Posts by Tom Higgins

As y’all know the user base for Unity is exploding and that growth includes developers across the spectrum, from games to non-games, from small development shops to large studios, from social media outlets to major media providers. Today we have news about not just a major media provider but a major toy manufacturer as well, that company being none other that LEGO! Allow me to quote a bit of the press release that went out today:

Building on the success of LEGO® Star Wars: The Quest for R2D2 and BIONICLE: Glatorian Arena, Unity Technologies, the provider of the market-leading Unity development platform for 3D interactive content on the Web, PC, Mac, Wii™ and iPhone, announced today a new three-year deal with the LEGO Group, in which the company will standardize on Unity authored content for 3D content on www.LEGO.com.

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of play materials for children, the LEGO Group recognizes the need to offer an innovative online environment for consumers to share their passion and creative flair. To do this, the LEGO Group is developing its web strategy to deliver an online consumer experience to match and enhance the real world fun and invention of LEGO products.

The LEGO Group identified Unity as the best 3D platform available to fulfill its short-term and long-term requirements.

“We’ve invested a great deal of time evaluating technology for the next phase of www.LEGO.com,” said Claus Toftegaard Matthiesen, Technology Manager of the LEGO Group. “We believe that Unity’s flexibility, strength and power will give us scope to create world leading content for our consumers and are looking forward to the cooperation.”

You can read the full press release here.

I personally find this exciting for a number of reasons. Of course it starts out by being a great business deal for Unity Technologies, so let’s get that one out of the way. But worth noting is that it will also serve all of us very well by helping push vast numbers of web player installs due to the high traffic numbers they experience on their website, that’s great for everyone using or adopting Unity for web based content. Finally, it’s also interesting as it’s yet another bit of validation that not only is our technology up to the task of delivering the best in-browser game content possible, but that it’s worth doing so for a mass-market site targeting users of a younger age.

All around this is a good deal and it’s news that I just couldn’t help sharing. Kudos to everyone that was involved in securing this deal, both on the business development front as well as our hard working engineers, for without them none of this would be possible!

A long held dream in the development world has been the idea of “author once, deploy anywhere”. To explain what is meant by that is simple, it’s the notion of being able to author your content one time, then through the simple click of a button deploy your content on any platform you like, whether that’s on the desktop, the web, gaming consoles or mobile devices. Nobody is quite there yet and there is more work to be done, but with that in mind Unity Technologies is making tremendous progress in making this dream a reality, and Unity is already used by thousands to distribute content across a variety of platforms. While the benefits of this author once deploy anywhere notion might seem clear at first blush, there are a few points worth discussing in particular, so let’s look at those in a bit more detail.

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Today we’re excited to have released Unity Asset Server 2.0! This is a free update for all existing users of the Unity Asset Server and it offers the following new features:

• The Unity Asset Server can now be hosted on Windows! (in addition to Mac OS X and Linux as before)
• The Unity Asset Server can now be hosted on Debian-based Linux distributions as well.
• The Unity Asset Server now uses an updated version of PostgreSQL.
• When used with Unity 2.6 (and later) the Unity Asset Server now offers faster check-in times.
• There are tools to help simply the backup and restoration of Asset Server databases.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Unity Asset Server or the 2.0 release in particular then please use the following links:

Press Release
Unity Features: Unity Asset Server
Download the Unity Asset Server
Unity Asset Server Guide

Enjoy!

The news, the great news, just keeps on coming! Recently the folks at Kongregate.com announced their new Konduit Platform and one of the cool benefits of that news is that they are now open to non-Flash game content, and that of course means they’re open to Unity content! While it’s always cool to read about new possibilities, nothing speaks louder than action and so hot on the heels of the Konduit announcement was the recent acceptance of not one but two Unity titles on their site! The Unity games that are now live are Big Fun Racing and Bubble Bang, both of which come from Decane/Martin Schultz. Now that Martin and Kongregate.com have paved the way for others to follow, who’s next?

