Okay so i am a recent graduate of game development and have a BA. I have created 3 game dev projects myself with 2 different groups of people. Both were 2d games with some 3d elements in one of them. My old group from my community college wants to get a project together and i am joining on as an artist or level designer. I have heard about unity from my recent school for iphone development but with android taking on a bigger role for app developers its a decent platform to consider. Now the people in my group all have android phones, and we decided to do a game for the platform. My friend came up with a game concept thats not far off from rpgs but wont be as open as rpgs and will be more linear. The game will be in a 2d format. Think the legend of zelda for nintendo ds. I guess my question is more about unity. The unity engine level editor. Am i to assume the editor itself will allow me to create landscapes? And then use my own texture to paint the landscapes or should we do this in photoshop or maya? I have experience using the crytek level editor 2 and the company of heroes editor. If the unity editor is along those lines of use then this could be easy for me. We plan on having chasms to jump across. If this is to be a simple side scrolling adventure like Mario then i would understand what needs to be done for the level layout due to past exp. making that type of game.
Another question would be, what language should our programmers having an understanding of? C++ or Java? I know most android evelopment is based off of java but unity is c++ as well. What would be the earliest version of android should we target? Most of us have 2.2 and most of us will probably get the 2.3 update by fall. If i have any other questions i will post them here.
You create assets in other apps. The only asset creation Unity has is terrains (which aren’t currently supported on mobile platforms, but will be in the next release).
Unity uses neither Java nor C++. You can use C#, Unityscript, or Boo.
You don’t need to; you can if you want. It’s unique to Unity, but is similar to Actionscript 3 and JScript.NET. It’s often called “Javascript”, but that’s misleading since it’s really not Javascript at all.
Thanks Eric. I saw that you have a link to a program called Fratscape. It reminds me of the crytek level editor. Would those terrains import into unity easily? Sorry if i am asking so much, we are looking for a good game engine for android.
Unity is written in c++ no doubt but scripting in Unity engine, mostly Javascript(UnityScript), C#(Not C++), Boo(Like Python). If your programmers are more comfortable with C++/Java should take a look at C# which is somewhat similar. And yes Unity is great for building Apps.
As for the version i don’t think there will be any incompatible issues except that Older versions are confirmed running older hardwares thus laggy/choppy. Just aim for the latest stable version (Not the latest). That would be fine.
Making for android can be a bit troublesome because of the android device fragmentation. But otherwise Unity handles it quite well.
C++ is a programming language, Java is a script programming language. They do fall into the same level of programming. You can use any which one is better according to you.
Basically you’d handle the Spirtes same as a 3D model. You’d have a quad (2 triangle) mesh, where you set the spire texture and make sure that the spirte is always directed toward the camera and then change the spirt graphics depending on the animation. zenonia3 isn’t 3d with spirtes btw. but spectral souls is
