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网页游戏开发引擎之战,Adobe与Unity孰优孰胜?

发布时间:2011-01-19 15:03:55 Tags:,,,,

Adobe即将在今年第二季度发布3D版本的Flash工具Molehill,这下开发者们可能就要犯难了,究竟是支持Molehill、Unity 3D,还是自主创建解决方案?

Adobe's Molehill

Adobe's Molehill

假如分析师的判断无误,整个游戏行业未来五年的市场规模将达870亿美元,在线和移动游戏的份额将占据半壁江山,那么问题就来了:拿什么去抢占这块市场蛋糕?

支持开发3D浏览器游戏的先进技术,已经成为影响网络游戏发展的重要因素,但开发者究竟更青睐哪家公司提供的解决方案呢?

2011年的开发者将面临两个新选择:采用Unity Technology于去年9月份发布的Unity 3,或是Flash 3D版本的Molehill,该工具目前仍处于测试时期,预计今年第二季度发布。

这可不是个容易的选择,游戏开发者们可得掂量清楚了,究竟是采用无处不在的Flash技术,还是接过Unity向开发者们伸出的橄榄枝。

不过也有例外的情况,台湾的乐升科技就选择了第三个方案——为开发下一款游戏《Maze Myth》,自己创建了基于Flash的3D引擎。乐升科技将《Maze Myth》称为“全球首款基于Flash的3D实时战略MMORPG网页游戏”,预计该游戏将于2011年底发布。

乐升科技的董事长Aaron Hsu表示,“我们之所以不用Unity,甚至是Unity 3,是因为它的下载和安装至少需要30秒的时间……大部分浏览器都可以支持Flash功能,所以没必要去下载这个程序,我们三年前就开始自主开发基于Flash的3D引擎,我们把它称为Hive Engine。”

Hsu还表示,Adobe在去年10月28日宣布其下一款软件Molehill会支持3D时,整个团队都在欢呼雀跃,他们觉得乐升科技自主开发Flash引擎真是一个正确的选择。但是乐升科技为什么不直接使用现成的Molehill,而还是要继续推进Hive项目呢?

Hsu对此解释道,“尽管Adobe表示将在第二季度发布MoleHill,但也不排除推迟的可能,如果发布没有延迟,我们就可以快速转向Molehill,如果Hive完成在先,我们就先用Hive,这主要看他们的发布时间。”

但Adobe似乎没有要延迟发布的意思,它已经同魁北克开发商Frima Studio达成了一个项目合作,据Frima的CEO Steve Couture所称,“Frima Studio将对其现有的技术平台进行优化,以支持即将到来的所有新性能和技术。”Frima作为预发布伙伴,已经收到预发布框架,并同Flash Runtime团队一起进行了多次的讨论会和电话会议。

Maze Myth

Maze Myth

Frima已经制作出了一些运用Molehill技术开发的演示视频,第一个演示的就是《僵尸大亨》(Zombie Tycoon)这款游戏。

Couture表示,对开发者来说,Molehill的优势在于它支持早期硬件设备所通用的软件渲染方式。“Adobe对TransGaming的SwiftShader 3D进行了授权,Molehill提供低等级的API硬件设备接口。这种模式对那些喜欢亲力亲为的开发者来说更有弹性,但其他人也可以灵活使用它的3D数据库。”

Couture相信Molehill将对基于浏览器的游戏产生巨大影响;它将最大限度地开启当代硬件设备的潜能。”举例来说,他表示,玩家可以直接在自己的Facebook页面体验《使命召唤》或《GT赛车》等游戏。这些功能强化的硬件可支持玩家在屏幕上移动2D或3D的东西,为硬核和休闲游戏玩家带来更多互动性、更深入的游戏体验。他感慨道,“13年前我就想让Flash成为游戏开发工具,Molehill实现了这一点。”

不过Frima也并不挑食,他们同时也使用Unity引擎。

Unity-logo

Unity-logo

Couture表示,“Unity是一款很棒的产品,我们有些项目就是靠它完成的,Flash因为已经掌握了足够的发行渠道,获得了业内的信任,所以具有很大的优势,这一点在开发免费模式的社交游戏过程中尤其如此。软件安装过程是游戏争取大众用户的一个障碍。”在超越Flash之前,Unity当然深知它所面临的挑战。

就连Unity Technology首席执行官David Helgason也不得不承认,“Flash有着庞大的用户基础,它的安装率高达90%以上,这也意味着当你开发Flash游戏的前提是,你知道98%的玩家都已经安装了Flash……但是我们产品的安装次数大约是4000万,比起世界上如此之众的计算机数量,这个比例实在是微乎其微。不过更重要的还是安装成功率,自从9月份Unity 3发布以来,它的安装成功率在60%至70%,这表示有60%到70%的人会同意安装插件,还有30%到40%的人拒绝安装。”

