Is Unity the best option?

News & General Discussion
1

I will try to make this as simply complex of a question as I can. Basically I have a card/board game I have been play testing for over a year. General outline; 1-4 Players, You can produce units, structures, and research during anyones turn but you only get currency and attack(s) during your turn. The game time is counted down by cycles not turns (cycle; once every player goes and it gets back to the first player again). There would be no movement of units. You may attack the HQ(player’s hp), or any other unit. Basically its a mix of Starcraft and MTG. The only unit animations would be production (entering the battlefield), resting, attacking, taking damage, and death (leaving the battlefield). It will be a top down view, with 3d models, very similar to starcraft 2/ warcraft 3. The structures will also be 3d models, but I want the actual play area to be 2d. As far as programming goes I have never worked with unity before, my only actual programming experience is in visual basic which I’m almost positive wont help me here. This game is going to be produced for ios, pc, and hopefully android. I hope I have provided enough information for someone to properly answer my questions.

Question 1- Is Unity a good choice for this kind of build?

Question 2- If the answer to question 1 is yes, then how complicated would the programming for this be?

Question 3- would this be considered 2.5d or a 3d game?

Question 4- does anyone have any links, sources, or tips that would help?

Question 5- In this scenario how hard would it to be make it so one person can play by themselves against an AI

Question 6- If I paid someone else for the programming of this game what do you think would be the average build time/cost.
Question 7-Is there any limitations to this kind of game by using Unity?

Question 8- In the end is Unity the best option for this type of game, or even if it is not the ‘best’ is a viable option?

Just to reiterate this is already a fully functional game that has been invented by myself, play tested for the last year, and has solid mechanics. But I feel wireless gaming definitely surpassing traditional gaming, so I would like to move this to the forefront of gaming. Thank you for your time and answers. Sincerely, Pixel Mush Gaming

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Hello, your post is a little bit of a PixelMush, and will suffer from the tldr syndrome.

I recommend you separate your Questions and use paragraphs and spaces for your entire post.

Eaxample:

Question 1- Is Unity a good choice for this kind of build?
Question 2- If the answer to question 1 is yes, then how complicated would the programming for this be?
Question 3- would this be considered 2.5d or a 3d game?
Question 4- does anyone have any links, sources, or tips that would help?
Question 5- In this scenario how hard would it to be make it so one person can play by themselves against an AI
Question 6- If I paid someone else for the programming of this game what do you think would be the average build time/cost.
Question 7-Is there any limitations to this kind of game by using Unity? Question 8- In the end is Unity the best option for this type of game, or even if it is not the ‘best’ is a viable option?

And do something similar to format the rest, then people might read it. Good luck!

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1.Yes,
If it works as a tabletop it can be done in any game engine. Unity as been a solid option for the last years.
As for programming there are a few visual scripting options, like playmaker, that will enable you to build a game. Check the video tutorials on yt to see if that suits you.

ps: And do follow Thiago advice.

4

Question 1- Is Unity a good choice for this kind of build?

  • Yes. Unity has solid support for deploying to lots of different platforms, and is relatively easy to work with.

Question 2- If the answer to question 1 is yes, then how complicated would the programming for this be?

  • It will be exactly as complicated as your game logic. Importing and animating models, moving game objects around, and playing particles systems is easy in Unity. There are lots of useful helper functions to deal with the 3D math (look at object, rotate around axis, etc). If you have any programming experience at all, it should help you out. It helps to know some basic concepts like loops and variables. I would recommend sticking to C# for most of your game logic; visual scripting is useful for simple game states and connecting functionality together, but it’s a bit inefficient for encoding complex logic.

Question 3- would this be considered 2.5d or a 3d game?

  • Sounds like 2.5D to me.

Question 4- does anyone have any links, sources, or tips that would help?

  • These forums and Unity Answers. One of Unity’s benefits is that there is a lot of discussions and tutorials out there already. You can search for almost anything and find a forum discussion about it somewhere. The only downside is that they are sometimes outdated.

Question 5- In this scenario how hard would it to be make it so one person can play by themselves against an AI

  • Creating an AI that is challenging for humans is very difficult. Humans are notoriously good at recognizing and exploiting patterns so your AI would have to be fairly sophisticated to compete.

Question 6- If I paid someone else for the programming of this game what do you think would be the average build time/cost.
Without knowing much about your game, I wouldn’t trust anyone who says they can make it in any less then ~6 months. So expect to pay someone full-time wages that long to build it.

Question 7-Is there any limitations to this kind of game by using Unity?

  • Nothing specific to your game. There are just Unity specific limitations. You’ll be using Unity’s rendering pipeline, their implementation of Mono (be careful with garbage collection), and a slightly outdated version of PhysX, etc. If you are using Unity Free you also have additional limitations. There is nothing that I think would be a deal breaker for the game you describe, however.

Question 8- In the end is Unity the best option for this type of game, or even if it is not the ‘best’ is a viable option?

  • It is definitely viable even with Unity Free, and Unity Pro would be even better. Something like UE4 would give you better graphics right now, but they don’t support as many platforms, it’s still undergoing a lot of development, and I think it has a bit of steeper learning curve than Unity. I can’t think of anything else that is competitive with Unity right now (which is obviously why I’m using it).
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Sorry I posted it from my phone with correct spacing but it smashed it all up. Hope the edit makes it a little nicer.

Thank you for the answers everyone. CaptainScience I appreciate the thoroughness of your answers, I will definitely keep looking into Unity. If anyone else has anything else to add it would be much appreciated if not I will definitely post any further questions… with correct spacing.

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Honestly, if you don’t know a lot about programming, I would use Unreal Engine 4 instead. Blueprints, aka visual scripting, are lightyears ahead of anything similar available in unity (plugins like playmaker, etc.). Blueprints are very intuitive and easy to use as they are contextual (the editor will tell you what functions, etc. that you can use based on the object you have selected in the editor. I’m making a fairly complex game in Unreal Engine and I haven’t touched a single line of code. I have yet to find something I couldn’t do with blueprints.

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I will definitely look into that as well thank you.

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Don’t be fooled, Blueprint is sexy like playmaker but it’s for prototyping not for making an entire game.(even Epic say that)
Unless you don’t want to finish any game and stay with a big blueprint spagetti full of bug, you should learn programing with text (or find someone). C++ or C#
You can make a flappy bird clone with blueprint, but your productivity will go down for bigger project.

Programming is not as complicated as people think, and it’s not as complicate as it was. C# is a lot easier for beginner than C++.
And beginner will make a lot less bug in c# than in C++.

If you know how to program in one langage (visual basic) it is really easy to learn a new langage. Really!
Look at the code of tutorial and I’m pertty sure you will understand how it works.

You can probably make this RTS game with Unity Free.
I made this RTS with UNITY (pro):
http://www.wildfactor.net/go/freaking-meatbags

.

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When it’s done send me a link, I need some good examples of fairy complex games made using blueprint.

(pun intended)