A couple of weeks ago, the first meeting of the Unity engine user community in Russia took place in St. Petersburg – Unity User Group.
Such meetings are quite a traditional format of cooperation between users and fans of Unity. However, such meetings have not been held in Russia before. We won’t guess what the reason is, but it’s definitely not due to the lack of Unity developers.
“The format of the meetings is the same for all countries. Perhaps there are some small differences related to local specifics, but in general, the meetings are held in the following way: speakers’ speeches and informal communication,” one of the organizers of the event told us. – “The main purpose of such meetings is a mutually beneficial exchange of experience, obtaining up-to-date information on the engine and technologies and, in the medium term, the development of a local community of Unity developers. That is why the event is organized based on such considerations and is aimed at the Unity user community.”
The first meeting took place in the office (and with the support of) i-Free and was, as they say, a “pen breakdown”. It began with two reports: “How to choose a game engine and not get… crazy” and “Take it and do it”.
The first one was read by Ilya Pshenichny, CEO of the St. Petersburg startup Amini Lab, who previously worked at Sperasoft and Creat Studios, now acquired by i-Free alma mater of the St. Petersburg igroprom.
The main thesis of his report was that when choosing an engine, it is necessary to proceed, first of all, not from the project, its genre or platform, but from what kind of team you have at your disposal.
For example, Ilya said that CryEngine is a great tool for developing games, but at the same time he does not recommend developing them on it. Why? There are very few specialists. Because of this, the risks increase.
The second report, told in a more free form, was read by Alexey Starovoit aka DiscoFish, a flash animator and independent developer. He showed the audience how one of the Unity plugins works, namely the playMaker visual scripting tool from hutong games. By the way, with the help of this plugin, it was developed (and continues to be created) Dreamfall Chapters.
The first St. Petersburg UUG was visited by 30 people. It may seem that this is not much, but it is a good figure for the first local event, the purpose of which is not so much lectures as communication.
The next event will be held at the end of May. We will inform you about registration for the May meeting additionally — follow the announcements on our Facebook pages (https://www.facebook.com/uugspb ) and Vkontakte: (http://vk.com/spbuug ).
P.S Organize an event for game developers — write to us, we will announce.