Helgason将玩家不愿安装插件的原因归结为几个因素,“有些人对插件有所戒备,还有人是因为网速过慢没耐心等(虽然插件大小只有3M)。还有一些人是在内网或者正在工作,他们不便安装软件。”

据Helgason所称,自从9月份Unity公布了其游戏引擎新版本以来,安装成功率已接近90%,这主要是因为之前冗长的安装过程已经缩减为一次点击即可完成。“我们仍然在搜集相关数据,但据开发者反应,他们看到了更高的成功率。”

撇开插件问题不谈,Unity引擎正是由于其长期对3D的支持才获得了良好的发展;大约在2005年,Unity发布了的该引擎的最初版本以及丰富的游戏工具组件。

Helgason表示,“Unity引擎已经走过了五年历程,这说明我们创建开发工具已经有些年头了,对这一领域也有了比较深入的了解,这些工具的备案文件都非常齐全,这表示它已经掌握了庞大的信息共享群体……开发者很称道Unity的开放性和它对游戏开发的提供的服务。尽管插件问题可能让我们失去一些用户,但我们还是以快速开发的优势赢得了其他用户;通过Unity进行基于浏览器的游戏开发体验会比使用Flash更好,就是因为Unity能非常快捷地添加更为复杂的内容,而且在物理技术,线性处理,网络等方面都占有优势, 它的3D技术,更是Flash难以实现的功能。”

Unity引擎在手机游戏领域尤为成功,这也让该公司在这一市场上遥遥领先于其他竞争对手。

Helgason表示,“比如说,我们在iPhone上取得了极大的成功。App Store上有超过1000款基于Unity的iOS游戏,但我想使用包括Flash在内的开发工具所创建的游戏会超过100款。这是因为,在那些更小型的游戏设备平台上,你总会想法节省开支,而Flash游戏开发的成本却很高。我并不是说使用Molehill就会出现这种问题,只是觉得至少我们的产品在这方面会很有优势。”

尽管Helgason尚不能提供使用Unity引擎的开发者数据,但他确信,Unity在游戏开发领域的市场份额正在快速增长。“使用Flash开发其它类项目(比如说视频和网页菜单)的人要比使用Flash开发游戏的用户要多得多。我很想了解究竟有多少人在使用Flash开发游戏,但可能没有任何人清楚这个情况。”

与Adobe和电脑制造商戴尔的合作案例相似,Unity也在寻找相关的程序绑定项目合作。

Helgason表示,“戴尔电脑出售时就已经预先绑定Flash插件了,虽然我们目前还不具备这种市场能力,但是一直在快速追赶,我们很快就会开始寻找这种合作项目,也许未来两年就会展开这类合作……我们很期待Chorme浏览器加入所谓的Native Client项目。这可以让Unity的游戏直接在Chorme浏览器中运行而无需另外安装插件。可想而知,这个项目对我们来说有非常重要。”

Adobe的发言人同样也承认了Unity在3D游戏上的成功,“但需要着重指出的是,Flash中的3D并不仅仅为了游戏而存在。我们即将发布的Flash 3D平台将对包括电子商务,数码营销,丰富的网页应用等领域在内的互联网行业产生巨大影响。因为Flash Player的功能扩展,用户不再把它视为插件。”

不过Adobe发表这番言论的时候,他们所谓3D Flash平台还正处于内部测试时期。

Adobe游戏解决方案产品战略高级总监Jennifer Taylor表示,“我们关注的是那些对3D工作流有严格要求的开发工具和引擎供应商,但现在也向开发商和发行商群体扩大了我们的测试范围,明年春天还会推出对外的公开测试。”

假如Molehill如期发布,那么开发者们面临的问题就是在Adobe与Unity之间的两难抉择。

Taylor表示,“在向网页添加三维效果这个层面上,我们仍处于初级阶段,Unity在这一行的表现确实令人叹服。但Adobe已经拥有300万开发者用户,所以我们仍可从不同角度切入,为3D领域创造新的发展机遇……”

Adobe的发展目标又是什么呢?成为像Unity一样备受游戏开发者拥护的工具。

Taylor对此答道,“显然,Unity的游戏开发引擎和工具的确很赞, 我们在这一点上还没有具体的规划,但你知道Adole一直致力于为设计师和开发者提供更优质的服务,所以我们总会想法克服目前短板,支持他们像开发视频等其它内容一样,方便快捷地创建3D内容。我们正在研究帮助开发者降低成本,减少麻烦的解决方案,让他们采纳我们围绕3D领域创建的新技术。”(本文为IIEEG 提供初稿,游戏邦二次修订编译 )

Adobe Vs. Unity: The Future Of 3D Web Games

[As Adobe marches towards a Q2 launch for its Molehill, the 3D version of Flash, developers must decide whether to aim for that, Unity 3D, or an in-house solution -- Gamasutra investigates.]