If you’re keen on giving it all a look for yourself then here are a few important links:

Kongregate.com

Kongregate.com’s Developer Center

Kongregate.com’s Konduit Platform

Once more, kudos to Martin for leading the way and props to Kongregate.com for opening their doors to a variety of technologies. That open door is good for us as a tech provider just as much as it is for game players wanting diverse game types/genres. Exciting times to say the least!

Hey folks, the end of another incredible year is rapidly coming to a close and the holiday season is fast upon us, and we here at Unity Technologies want to help everyone celebrate with a special end of year discount. Specifically we’re offering everyone the chance to save 20% off of any purchases made in our online store between now and the end of the year. In order to take advantage of this offer you simply need to visit our online store and enter ENDOFYEAR2009 into the rebate coupon field and you’ll save 20%, it’s that easy. You can visit our online store by clicking on the following link:

Unity Online Store

Remember, this end of year discount offer is only valid through December 31st so make sure you take advantage of it before the new year begins!

Apple recently put out their iTunes Rewind 2009, it’s Apple’s way of recognizing the best music, TV, movies and of course iPhone applications and games from this last year. What’s exciting for us is that there are three Unity-authored games found among the best and top selling games lists! Given that awesome achievement I thought it would be cool to take a minute and offer those three games their proper kudos and congratulations.

Best Games of 2009
There are two Unity-authored games found on the best games list for 2009, those are:

Ravensword: The Fallen King
Samurai: Way of the Warrior

I know that I’ve played both games and have to agree that they’re both awesome and well worth a look if you haven’t checked them out already!

Top Selling Games of 2009
The top selling games list has yet another Unity-authored game listed, one that most of us have likely heard about long ago as it sat atop the sales charts for some time:

Zombieville USA

Congratulations to everyone that has games out on the AppStore using Unity, but an extra dose of congratulations goes out to the folks above for a job well done. Here’s to hoping we see more of the Unity community listed as part of iTunes Rewind 2010!

Earlier this week iLounge released their 2010 iPod + iPhone Buyer’s Guide and a number of Unity titles are featured in their top games list! For starters you can check it all out at the following URL:

iLounge’s 2010 iPod + iPhone Buyer’s Guide

It’s a rather large (20+MB) download as they provide a ton of material, including their suggestions for top games and applications to purchase if you own an iPod touch or iPhone. But as noted above the exciting point for us is the fact that a number of Unity-authored games are listed in their Top 100 Games of 2009! So to help promote those games and offer them some extra kudos I’ll preempt the download above and list them here in the order they appear in the guide:

Downhill Bowling from Game Resort LLC (page 22)
Downhill Bowling Lite (free)
Downhill Bowling ($2.99)

Vans SK8: Pool Service from Fuel Games (page 23)
Vans SK8: Pool Service Lite (free)
Vans SK8: Pool Service ($2.99)

Battle Bears from SkyVu Pictures (page 27)
Battle Bears Free (free)
Battle Bears ($0.99)

Inkvaders from Chillingo (page 27)
Inkvaders Lite (free)
Inkvaders ($1.99)

10 Balls 7 Cups from Graveck (page 31)
10 Balls 7 Cups ($0.99)

Note: 10 Balls 7 Cups has been rereleased on the AppStore under the name Skee-Ball as well!

Volcano Planet by Jelly Biscuits (page 35)
Volcano Planet Lite (free)
Volcano Planet ($0.99)

A huge kudos to all the developers behind the games above, clearly it’s a job well done and you deserve some recognition for your efforts!

Now that we’re clear of the frantic week we call Unite 2009 let’s talk about the also incredible Unity Awards! Once again we had a huge increase in not only the total number of submissions (129!) but also in the overall content and quality of those submissions. It was a tough job to pare down the submissions into a list of top contenders in each category, and then even tougher for our team of judges to whittle those down to a list of their top-5 favorites in each category. The end result was that 13 games in particular seemed to stand out the most as those titles occupied the top-5 positions across all four categories. Without further adieu let’s go through each of the categories and see a list of the finalists and winners…

Best Overall
The best overall category is the one in which we recognize the true best-of-breed content for the year and it was a tough task to say the least. There were many titles that came close to being finalists, but ultimately only a few made that final run at the title.

