Have you noticed how overrun the forum now is by all those evil PC users some feared. Funny if you’re remembering some of those rather large threads were concerned users were discussing how to deal with them.
I think the commUnity, with the help of moderators such as HiggyB, will be able to correct itself and teach the new kids how to behave soon enough. Let’s just be welcoming to all the newcomers (just like all you guys were when I was new) but also show them what proper forum etiquette is like around these parts.
What kind of bullshit thread is this :shock:
If you want to start a Mac users (wich it was before) vs PC flame war, wich basicly this thread is all about, let us know.
The only people who need to learn how to behave is you.
Good way to make us feel welcome, thanks.
The forum software here is PHPBB v2 at the moment. This is extremely basic compared to the newer v3 releases, which I’ve used. (v2 lacks a lot of useful moderation features, for example.)
From comments made by UT folks in these forums, it’s clear that a rollout of new forum software is in the works, which presumably means upgrading to PHPBB v3. (Or not; they might switch to vBulletin or some such.)
As for the signal:noise ratio, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw an increase in questions from neophytes, hence the appearance of per-forum FAQs. (I was a staff member at GameDev.Net for a short while, so I’ve seen what a high-traffic site looks like from the inside.)
I expect we’ll see a spike in new members around the beginning of each academic year as Unity is an excellent teaching tool. Now that it’s available for Windows, we should see an increase in the number of students using it.
The Windows release of the Unity Editor also makes books more viable. (And not just for games. Unity has uses in many related fields.) Whether UT are already on this I don’t know, but I would expect to see an ecosystem of books, videos and other support material appearing sooner or later as Unity takes off. Hell, I expect there’ll be a full-blown User Education Training department within a couple of years!
While I can understand where you are coming from (I am a PC only user) but I would try to take it easy. Taking a thread like this personally his how things get out of control. I would be hoping that taumel was joking when he posted this but I don’t see any real reason why this thread should still exist mainly because all I see this thread doing is creating problems. If there are issues with new users, that should be left to the forum mods to deal with.
Steady on, old chap! Be careful that you’re not mistaking an attempt at humour for a serious statement. Not everyone on these forums is a native speaker of English. (Taumel is German, if memory serves. I’m half-Italian, half-English.)
It’s possible Taumel was being sarcastic. Dry wit and sarcasm are the two hardest forms of humour to convey in a purely textual medium.
Sarcasm and irony are far more common in everyday conversation in most European countries than in, say, the US. The English language is almost tailor-made for this: it’s not unusual for a Brit to greet a close friend with a hearty, “How are you, you wanker?” This approach does not, however, work well in internet forums.
I don’t see any evidence of being “overrun” anywhere and most of us – including the UT guys themselves – are platform-agnostic. Macs just happened to be what they were using when the idea for Unity came about. (Apple hadn’t switched to Intel back then.)
Platform agnosticism is by far the best philosophy and one the moderators here will doubtless enforce with banhammers of the strongest steel. There is no “best” platform. Each provides an answer to a different set of questions.
Dont get me wrong, im not pulling out the lightsaber yet, but its quite impossible to see if it was for fun or sarcastic in the 2 posts, at all.
Ive just been around plenty of places on the internet, and so many “non” windows places hardly get big joy when windows users show up.
This engine just got out supporting windows, and this topic just seemed to me like a slap towards us windows users, as stated above, i see no “hints” it was just for fun, or sarcastic.
I thought the use of “evil” in Taumel’s post was a good hint, but I’m used to reading between the lines like this. British English is loaded with sarcasm and irony. (It’s a myth that Americans don’t understand irony, but they do use it far more sparingly. The upshot is that Americans expect some warning when it’s used.)
Remember, Unity is now at version 2.5; this is a mature product which already has an equally mature community. What is unusual is that most of that community is not American. I don’t expect flawless English worthy of Shakespeare, any more than an Italian would expect everyone here to be capable of writing like Alighieri.
Most European nations have a policy of teaching English as a Foreign Language as part of their national curricula, but the depth and quality of the teaching naturally varies. The upshot is people attempting to convey complex information, or ask difficult questions, using poor English. You have to be able to read between the lines to understand some of these.
I’ve taught English myself and have picked up some tricks for this, such as knowing that Latin-based languages give everything a gender, resulting in English like, “The mouse, she is not working!” Other languages have their own quirks which get reflected in attempts at English, such as subject / object ordering and the like. Once you learn to spot the patterns, it’s a lot easier to understand the text.
(Whether the above is a good reason for setting up dedicated foreign-language forums is another thread, but it may be a debate worth having.)
If you aren’t 100% certain that insult was intended, it’s better to assume that it wasn’t. If you are certain that insult was intended, don’t take it. It’s inevitable that we will see trolls here, but we’re not obliged to feed them.
