()
{
transform.parent = parent;
}
Thats it. Then I dragged the object I wanted to be it’s parent, into the new gui field that appeared on the unity ui called parent, and hit play - instant cloth that hangs realistic from the object of my choice. I made this a prefab so I can hang bits of cloth anywhere I want.
This is how unity works: most of it is visually driven with tiny scripts to deal with the small details. It honestly does not, can not, get easier than this.
It can get easier. A lot of people would read your post and not understand it. There is a steep learning curve to Unity that many do not get far into.
There are bespoke engines written especially for a project at the top end in complexity, down through Unity and way beyond to very simple. As things get simpler, the more limited the potential, but the more accessible it becomes. Where people are willing to go in that balance will vary.
Unity does fantastically well in potential given its accessibility, but it isn’t at the only valid point in those trade-offs.
I agree with this^^
I think there are already generally code-free stuff out there, like drag n drop stuff.
I love Unity because it is like the best of both worlds, or has the potential to be anyhow.
I bucked up and jumped headfirst into C# and am loving it.
There is a certain way of thinking when game making that you probably have but just timid to try. If you can do drag n drop, you can code.
It’s all logic thinking, but instead of dragging pre-made tree and door sprites, you are adding and moving lines of code!
Now, that code is something that can exist, and you copy it, look at it, and tweak it to your liking. That’s a start!
Coding will give u so much more freedom to be specific in what things do.
What I would hope for in Unity is that it becomes so streamlined and mainstream that it becomes an industry standard, in the way that Maya has permeated the industry.
good luck!
-Welby
It is already for casuals. You don’t need to have a higher degree in math or graphical computing nor anything alike to create a game just basic logical thinking, a tad dedication and some time 
Creating a game without coding will never work, no matter what you do.
Visual Coding doesn’t change that, it just is the same code in a different form.
It can only degenerate creativity and quality of games to the degree GameSalad degenerated it, where the games are due to its restrictions that shallow and boring that I hope that apple will soon prevent gamesalad titles from hitting the AppStores at all.
Unity even when you know basically nothing about it is already several times more powerfull and flexible than GameSalad if you are an expert in it
As for AppInventor: I’m on its beta and if you believe that you can create anything even halfway meaningfull without knowing to code, you heavily overestimate what it can do. You will do extremely complex blocks to achieve trivial things pretty regularly (things that would need 2 lines of code but a 6 level deep block construct to work even remotely as well in Inventor)
You are basically always much better off when you learn the basics of coding and go from there.
Learn UnityScript, its easy and doesn’t force you to learn OOP for example.
On top of that invest into PlayMaker on the Asset Store and you have a system that will allow you to create a lot of common blocks with the out of my view best approach, State Machine, cause games are practically always state machines yet people new to programming don’t realize that and instead try to solve problems with very ugly code spaghetti massacres which neither them nor anyone else will be able to ever update again 
(some people will or did list uScript / Antares Universe, but those are real visual programming languages where you still need to know how programming works, how code flows work etc, to me they only make sense if you have a reasonable programming background already unlike PlayMaker that allows you to setup states and create interaction relatively easy even without a real programming background yet)
For visual effects, where the regular shaders aren’t enough, look into Strumpys Shader Editor (free on asset store) or the non free shader editor which works differently and might be more of your type depending on your background.
If you can’t be bothered to learn the basics you need…
It (generally means) you have absolutely no comprehension of what’s happening…
Which means your not going to go anywhere no matters the form of programming. You’ll either be unable to implement the effects you want or simply run into bugs because of misunderstanding.
That said, there is a perfectly good engine out there that enables you to drag and drop code (at the cost of harder to use scripting), and is about to become multi-platform:
I understand what everyone is saying.
But my point is simple, is Unity too complex for developers who want to make casual games for phones? In other words, is it practical for a new developer with limited programming experience to learn Unity just to make casual games?
Hope my analogy below makes sense.
Why buy a $300,000 Lamborghini (unity) to race a Prius(Casual Game). I can just buy a $60,000 Porsche (gamesalad).
Do I make sense or am I clueless…lol
I think there could be a middle ground/compromise if Unity wants to evolved into a more mass appeal kind of engine. The underlying Unity engine will still be the same - if you are a “coder” you still get access to get the most / speed / flexibility out of Unity by coding scripts.
But I think a lot of non-coders could probably benefit enormously if Unity allows them to just do higher level process (like how a human brain function) without touching the code. For example by providing encapsulated behaviors, logics, and state machines that user can meaningfully wire together.
For all the “coders” who thinks Unity shouldn’t do this - my argument will be this - You are NOT coding, you are scripting! In the temple of programmers, you are already practicing sacrilegious act against the coding Gods! REAL HAX0R CODE TO THE METAL ! ASM / MACHINE CODE NO LESS ! What Unity does right now is no less than what normal people really want. Unity is really just an abstraction layer to the underlying engine - even itself talks through APIs (another abstraction layer to the real metal/graphics card) to the system. Its job is to simplify the the process and make it easy and understandable for human consumption. I think going for the high level abstraction route is only a natural process of evolution for 3D game engines.
Unity is making it easier for people to create games, by continually improving the usability for every user be it Pro or Amateur - and I think that should always be the aim.
Actually I use unity3d to program. Scripting can be defined (if one wishes) to programming within a program. Another definition could be an interpreted language. Neither of which describe what I’m doing. If I wished I could ‘script’ unity by the first definition (and have done so in the past), but I currently program it.
Unity is designed to be powerful, and has a strong market.
While unity could go down dumber, there is strong competition in that market and honestly if you can’t handle this:
http://www.unity3dstudent.com/2010/07/beginner-b01-basic-collision-detection/
Then I doubt you’ll create a statistically significant revenue.
Creating games without writing code works since years. And the communities around those tools are not small. In 2D it`s Multimedia Fusion or Gamemaker by Yoyo to name two of them. But even clicking bricks together or choosing code snippets in a list of events is some kind of programming. The logical part remains.