📅 Dec 06, 2021
Before game development engines like Unity, Unreal and GameMaker had become style, the creation of each game took unreasonable amounts of time and trained specialists because the act of game creation entailed extensive effort. It involved the creation each and every object present in the game from scratch. As a result, game creation earlier was confined to very few regions in the world and was characteristically done by very few people- typically those in the technologically advanced economies of the western hemisphere.
However, with the genesis of these engines, gaming has become more decentralized and permissive- allowing anyone irrespective of training or geography to create games. These engines have made game creation fun, easy, and accessible- to everyone- everywhere. The game creator, now, neither has to create everything from scratch nor has to be an imminent specialist to be able to create 2D or 3D games.
In this context, let us analyse:
- What is Unity?
- The Prime Features of Unity
- The Many Applications of Unity
- Merits of using Unity for Game Development
- Demerits of Unity
What is Unity?
Unity is a game development engine created by Unity Technologies. It was launched in the year 2005. And currently, debatably more than 50 percent of all games created- for mobiles, PCs, consoles- are being created using this engine. Pokémon Go is one of the most popular games that have been created by this game development engine.
The Prime Features of Unity
- Free and Paid versions: Unity comes in multiple packages. But for the sake of brevity, I will broadly reclassify the packages into free version package and the paid version package. The free version is limited in its utility, but it has everything one needs to begin game development; on it, one can’t export projects, but the game created could be used for personal use. On the other hand, the paid versions have superior models and templates that allows creation of complex game universes.
- Asset Store: Unity has a fantabulous Asset store from the game creator may purchase models, scripts, game templates, shades, and audio. It is highly organised and easily navigable- even for a first time visitor. Apart from buying from the asset store, a game creator could also sell his game objects on the asset store. This enables the game creator to monetise her partial creations even before the final product is out!
- Language Choice: Unity provides two options in which game objects could be encoded: C# and Java. The user may choose from the two languages available depending on one’s own prior knowledge and ease.
- Prefabs: In Unity, it is easy to replicate game objects across screens. This denecessitates the need to repetitively recreate objects already created; hence, saving the game creator precious time and effort.
- Enlighten: Enlighten is lighting tool present in Unity which helps in enhancing shadows, give surface texture and realistic feel by introducing tones of colours, luminosity, and vibrancy. Unity provides this feature for free.
- Customizable Interface: Unity’s interface has been divided into: project, scene, hierarchy, inspector, toolbar. This Unity interface could be adjusted to suit game creator’s need.
- Multiplatform Deployment: Games created on Unity could be exported to a range of platforms. The games could be exported and run on laptops, mobiles, consoles et al.
The many Applications of Unity
Unity has wide ranging applications. Although game development is the most publicly renowned application of Unity, the applications of Unity, however, are not limited to game development alone. Movie making, animation, military, medicine, and architecture are some industries where Unity has contributed immensely.
- Interactive experience: Interactive maps surround us in malls, parkings, hospitals- and sometimes even in elevators! Such interactive maps have algorithms that function similarly to that of a game. Many such maps have been made using Unity.
- Previsualization of a movie: Film making is expensive and to block space to create each scene of a movie requires a lot of effort. Moviemakers have thus used game engines like Unity to pre visualise their movies through storyboarding on Unity to cut down on cost.
- Animation: Unity has been used to make animation movies. The award winning movie Adam is was created using Unity. As mentioned earlier, projects created on Unity could be exported on a range of platforms. This unique feature allows the result- in this case: a movie- to be exported to a laptop.
- Architecture: Architects use Unity to model their designs. By presenting their building plans in 3D to their clients, they are able to give their clients, a more immersive experience which helps the client to gauge the work better. This 3D visualisation of plans created through Unity has helped architects gain a competitive advantage over those architects who limited their project interaction with clients through on paper modelling alone.
- Medical Simulations: In medicine, simulations have been used to train trainee doctors in challenging ways to make them more objective, clear, and concise in their treatment; this gives them instant feedback, scope for improvement, and prevents disbursal of wrong treatment in real life.
Merits of using Unity for Game Development
- Pocket Friendly: Unity is not expensive. The free version is a good place to begin; and the paid versions have gradations that gives a persons a slew of choices to choose from as per ones’ need and economy.
- No Licensing Issue: Unity has very few- if any- licensing issues. When it comes to Free version of Unity, no royalty has to be shared. Also, no license has to be purchased for until profits rise over and above $ 100,000.
- Platform Support: Unity is supported on multiple platforms. The products created on Unity could be supported by PCs, laptops, smartphones, consoles, etcetera.
- Superb Support: Unity has great online support. Free tutorials to learn various aspects of Unity have been made available on Unity’s website and on YouTube. Furthermore, the community that uses Unity is open to extending support to the newcomers.
- Smooth Learning curve: Learning Unity is not difficult. The process of learning typically takes 6 months to get to intermediate level learning. This period could be further shortened based on one’s prior understanding of either of coding languages Unity uses. Anyone- young or adult, experienced or novice- could learning to create games on Unity with a little bit of effort.
- The Asset store: Unity’s asset store is highly organised that makes navigating through it simple. With the help of the range of products made available on asset store, a game creator could buy the elements she needs in her game and sell the game objects created by her.
- Easy Debugging: Codes written to design game objects could be un-bugged and de-errored with the help of explanative guidelines that indicate clearly the root cause of error and its position so that it could be easily fixed.
- Documentation: Unity comes with an in-built documentation system that has expansive system information on every topic.
Demerits of using Unity
- License Cost: License is required when revenue rises above $ 100,000. And this licensing cost is quite high; and it is needed for graphics, deployment, rendering, and stencil support.
- Graphics: Compared to Unreal, Unity’s graphics are debatably less superior. They are good, but they could be made better by enhancing their sharpness.
- Relatively New in the Market: Unlike other game development engines, Unity started relatively recently in 2005; and is, thus, in development stage. Many features that long existed in other game development engines are only emerging in Unity as time’s progressing.
In Simple words, Unity can be used for a moderate course of action. Unity is the ideal software, to begin with, it creates the pathway for the learner to adapt to other game engines as well. Unity game development courses can be most beneficial for children and new game developers.
-Written by Aman Kumar