HEE HEE HEE!
There. Its funny.
Just to be clear, it wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone by saying “people will learn how to behave”. That wasn’t meant as a derogatory comment; every forum has a different feel to its communications and sometimes it can take a while for new users to adapt to that. I, for one, am glad that we have so many new users on board. An even brighter future awaits Unity 
On a much lighter note:
That looks cool! I’m off to play with it.
stirmarco love your post made me laugh highly entertaining …splendid jolly good what what.!!
FYI, I’m 98% sure that taumel’s comment is dripping with gargantuan drops of sarcasm.
He is actually taking a swing at people who were fearful of the whole transition, not the “Windows” people. (myraneal, though, I think took him seriously, and was trying to assuage his “fears.” That’s where tone probably comes from.)
Two points:
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It IS a transition to a much more giant user base. That is more threatening to a forum’s coherence than what group it’s composed of.
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We ain’t seen nothing yet as far as numbers go, so taumel’s comment is premature in my estimation.
Anyway, none if it matters because, so far, UT has attracted people that are extremely passionate about games, often those who had difficulty getting into development for various roadblocks that Unity takes away. I expect most people here to learn to value the benefits of a tight-nit community and be great collaborators no matter their platform preference (and I’m not just talking about NEW people.)
Please don’t expect HiggyB to make it all happen on his own. :shock:
Best thing to do amongst the oncoming numbers is get familiar with the forum so when those noise signals go up, people can be kindly and helpfully redirected to faqs and threads that have just what they need. That’s our job most of the time, not HiggyB’s (though, he’s good at it!)
Also, Path does indeed look very nice and when I get to a certain project I’m trying to get to I’ll be all over it.
Indeed…there have been a lot of new users lately even before 2.5 was released (many Unity iPhone users I expect), and so far I’m just seeing a continuation of that curve rather than a massive spike.
Considering that Taumel is an evil PC user, of course he’s being sarcastic. 
–Eric
Well when posting stuff like that is forums, people need to be clearer on there tone as the is no tone with read word so stuff like putting a smile face at the end of a comment or doing something like can go a long ways in preventing misunderstanding. 
Unity’s publicity has been mainly viral.
Unity threatens the programmer-centric approach to game development. Conservatives in the industry will naturally resist such a change. Traditional middleware has tended to focus on programming libraries and ancillary tools. It’s only recently that we’ve seen an increased awareness of, and desire for, full development pipelines.
Many industry professionals still think of Unity as a cheesy “game-maker” application, so there’s still some education to be done there. (Admittedly, I see this less and less now.)
Unfortunately, most of the online game development communities still reflect the older, technology-led, approach to game development, with engineers forming the vast bulk of community membership. Artists seem to congregate in their own communities, often separate from their fellow colleagues. (GameDev.Net is a good illustration of this: a mere four forums for “Creative” members, while “Technical” members get fourteen as well as those in the “Special Interests” section!)
I don’t envy Tom and Sam their jobs. Selling a product is often just a matter of saying “It’s like X, but with Y and Z!” You can’t do that with Unity as there are no convenient frames of reference. It looks like no other game development tool on the market. (If anything, it looks more like an art tool, so static screenshots do it no favours.) Videos, an industry track record, and hands-on experience are the best way to get the message across, so I expect UT to stick to their present viral marketing and conferences path for a while yet.
(Pitching Unity at the education sector could pay off in the medium-term too, as students graduate and move into the industry. I don’t know if UT are already doing something like this.)
UT are heavily pitching unity to educational institutions in Denmark at least - don’t know about the global scale.
I think GDC will turn out to be quite essential in their marketing and they’re probably firing all marketing cannons there.
Only thing holding me back at the moment is the price for pro license.
I already wrote to Unity sales email about that though.
I just think, 1500 us$ for the “pro” version (wich i need for my project because of render 2 texture and more of the cut down limits of indie), is too much considering the other high end AAA engines comming out with nextgen shaders, source code access and such, for far far less (T3D for excample as one of them).
Im making my game only for Windows, not Mac, not iphone, not Wii and so forth, so im in a spot where im very unsure what i wish to do now (waiting responce from the Unity team though first).
So anyways, its like cost vs benefit vs market vs… accckkkk headacke comming up 
is to be assumed with this guy.
If you’ll notice, the people who took him seriously were teh n00bz. I don’t know the proper way of dealing with that, the getting to know people on the forums. There are lots of people who don’t post much, around here, who I ought to remember from older posts, but don’t. So sometimes, I’ll find somebody to be helpful in a recent thread, and then get surprised by looking in an old thread in which I posted, and see them there too, again being helpful.
Other high end AAA engines usually cost far far more, actually. If UT ever changes the price for Pro, I suspect it’s more likely they’d raise it, not lower it.
–Eric