Eve Online using Unity :)

[MaxieQ]

Team Avatar and the future of our prototype - EVE General Discussion - EVE...

Over three months we concentrated on the minute by minute gameplay of actually being inside a long abandoned structure, the hazards that it would contain and how the players might deal with them and any uninvited guests. We used the Unity engine which is a great game engine for prototyping in as it lets us create environments and gameplay very, very fast and iterate on it equally quickly. A lot of our art is much more abstract (a “grey box”) than you’d see in a final game. This is due to us concentrating on the gameplay first and foremost whilst also recognizing that ambience plays an important role in how a game feels. We do throw in the occasional EVE asset here and there for flavor but those are not descriptive of any final theming or style.

This DEV post from CCP was published back in October. Either my search totally fails me, or this hasn’t been brought up here.

As an avid Eve fan, I thought this was interesting. What do you think?

[BrUnO-XaVIeR]

To me sounds like they are using Unity as a mere sandbox to try new features instead of messing with real game’s large code base where the ‘game engine’ is the game itself.
Is not exactly “Eve is using Unity”.

[khanstruct1]

@BrUnO XaVIeR

To me sounds like they are using Unity as a mere sandbox to try new features instead of messing with real game’s large code base where the ‘game engine’ is the game itself.
Is not exactly “Eve is using Unity”.

Well, it’d be more accurate to say CCP using Unity. Very good press for UT though.

[MaxieQ]

@BrUnO XaVIeR

To me sounds like they are using Unity as a mere sandbox to try new features instead of messing with real game’s large code base where the ‘game engine’ is the game itself.
Is not exactly “Eve is using Unity”.

No, it sounds like the Eve devs think that Unity is mature and advanced enough for internal prototype work, instead of using their own Carbon engine. Which sounds nice to me.

[Metron]

A friend of mine (and former colleague) is working at CCP and earlier this year we had discussions about Unity. He told me that they’re using Unity for sandboxing and prototyping before porting important features into Eve.

[Starsman_Games]

@BrUnO XaVIeR

To me sounds like they are using Unity as a mere sandbox to try new features instead of messing with real game’s large code base where the ‘game engine’ is the game itself.
Is not exactly “Eve is using Unity”.

That’s what it sounds to me too. It’s what I did with GameSalad for Misu Misu Kaboom. Prototyped there VERY fast (for 2d game) then went to work hard in Unity (that is not as 2D friendly) for the performance and control.

@MaxieQ

No, it sounds like the Eve devs think that Unity is mature and advanced enough for internal prototype work, instead of using their own Carbon engine. Which sounds nice to me.

Not necesarely. They said “gray boxes”. That means they are simply using the same old built in primitives that Unity can create quickly. It is also very likely their actual in-house engine also reads C# as a script, so they can experiment with stuff in unity without even compiling, then when they are ready for serious work they do actual build and test in their internal beta servers.

From the article:

The prototyping work they have done in Unity has allowed them to rapidly explore different themes and make a game which is challenging, fun and in the true spirit of EVE.

So I think they are using Unity exclusively to prototype. No animations or anything, just move blocks instead of bodies around and figure out “nah, this is not as fun as I thought at first, lets try the other ideas” until they hit the perfect combination to spend the big hours developing.

[Starsman_Games]

@Metron

A friend of mine (and former colleague) is working at CCP and earlier this year we had discussions about Unity. He told me that they’re using Unity for sandboxing and prototyping before porting important features into Eve.

Bah should read the full thread first. Anyways, Metron seems to confirm it.

[MaxieQ]

@Starsman Games

Not necesarely. They said “gray boxes”. That means they are simply using the same old built in primitives that Unity can create quickly. It is also very likely their actual in-house engine also reads C# as a script, so they can experiment with stuff in unity without even compiling, then when they are ready for serious work they do actual build and test in their internal beta servers.

Maybe. I don’t know. As far as I know, their preferred scripting language is Stackless Python. CCP sponsors the development of it according to their home page. With Stackless python, you’re decoupling the language from the C language stack and can have multiple threads, or hundreds of thousands of micro-threads. But that’s far outside the scope of my initial ‘What? Yay!’ post above.