When comparing Duality vs uScript + Unity3D, the Slant community recommends Duality for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Duality is ranked 30th while uScript + Unity3D is ranked 97th. The most important reason people chose Duality is:
The full source code is available on GitHub, where the framework is actively developed. All of the editor, core and plugin code is written in C#.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Open source
The full source code is available on GitHub, where the framework is actively developed. All of the editor, core and plugin code is written in C#.
Pro Great editor
Duality includes a powerful visual editing system that can be used for previewing, integrating, editing and testing game content.
Pro Live reload of code and assets
Pro Very extensible
Because both Core and Editor are completely plugin-based, Duality not only incorporates a clean and modular design, but is also very extensible - even if it wasn't Open Source. In fact, most of the standard editing capabilities comes in form of Editor plugins.
Pro Built-in physics and lighting
Pro Friendly to version control systems
It can be configured to serialize all data in a text-based format, which has been structurally optimized for version control systems.
Pro Used in commercial projects
It has been used in a production environment without burning the place to the ground. Supposedly artist-proof editor workflow with an API for tailoring the system to fit your team.
Pro Automatically generates nodes for third-party script assets
uScript's nodes are a visual representation of actual code blocks, and it takes advantage of C#'s reflection capabilities to automatically create nodes for any scripts it finds in your project, regardless of the source. This makes it inherently compatible with pretty much everything.
Custom nodes can also be created by hand, for cases where the automatically created ones contain more elements than they actually need.
Pro Versatile flow diagram script model
Modeled after UDK's Kismet (the predecessor to UE4's Blueprint), uScript's scripts resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish.
Pro Generates C# source code
Nodes are translated directly to C# files in your project. This is great for learning to code, and also for advanced users who can use uScript for fast prototyping and then further optimize the scripts if necessary.
Cons
Con Visual Studio required
To have possibility for scripting you have to download entire Visual Studio and spend 10 GB of free space
Con Requires windows for development
Con Not that easy to use
It's a lot more complicated compared to something like Playmaker. Same tasks take a lot more time.