Looking at that, you'd think I'm back at the beginning. Looks can be deceiving though.
For starters, that's now a Voxel engine. I am generating the mesh by hand and only drawing the sides facing the air. With my old engine, I was struggling to draw a 16x16x16 chunk. What you see in front of you is 16x256x16. The chunk is generated in less than a second and I still have lots of room for optimization.
More importantly, though, is that what you see there is not Unity. That is XNA.
As I was moving more and more forward with Unity, I felt like I was learning Unity-specific techniques instead of 3d-specific. I wasn't happy with this and questioned my tool of choice. After a couple days of looking around, I decided on XNA. While it only exports to Windows, XBox Live and Windows Phones, it's a lot of fun to work with. It can also take a lot more and handle it gracefully.
Integration with the XBox is awesome. I purchased a wired 360 controller and setting it up was just a matter of plugging the USB into my computer. The code for controls looks like this:
1: Vector2 movement = GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).ThumbSticks.Left;
2: if (movement.Y != 0)
3: {
4: lspeed = speed * movement.Y;
5: cameraPosition += cameraDirection * lspeed;
6: }
Suffice it to say I'm very happy with my switch. I paid the $99/year so I can also upload and test on my 360.
So in a way, I am starting over on a whole new platform. Thanks to Unity, though, I was able to learn a lot of 3d techniques in a relatively short amount of time. For a smaller 3d or 2d game, I wouldn't hesitate to use Unity. For what I want to do I need more.
For my next step, I'm going to learn about lighting and shaders. From Unity to XNA, placing full blocks to a voxel engine I've made some great strides. I look forward to the future.
