‘Futile’ Unity code only 2D game framework alpha released

 

This post over on the gamedev forums at reddit caught my eye.  User @Mattrix has released a framework for creating 2D games using Unity with code only.  This effectively turns Unity in to a runtime only; it makes almost zero use of the tools provide with Unity and in many cases completely re-invents things Unity already does, such as texture packing.

 

At first glace you may be thinking “Why?  Isn’t that remarkably stupid?”

 

Well, not really.  To a certain degree, you are already cludging Unity a bit when you are working in 2D as it is, it certainly is designed as a 3D toolset.  Consider this though, if you want to create a game for Android and/or iOS and you want to use C#, what are your options?  Well, basically that leaves MonoGame or Unity.  MonoGame is certainly a good choice, but there is a major downside…

 

A 400$ price tag.  You see, in the end you either need monotouch or mono for android, which are 400$ a piece. ( God I wish Xamarin would reconsider their pricing! )

 

Or you can go with Unity, which is a licensed version of mono, with a complete game library built overtop and the exact same price tag.  Even better, just a few months back Unity made both Android and iOS versions completely free ( I know I got my licenses then ).  So, if you want to take a code heavy approach and avoid the higher level tools, but prefer to work in C#, Futile is certainly worth checking out.

 

He has included full source for a sample game, that you can see in the following video:

 

He has also provided a 10 minute as well as an hour long video tutorial on getting started.

 

 

I might play with this if I get a bit of time.  If you are interested in checking it out, this is the website and the source code is available on github.

 

Regardless to it’s final usefulness, it’s an interesting idea and it’s cool that he shared it.

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