If analysts are correct — if online and mobile games generate half the projected $87-billion total game market’s annual revenue in five years, as investment advisor Digi-Capital predicts — the question arises: What will it take to capture market share?

Leading-edge tech that supports immersive play, such as in 3D browser-based games, will surely have a major impact across the web, but which technology companies will developers favor?

This year, developers have two new choices: adopt Unity 3, the third version of Unity Technologies’ increasingly popular Unity 3D development platform, recently launched in September, or utilize Molehill, the new 3D version of Flash, now in beta and scheduled for a Q2 release.

It’s not a simple choice, to be sure, say game makers who must weigh the overwhelming popularity of the near-ubiquitous Flash against the support they receive from the developer-friendly Unity.

Instead, Taiwan-based XPEC Entertainment has chosen a third alternative — building a proprietary Flash-based 3D engine for its next game, Maze Myth, scheduled for a year-end 2011 release. The game, which XPEC calls “the world’s first 3D, Flash-based, real-time battle browser MMORPG,” was discussed in detail at GDC China in December.

“We decided against Unity because, even with its new Unity 3 version, it still takes at least 30 seconds to download and plug in the program,” says Aaron Hsu, XPEC’s chairman. “Most browsers already have Flash installed so there’s no need to download it. Which is why we decided to go with Flash when, three years ago, we started working on our Flash-based 3D engine, which we call the Hive Engine.”

Hsu recalls that his team was thrilled when, on October 28, Adobe announced that its next release, codenamed Molehill, would support 3D, confirming that XPEC was heading in the right direction with its own Flash engine. But why would XPEC continue the Hive project when it could just as easily adopt Molehill?

“Because even though Adobe says Molehill will be available in Q2, there could be delays,” explains Hsu. “If there are no delays, we will quickly transition to Molehill. If we complete Hive first, we will use Hive. It all depends on who is quickest.”

But Adobe has no intention of missing its deadline. In fact, it is already partnering with Quebec City-based developer Frima Studio which is “adapting and improving its existent technology platform to support all the new features and possibilities included” in the upcoming API, according to Steve Couture, Frima CEO.

“As a pre-release partner, we receive pre-release builds and participate in both forum and voice discussions with the Flash Runtime team,” he elaborates. “We were able to expose concrete challenges that game developers face.”

Frima has produced several demo videos utilizing the new Molehill technology, the first of which uses the developer’s Zombie Tycoon game.

One of the developer-friendly aspects of Molehill, says Couture, is that it supports a fallback to a software renderer for older hardware. “Adobe licensed TransGaming’s SwiftShader 3D. Molehill offers a low-level API to access the hardware. This provides enough flexibility for those who want to get their hands dirty, but allows others to use available 3D libraries to use it as well.”

Couture believes Molehill “will have a large impact on browser-based games and their quality; it will unlock the full potential of today’s hardware.”

For example, he says, one could play a game comparable to Call of Duty or Gran Turismo directly on their Facebook wall. The acceleration hardware allows one to have moving items on screen — 2D or 3D — giving more interactivity and immersion possibilities for gamers, hardcore or casual, he explains.

“Thirteen years ago, I wanted Flash to become a tool for game developers,” he says. “With Molehill, this is it. It’s finally a gaming platform.”

And yet, Frima is using Unity’s technology as well as Adobe’s.

“Unity is a great product that we use for some of our projects,” explains Couture. “The Flash player, however, has a huge advantage because of its existing distribution and trust. This is particularly true for free-to-play and social games. Installing software is a big obstacle in this market, especially when the key to success is to have the widest entry door into the game.”

Unity is, of course, well aware of that hurdle it needs to overcome before it can do a better job of competing with Flash.

“Yes, Flash has this massive install base which is up in the high 90 percentile,” acknowledges David Helgason, CEO of San Francisco-based Unity Technologies. “Which means that when you offer somebody a Flash game, you know that, say, 98 percent of the gamers will already have Flash installed.

“We, on the other hand, have approximately 40 million plug-ins out there which translates to just a few percent of however you estimate the world population of computers.

“More important is the installation success rate. Up until September when we launched Unity 3, our success rate was 60-70 percent, meaning that when you offered a Unity program to somebody, 60-70 percent of them would agree to install the plug-in but 30-40 percent would not.”

