Pro and Indie interoperability for individuals

Unity Engine
1

Hi! I think I’m about ready to pick up a copy of Unity for myself. I’m impressed and inspired :shock: Kudos to everyone involved (not just the tech people :slight_smile: ). At this point, I just have one general question, and a few related follow-up questions.

I tried searching the forums for these questions, but I couldn’t manage to nail anything down. I also read all of the easily accessible documentation I could find. If this is answered somewhere already: sorry.

A friend and I want to develop a brainchild in our spare time. There’s no company or legal entity, it’s just the two of us. I happen to work for a professional game developer, but this project has nothing to do with the company I work for. We don’t use Unity at my company (yet :wink: ) My friend doesn’t work in the industry. I may be lucky enough to have the money to spring for a Pro license, but my friend may not be so lucky (I haven’t asked).

If I have the Pro version and he has the Indie version, will we be able to work on the same project files without any loss of data? I understand that the Indie version won’t run any Pro-only functionality, but will the data be preserved if he loads my Pro-created project and then saves it with his Indie version, or will the unsupported stuff be stripped? In other words: can we safely mix license types or do we both need the same license type to work on the same files?

I assume that this kind of usage wouldn’t violate the EULA since we’re just two guys working at home in our spare time. Yes?

The last question is a little more complicated. Suppose that my friend and I get the game to a playable state, show it to the people I work for, and they like it and decide they want to show it to some publishers and possibly get it on shelves/downloads for us. At that point, the game would transition from being something developed in my spare time, completely using my own resources, to something that the company owns (ignoring content licensing issues). What’s the correct path at this point for Unity licensing, etc? The studio would, of course, buy a copy of Unity Pro (and possibly additional platform licenses), but is that it, and what about my friend and I? More than anything, I just want to know what my options will be, and how to avoid any problematic situations if something like that were to happen. If things work out well, maybe I could convert my people to a Unity studio :slight_smile:

Feel free to email me, redirect me, etc.

Thanks!

2

There isn’t really a demo version, an Indie version, and a Pro version. There’s just one Unity app (well, actually Unity iPhone really is a different version). The only difference is your license code, which may limit certain features you can access, but that’s all. Otherwise UT would have to make different versions for every sample project, not to mention that people would have to make different versions of .unitypackage files and so on, and it would just be a mess.

–Eric

3

It thought needs to be pointed out that you are not allowed to work with mixed licenses on a project. Either all have Pro or all Indie.

4

I understood that the license restriction was that an institution or entity licensing Unity can’t mix both Indie and Pro. I can’t see why limit mixing licenses between individuals working together on an ad-hoc project. For one, it would make a lot of collaborations that just emerge on the forums against the license.

5

Collaboration here on the board is not working together on a project thought.
Neither is this the case when collaborating in the Wiki.

The idea behind it is likely what the thread starter also seems to attempt: gainging Pro building benefits while only one of the developers on the project has Pro which definitely can’t be the idea.
To deploy a Pro project, all assigned developers need to be on Pro.

What he could check back with Unity is if it would be fine if they restricted their usage to the Indie capabilities and build the game with Unity Indie.

6

The site is unfortunately ambiguous:

The license, however, makes no mention of teams.

I don’t think it would make any sense to attempt to limit what ad hoc teams can collaborate on, nor to attempt to regulate interactions between people. It’d relegate Indie users, who probably just came into the platform, to a lower caste where they can’t join in projects with people with Pro.

Can we get an official Unity clarification on this, just to be on the safe side?

7

Back to some of the original query on porting from Indie to Pro. I did some initial programming in Indie to see if I could make some playback controls on an animation in a scene. All went well. But when I copied the code into Pro, nothing worked. (I should note that we bought Indie but had to ask for a demo version of Pro to make our interactive animation look better. We do plan on buying Pro if the client likes what he sees.)

