Has anyone heard any rumblings as to whether Unity will have WP7 support?

I guess I just don't understand why any Indie developer would go through the difficulty and trouble of developing a 3D game in XNA for WP7 when Unity has cross mobile platform support for iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android. 

I can certainly understand developing a 2D game in XNA because of the Xbox 360 user base.  That can at least possibly make some business sense.

But if you are going to go the 3D game development route....which is a huge huge increase in complexity and time for art asset creation....it just seems to make more sense to go with Unity for the cross mobile platform potential.  Just considering the unbelievable complexity of 3D game development and all that XNA requires you to develop on your own vs. what Unity offers out of the box....I don't know....I just don't get it.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why 3D on WP7 using XNA makes any sense for an Indie developer when Unity is available on other multiple mobile platforms.

For the record I just finished reading the excellent book iPhone 3D Game Programming All in One by Jeremy Alessi.  The book uses Unity as the development platform.
It really has me thinking that if I want to go 3D as an Indie developer, Unity is probably the way to go.

Thanks
Allan

There's been nothing announced.

Unity is a pretty nice tool if you lack the knowledge to program your own game from scratch but there are many of us who prefer to use our own engines who have years of experience developing 3D games and applications.

Allan Chaney:

I just don't get it.

If it was all about the money, then something like unity might be prefered.  However, some of us prefer to avoid all the premade engine type products in favor of reinventing the wheel.  I enjoy the journey more than the destination.

Allan Chaney:

Has anyone heard any rumblings as to whether Unity will have WP7 support?

I guess I just don't understand why any Indie developer would go through the difficulty and trouble of developing a 3D game in XNA for WP7 when Unity has cross mobile platform support for iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android. 

I can certainly understand developing a 2D game in XNA because of the Xbox 360 user base.  That can at least possibly make some business sense.

But if you are going to go the 3D game development route....which is a huge huge increase in complexity and time for art asset creation....it just seems to make more sense to go with Unity for the cross mobile platform potential.  Just considering the unbelievable complexity of 3D game development and all that XNA requires you to develop on your own vs. what Unity offers out of the box....I don't know....I just don't get it.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why 3D on WP7 using XNA makes any sense for an Indie developer when Unity is available on other multiple mobile platforms.

For the record I just finished reading the excellent book iPhone 3D Game Programming All in One by Jeremy Alessi.  The book uses Unity as the development platform.
It really has me thinking that if I want to go 3D as an Indie developer, Unity is probably the way to go.

Thanks
Allan

RecursiveEncounter:

Microsoft has XNA to offer. If you're saying that Unity is "better" (in some way) than XNA, then this is the wrong forum.

Why is everyone so touchy about this stuff?

I'm not saying one is better than the other technically.  I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind developing a 3D mobile game in XNA vs. Unity.  I think an intelligent discussion on the viability of platforms and development environments is reasonable for any forum that focuses on game development.  And I'm coming from the perspective of an Indie Developer with a small company.  I'm not coming from the perspective of a hobbysit programmer with time to spend messing with code for the joys of messing with code.  If you are of the later mindset than you may not have anything intelligent to add to the discussion.

Jim Perry:

Maybe because we don't care about those platforms?

Fair enough.

But I'm interested in all game development platforms including WP7 and XNA, thus the point of my post.

Allan

Allan Chaney:

Why is everyone so touchy about this stuff?

Because you are in the XNA forums ;-)

Since Microsoft don't allow native code on WP7 I dont expect to see Unity on WP7 any time soon. Cross compiling between iPhone and droid is one thing. Changing it all to managed code is likley to be a total rewrite.

Right now unity is a sensible choice to target 'the other' mobile platforms. XNA and silverlight are your only choices on the phone - there's no commercial engines announced though I'm sure we will see some eventually.

The closer possiblity of hitting ALL the platforms is Mono - monotouch is out and monodroid is on the way. XNAtouch works though nothing for droid. I wouldn't be surprised to see Moonlight working on iphone/droid at some point too. Maybe c# will really become the cross platform language Microsoft always pretend it is ;-)

Allan Chaney:

RecursiveEncounter:

Microsoft has XNA to offer. If you're saying that Unity is "better" (in some way) than XNA, then this is the wrong forum.

Why is everyone so touchy about this stuff?

I'm not saying one is better than the other technically.  I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind developing a 3D mobile game in XNA vs. Unity.  I think an intelligent discussion on the viability of platforms and development environments is reasonable for any forum that focuses on game development.  And I'm coming from the perspective of an Indie Developer with a small company.  I'm not coming from the perspective of a hobbysit programmer with time to spend messing with code for the joys of messing with code.  If you are of the later mindset than you may not have anything intelligent to add to the discussion.

