Dear Esther Getting Commercial Release

Quote from Skjalg

Dear Esther moving to Unity:

http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/dear-esther-and-unity/

I cant really understand why, even with the explanation there...

edit; my mind had actually skipped over a section there. And it makes things a lot clearer

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Sometimes I think Robert is a) insane b) a masochist

finaly something in unity that will look good

Plz Robert, finish up all this and make your dystopian Russia shooter already, I will throw so much money at you, you'll be like Huell from Breaking Bad!

Overall, the reasons behind this were:

Bringing better support for Mac and Linux (and eventually PC).

Keeping development small, focused and in-house (lower costs).

Better outside access to developers experienced in the engine, if needed.

Easier accessibility and support for expansion other platforms (PS4, iOS, etc.)

Better overall engine support & tools.

Some people are taking this as a put-down to Valve, but it's just common sense really - Source is over 10 years old and I don't want to see Dear Esther turn into an abandoned broken mess in the future.

If you can get the exact same look out of it, I don't see why you wouldn't switch. Porting is going to be comparatively a piece of piss.

An admirable move to secure the future integrity of the product even though it means a ton of work.

I tip my hat to you, good sir. All the best!

The nice thing is DE is 90% content and 10% code, so once the content conversion was done, the hard part is over

can you still continue working on this at your new job?

I was just about to ask if we'd be lucky to get an insight of how the port was being done when I saw this: http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/dear-esther-unity-how/

Thanks, it's a great read and good luck with finishing it off!

I read the post about the motivations on switching engine, and it's all clearly agreeable.

On the results, seems pretty good right now, like the water in particular. I'm sure it's the image compression but textures don't seem as good and lighting doesn't seem (yet) on par as the Source build... just my impression?

Those screenshots kind of highlight one thing that is lacking in Dear Esther: swaying grass. I guess you can make it happen easier now with Unity.

A question: why not unreal engine? It runs on mobile too and visually annihilates unity…

you obviously haven't used unity

Quote from blackdog

A question: why not unreal engine? It runs on mobile too and visually annihilates unity…

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe the licensing costs for unreal to be a bit steeper than the unity one... (factoring in, of course, that dear esther is selling millions instead of merely hundred copies)

Regarding Unreal: As Skjalg mentioned, we'd be getting ourselves into the same predicament of high licensing costs, reliance on outside help (coding, porting etc.) and limiting our platform options. I have no idea what state Unreal 4 is in, but I get the impression is not really ready yet. Sometimes using the latest and greatest thing is not always the best option.

Textures, shading and lighting will be identical, there's really no reason for there to be any difference between Source and Unity, but with Unity we at least have the option to improve in some areas we couldn't before.

Im hoping to have the bulk of the work done before I start Valve, so I will easily be able to finish it in my spare time if necessary. The content is in which is the main thing, I just have to iron out some small technical issues and finish up some of the scripting and movement stuff.

.

Quote from Rick_D

you obviously haven't used unity

My comment had to be on games i've seen. Ok "annihilates" might be a too strong term, but on average the UE3 games out there seems to me prettier than Unity powered ones.

@Robert: thanks for the explanation, i was just curious, since your portfolio features prominent UE-powered stuff and you talked about using plugins to make use of Unity much alike UDK

Wish you best of luck for the project.