Helgason attributes that reluctance to several factors: “Some people have just been told to beware plug-ins, while others have slow connections and can’t be bothered to wait for it — even though the plug-in is only 3MB. And some people are on closed networks or are working on PCs where they can’t install stuff.”

But, since September when Unity unveiled the new version of its game engine, the installation success rate has leaped to around 90 percent, Helgason claims, mainly because the former multi-step process has evolved into a one-click installation. “We’re still gathering data on that,” he says, “but developers have told us that they are seeing much better success rates.”

Disregarding the plug-in issue, the Unity engine has fared particularly well due to its longevity, especially in its support of 3D; it’s been around since 2005 when the original version was unveiled with 3D capabilities as well as its rich game tool set.

“The Unity engine has been around for five years, which means that we’ve been building our tools for quite a few years and there is a depth to them, an exactness and a polish that’s really hard to achieve. And the tools are extremely well-documented,” says Helgason. “That means books as well as a lot of sharing and knowledge going on in a very big community.

“Developers have appreciated that openness combined with a deep game focus. So while may lose some potential customers because of the plug-in issue, we gain others because of our very fast development times; developers get a significantly better experience in the browser with Unity than with Flash simply because it’s very easy to put in really complex content and do really good game-specific stuff like physics, streaming, networking, and so on — in addition to 3D — that is somewhere between hard and impossible to do with Flash.”

The Unity engine has had particular success in the mobile device space where, Helgason reports, his company is far ahead of the competition.

“We’re wildly successful on the iPhone, for instance,” he says. “There are over 1000 Unity-based iOS games in the App Store for iPhone and iPad while I don’t think any other game tool set — including Flash — has more than perhaps 100 or so games. That’s because, with those small devices, you really want to be close to the metal and not have a lot of overhead. And Flash has a lot of overhead. There’s no telling what share Molehill will get, but we feel we have a pretty big leg up for a while at least.”

Helgason was unable to supply data regarding how many developers build with the Unity engine versus Flash, but he says that, when it comes to games, Unity’s market share is growing rapidly.

“A very significant number of people use Flash for stuff other than games — for things like video and website menus and so on. I’d love to know how many people are actually building games with Flash; I don’t think anyone has those numbers.”

In the meantime, Unity is working on bundling deals similar to the ones Adobe has with computer makers like Dell.

“When a Dell computer comes out, the Flash plug-in is already pre-bundled with it,” says Helgason. “We don’t have that sort of market power yet. But we’re catching up incredibly fast and I think we’ll start to see those kinds of bundlings soon, perhaps in the next two years.

“In the meantime, we’re looking forward to the Chrome browser adding what the Google techs call Native Client. What that will do is give Unity games the ability to run natively in the browser without a separate plug-in. You can imagine how important that will be to us.”

While an Adobe spokesperson acknowledged Unity’s success in 3D games, “it needs to be emphasized that 3D in Flash won’t just be for gaming. Our soon-to-be-released Flash platform with 3D will have a major impact across the entire Web — e-commerce, digital marketing, rich Web apps, etc., because of the proliferation of Flash Player which is not considered a plug-in anymore in terms of the end users. To them, it’s just there.”

At the moment, the 3D Flash platform is in what Adobe is calling a very limited, private beta.

“Our focus has been on the tools and engine providers who are critical on the 3D work flows,” says Jennifer Taylor, senior director of product and strategy for gaming solutions at Adobe. “But we’re extending our beta now to more of the developer and publisher community, and then we’ll be opening up a more public beta in the spring.”

Then, when Molehill is released — in Q2 if on schedule — the question is what sort of competition will developers see between the Adobe and Unity engines.

“At this point, we’re still in the early days when it comes to adding a third dimension to the Web,” says Taylor. “Unity has been incredible in terms of delivering these capabilities to the industry. But, with Adobe’s base of over three million developers, it’s obvious that we bring a different lens to the opportunities around 3D. We will be bringing 3D to the broader Web  community, effectively empowering the masses.”

And Adobe’s goal? To become as game developer-friendly as Unity is perceived to be.

“Obviously, one of the things Unity has done very well is deliver great capabilities in their engine and their tools,” observes Taylor. “We haven’t announced any specific plans at this point,but you can imagine that Adobe is focused on designers and developers. We’re going to be looking to find ways to solve their challenges and to make working with 3D as easy as we’ve made working with video, with vectors, with all these different content types.

“We are thinking very strategically about ways in which we can reduce the cost and the pain and the challenges for developers so that they can embrace the new capabilities we are adding to the runtime around 3D.”(source:gamasutra)


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