Perhaps this is a compelling reason to roll your own...

http://www.tipb.com/2009/11/14/apple-rejectsremoves-unitybuilt-games-protect-user-privacy/

The ZMan:

Since Microsoft don't allow native code on WP7 I dont expect to see Unity on WP7 any time soon. Cross compiling between iPhone and droid is one thing. Changing it all to managed code is likley to be a total rewrite.

I think I see what you are saying.
 
Here is a quote from the Unity blog regarding the nefarious new iOS4 TOS:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/page/2/
"As you probably know, Unity is mostly written in optimized C++ with assembly optimizations and Objective-C wrappers thrown in for good measure. Game logic is written by the developer, using C# and JavaScript, both of which are running on top of .NET. The beauty of this scheme is that we’ve been able to sidestep the old scripting-versus-native question as .NET provides for very rapid development (and almost near-instant compilation), while at the same time generating highly optimized code. And on the iPhone we actually ahead-of-time compile .NET to completely static machine code for speed and conformance with the old iOS Terms of Service."

It sounds like Unity currently relies upon .Net and Mono to make possible the use of C# and Javascript for development but it is natively written in C++.

I assume that is the native code you refer to.

Thanks for the info.  Zman.

Allan

RecursiveEncounter:

So if someone doesn't agree with you (or better yet, attempts to explain why your narrow-minded thinking is wrong) is unintelligent?

Ugh.

Dude calm down.

I'm not asking for agreement on anything.  I'm just raising the discussion point regarding 3D development opportunities on different platforms....one of those being WP7 and XNA.

But when someone says....you can't discuss anything on these forums but what I want to see discussed because it will offend me for some reason....I have to wonder why you spent the time typing a response at all.

It's a fair question to ask what the differences are in development on these different platforms using these different frameworks...the pros and cons.

I'm looking for opinions not aggreement of disagreement.  I'm not in any camp.  I'm just looking for educated opinions.

Thanks
Allan

That's a good point.

But that had more to do with those specific unity applications grabbing user data..which Apple did not like.

With that said,  the Unity community is concerned about the TOS for iOS4 but so far according to Unity no games have been pulled.  And Unity has a plan B that they will implement if it comes to that. 

Allan

Allan Chaney:

The ZMan:

Since Microsoft don't allow native code on WP7 I dont expect to see Unity on WP7 any time soon. Cross compiling between iPhone and droid is one thing. Changing it all to managed code is likley to be a total rewrite.

 
Here is a quote from the Unity blog regarding the nefarious new iOS4 TOS:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/page/2/
"As you probably know, Unity is mostly written in optimized C++ with assembly optimizations and Objective-C wrappers thrown in for good measure. Game logic is written by the developer, using C# and JavaScript, both of which are running on top of .NET. The beauty of this scheme is that we’ve been able to sidestep the old scripting-versus-native question as .NET provides for very rapid development (and almost near-instant compilation), while at the same time generating highly optimized code. And on the iPhone we actually ahead-of-time compile .NET to completely static machine code for speed and conformance with the old iOS Terms of Service."

It sounds like Unity currently relies upon .Net and Mono to make possible the use of C# and Javascript for development but it is natively written in C++.

I assume that is the native code you refer to.

Yes, lots of folk get confused because Unity uses c# for its scripting so they think its all c# and mono.

So they would need some very special permission to get it to run on the phone - or a rewrite. As far as I know even the licensed developers are currently still restricted to XNA or SL.

In my opinion, having WP7 games use XNA instead of a native API environment like with Android and iPhone is a major benefit to indie game developers, especially for 3D games.

If your worry is cost based, consider this: Unity is a third party middleware and thus an extra cost on top of the platform licensing itself. To develop a game using Unity for both Android and iPhone, you need to buy Unity Pro which is currently discounted to $1,200. You then need an Android Pro license for $1,500 and either an iPhone Basic license for $300 or Pro for another $1,200. That's an out-of-the-gate cost of $3,000 to $3,900 on top of the couple of hundred for the Android Marketplace and iPhone AppStore subscriptions while XNA costs nothing on top of the WP7 marketplace subscription :)

Developing a 3D game for WP7 using XNA is much more comparable to developing a 3D game for Android or iPhone without using any middleware engine, except it's actually designed to give game developers what they need rather than just providing pretty raw access to the 3D API's as Android and iPhone do. If the issue was about money, then chances are it would be more cost effective to not use a middleware engine and just develop each version using each platforms' own frameworks and API's.

