Has anyone tried the UNITY game development tool? For an indie game developer, it looks awesome. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Mac at the 
moment to run the IDE. I’ve previously played around with the indie-focused GarageGames tools, but was seriously turned off by their mickey-mouse scripting environment (their new products that use C# could change my mind). Coming from an application software background, I insist on having a full-on, object-oriented programming stack with my game development tools, thank you very much. UNITY seems to deliver. In fact, it gives you the full power of several common programming languages (C#, JavaScript, or Boo).
But wait, folks! That’s not all!
With UNITY you can code for the Wii and iPhone in addition to writing desktop games. You heard me correct. C# on the Wii. C# on the iPhone. Holy crap.
And the best part? If you are an indie game developer, you can get all this delicious software for only $200 bones.
Update: See my post on Stack Overflow for more info from the community.
Looks like you’ve got to pay $30K to publish a disc and $15K for WiiWare, on top of getting ahold of the Wii SDK (which supposedly runs around $2K). Ouch.
http://unity3d.com/unity/features/wii-publishing.html
Hi there – I’m just starting out on game development, and I think I’ve settled on experimenting with C++ (I’m a web designer so Flash + AS2 are more kinds of things). Do you know of any good resources or tutorials for learning C++, and the kinds of software I’ll need to download to start experimenting?
Anyway I’m also blogging about my game development *adventure* at progspot.wordpress.com – if you have any advice or pointers please feel free to drop me a note!
Cheers
Hey, that’s a good question! If you want to gain a solid understanding of C++, including best practices, I would recommend C++ Primer (4th Edition). For quick lookups, I keep my well-worn copy of C/C++ Programmer’s Reference on my desk at all times. As far as tools, etc., it really depends on what OS you are running. On Mac you can use Xcode or TextMate, and on Windows I would highly recommend Visual Studio 2008 C++ Express with The Game Creators GDK. You will probably also need some good books on OpenGL/DirectX programming and general game design.
Plus, don’t forget that there is a ton of open-source code out there to download and learn from!
Well if you want quick results in 2D indie game development, Gamemaker 7~ onwards is a good place to go instead of sifting through daunting material on programming.