Ever since I joined Skive, I’ve been producing 3D games for the web, using Director and Shockwave (not to be confused with the Flash plug-in, which is sometimes referred to as “Shockwave Flash”). I started developing 3D games in 2002, and in the early days, Shockwave’s capabilities were so far ahead of its time that the main consideration was whether the average home user would even have the hardware required to run the game at all.

Some of the 3D Shockwave games we've produced at Skive

Since then however, much to the disappointment and frustration of many Shockwave developers, upgrades to Shockwave’s 3D and game-related capabilities have been almost completely negligible. At the time of writing, Shockwave still has pretty much the same 3D feature set that it had in 2001, and we are now in almost exactly the opposite situation, where most modern computers – even cheap home PCs – have advanced 3D graphic capabilities which the now antiquated Shockwave plug-in simply cannot make full use of.

Adobe claim that their long-term plans include making Director “the preferred environment for games creation”, however until they release a clear roadmap or a significant upgrade in this area, we can only speculate as to what this means.

I recently had the opportunity to research and evaluate some of the modern alternatives for a new project, and of these, “Unity 3D” emerged as a clear winner. I had been keeping an eye on a few of the 3D alternatives over the recent years, but it wasn’t until I actually got stuck in and started developing in Unity 3D that I realised the extent to which it feels ‘alive’ as a tool. The community is buzzing with new ideas and talent, the company is responsive and easily approachable, and the engine’s capabilities are modern and expansive.

Unity 3D - The Editor

As well as the obvious graphical advantages that come with a modern 3D engine, there are many other features which throw Director’s shortcomings into stark contrast. Here are just a few:

• Supports C#, a modern professional programming language. In addition, you can work on the code in Visual Studio, which sweetens things even more.
• Very active forums, with many Unity engineers and product specialists contributing regularly.
• A user feedback system where ideas and feature requests can be added and voted on. Members of the technical team actually comment on these ideas, and some of them do end up getting implemented!
• A public roadmap. They tell you what they’re working on, and roughly when it’s due for release.
• New communities are growing around the technology. People are tweeting and blogging about Unity. There are typically 40-80 users in the IRC channel at any given time (including regular Unity staff). By contrast, the community around Director feels as though it has been dwindling since around 2004, and of those remaining, a high percentage are old-timers.

So now, having completed my first (rather large) Unity 3D project, I’ve come away very impressed with Unity – with both the product itself, and with the company and community that comes with it! And on that note, I’m hoping to dedicate a little more time to such things as blogging about my experiences, experiments and research over the next few months.