UNITY anyone?

[Meatsack]

I downloaded the free version of UNITY today and am starting to learn it.
Right now, it feels a lot like JUPITER, but without the game resources.

I'm daydreaming right now of making a TRON-esqe world and calling it "The Grid". Of course, I can't call it TRON or use any proprietary characters, but having a generic "Grid" could work. After all, "The Grid" is a commonly used phrase for first-person interaction with cyberspace networks. See: Neuromancer, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and numerous other references outside of Disney. If it does become a problem, then renaming it is easily done.

I forsee my biggest hurdle being 3-D modelling. I'll get around that for now with block-modelling in hopes that I can make a game world fun enough bland to attract interested artists. LDSO gets dibs, naturally.

My first question, though, is: are there any free-use TRON 2.0 prefabs that I can use in my learning process? The video tutorials are clear in how to import 3D Studio Max files. (Copy file and associated Textures folder.)

Has anyone else looked at UNITY yet?

[TronFAQ]

I'm not entirely sure how the team feels about this subject. But from discussions we've had, this is my understanding of what's going to happen in the future.

User Error 3 is going to be LDSO's last major new project for Tron 2.0.

We'll continue to update existing ones, and maybe do some smaller stuff. But in the future, if we do anything else, we'll be switching to another development platform and probably become a sort-of "indie" development team.

What platform we choose, and whether future projects will be Tron-like or not, is up in the air right now.


If anything is going to be Tron-like, we'd have to be careful and distance ourselves quite a bit from the IP. This is the main reason we've stuck with making things for Tron 2.0 for so long. To avoid possible legal complications. Making add-ons for an existing Tron game almost entirely negates any legal hassles.

If we wanted to use a more modern engine, we could have attempted to make something for Tron Evolution which uses Unreal. Even without an official set of editing tools or SDK, we probably could have done something with it. But, why tie ourselves down, then, to that game? When we could just use the UDK and have complete freedom.

With Evolution, people have to own the PC version of the game, have to have a reasonably good system to run it, and have to put up with the garbage known as GFWL.

With Tron 2.0, almost any recent system can run it easily now, and no extra crap like GFWL to get in the way which makes it easier to install and use. And, we have editing tools. As crap as they are, at least we have them.

Unfortunately, this has limited us in a lot of ways up until this point. But trying to push the limits of such an old game and engine, and then managing to succeed, can be very rewarding.


So, whether we eventually switch to something like UDK, Unity, or something else . . . don't know right now. But that's most likely where we're headed in the future.


Regarding use of prefabs, it's hard to say. I suppose for any fan who made their own Tron prefab, it's probably okay to use if they're okay with it. But anything from Monolith is likely not a safe choice, unless the project remains not-for-profit. And even then, I'm not sure. Again, we've been sticking with add-ons, to avoid the whole potential for legal wrangling if Disney finds out about your project.

Then again, there are several Tron-like rip-off games that seem to have been getting away with it.

[xistence]

No Unity here, but i work with UDK since a few weeks, will get my arse into that. Dump Tron Evolution... 'ill try to create my own Diu/Tron-design in UDK then everything is fine and free from license probs.
And to speak for myself: i will also personally drop Jupiter-engine after the current project being done, and i already did so for any maps planned (they will be done in UDK if anyway). Also the xMDK has no use at all (feedback i think just two post anywhere), so this is dropped as well.
Unity for me might be a good platform independent engine, but it has not the strength and that huge community as UDK. I also thought about cry-engine, but after fiddling around with it for a while i realize that not every idea would be easily possible (starting to mod the engine again is not my plan), so i picked UDK now for my personal project. No plan about the next gen engine for the team, we'll see.

[deeahchur]

Please let me know what you all decide upon. I would like to continue and expand work on YCP as a basic concept; however, I am interested in becoming involved in other projects, as well.

[Cryogen]

I downloaded the free version of UNITY today and am starting to learn it.
Right now, it feels a lot like JUPITER, but without the game resources.

I'm daydreaming right now of making a TRON-esqe world and calling it "The Grid". Of course, I can't call it TRON or use any proprietary characters, but having a generic "Grid" could work. After all, "The Grid" is a commonly used phrase for first-person interaction with cyberspace networks. See: Neuromancer, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and numerous other references outside of Disney. If it does become a problem, then renaming it is easily done.

I forsee my biggest hurdle being 3-D modelling. I'll get around that for now with block-modelling in hopes that I can make a game world fun enough bland to attract interested artists. LDSO gets dibs, naturally.

My first question, though, is: are there any free-use TRON 2.0 prefabs that I can use in my learning process? The video tutorials are clear in how to import 3D Studio Max files. (Copy file and associated Textures folder.)

Has anyone else looked at UNITY yet?

Well! it would seem if your building tron type games/mods/environments that are non-profit then you should not have any problems there is a large amount of tron goodness that falls under the said categories and it all keeps the tron concept alive! so if anything its good business for disney...
As for unity i actually own the engine! and the engine is used at my uni where i currently study unity is the staple 3d environment for most universities! at some point i will build a little game for profit! (*unrelated to anything tron tho) now! using assets from a commercial game in a project is illegal and falls under the fraud act! though! if your just using the assets for testing then it should be fine just dont distribute them! also! even extracting the game content/assets from a compressed archive could be illegal! (*basically just follow the golden rule when doing stuff like that dont ask dont tell) i would recommend you try out google sketchup for your modeling when starting out! then move on to max .........................Cheers!!