Unity Technologies announce 'Open Projects', building games in Unity that are open source

These news are dynamite! I love open source more because of this. Such incredible projects are underway. But this project will surprise its makers.I'm sure of it


Last edited by Solarwing on 1 October 2020 at 5:03 pm UTC

lets not be naive here.

replace the word: unity technologies (company) with microsoft, and the unity game engine with directX and tell me: whats happens?

unity is not doing that because they want to help the open source comunity, they want to take advantage of the open source comunity to help their proprietary game engine to compete against other engines like godot (wich is trully open), and unreal (wich is source code avaliable or something), they want to improve their ecosystem with the power of "open source", not to empower the open source ecosystem with the power of unity, otherwise they would just open source their engine.

now, if doing that is better than not doing anything open source, or not, its up to you readers to decice, in my personal option, it still is a good thing, but its fair away from ideal, epic sending an mega grant to godot was an better deal for us.
unity could help some open source libraries that they use, or some thirdy party tools like blender who are helpfull for any developer regardless of game engine, but instead they want us to help then for... at least they are paying, or its for free?

replace the word: unity technologies (company) with microsoft, and the unity game engine with directX and tell me: whats happens?

The same as most companies, including Valve. They're all out for financial gain in some way. We all know this. Open source isn't about being entirely free of cost remember. Not sure what your entire post is really trying to get at. Yes they're a company selling a product which is proprietary, doesn't change what they're doing with this.

If the game can only be built with a proprietary engine, is it really an open source game? I don't think so. Or have I misunderstood and the game they will be making won't depend on Unity?

Unity is really a dealbreaker for me. There are so many real open source projects one might help...
Anyway, this is strategically clever. Such projects are sertainly a way to improve documentation and the engine itself, especially if the team building the engine is involved.

replace the word: unity technologies (company) with microsoft, and the unity game engine with directX and tell me: whats happens?

The same as most companies, including Valve.
there is a big difference here, valve is doing a lot of things that improve linux in general.

paying developers to improve the drivers makes linux better for all of us, not just steam.
i can buy an game in an drm-free service like gog or an opensource game from github, and play it using the drivers that valve helped making, or improvments to the kernel that they did, without touching steam if i want.
maybe proton is too tied to steam, but they're still improving wine in general.

" They're all out for financial gain in some way. We all know this. Open source isn't about being entirely free of cost remember."

i'm not saying that they shouldnt make money, you're the one implying that
being open source mean you cant monetize it, take godot for example, makes money despite the fact that its open source.
sure, they're not making as much money as unity, but it will grow over time, the question is, why should we help unity instead of somehting like godot? we're locking ourselves to an proprietary runtime to run our open source code, if you dont see the issue here, why do you use linux to begin with?

sure, godot is used to make proprietary games, and part of the money used to funding it comes from developers who made those proprietary games on it, trying to contribute back to an project that helped then.
both godot and unity are making money here, the difference is that if i want to make an open source game on godot, my game will be open source on the game code and engine code, the only proprietary part will be the operating system that the player use to play (if they play on windows), the drivers (if they're not using floss drivers) and any firmware that their computer may have (if they dont purchase from system76 or change their firmware somehow)
Unity add another layer of being proprietary, if you make an open source game on it, good luck removing the unity "layer" later on, maybe you coulde replace it with some floss engines like godot, if that move from unity technologies dont kills it...

another example:
if i make an site open source site, using open standards like html5, i can run this site on free browser like firefox, or an proprietary like internet explorer (if it work on legacy browsers) but if i make it using proprietary standards like active X, it will only work on IE on windows, regardless of the code of my site being open or not.

the same goes for open source games made in directX.

Not sure what your entire post is really trying to get at. Yes they're a company selling a product which is proprietary, doesn't change what they're doing with this.

the question is that they're asking the open source comunity to help then with open source code, while then thenselves arent willing to opensource their code.

so, if they cant find an way to monetize their game engine if they open its code, why should i write open source code for it?
to improve their ecosystem and gain nothing in return? if they're willing to pay for those open contributions, then sure, its an fair deal.

but no, they cant find an way to make money with open source code, so they want me to figure out it instead, or, if i cant, work for then for free, while theyre not willing to do the same.

