July 28 2008What a week that was!
I know it’s been a while since I last posted so I figured that it was time to get back to blog posting and provide some updates as last week was rather exciting for us. Here’s the latest from our end…
Casual Connect Seattle
July 23-25, 2008
http://seattle.casualconnect.org/
Once again we were a sponsor for the Casual Connect Seattle conference held in, you guessed it, Seattle, Washington. For those that haven’t been watching this conference it’s been growing over the last few years with something like 30-40% growth year-on-year (I heard that this year had just under 2000 attendees). It’s a conference that focuses heavily on the casual games sector (duh!) and that always brings out a great crowd of folks that attend the sessions and stop by the sponsor tables to chat. Over three days Sam and I worked the table, had well over a dozen meetings, spoke to countless potential new customers and lots of existing ones. Of note we hung out with Matt and Ben from Flashbang quite a bit, but also many others including some old friends and an interesting dinner with Sam’s parents. All told it was a fantastic conference once again, well worth the cost and effort to attend. If you haven’t gone to one of the Casual Connect conferences yet then you might want to give them a try soon!
Unity 2.1 Released
July 24, 2008
What’s new in Unity 2.1
On Thursday of last week we put out the authoring side of the Unity 2.1 update (the 2.1 web player went live on Friday, July 18) and it’s far more of a major update than a minor one! Not only will you find the usual bug fixes, but you’ll also find plenty of new features that truly are significant. A few highlights:
- Streaming Asset Bundles
Load assets on demand with new web streaming features. You can now stream in your game world as characters, locations, and objects come into view. You can also stream entire levels from the web as you navigate through the world. - Streaming Terrains
A seamless world is key when making an MMO. With Unity 2.1 you no longer are limited to a single terrain. Immerse your user in an endless landscape, based on streamed data. - Undo
Yes, undo! Traditional, reliable Undo and Redo are now available for all scene operations. You can stop constantly saving your work – it just works.
There are plenty of other features so make sure to check out the What’s new in Unity 2.1 page on our website.
Press Release News: 2 In-Browser MMOs in development using Unity!
July 24, 2008
Cartoon Network Creates First AAA, Browser-Based MMOG for Kids
Along with having announced the release of Unity 2.1 (featuring MMO/Virtual World-friendly features) we also announced that there are two full-blown in-browser MMOs in development using Unity front ends! The first of those is Cartoon Network’s coming FusionFall title which is targeting a younger audience and that hopes to involve millions of users enjoying hundreds of hours of game play. The second MMO in development is coming from Funcom and ArtPlant and is a casual MMO that will also attract an extremely large user base and offering countless hours of play-time, all served up inside your browser. We’re quite excited to have both of those projects on board with Unity front-ends as they’re both new breeds of content and with Unity, they’ll deliver an unparalleled experience inside the browser. w00t!
Of course all of the above is on top of our recent announcement that we’ll once again be hosting another Unity developer conference, Unite 2008, as well as another developer contest, the 2008 Unity Awards. It’s quite a busy time for all of us in the Unity community, I hope your summer is proving as exciting as ours is!