Winner: Max & the Magic Marker, developed by Press Play

Runner Up: Lego Star Wars: Quest for R2-D2, developed by Three Melons

Finalist: Paper Moon, developed by Infinite Ammo
Finalist: Monospace, developed by Nonverbal
Finalist: EnerCities, developed by Paladin Studios

Best iPhone Game
Given the popularity of iPhone/iPod touch games in general, and of course the way in which Unity iPhone has become the dominant middle-ware tool of choice, we felt it truly necessary to recognize the best iPhone games on their own.

Winner: Monospace, developed by Nonverbal

Runner Up: Samurai: Way of the Warrior, developed by Mad Finger Games

Finalist: Snake Galaxy (now being published as Paris Galaxy), developed by DigDog
Finalist: Battle Bears, developed by SkyVu Pictures & Blackish
Finalist: Touch KO, developed by Adam and Matt Mechtley

Best Visual Design
One of the exciting things about a tool like Unity is that it lets you experiment in ways you might not be able to with other tools. The rapid iterative abilities and easy work flow make experimentation easy, and that leads to some incredibly beautiful and unique visuals.

Winner: Doppelscope, developed by Tobias Baumann

Runner Up: Blush, developed by Flashbang Studios

Finalist: Choma, developed by Knife Media
Finalist: Max & the Magic Marker, developed by Press Play
Finalist: Paper Moon, developed by Infinite Ammo

Best Technical Achievement
To go along with rewarding the best visual effort we wanted to recognize those titles that displayed solid technical achievement as there are so many folks out there pushing the technical boundaries with Unity. This category was extra tough as we all have our pet areas of interest with our technology, audio, shading/graphics, game play mechanic and more.

Winner: Blush, developed by Flashbang Studios

Runner Up: Max & the Magic Marker, developed by Press Play

Finalist: Time Donkey, developed by Flashbang Studios
Finalist: Touch KO, developed by Adam and Matt Mechtley
Finalist: Super Volei Brasil 2, developed by Aquiris

Closing Thoughts
As I noted up top there were 129 separate entries at the beta stage and that’s an awesome turn out! I know that not all of you were able to get a final build submitted and certainly not all of you made it into the final judging stage (involved roughly 30 entries), and even fewer of you made it into the top-5 finalist categories. But through it all the hard work and effort the Unity community puts forth to make killer content is a critical component in driving our technology forward. Content is king y’all, and without you I don’t know where our tech would be. So thanks to everyone that participated in this year’s Unity Awards and a huge round of applause and hefty kudos to the finalists, and especially the winners. Rock on!

Wow, Unite 2009 has come to a close and once again it was an awesome/incredible/crazy/you-name-it week! Now that I’ve had a day or so to rest and recuperate a bit I figured I’d take a few minutes and jot down some notes and comments about last week’s event. Read on for my thoughts and post up some comments if you have any questions.

Content is King
We all know the phrase “content is king” when thinking about web technologies like ours*, but I think that also applies to conferences as well. The truth is that without high-quality sessions that offer attendees something valuable, our conference wouldn’t be worth much. The good thing is that I think we offered some incredible sessions this week and that feeling was backed-up by the in-person feedback I received on site. Many attendees indicated to me that they felt that each day offered them material they found interesting and more importantly useful. So for that I have to thank the crew internally at Unity Tech as we had many of us up on stage delivering presentations or assisting attendees during hands-on lab. Additionally I have to thank the awesome 3rd party speakers that showed up to deliver presentations as well, they volunteered their valuable time to help others learn more about Unity and that’s a generous offer to say the least. So, content is king even at conferences and all signs seem to indicate that was the case this year once again.

*If you don’t then know this, it’s an indication that for tech companies like us having great content in production is critical. We can have the greatest tech available but if nobody is using it to make cool stuff then who’s really going to know about it or care? So, “content is king”!

