Yes, I realize, the “is Unity pro worth it” thread has been done to death. Yet here I am posting another, but with two key differences. First, I’d prefer to hear from people who actually own and use Unity pro so they can give informed opinions. If you like me are using Unity free, let’s let those who have gone before say their piece. Second, I’m going to give some specifics of my situation that may make the right answer more obvious to those in the know.
First off, cost is not the real issue. We’re well funded enough that Unity pro’s very reasonable $1500 price tag is not a serious issue. The reason this question comes up now is if we want to claim the Pro License as an expense for tax purposes, we need to buy before the end of the year. The real question for us is does Unity Pro actually present a sufficient value proposition in our specific circumstances vs. spending the same money other places. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s not worry about what the other tools that would be upgraded are, I’m trying to find out if I’m missing something about Unity Pro that I should know.
Here’s how I currently see the situation:
As our game is cell shaded and does not use Unity’s lights or shadows, the real time shadows are not of any value to us.
The built in pathfinding is nice in theory, but we’re already using Aaron Granberg’s A* pathfinding system which is largely acknowledged to be superior anyway.
The profiler seems the most relevant and useful tool in the Pro package, and there is no really good substitute for it available.
Upgrading to Pro means buying the pro versions of the output modules (iOS, Android, and in due course Windows 8 phone). These are five times as expensive as their indie counterparts which means the true cost of “going pro” is not $1500 but $5100 (assuming they keep the pricing structure the same for windows 8 phone as other mobile platforms). So far as I can tell, there is no substantial difference between the pro versions of these output modules and the indie versions. I’m sure I must be missing something here, so if some one can straighten me out on this I’d be obliged.
Given the above, the facts seem to point toward holding off on Unity Pro and spending the money elsewhere at this time. Yes, we do want to support Unity as we want them to keep developing and improving their engine, but that’s perhaps done after our game is complete and being sold rather than spending scarce development dollars on it prior to release. If we do upgrade before release doing it at the beta testing/optimizing stage would perhaps be a better choice than doing it now just to catch a small tax deduction this year.
I greatly appreciate anyone who cares to give some informed insight into the situation. I suspect I’m missing something important, but I just don’t know what it is.
There’s a lot more differences than just the ones you’ve highlighted.
The Pro features I find useful that you may are the IK Rigs and animation curves in Mecanim, LODGroups and occlusion culling (I also need stuff you may not need - like post fx, reflective water, and realitime shadows). For IOS/Android, you may find you need build size stripping, static batching, etc. If you Haven’t looked into it, there’s a comparison chart here:
Also, you will not have the “Unity” loadup etc and can have a custom startup and loading screen.
Occlusion culling could be the most valuable feature of Pro for mobiles in my view.
Good points everyone. Actually, occlusion culling was on my list of important features, though I had forgotten to put it in this post.
Mechanim is pretty much irrelelivent to me. I’m a modeler and animator myself and have another great modeler and animator on staff (actually Dogzerx from these forums. Check out the website in my sig to see some of the amazing work he’s done for the game).
Eric: I didnt realize the standard export modules could be used with Unity pro
pro, thanks for that. Someone might want to clarify that on the product page.
Build size stripping would be vreat but apparently causes problems with some of the plugins we use (%they specifically warn against using it in their docs), so probably would be a nonfeature for our case.
I have seen some comments in the peanut gallery who will actually badmouth a game when they see the unity logo so if you want to avoid that you should use your splash screen.
IIRC the navmesh generation is limited to Pro - you can still read Navmesh data and use nav agents on IOS basic; or at least you could a year or so ago (I was surprised by this, no idea if it was/is intentional). However I’d have to agree on Aaron’s being superior anyway, there’s been virtually no native navmesh/agent development since it was first implemented.
Peanut gallery aside, the only real reason to upgrade to mobile Pro licenses is if they have something you actually need. In your shoes, if this is was my first title and I’d managed to get by with Basic I’d probably just see if I’m going to make money from it first, then upgrade and update the game. I went Pro years back purely for the Asset Server at the time. I don’t think having the Unity splash is a terrible thing - nobody ever thinks twice about putting nVidia, Dolby, Unreal Engine, etc logos on PC games. It’s not that big a deal.
That’s my 2 cents anyway.
Good luck with the game btw. Reminds me of Antiriad…
Wait, is this true? I thought if you wanted Unity Pro and you wanted Android or iOS, you had to get Android Pro or iOS Pro, just like if you want Android Pro or iOS Pro you need the full Unity Pro as well. Thus turning my $400 Android license into a $3000 license.
It’s perfectly fine to have Unity Pro and iOS Basic. The only thing you can’t do is have iOS Pro without Unity Pro. If you use iOS Basic with Unity Pro, you will of course not have any of the iOS Pro features that exist at runtime (dynamic shadows, static batching, light probes, rendertextures, build stripping, navmesh, asset bundles, audio filters, etc.). You could use the profiler since that’s an editor feature and not something that’s affected by iOS Basic or Pro.
Maybe you’re confusing this with team development, which doesn’t allow mixing Pro with non-Pro licenses, but that’s referring to different people in the team. If everyone has Unity Pro and iOS Basic, that’s fine. It would not be OK for some people to have iOS Basic while others had iOS Pro.
