cybereality https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-made-a-malware-installer/

Looks like Unity is over. Expect a LOT more people coming to Godot very soon...

The thing I find the most sad about this is that the merge/acquire was right after they (Unity) let go of a bunch of their employees. They seem to have the money that they could have, at least from a theoretical monetary perspective, kept the employees and been able to pay them, but… I digress.

A totally different aside: I’ve been slowly trying to wrap my head around efficient peer-to-peer networking setups, but it is confusing. Payload size isn’t nearly as much of an issue as I thought it might have been, but instead it is latency. Even with smoothing and interpolation between packets, things are still a little laggy visually. I’ve read the way around it seems to be sending data so you can predict where the player will be going next, which can be as simple as passing the velocity or as complex as pooling the player’s recent input and then trying to guess their next input from that.

All of this has given me a new appreciation of all the multiplayer games I’ve played. I’m just working on a 2 player project, I cannot imagine the immense complexity of trying to program the networking for something like a MMO or a battle-royal game.

      cybereality

      After reading the article, I think you're overreacting. The malware they mention was adware, which lots of "legitimate" companies produced, and they seem to be past that now and mostly into advertising. Getting more advertising experience is likely to make unity more attractive to developers who just want a really easy way to cash in.

      I wouldn't like it, but I didn't like unity to begin with. 🙂

          TwistedTwigleg

          I'm of the opinion that the secret to making a good networked game is getting the software to lie convincingly about what happened. As long as each player sees something reasonable, who cares if they all see the same thing at the same time. Einstein would approve.

            I was in a love-hate relationship with Unity, TBH. It's sad to see it change and all. What I didn't like was how those who couldn't/didn't pay for stuff was usually kept in the dark. Plus, the tuts they offered for free were not up-to-date. I liked how easy it was to whip up a game with it using assets from their store, and I also made and published my very first game with it. It wasn't really that great, but it was a huge step.

            Some doubted that I would get that far, it was awesome when I managed to officially correct them.

            Alright, so this is about my player blinking to indicate invincibility.

            Right now, I'm using AnimationPlayer to make visibility on and off.

            It's just... well... the node tree.

            Normally, it should be either AnimatedSprite or AnimationPlayer + Sprite. Here, I use both of them (AnimatedSprite for explosion effect and AnimationPlayer + Sprite for blinking).

            I did try to use only AnimationPlayer + Sprite, but when changing texture using keys, the texture is just... gone.

            Maybe because the explosion sprites are on different files, it doesn't want to work.

            Assets:

            • Ships
            • Tiles <- The explosion sprites are here.

            So in the end, I have to use both methods. Though, I feel it's not efficient.

            duane Everyone pretty much knows adware is the way to go for indy games. They can probably sell a few on steam, but mostly people don't want to pay for indy games.

                I wouldn't be so keen on getting my game flagged by Windows Defender or MalwareBytes. Not a good look.

                  fire7side Everyone pretty much knows adware is the way to go for indy games.

                  A highly debatable statement.

                      My bet is we'll see if that statement is correct or not depending on how well Unity does now that it has merged. Makes me full of idle curiosity.

                      cybereality Can't tell if it's satire or irony, can't be a true statement.

                      On the Internet, it's very hard to tell who's kidding and who's... saying what they really think. That's why I try to be very careful with the wording, to make it as clear and understandable as possible. But I'm not sure that always succeeds.

                        Exactly this. I usually wouldn't tease without some laughing face or whatever to show I actually am, unless the statement is plain out ludicrous.

                        cybereality I can only speak for myself, but all the indy games I play are on android and ad based. Generally they have a "no ad" option to buy, but I doubt many would buy it without playing the ad based first. Small teams can generally sell a game on steam, and once in a while there is a solo game on steam that is pretty good. I bought two games on steam that were written by one or two developers. That's all. It's a true statement for me, anyway.

                          I wasn't so fortunate with ads, but I didn't have much experience then, either. Still, ads sounded better than making people pay and risk missing having a less fortunate crowd try it.

                          With that being said, there is a nasty drawback: people will use adblockers to stop your ads. I used to swear by rewarded videos for this- it checked if the ad fully ran before rewarding. Other ads are either skipped or completely blocked using ad blockers or putting the phone on air plane mode.

                          Ads are phasing out right now, but I bet they will return as a valuable method for making money from games.

                          A friend gave me a tip recently. Anyone else hear of Rachel Pedersen? She has a podcast on marketing on Podbean. I checked it out and find her stuff kind of interesting. Might be worth looking into for beginners social networking.

                          I can't say I've ever touched a website in the past year without javascript and ads disabled. Ads definitely should not be relied on for any amount of money.

                          cybereality
                          I'm not sure if you're joking here or not. That would be a seriously dumb mistake that would be easy for them to avoid. 🙂

                          I just read the very interesting console article, and I have to say that if I were a young developer, looking to make money, godot would not be my first choice. There's less support for consoles (the source of "most of the revenue from independent developers"), even if you count third party companies. It's harder to insert advertising -- based on the many posts I've seen asking for help on the subject. There's just not much to recommend it.

                          Of course, mine is very much a layman's opinion, but new developers don't have much more knowledge on the subject than I do. They might reach the same conclusion.

                              Okay, I'm not sure if this would help, but... Fahir Mehovic made a tutorial about setting up Admob in Unity- not Godot, but go with me. Could anyone possibly convert the code he uses to GDScript? Would that work?

                              That feeling whether your tutorial is good enough or you still need to improve it.

                              For context, I'm currently making a tutorial for Udemy. I have created the game for the tutorial, but I don't know whether they will like it or not.

                              Functional speaking, it's ready. But there are some that still need to be improved, I think.

                                For my own part, I will not install a game (or any software) that needs an internet connection, a registration, has some sort of DRM or does not run in user space alone. To be provocative, one either has the idea for a nice game that's worth spending money on (e.g. Factorio, KSP), or not. They are not that many. But if they must rely on ads to boost their income, they're not my cup of tea anyway.

                                @KanataEXE , I would say that a game for a tutorial doesn't need golden handles, bells and whistles. Too much info might distract people from the underlying principles. It is not much that even a good teacher can transport in an hour lecture. People often tend to pack too much into it. That doesn't mean it should be repetitive, but just enough to give the listeners the feeling of achievement. It is an edge to walk, and you have no feedback like in a classroom.
                                Disclaimer: I have heard for decades that I am a bad teacher :-/