Even when comparing cross-platform portability to Unity, developing a game using XNA allows practically one-click conversion of a game between Windows, Xbox 360 and WP7. Only one mobile device, sure, but a mobile developer would get the option of adding the other two platforms to their portfolio with very little extra development work.

On the other end of the spectrum, a major consideration when developing across incompatible platforms is prioritizing the platform which will give the best results fastest. Compared to development on iPhone and Android, XNA is a lot quicker to learn and a lot simpler to use. If you design the game so it loads in all the game-related data (menus, levels, character/enemy data, weapon stats, 'scripted' sequences, etc.) from generic XML files it then makes porting to other platforms a lot simpler than hard coding a lot of the data. The XML files could be shared between the different platforms with no conversion issues.

Once you have an XNA version up and running you'll be able to port most of the code to C++ relatively easilly to use as a common code library for iPhone and Android. Obviously this would require writing a lot of code for functionallity the XNA Framework provides and writing an abstraction layer to handle the actual hardware or platform API calls, but once that's done you will have a multiplatform game framework of your own to use on future projects without having to pay licensing costs for middleware. This isn't just a cost saving but also allows you, the developer, to have full access to modify the whole codebase as you please rather than having to relly on the middleware's developers to release a new version.

This is obviously delving into the ongoing debate of whether developers should favour using Middleware or not and these are just my personal views, everyone has a different take on such things :) At the end of the day, a developer must decide which platforms they want to target and what's the best way to approach it given their capabilities and resources. Targetting as many platforms as possible is a delightful idea but isn't exactly practical for the majority of indie developers.

On the whole subject of whether WP7 will attract 3D game developers, I think it will because it has such a solid game development framework at it's back end. Developers wanting to make mobile 3D games but haven't chosen a platform will be attracted by XNA's overall simplicity and quick turnaround on development. Developers wanting to branch out to a second or third mobile platform would probably be a lot more concerned about the market share of the platform than it's development environment and even then it's a cost/return based decision.

WP7 has a lot of weight going into it's launch and has enough big name developers working on apps and games to get the public interested. It shouldn't take long for it to get a big enough userbase to be a competitive platform in that sense. On the development side Microsoft has been very committed to getting developers on board and giving them everything they need to develop the apps and games, even as far as sending out as much pre-release hardware to developers as they physically can. From the looks of things, WP7 will have a much stronger launch than Android did (this prediction coming from a TMobile G1 owner).

Also, do remember that WP7 isn't actually released yet and it was almost two years since the G1 came out before Unity offered support for Android :)

From an artist's point of view, one of the strong points of using Unity is the ease of importing art assets and then being able to view them instantly.

Winning Guy:

With that said... it's not coming to XNA unless they do a whole rewrite.  And that won't happen unless there's HUGE demand.

Yes I could certainly see why Unity would require a rewrite to use XNA.  I think it would be more realistic to just add Unity to the available tools with which to do WP7 3D game development.  XNA can still exist as a seperate development path for both 3D and 2D.  It certainly seems that it would be possible to have WP7 as a target platform for Unity.  It would seem to me that it would be easier for Unity to target Microsoft platforms than making Unity work on iPhone and Android simply because Unity already connects to .Net and uses C# for coding.  It seems like they're already half way there.....as opposed to converting everything into Objective C for iPhone or whatever Andriod uses.

But those are just my simplistic thoughts. :)

Allan

Allan Chaney:

I think it would be more realistic to just add Unity to the available tools with which to do WP7 3D game development.

There's no reason why Unity can't do that.  As far as I can tell, if Unity wanted to, they could build both WP7 and XBox360 versions.  You'd still have to deploy both of them through the respective Microsoft setups, but there's nothing technically that would prevent a third-party engine from running on either platform.  It's not really up to Microsoft whether that happens, though - it's completely within Unity's purview to either make that happen, or not.  In either case, they'd have to build a managed version of their engine, though.

I have work experence with Unity and ipad,iphone

but the main problem here is

if you take unity game engine it can do so manny things

but what if your game only use 10% of Unity can do , you have a lot of dead code and values

so unity will be slow

in xna we only create the components that we gonna use in our game,

and the framework in xna was design for this.. so it is fast

wicth meen we have to invent the weel for our game every time we make a new game

and that is good , for your programming skills, and there are a lot of people to help you here in this forum if you get into trobble

what we need here is an ecosystem of game components for you to grap so you can build your game fast, and put in on sale

i whis that microsoft wood make a shop for developers where thay can by game components and sell our components so that the ecosystem can grow

that way we will compeate out all those engines that says build a game in 15 minutes, but the editor takes 6 month just to learn and you havent learn it all

and you have not learn any programming skills , while you where bissu messing around in some game engine


so a simple sollusion to this , Microsoft make an ecosystem for developers where we can by and sell Game components all must be source code and othere stuff programming releated

as programmer we all have a lag in some aereas, and this will help.

