Hello people!
Some of you surely remember Dear Esther. The game got mixed responses at the time, because it clearly wasn’t for everybody. However, one thing that most people agreed on was that it looked more than just good. This was even more surprising considering that Dear Esther was built on Valve’s Source Engine which - at the time already - looked very dated.
Long story short:
Because of problems with the Linux, Mac and PS3 ports, this game is currently being ported to Unity.
I personally think this is a great move.
Like quite a few people, I own Dear Esther on Steam, but can’t play it on Linux which I find very disappointing.
Even though I wasn’t really into Dear Esther personally, I see the appeal to other people for sure. I actually assumed it was made in Unity when i played it.
Awsome news thanks for sharing! I never got to play Dear Esther but always heard about it and was interested. now I guess ill wait until the unity version is finished. Really great blog post. The gifs posted of current progress look fantastic.
@Iamdabawss, unity + Playmaker alone truly is a fantastic, much more efficient and productive way to develop games. Im sure shader forge is an excellent add on to combine with the two as well. I want to get it now from the asset store so I can also have the complete “holy trinity”
Nice article, especially the surprise licensing parts. I shudder to think about that situation. Also that’s the exact type of situation that people seem to forget about when comparing Unity to other engines.
Huge shame that they didn’t consider getting out of their comfort zone and trying something new earlier, it may have saved them a lot of money.
I personally would have found it a really difficult decision to make having invested a lot of money in the source engine and then cutting my losses and moving to a new engine, having all my previous efforts and money wasted.
Having developed for the Source engine before(Pirates, Vikings, and Knights 2), I can say that the art and animation pipeline in Source is an absolute nightmare to work with. People often take for granted how easy it is to get an assets into Unity. Just save an fbx in the assets folder. With Source, just to see your model in-game, you have to export to a special format that is then referenced from a script where you define all the paths that is then fed into a command line tool gives you your model. But wait- then you have to convert the texture into their format and write a material in a text editor.
Granted, the Source engine is 10 years old now and quite archaic. I’m glad to see them switch.
Being a big fan of “Dear Esther” I am surprised they haven’t moved earlier As others mentioned, the art pipeline, deployment features and future costs are something to consider when picking an engine. Unity wins in many of these areas but personally I think they need to step it up a bit in the “visual” and “performance” area. Anyhow, all the best to him.
Great find! While i didn’t enjoy the narrative, the journey was amazing and playing it with an Oculus Rift in a hacky way was one of my all time true transformative gaming experiences that heavily influenced how i thought about games development since
Using unity, OR support is trivial and would fix the visual bugs and would be the first place i’d send anyone interested in the roots of my fascination with ‘walk em ups’. Great news - but i do hope they keep the crisp contrasty look of the original art and don’t overdo the graphics side of things, the game was a beauty on trusty old source
Well, Source has always been more of an in-house engine that you could license if you really, really wanted to. Valve’s main source of profits is Steam, no doubt.
If you want simplicity (in terms of workflow and such), you go with Unity.
If you want quality (in terms of technology), you go with the CryEngine.
If you want anything in between, you go with the UDK.
I cannot understand why anybody would license the Source engine. Aside from mapping, everything is such a pain in the ass; And it doesn’t even look that great.
I think source was the only free-to-try ‘quality’ engine 10 years ago… before Unity Indie.
It probably stuck in the mentality.
Oh, and one of the first to support Oculus Rift, which is relevant here. I almost puked after playing the first couple of levels of HL2 in OVR. But it was worth it.
I think there are plenty of great looking games using the Source engine, and the choice of using it may have been simply down to being unclear as to the alternatives. I’m mostly disappointed at Valve for being seemingly unsupportive
What games are you talking about?
Mods, sure. Source is THE engine if it comes to modding support and the modding community.
Complete games made with Source? I don’t know many considering Valve’s own do not count.
I would say:
If you want simplicity (in terms of workflow and such), you go with Unity.
If you want quality (in terms of technology), you go with Unity and stop being lazy.
If you want anything in between, you go with Unity.
I’ve seen pics of some really nice visuals from Unity, and you would never know about it because how Unity is. I’ve seen alot of good games that look dissimilar from each other, but great nonetheless. I can’t say that about UDK or CryEngine, as they look similar to each other.
Of course, most came from experienced devs who knew alot about it.
As others mentioned, the art pipeline, deployment features and future costs are something to consider when picking an engine. Unity wins in many of these areas but personally I think they need to step it up a bit in the “visual” and “performance” area. Anyhow, all the best to him.