If the game can only be built with a proprietary engine, is it really an open source game? I don't think so. Or have I misunderstood and the game they will be making won't depend on Unity?

yeah, that is the point.
that is like saying:
my game is open source, here is the source code:

"c:\program files\my copany name\game.exe"

if you run this line of code, you can run my game! see? its open source!

no, its not.

if you're calling an pre built library to calc physics for you and your game depend on physics to work (eg: angry birds or similiar), you dont have acess to the source code of this library, then your game is not trully open source.

i quoted the example of drivers in another reply and drivers, let me better formulate on then:
html5 is an open standard, wich means any company can work on implementing it.
it may be an open source implementation (eg firefox) or proprietary (internet explorer).

if you make an open source game in html, then it may be open on the game layer (html5), browser layer (firefox) and operating system layer (linux), or you can replace some of those layers for other that you prefer...

if you use some engine to make such game, then you add another layer to it that may be libre (godot) or not (unity).

i can understand why people would be tempted to use some proprietary engine, it may have some features only avaliable on it (eg: rendering optimizations, physics library, etc), what im saying is:
lets not fool ourselves, if your code can only run on unity game engine, on windows, or something like this, its still not 100% our code, it still locked to some proprietary layer.

if you're ok with this, then, go for it, just know what you're doing and dont ask me for help later on to try to kill an monster that you helped to feed, and now is trying to "kill" you somehow.

i'm not crazy as RMS, i'm willing to run some proprietary code for convenience or anything.
but if we accept anything, we may end up with an system more close than windows...

I don't really have much to add, I agree with what mirv said and I think this is still a great initiative if you're not going to be a zealot about it.

Is this a tactical move from Unity to strike-back the increasing interest of (open source & new) developers for Godot?

I don't have a problem with this it could even lead to a new career for some talented people. Plus if there are linux developers out there that do make it into a game making studio there's a linux friendly voice on game development team right there.

Someone in the comments mentioned gadot engine yes its open source but why do they need to hold an event to encourage developers to use their engine. If you/they are that passionate about open source gaming fix the problem direct. Get a discord group together and actively work on a game using open source development tools.

Someone in the comments mentioned gadot engine yes its open source but why do they need to hold an event to encourage developers to use their engine. If you/they are that passionate about open source gaming fix the problem direct. Get a discord group together and actively work on a game using open source development tools.

Why does any project ever have to market itself?

Someone in the comments mentioned gadot engine yes its open source but why do they need to hold an event to encourage developers to use their engine. If you/they are that passionate about open source gaming fix the problem direct. Get a discord group together and actively work on a game using open source development tools.

Why does any project ever have to market itself?

Well there are a multitude of reasons my point was the particular poster was ranting about doing this sort of promotion and they saying why not with x engine. My point dont bitch about it do something about it you dont need an organized event if it matters to you just do it, use whatever open source engine you want and make something that makes people take notice of the engine.

Perhaps Godot is doing some kind of dent in Unity's business, which would be great. There's still a long road ahead, though. The problem with Godot is that despite all the money it is getting and the number of full-time devs on it, development on it is still very slow. Godot still lags behind Unity big time in 3D capabilities and Unity's own 3D isn't even high-end, either. That's not going to even start to improve until Godot 4 with Vulkan is finished, which is underway for a long time and there's still no ETA on it. It's just the beginning though, Godot 4 is not a magic bullet that will have everything missing. It will just lay the foundation for other stuff being implemented. It's still going to take Godot years to catch up.
What's nice for Godot though is that what's there is really good. I think the engine is even easier to use and understand than Unity, there's high quality documentation available on most topics, the entire engine is available to use and modify and furthermore the engine and editor run beatifully in Linux, which is not something that can be said about Unity - the engine runs somewhat fine, their Linux editor is laggy and unstable.

I'm a C# developer and I have been succesfully avoiding C++ so far. Godot is making me want to delve into it rather than painfully watch the slow progress, but realistically a C++ newbie like me wouldn't really be making any fast progress, either :(

The Unity editor on Windows is also extremely slow, and the fact it often doesn’t tell you it’s busy and will ignore all UI input makes it infuriating.

Oh wow, well that makes it even worse. Yeah, all those new features they've been cooking up lately have been on the expense of the editor experience, I think. Not only it ignores UI inputs but it also fails to refresh the UI when it's busy, so it basically just freezes at random times. Oh and some operations like duplicating game objects are dangerous, as they can crash the whole editor. It's likely worse on Linux than it is on Windows but either way, Godot's tools right now are much better and friendlier - with half the features, sadly.

This is great news! I love it.

If someone asked if you wanted a dish of ice cream, would you cross your arms and refuse because they didn't give you the whole carton? Let's get real here. This is a positive move whether the game engine is open source or not. Are you next going to say that a game isn't open source if it only runs on Windows or Mac OS? Next step is open hardware. What's next after that, cooperative, non-profit utilities in your home?

It's very easy to be cynical. It is a LOT harder to do good work, be positive, and get others working alongside you. Cheers to the folks who can.