DrewMelton Thank you for the detailed answer. It did contain some useful information. As soon as I'll have some free time, I'll do a few tests and see how it works out.
Your Unity port looks promising as well, I wish you good luck for it. If you don't mind my asking, I'd have some questions about that as well:
- Are you coding it in C# or are you using some visual programming plugin?
- I read that you tried UE4 as well (If I remember right). Why did you ended up using Unity instead of UE4?
I'm coding in C#. I have Playmaker, but decided that I wanted to finally learn to code. I feel like it gives a bit more control, not to mention that if I ever join a team, saying I can program vs saying I only know how to use Playmaker or UE4 Blueprints or whatever, is a big selling point. Also, there are a lot of books and tutorials that are in C# (but not Playmaker). The next book I am going to read is strictly about A.I. programming.
I liked UE4, in fact I still say it has a better graphics engine, but the ease of use with everything that comes with it gets in the way. When you want a customized game with specific features, all the nice features of UE4 tend to not help much, and may even make it more confusing. The visual blueprint nodes can look like mush after a while, and you have to bounce around a lot between sections.
Unity in C# is very straight forward once you learn how it works. Everything is done from a centralized location. Every object has components that can be attached plus enabled/disabled at will all from the same screen. This makes it easy to accomplish certain tasks. For example, let's say you have a c# script that highlights the object on mouse over, well just grab it and attach it to the new object. That's it.
I also feel like Unity is a bit easier to work with in general due to smaller file sizes for easier backup, and access to the asset store with plenty of examples and cool stuff made by professionals who specialize in one particular area. For example, the animated shaders in the Diablo style health and stamina globes you see above were assets that I bought because I do not have much experience in creating animated shaders. They look great in motion. The rest of the HUD I made myself, of course.
Well, anyway, let me know if you have anymore questions. I need to head out for a while.