Unity recently changed their pricing model so that any developer that makes $200,000/year or more, AND has 200,000 or more total app installs that use the Unity runtime will have to pay $0.20 per install. This means that once I meet the new criteria, I have to pay Unity $40,000 for my work. This includes game demos, re-installs, installs on multiple devices, and pirated installs. Fortunately, I don't make that much money per year so I don't have to worry about this extra payment yet. But it does mean that I'm taking Solar Lander off of the Unity engine before I qualify for those fees. Plus, it also means that Unity is essentially forcing their own, proprietary, tracking software into a game that I have decided long ago will NOT have any such software in it. And I wouldn't trust their tracking software anyways. Here are a list of things I've been working on to put the Modding Update in the beta branch on Steam.

• New base UI resolution of 1024 x 768 (old base resolution was 800 x 600).
• The addition of retro throttle controls (not available in the default game modes).
• Additional controls for using the keyboard to provide a constant throttle output at levels other than 0% and 100%.
• Zoom controls to allow for smoothing-out the transitions between zooming and not zooming.
• New UI elements on the High Scores screen to allow users to select between different leaderboards and refresh the current leaderboard.
• A check to make sure you cannot accidentally assign a button, key, or axis to two or more controls at the same time.
• Use a stack for navigating between different game menus, among other UI performance enhancements.
• Migrate joystick button and axis assignments, and response values into controller profiles rather than as part of the game settings.

What I have in store for Solar Lander is to move it to my own game engine (which is a work in progress still). That way, I know that the game will only have software that I explicitly put in it. Some of the software that I will be using is actually available on my GitHub page. In addition, Unity tends to bloat the game loop with a ton of stuff that my game just doesn't need. Granted, I can take a lot of that stuff out of the loop (which requires code to do that, which will increase load times), which is what I was originally going to do. But since Unity forced my hand, Solar Lander will now get a clean game loop. There will be some downsides to this though. First, it does mean that Solar Lander's Modding Update will not be available for Linux, since right now, I'm only familiar with the Windows API. That will have to change fast. Secondly, I will have to delete the previous versions branches since these versions will still be on the Unity Engine. And the biggest downside: More delay for the Modding Update, which I would have liked to have been out on the Beta branch right now, possibly coming to the main branch.

[ 2023-09-14 20:11:24 CET ] [ Original post ]