Posted by: Tom Higgins - Product Evangeli at October 16, 2007 12:05:51 PM
Unity Technologies is extremely proud to announce the release of Unity 2.0, the largest and most exciting update to Unity and the Unity Web Player that has ever been released. This major update includes more than 50 new features and a variety of other product updates. Everything about Unity 2.0 is designed to make your games look better on more platforms, run faster, and easier to make.
Your Games Look Better
Creating content with strong visual appeal is a key element to your success, and there are a number of features to be found in Unity 2.0 that allow you to create content that looks even better than before. This is due to a variety of new features, including the ability to play video files as textures on any surface with ease and an all new way of developing content GUI systems.
Your Games Run Faster
Alongside top-notch visuals, developers also require the highest performance possible and as such we've also included a number of features in Unity 2.0 that will boost your frame rates and script execution speeds. These performance improvements are based partly on core engine optimizations as well as new features like DirectX 9 rendering support on Windows.
Your Games are Easier to Make
A key advantage of using Unity is the fact that it allows you to learn faster and do more with less effort, and we haven't forgotten that in Unity 2.0. The workflow improvement features include an all new companion product, the Unity Asset Server, which allows teams of developers to easily stay in synch and provide project source control capabilities. They also include a number of significant improvements and additions to the documentation, including new references guides for shaders, network enabled games and the terrain rendering engine.
Learn More
Of course there are many new features and improvements that haven't been mentioned above. The best way to learn about them all is to visit our website where you can learn more about the new features, download and use the free 30-day trial or go ahead and purchase Unity 2.0 today.
WHAT'S UNITY
Unity provides 3D graphics and rendering effects on par with the newest games on the market, an extremely fast implementations of javascript (20x faster than other implementations), flexible and fast character animation support, the fastest physics simulation engine using Ageia's PhysX, and totally dynamic game worlds where every single object and texture is modifiable on the fly.
Unity is the ultimate in supporting art packages. Almost every single application is supported, ranging from 3D modeling to image and audio tools. Unity has support for Maya, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Cheetah3D, Blender, Modo and more.
Tutorials, videos and examples, thorough documentation and reference manual, and a great friendly community help make Unity a joy to get into.
BACKGROUND
Unity is the only Mac-based high-end game development tool sporting a stylish pro-app GUI, no-friction workflow and over-the-top technical features such as extensible shaders and image effects, dazzling particles, JIT compiling scripts in C#, javascript or a dialect of Python, the Ageia physX Engine, skinned character animation, and ragdolls.
Unity is being used by game developers such as Codemasters and Freeverse, in game design education, and amongst creative visualization professionals.
Tom HigginsMember since: 8/2/2007 From: San Francisco, CA
Posted - 10/24/2007 5:04:37 AM
When will a Windows IDE be out? A link to an article with Nicholas Francis was already posted but I'd like to still add some info. We've now released Unity 2.0 and as we look forward at what's next I can say that a Windows IDE ranks at the top of the list. I cannot offer a time-line just yet, but we most definitely recognize that without it we hinder our long term growth and leave many potential customers out of the loop (some may be up for buying a Mac to use our tool, many others are not).
As to that preview article and how it relates to Unity 2.0:
A) The screenshots shown are not even of Unity 2.0
B) The article states that Unity fails to have proper support for networked multiplayer games yet that's now incorrect, we added a host of new features in 2.0 to address just that need.
C) The article calls out shortcomings in Unity's 2D capabilities yet it does so while only mentioning pre-existing features, it doesn't mention the all new in-game GUI tools we added to Unity 2.0 (that are code-based for now but we will build on in future releases).
D) It mentions no proper video support and states that some "sketchy third-party plugin" is needed to play videos which is now not true. We added all new video support in Unity 2.0 and you can play videos as textures without relying on any external technologies (in both stand-alone executables as well as within our web player).
E) The article doesn't discuss a host of new features (a full-on terrain and nature rendering system, real-time shadows, an asset server, and more) and improvements (including significant improvements to the documentation) that all add to the power and capability of Unity.
I will admit that we have some areas that need improvement and we're working on those aggressively. And while the review does correctly mention some limitations found in Unity today, it also calls out some limitations that were directly addressed in the Unity 2.0 release. So please, don't rely on that article for a completely accurate representation of what we've done in our latest efforts, instead give it a look for yourself:
Emmanuel DelogetGDNet News LeadMember since: 8/27/2003 From: France
Posted - 10/25/2007 8:14:13 AM
Quote:
Original post by Tom Higgins
When will a Windows IDE be out? A link to an article with Nicholas Francis was already posted but I'd like to still add some info. We've now released Unity 2.0 and as we look forward at what's next I can say that a Windows IDE ranks at the top of the list. I cannot offer a time-line just yet, but we most definitely recognize that without it we hinder our long term growth and leave many potential customers out of the loop (some may be up for buying a Mac to use our tool, many others are not).
As to that preview article and how it relates to Unity 2.0:
A) The screenshots shown are not even of Unity 2.0
B) The article states that Unity fails to have proper support for networked multiplayer games yet that's now incorrect, we added a host of new features in 2.0 to address just that need.
C) The article calls out shortcomings in Unity's 2D capabilities yet it does so while only mentioning pre-existing features, it doesn't mention the all new in-game GUI tools we added to Unity 2.0 (that are code-based for now but we will build on in future releases).
D) It mentions no proper video support and states that some "sketchy third-party plugin" is needed to play videos which is now not true. We added all new video support in Unity 2.0 and you can play videos as textures without relying on any external technologies (in both stand-alone executables as well as within our web player).
E) The article doesn't discuss a host of new features (a full-on terrain and nature rendering system, real-time shadows, an asset server, and more) and improvements (including significant improvements to the documentation) that all add to the power and capability of Unity.
I will admit that we have some areas that need improvement and we're working on those aggressively. And while the review does correctly mention some limitations found in Unity today, it also calls out some limitations that were directly addressed in the Unity 2.0 release. So please, don't rely on that article for a completely accurate representation of what we've done in our latest efforts, instead give it a look for yourself:
It turns out that the reason why the review linked to above is so inaccurate, is that it is in fact written about the previous version of Unity. Due to some editorial misstep, this it was only released after Unity 2.0 was out... resulting in quite a lot of confusion (and a bit of bad press).
For that version it is fairly accurate, but of course Unity 2.0 resolved all the main shortcomings of Unity 1.6, which is why almost all the criticisms have been addressed.
... in the meantime we've started working on the next release ... :)
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davidhelgason
Member since: 8/24/2005 From: Copenhagen, Denmark
Posted - 10/18/2007 12:34:24 AM
Posted - 10/19/2007 1:38:22 AM
Posted - 10/22/2007 8:38:09 AM
