[game_edu] Teaching with Unity and Playmaker

[Gregory Walek]

I am using both Unity and Unreal Engine 4 in my program. Here's pieces of information  

If you're using the Free version of Unity, be aware of the EULA on it's use. 
"Entity Size Restrictions for Unity Free

Unity Free, which include the free platform add-on products, may not be licensed or used by a commercial entity with annual gross revenues (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000, or by an educational, academic, non-profit or government entity with a total annual budget for the entire entity (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000."
from http://unity3d.com/legal/eula

You seem to have a good grasp of the ins and outs of Unity, so I don't see a need to go in further detail. 

Allan mentioned UDK in his response. UDK is the older Unreal Engine 3. Epic has basic said from the get go that you should use Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) instead.  

* Epic is going out of its way to make the UE4 available to schools & students for free
  *** If you contact Epic through their education page, they will send you licenses for your students for free. I did this for my students and got 1 year licenses for free.  
https://www.unrealengine.com/education  
  *** There's a Game Dev Backpack with tools from Github, UE4 is one of the tools in it. https://education.github.com/pack

* You can create games using Blueprint, the visual scripting system for UE4.  Also the structure of the engine is the same if they're using Blueprint, writing C++ code, or a mix of both. (Granted, you're likely not looking at C++, but it's good to know!) 
  ===>One of my students built a Portal clone prototype using only blueprint. He built it in about a week!

* Unreal Editor & UE4 is highly supported with documentation,  including excellent video tutorials from Epic. 
* It's the same tools as the Devs use. Also it was used to make several well known titles on all major platforms. 
* Growing support for Mobile platforms - Android and iOS specificly. 
* HTML5 support is in an early state. (Unity does this better with their web plugin. 

Regardless of what you ultimately choose, I wish you the best!

- Greg 

________________________________________

From: game_edu [game_edu-bounces at igda.org] on behalf of Allan Fowler [Allan.Fowler at waiariki.ac.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 11:45 PM
To: 'game_edu at igda.org'
Subject: [game_edu] Teaching with Unity and Playmaker

Hi Malcolm,

I have been using Unity for a while now and feel it addresses most of your needs. The price is a little high if you want/have to pay for the licence. I have also been using UDK and GameMarker Studio. However, my preference for using Unity is that coding is a lot more user friendly, as you can (mostly) use open access programming languages (JavaScript, C#). I realize that the other choices may also offer this (now). But in my opinion, Unity does it better.

Allan

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 12:51:26 +1100
From: Malcolm Ryan <malcolmr at cse.unsw.edu.au>
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org>
Subject: [game_edu] Teaching with Unity and Playmaker
Message-ID: <7BA64EDA-4B62-400B-AA50-DDA2F2101E4E at cse.unsw.edu.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

I?m teaching a first-year university game design class to a mixed of programmers and non-programmers. I?m looking for a game engine for them to prototype in. My wish-list is:

        1) A visual editor. Preferably something event based ?when X do Y?.

        2) An interface between this editor and a scripting interface, so the programmers can write code and then use the components they?ve written in the visual editor.

        3) Games can be exported to the web and played online, for easy sharing.

        4) It feels like an ?adult? tool, not a toy (unlike Kodu). Something they will actually continue to use later, and won?t be embarrassed to put on their resume.

        5) It is well-documented.

        6) It is multi-platform (Windows and Mac, at least)

        7) It is cheap/free (for educational customers)

At the moment I am looking into Unity + Playmaker, but the Playmaker documentation is a bit sparse and while the visual editor is good for representing state machines, it doesn?t seem to express reactive rules very clearly (like: "while up is pressed, move forward?). Has anyone tried teaching with this combination?

Malcolm

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