Unity Division

As some of you have seen or maybe aware of the Unity Division, a free modular game engine that if enough love goes into it, can create a AAA title quality

it's been long planned by some to bring this into fruition and I'd very much like to see it as a public access to bring and draw newcomers in, but to do that, we need to offer hosting for Unity games

Much of the unity scene is very small and divided, there is a severe lack of communities for members to post their ideas, at best you have the Unity forums where they can get a single thread and it gets lost amongst all the other junk
I know a lot of the work needed needs to be agreed upon and the right members to set it up
some people are scared of changing things that are unapproved by their peers which forces things to slow down

there are several things that need to happen over the next few weeks, which in hind sight can be done in 48 hours, but we're revora...

so what needs to be done?
from the top, we'd need a drop down menu in the top banner for Unity with an icon, where it would sit
maybe between BFME and Petro

PNG LINK - Original Large
PNG ICON LINK + Alpha


also on the hosting services, if we're serious for hosting Unity games, we're going to have to make it clear that we offer at least project pages for Unity Developers
http://revora.net/hosting

and lastly a revamp of the project forum in Unity, with major projects at the top where RR and others are while smaller projects in "other projects" and just general house keeping



why the sudden push?
well originally I thought Unity would not get any interest here, but I'm glad it picked up with RR, but we have to be honest, we are competing with Mod DB, while they would have a project page, their forums are a complete useless mess, and that would be our strength
if we can pick up and draw in people, give them something worth hosting their projects with, no matter how small, they will come.

as for me, I'm waiting for Unity to be setup so i bring it to the Public...




 

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 01 April 2013 - 06:32 AM.

Hear Hear! This man speaks the truth! I really mean that. I hope he succeeds in helping to lead us in a new direction. Unity...

That is, if we can make it a resource there that can't be found anywhere else.  And advertise it well.  But that's the part that always gets us... the advertising... Gen, who don't you help out Diggy here and organize some topics to spread around the internets?

Here's my thoughts on this, as a person who uses both Revora and IndieDB for Unity publicity. 

IndieDB has profile pages that are very simple to make and update. This is a big draw, because if I'm developing, I don't want to deal with the hassle of breaking out notepad and making a site, or even grabbing a prefab template. It just works right out of the box and is really easy to keep up to date. However, that's really not why I use IDB. I use it because it has a very large active userbase that is strongly interested in indie titles. Posting stuff there gets me views, gets me exposure. To a developer that's just starting off, strong exposure at such a low effort cost is great. Revora doesn't have the userbase to give me that (yet..).

Revora's key advantage (for me) is when I want to go beyond IDB's pages, and actually have a nicely customized site, with lots of advanced web features, for free. The fact that we offer both a really robust forum with a friendly staff is also a strong plus. These are both options that don't appeal so much to a lone developer who's getting a project off the ground, but are almost mandatory for any level of professionalism. So, we are a better target for developers as they get established. 

In summary:

Revora

• Simple, clean forums
• Great free hosting options

IndieDB

• Massive userbase & potential for exposure
• Really easy to update

There isn't too much overlap, as we're not strictly competing. However, given that most Unity projects die in infancy and are rather low-effort projects in the first place, our pros don't really work for attracting the great majority of users.

Another "problem" with getting unity content is that a lot of the "help" for Unity issues is provided not be a specialized experienced user base, like with modding a particular game. Any c# programmer can technically troubleshoot 90% of Unity "help me" posts. We can't really rely on a lot of that here for help (how many really awesome programmers do we have? I know we do have some, but probably not enough. What I mean here is that we cannot hope to attract users based on technical response.

What I think

DIGI's developer resources section is probably the best bet for generating traffic. If it can be populated really well and advertised, well, nothing draws people like free stuff, especially many Unity newbies who just want to plug in a bunch of code/models and get some kinda game out of them. So I would say expand that as much as we can. I'll contribute what I can, when I can.

If we wanted to start intruding on IDB's territory and providing services for smaller devs, a system similar to T3A's mods might be a good start. Again, provides a pretty simple page where users can easily create a page and create updates, post content. It would be quite nice, particularly if integrated with the developer resources. In a supplementary fashion, if someone wanted to actually start posting indie new roundups - cover non-revora games that seem interesting, things like that. It would further our development towards being a hub and generate additional traffic. 

Additionally, I'll keep personally advertising Revora and the services provided (I try to give us a plug anytime anyone mentions webspace). I'm hoping that as SVSH gets further off the ground, forum demand will be higher and I can start herding the masses over here. We're slowly gaining momentum.

That's my quick blurb. Do with it what you will, digi. 

Nert, 2 things I'd like to say
First, I bet that started as a small post and just grew, second, I agree completely and wholey.
we may not be in direct competition for IndiDB but they offer something I would like too and that's the personalized profile for their game, and in a sence, we do offer that but i've never seen it implemented so maybe I'm assuming it otherwise

You have given me a great idea, but i don't know where to start.
Maybe a website that has the ability to reads the unity forums for projects and uses a thread for its profile page and people can reply that way if they are logged in or a guest

Apollo happily offered to create a website for me based on one i liked, so how do we turn that into the T3A mods page?

Just letting you know i am watching this thread. I have a few systems in which i could do a lot of the things the other websites have done. it would be easier to copy and paste the code but if thats not possible then i can just write it all from scratch