I was getting errors left and right. Most of my simple programming was done on the Main Camera (i.e., simple transform.Translate code using the arrow keys for X and Z motion). But when I did that same code on the Main Camera in Pro, it started telling me that “z” was not defined and I was getting other errors.

Are there any known issue with porting scripts from Indie to Pro? I wouldn’t think so since they’re the same app, but something was going awry here! Any help there?

8

there is no porting involved
sounds more like you came up with the idea to copy the files which will not work as the meta data is missing.

you can just open the project after you installed the pro trial license and pro will start and work without any problem as Unity Indie is a subset of Unity Pro

The only case where things will potentially not work is when you go from Unity to Unity iPhone as the iphone is much weaker and so various things do not exist.

9

The only thing about that is I tried writing it from scratch, too. Since it was on a different computer altogether, I wasn’t able to copy and paste per se. The code I attached to the main camera was:

var speed = 5.0;
function Update () {
var x=Input.GetAxis(“Horizontal”) * Time.deltaTime * speed;
var z=Input.GetAxis(“Vertical”) * Time.deltaTime * speed;
transform.Translate (x,0,z);
}

Pretty simple. But when I typed that into the Pro version and attached it to the Main Camera. I got errors. I should also note that I’m a newbie and not familiar with the meta data you mentioned. This is probably a discussion for another forum, but it does involve the “porting” of scripts from Indie to Pro. Especially from different computers.

10

Yes, the two of you can move back and forth without data loss. As you said, problems will occur if you attempt to include Pro specific features.

If it’s just the two of you sitting around at home working on a non-commercial project then you’re in the clear. But…

At that point (when it becomes a commercial effort) you then need to get everyone up to the same license standard, in this case anyone touching or working on the project inside of Unity needs to own Unity Pro. Once you’ve done that then you’re free to finish up the project and publish away.

11

Scripts should not need any porting - and if it’s just about scripts, the metadata is also not really relevant. So my guess would be that something went wrong while “re-coding” that snippet. I don’t see a problem with the code, though.

In general, you can use “Assets / Export Package” to export a whole package e.g. including prefabs, models and so on (and scripts, of course) and then use “Assets / Import Package” on the target machine. That way, you also get all meta-data (e.g. for prefabs, imported models and the like).

12

Thanks for the insight. I’ll be back on that this week to get it working.

Regarding the licensing and getting everyone up on the same platform. Our company’s plan is to push out this demo using Indie to test our scripts while we get our assets, animations, textures and lighting complete on the Pro. Then we copy the code over to the Pro and push it out to a deliverable. If the client is a go, then we will develop on the Pro.

Question (you may have already answered this, but I’m still unclear): Once our project is a go and we start developing. We will purchase the Pro version. However, we’ve already purchased the Indie version, too. Would it be a violation to use the Indie to work on our scripts while we do production on the Pro?

Here’s why I don’t think it SHOULD be a violation. We are using the Indie for simple script creation and testing. However, our Pro platform is being used to create and deliver. Is there a yes or no answer to that issue?

13

Sorry. I re-read your post. It is clear that we should ONLY be developing both scripts and the game portion on Unity 3D Pro. Is that correct?

14

I have answered it clearly, once it’s a “company project” (and not just you and a friend tinkering around), then everyone touching the project in Unity needs to have the same license type, and in this case that means everyone needs to upgrade to Pro.

What’s more is that if the company had more than $100000 in gross revenue last year, that company should never buy Unity Indie anyway as that’s license restricted (any entity, person or company, with more than $100K in turnover is obligated to buy Pro).

15

Good to know, HiggyB!
Thanks for your response. I will give Unity3D this. I have never worked in 3D or game programming, but the simplicity of the scripting language in JavaScript and being a Web designer made it pretty easy for me to jump in. The tutorials were very helpful, too.

Looking forward to finally purchasing the Pro version when the client gets this project funded!

16

Perfect! Thanks, Higgy. That’s what I was hoping to hear.