Some Incredible Numbers
This past week offered up some incredible numbers that show how much this conference has grown. Just two years ago we held our first conference, Unite 2007, in San Francisco and were excited that we had something like 80 people in attendance and we offered 11 presentations. Then a year later we held the conference again, Unite 2008 was in Copenhagen and it grew even larger attracting roughly 170 people who were there to take in a total of 15 presentations. So this year we held the conference for the third time, again back in San Francisco and the attendance growth continued once again as we had over 350 people in town to attend 21 presentations and 3 classes, this time over four days (compared to prior years being 3-day events). So we’ve gone from 80 to 170 to 350+, and I say 350+ as we had all 437 seats in the Cowell Theater full for the keynote, but many of those were press/media/guests there for that presentation only, we had 350+ there regularly despite a much higher peak number. Beyond that we offered more hands-on lab, we had a bunch more Unity Awards entries (a separate blog post on that is coming!) and we had a significantly larger Unity Tech employee contingent on site as almost all of our 50+ employees were on site. Simply incredible…

Our Community is Awesome
Once again I have to say that the Unity Community rocks! Not only did members of the community step up and deliver presentations, but a bunch more were simply there in attendance welcoming all the community newcomers that were getting introduced and they were all spending time networking, talking about Unity and sharing what they know. We spent lots of time socializing at the Pre-Unite Monday Night User Meeting, the Wednesday night Unity User Group “Drink & Shoot” Party thrown by the folks at dimeRocker and then once again at the official conference party Thursday night. I spent a ton of time each day at the show talking with forum regulars and community newbies, with lots of Flash users looking to make the jump on up to folks that have been using Unity since before I arrived on the scene. So again this past week showed just how awesome of a community we have and so I thank everyone of you (those that could attend as well as those that could not), y’all truly help make Unity and our Unite conferences something special.

What’s Next?
First up is a bit of rest, then come Monday morning we’ll be back at it as there’s a lot to do. First up will be some website updates to both the Unite pages as well as some information about this year’s Unity Awards finalists and winners. Then we’ll work with the awesome guys from ShiftControl to get the session videos they helped record prepared and posted online in a much faster manner than years prior. Then after that we’ll start looking forward to next year’s event, where it might be held and how many people we might think will attend. Given the progression we’ve seen it could be even crazier next year and without a doubt that’s exciting beyond belief, I can only imagine what it’s going to be like.

One Last Reminder, Thanks To…
The incredible crew from Melons Catering who delivered top-notch food each and every day. The crew at the Fort Mason Center that helped us put on a great show. Everyone at Unity Technologies for an awesome week of hard work, I know we put y’all through your paces so thanks for stepping up! To each and every 3rd party presenter, I know you put in your own time to prepare and deliver those, it’s appreciated. To ShiftControl who came on-site to handle the session recording, putting in some seriously long hours working under lots of stress with nary a sign of cracking. And finally, one last thanks to everyone that was there in attendance, conferences like this take a massive amount of work, induce mountains of stress and likely age us prematurely, but knowing that y’all enjoyed the week and that you learned a lot along the way makes it all worth it.

See you next year!

As the sun rises over San Franciso we’re gearing up for another exciting day at Unite 2009. Yesterday was a new experiment for us in having a day of classes added on to the conference and from what I saw it was a huge success. In one room we had a “Unity for Unity Developers” track with three 2-hour classes taught by our in-house experts (Nicholas, Aras, Joachim and Lucas) and so far the feedback forms show that folks learned a lot. At the same time in another room we had a “Unity for Flash Developers” track that featured four speakers (myself included) delivering one-hour sessions introducing Flash developers to Unity. The speakers were me, John Grden (engineer on Papervision3D), Paul Tondeur (author of a book about Papervision3D) and Mauricio Longoni (noted Unity community member already). All the sessions were great and the word around the conference was all positive.

Today we’re back to our “normal” agenda, three days of technical sessions. The view above is what I was lucky enough to take in while sipping my coffee outside the event center this morning at 7:30am or so. I’m strangely sleeping too little yet extremely amped up with energy. The vibe and excitement from everyone in attendance is great and it’s only going to get better. In 45 minutes the keynote starts and then day #2 begins… Here we go!