Michael Hansen

developers
Developers
DEVELOPERS YOU NEW ECOSYSTEM OF LEARING TO PROGRAM GAMES 
 

Using Unity is not a clear win, there are tradeoffs.

i'am a very clever guy , please read and make your own conclusion of this

custrom smart phone market

Appel has 80 millions users
Android has 40 millions users


The othere smart phone market

Microsoft mobile 6.5 and bacwards 20 millions users

Nokia 110 millions users

LG 30 millions users

Samsung 55 millions users

and the list keep on going to asia

Asia skyphone network 360 millions users

and there are otheres just to name a few


let combine the resources


Microsoft Mobile 7 will be poweres by

Samsung,nokia,LG and othere brand name phones

Tele Operators are selling the phones with a phone plan and services, and so on

so this market is the biggist in the world

with about 300 millions possible custermors at start this december


40%  of customers do care about a brand name phone
30%  of customers do not care about a brand name phone , it is the look and feel and the phone menu and navagations, the overall experence of an user interface
20%  take the cheaps smartphone thay can get there hands on
10%  like no brand custrom made , like you have a special U2 MUSIC GROUP ipod play, but just a phone


so all there data , what does this meen for you as a developer on windows phone 7

it meen if you get your apps or games or what ever at sale this december, there is a good chance 6 to 8 month later m you have sold a lot of copyes of your product


i doesent really matter what you are bying this december m all phones and brand contains a microsoft operating system inside

and xna will be running on all the brand names phones


you have a global market of 300 millions customers

only problem , the factoryes has to keep up with the demands on the market, but i have heard that 11 millions phones world wide at start


please make your own conclusion of this,


but i tell you i bet on windows phone 7 , and i doint care if it a samsung,LG,Nokia and othere phone makers that are making the dam things



all i care about is to have 6 or 7 games and some app this decebmer , 

so unity has no chance of miking it here, microsoft has given a platform where all are on qual terms here when ever you are a big publsher or a smal developer

you still have to build it all from scract, and invend the weel again , or porting app and games from othere platforms

but you are secure work in the future , course you are a c# developer

and that is what it counts,, more jobs for you and for microsoft thay are in the game once again with there operating system that is all what counts for microsoft,
 
why is that microsoft is in every school and university all over the world, to recruct people to work on future platforms,

and build a foundations for developers, to secure the future for microsoft.. we have all seen what apple has done

nokia,samsung and all the companies menturen above , are sucking down not selling there product , course of apple market

and that meen the ecosystem of jobs are going down, and some hardware companies are going bankrups ,

so this what it takes to make balance one again in the market


listen what bill gates says the new formfactor at the end of the interview , the  future of microsoft date 8-8-2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1-xQG3ULiw



Michael 

" IT IS JUST LIKE PINKY AND BRIAN , WHAT ARE WE DOING, TAKING OVER THE WORLD OF SMART PHONES"

The Apple products and Android use OpenGL.
XNA is managed DirectX.

OpenGL != DirectX

Which means Unity will have to port XNA to C#.

I think XNA is powerful enough ;).

mashi

Allan Chaney:

Has anyone heard any rumblings as to whether Unity will have WP7 support?
For the record I just finished reading the excellent book iPhone 3D Game Programming All in One by Jeremy Alessi.  The book uses Unity as the development platform.
It really has me thinking that if I want to go 3D as an Indie developer, Unity is probably the way to go.

Thanks
Allan

Yes the tools for windows phone and Xbox are a joke.  I wrote my own 3D game it took me 4 years from going from knowing nothing to Zombie crossing which is one of the more advanced 3d games I've seen. ( I dont know many games I must disclaimer)

Am I a better developer for it, hell yes, which was the whole point.

To me the IPhone is nothing but a pog or powerranger toy. 

I also wish I could punch that ass steve jobs in the face, he is a money grubbing sob and I'll never take part in that BS.  Microsoft is disapointing too I will admit that, they have some terrible leadership and only the XBOX group seems to have any clue. 

That said, XNA is utter crap, slow as hell but hard to use. If I could use c++ I would just do that.  it is not much harder to optimize c# because you got structs flying around passing by value left and right in the xna library itself....  Unless your making "Sexy Bomb" apps then  yeah c#.

For a multi year project c# is no easier than c++.  Point is it all depends what level of app you want, if it is angry birds then who really cares right? it is so basic you don't need anything but some free physics library.