After an intense few weeks with Unity, I've decided to put it on hold and come back to it later. The biggest problem is that, even though it can output to web browsers via WebGL, it is extreme overkill for projects that can be easily handled via Plain Jane HTML.

As an Unity exercise, I pulled art and assets from the old game Star Control 2. This was possible because (1) the creators of the game released the code in 2002, and (2) I'm no longer working at Microsoft. I was aware of the code release when it occurred, but my employment as a Microsoft developer at the time meant I could not look at anything released under GPL. Even that of an old game with zero relation to the work I'm paid to do.

Since it was a simple 2D game, bringing the assets to life using Unity severely underutilized Unity capabilities. That isn't a problem, the part that gave me pause is that the end product is a lot heavier-weight than I thought it would be: Even when there's only a few 2D sprites animating with some text overlay, it is a larger download with correspondingly slower startup than I wanted to see.

Given what I see so far, Unity is the wrong tool for this job. Now I have a decision to make. Option #1: Keep digging in on an old favorite, and work on SC2 code using some other framework, or Option #2: Find a project that plays more to Unity's (many) strengths.

Option #1 goes to the past, option #2 goes to the future. (Specifically VR.... Unity is great for exploring VR development.)

Today, I find that I've caught the old SC2 fever again, so I'm going with #1. I'll come back to Unity/VR/other explorations later.