About 9 months since I first found out about Unity. About four months since I got my Mac Pro so I could actually use Unity and about 4 hours since getting my VAT-number because it's a business purchase and I don't want to waste some EUR 250,00 on VAT blindly. Now finally, just a few minutes ago, I purchased my own Pro license of Unity (I did use the evaluation license until now).
This has been a long story. I realized I would have to get a really good game engine to support me in development of RaMtiGA and while doing a lot of conceptual work in spring 2007, I also spent some days researching what game engines are available. Obviously, I needed something I could afford (I can't just drop $ 100,000.00 for some game engine "real quick"). Unity Pro 2.0 is currently EUR 1,099.00 - that's not little, but given how much time this is gonna save me, that price is more than fair.
Since I've been developing based on the .NET-Framework for years (after developing in Java, which is very similar, for even more years), I definitely wanted something based on the .NET-Framework, where I could use C# as primary code implementation language.
Through DevMaster.net, looking for something with 3D, based on .NET and ideally with some AI, physics and - if possible even with some basic networking implemented... ah, and of course, it should look cool... last but not least, it would have been nice to be cross platform ;-)
Well, to finish the sentence: ... I first found RealmForge. I though - ok, now, this is it. Perfect. And even open source. What could be better. To my sincere frustration, I soon had to find out that the project had been discontinued. Dead end. Later I found out that the people who developed RealmForge actually continued and are currently developing a commercial game engine called Visual3D. This does look promising, and for a while I though this was gonna be it.
While searching for a Mono-port of XNA, because I was hoping to find a way to use Visual3D to develop cross-plattform, so that also Mac and Linux users could join in to the game, I stumbled upon Unity.
At first, I thought "this is it"... But after a moment of disbelief and resistance I realized that this incredibly cool game engine may be able to produce Windows games - but the editor itself is not available cross-plattform but Mac only. At first, I was very disappointed, but going through the forums I realized what a wonderful community there was around this game engine.
As an old Commodore C64 and Amiga veteran (and ex-Linux-user), I did have a bit of an affinity towards the Apple Mac. While writing this, I just realized that my first professional free-lance job was actually doing Mac support and checking Macs before they were delivered to customers (that was after doing my "civil service" and before I started to go into studying computer science). Just recently, a few of my friends had converted to Macs, and even at my job, some of the developers (all VS.NET / C# developers) and sys-admins have become or are becoming Mac-users. So... I started thinking about moving to Mac OS X.
At first, I was aiming at a Mac Mini for pricing reasons, but after some going back on forth, existential fears ("can I survive the next month?"), and some funny coincidences and misunderstandings, I ordered my Mac Pro on August, 2nd 2007. In between I still discovered Blade3D, another XNA-based game engine, but realizing that Mono.XNA (which may still change its name) is probably not gonna be production-ready any time near, I more and more favored Unity.
On October, 10th, 2007, Unity Technologies (formerly OTEE) announced the release of Unity 2.0. It took two days until I found out...
Well, oh well... Unity and me... looong story... But we're together in Unity now, time to code... I'll post more later...