My intuition was right. The free Unity engine release was just the beginning of a new trend in the world of game engines as Epic has now released the equivalent of Unreal Engine 3 without the source code.
The world is changin’, and I’m sure this trend will continue. I can even see some sort of engine-product revenue sharing model pop up with these free versions (think royalty-based sharing with products built using a free engine). My only question at this point is, “Who’s next?”
Now this is cool stuff: the Unity engine is now free.
Granted, it’s the equivalent of the Indie version, but they were offering that version of the engine for $199 USD. That’s $199 I no longer have to worry about spending if I want to use the basic engine to prototype ideas (and maybe sell them).
My intuition is telling me this is a huge deal, not just for Unity but for the industry as a whole, particularly for the hobbyist, scientific, and independent developer.
It’s been a while, but I’m alive. I needed to take a break from software things. I got a little burned out as I wasn’t balancing out life enough.
On the positive side I think I’ve picked up a new addiction hobby that may or may not turn into something one day: golf. I’ve realized I need a competitive outlet of some kind, and golf is one of those sports that I can compete against myself as much as I can other people. It’s a bonus that I’m turning out to be pretty decent at the game too.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with software or this blog right now. Bottom line is I’m alive and starting to get software itches again, so this blog should come back to life as well.
Bob Walsh might be on to something with Google OS:
What’s a poor media mogul to do? Well, how about getting behind a new platform? Say one of those cheapie netbooks running an OS we don’t have to pay for, like, say, Google Chrome OS? … Which would you want? A netbook running Windows XP for $400 or a netbook running Chrome with every episode of Lost, you favorite newspapers and magazines for $100 and by the way a monthly subscription fee?
I suppose the news-du-jour the last couple days is the new Google OS:
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.
Okay, cool. And now Michael Arrington is masturbating over himself:
It’s hard to type a blog post when one hand is being used to pat myself on the back.Last year I wrote a post about the just launched Chrome browser titled Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer.
Congrats, Michael. I guess.
Google OS is in fact an operating system. It runs hardware management off the Linux kernel and its application platform is the browser (Google Chrome). For Windows the application layer is the desktop, with the browser as another application offering but not the platform that all other applications are built off.
That difference is why I don’t think Google OS is going to be the Microsoft killer of Arrington’s fantasies, at least in the short- to medium-term, and by the long-term Microsoft will have an answer. Certainly, it will open up other opportunities for online computer usage, and it may open up “the cloud” to a more mainstream audience. But online and “the cloud” is only part of what computers are used for. What about games, business applications, embedded applications, simulations, and so on?
One issue I see is that web technology is not yet equal to desktop technology. It’s headed that direction, and great strides have been made in all verticals of web tech in the last decade, but web-based application development presents its own unique challenges that desktop application development has long since resolved. If you strip away the application platform of today and replace it with a browser so that you’re forced to work within a web-based framework, then you’re reintroducing challenges application developers have to now re-address.
For example, Google Apps, which Arrington addresses:
Don’t worry about those desktop apps you think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss office. Chrome plus Gears plus Google Wave plus HTML 5
and web platforms like Flash and Silverlight all combine into a single wonderful computing device. The Internet Is Everything. All the OS has to do is boot the damn computer, get me to a browser as fast as possible and then stay the hell out of the way.
How many people actually use Google Apps for their productivity applications instead of Microsoft Office (or an open source alternative)? It would be nice to see that stat, but nobody I personally know uses Google Apps for their regular document editing needs. Why not? Because it sucks. Response is slow, features are limited, and it’s in a browser.
Even if the browser is the operating system, Google Apps is not at the level of Microsoft Office. For example, I always have issues with Google Apps when formatting my document. I don’t actually know how it really looks until I make it a PDF, since there’s always a variation between the edit view of the document and the printed view. I don’t have that problem with Office.
Don’t get me wrong: Google OS is an exciting announcement that will open up another vertical in the OS market, but it isn’t a replacement for the traditional desktop OS platform. There are issues with a browser-based OS that desktop OS’s simply provide better solutions for, and for that reason Google OS will not be for everyone. ReadWriteWeb posted 10 Things We’re Dying to Know about Chrome OS that is an example of some of the challenges a browser-based OS faces. Like I said, some of these things the desktop OS is simply better at performing.
But of course with announcements like these people like Michael Arrington have to do the masturbatory dance. It keeps their egos (and paychecks) growing. I just advise against being sucked into the hype.
I know things look different, but you’re at the right spot.
Within the last 24 hours I decided I was tired of paying for Typepad and moved my blog to a custom WordPress installation. Typepad is a good product, but not good enough for me – in fact, I think it was actually detrimental to my blog posting frequency. The backend tools aren’t very responsive and user friendly to me, and the frustrations I went through made blogging a chore.
So, I’ve joined the flock and moved to WordPress.
Caught this on Digg: The Life Cycle of a Video Game. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it hits on some truths.
Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu:
“The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.”
A few days ago I saw a documentary on Discovery HD Theater called "BMW: An Expression of Joy" where artist Robin Rhode attached paint spray nozzles to the tires of a BMW Z4 and used the vehicle as a paintbrush on a large canvas. You can see the result and more info on this at the Expression of Joy website.
After watching the documentary I decided I wanted to do the same thing. How cool would it be to drive a vehicle that painted with its tires? What kind of artwork could I come up with?
Not wanting to take forever on the project, I moved quickly to create a gameplay prototype. The first problem I ran into, though, was that to reuse my existing 3D codebase would require more work than I wanted to spend on a prototype, particularly since I needed to integrate a physics engine to get the effect I wanted for the vehicle dynamics.
So, I took a look at Flash, noticed that there were a few 3D render engines and a few physics engines, and figured "why not?" Granted, I've never used Flash before, but I went to Adobe's site, downloaded the Flash 30-day trial, and went to town.
A few days later, and I have a prototype of CarPaint: http://www.gamesunplugged.net/CarPaint3D.html. If you check it out, be sure to click the Help button to see the controls and instructions.
It turns out that BMW also created an iPhone App off this idea – something I just found that out as I searched for the name of that documentary for this post. I'm going to download it and check it out. In the meantime, I'm going to let the Flash version cook for a little bit as I look at porting it over to a Windows-based application using my engine – and of course consider I'll consider the iPhone App route.
I'd like to thank JD Meier for reminding me of the importance of small wins this morning through his blog post "Don't Always Go for the Long Shot". It's a great reminder that success doesn't come all at once.
Everyone wants to be successful. Entrepreneurs want successful businesses. Athletes want to win. Engineers want to build perfect solutions.
The problem is that most of us try to be successful through grand strategies and big plays. Entrepreneurs hold off on starting a business until they have that "killer app" idea. Baseball players try to hit the home run. Engineers try to design a solution that will address any possible situation. Meanwhile, another company comes out with a better "killer app", the baseball player strikes out trying to "swing for the fence", and the engineer ends up with an over-complicated solution that has to be scrapped because it doesn't work.
As JD Meier reminds us, the key to winning isn't the big play. The key to winning is to build momentum off a series of small wins. By focusing on small goals, small tasks, and small features, we allow ourselves to adapt to change, to measure tangible progress, and to celebrate successes early and often.