Two friends of mine, both game developers, swear by
Unity. Unity is a game engine and authoring environment that's designed to be accessible to indie game developers. Now that it's free, I decided to give it a whirl, and I am impressed. It's a deep tool, and I've only scratched the surface with the first tutorial, but so far, wow! I love the visual approach that they've taken. You put enemies in the scene, drop some scripts on them that define their behaviors, and boom, they're off and chasing you. Here's a screen shot of the tutorial project.
There are two things I haven't quite figured out yet.
- How to place objects efficiently. My objects end up floating off in space, then I need to go retrieve them and painstakingly bring them back. I've started clicking on nearby objects, getting their coordinates, and copy-pasting them. Anyone know a better way?
- How to track down errors. My tutorial project had a bunch of errors I couldn't figure out. Unity points me to the offending objects, but how do I know what's wrong?
