Archive for the ‘Product News’ Category

Today is very exciting for us because we’ve just released a much anticipated update to our iPhone development platform — Unity iPhone 1.5.

Some of the highlights from this major point release include:

Significant Performance Boosts

• Up to 3x faster than 1.0.3.
• Performance critical paths rewritten to take advantage of VFP coprocessor, animation skinning is up to 4x faster.
• Automatic batching of meshes to reduce draw calls.

Built-in Anti-piracy Protection

• Identify if Apple DRM was removed from the application bundle and modify application behaviour accordingly.

More Power

• Full support for native Objective C and C++ code opens full access to the iPhone 3.x APIs and custom plugins.
• Access to video-playback, on screen keyboard support, and GPS/location services.
• Support for 8-texture shading on iPhone 3GS with automatic fallbacks for iPhone 3G.

Better Docs

• Detailed instructions on iphone-specific optimizations.
• New 150 page tutorial to get you up to speed with iPhone game making.

Further information about this release, a download link for the update, and a link to the Penelope Tutorial can all be found here: http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/iphone-1.5

The Demo Team is putting the finishing touches on the iPhone Standard Assets that will go out with the Unity iPhone 1.1. release. There are plenty of useful assets that you’ll get:

1. Additive-Projector (can be used to fake spotlights)

2. Blob-Shadow

3. iPhone-specific shaders

4. Default Skybox asset

5. Joystick and TouchPad scripts

6. Easy-to-use water reflection script

7. Control schemes aplenty: 2D side scroller, camera-relative, FPS, FPS w/ tilt, player-relative, tap-to-move

With the Unity iPhone 1.1. release imminent, you’ll be enjoying all of these goodies, soon!

I’m happy to report that Unity 2.5.1 has finished baking in the oven and is now ready for download! As with all minor updates (anything 2.x) this is a free update for all existing Unity 2.x license holders, you just download the new build, install it and get back to work! From the news item on our website:

We’re very excited to share that Unity 2.5.1 has been completed and is now available for all Unity developers! 2.5.1 is all about stability of the Editor and Web Player, along with some other improvements that somehow snuck in. This hotfix release is recommended for all Unity developers. Due to one particular bug fix, we also recommend that all developers using the Web Player as a deployment target read through the Tech Note inside the 2.5.1 release notes.

And here are two relevant links:

Unity 2.5.1 Release Notes
Download Page

Existing license holders can simply download the new installer from the download page above (there is only one installer for Unity Indie, Pro, trial, etc.) and run it to update to the latest build. Have fun!

Note: this release does not contain updates to Unity iPhone, that update (Unity iPhone 1.1) is being handled separately and in parallel, more news on that will be shared later as appropriate.

If you’re using compressed audio in your iPhone game, then you should grab Unity iPhone 1.0.3. It is a hot fix release with a single purpose – to improve performance of a compressed audio playback under the iPhone OS 3.0.

Now some technical bits. Previously we have been using the AmbientSound as an audio session category. The AmbientSound category respects silent switch and allows single compressed audio to be played via dedicated hardware decompressor. However since introduction of the iPhone OS 3.0 meaning of the AmbientSound slightly changed. Now this category allows multiple compressed audio sounds to be played, but all of them are decompressed on CPU!

That is not a big deal if you have game without CPU intensive tasks or completely GPU bound game. Otherwise performance may suffer. Instead iPhone OS 3.0 introduced a new audio session category called AmbientSoundSolo which behavior is more like an AmbientSound under the OS 2.x. That is what we need!

Unity iPhone 1.0.3 will detect OS version at the run-time and will pick audio session category for you. It is important to know that this process does NOT require you to explicitly compile for newer OS version. You should use the OS 2.x as a compile target still – it will guarantee wider audience for your game.

Unity iPhone 1.0.2 is out now, so grab it!

As I’ve mentioned before the key aspects of this release were to reduce memory consumption and make your games more stable. Let’s go over the most important things you will find in 1.0.2:

• We have halved memory usage for textures! Textures are not longer kept in the memory after being submitted to OpenGL ES. However you will not be able to read or modify texture data from scripts unless the “Enable Get/SetPixels” flag is enabled in the texture import settings. Note: In order to take advantage of this feature for projects created with older Unity iPhone versions make sure to reimport all assets.
• Memory usage for uncompressed audio is half of what it used to be.
• Audio respects “mute” button and iPod music playing in the background.
• Audio continues to play after iPhone receives or rejects a call, text message or alarm.
• Unity now has much more tidier memory management when it comes to loading new scenes and assets.
• You can chose from 5 new landscape and portrait splash-screens.
• We have fixed issues preventing correct usage of .NET sockets and occasional GUI components being stripped away.
• And on top of that final binary size became smaller!

You can find more details and download here: What’s new in Unity iPhone 1.0.2

While 1.0.2 keeps you entertained, we’re back working on Unity iPhone 1.1.

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve how we go about our business I’m excited to report that we’ve begun a bit of an experiment to improve how we gather user wish-list items and general product feedback. Until now we’ve only had the Unity Community Forums and more specifically the Wish List area there in particular. While that’s worked well enough, it’s just not the right way to go about things. I say that because it’s hard to pull any quantifiable feedback and it’s very weak in terms of general organization for such an effort. Today we’ve unveiled our experiment and that’s the use of User Voice, a web based feedback tool that lets folks like you post your wishes and use your own voice to vote for those items you think are most valuable to you. Your votes are limited* so use them wisely!

Unity Feedback (for general Unity feedback)
Unity iPhone Feedback (for Unity iPhone specific feedback)

*Some folks have expressed mild dismay at the notion of limited votes, if that wasn’t in place the folks would simply vote on everything and we lose any data about what’s really important to you. So when your votes are capped the challenge is on and you must decide carefully, thus giving us better data.

Woah my first blog post! And I am going to dive right into the roadmap. This time we are taking a look at what is coming up in the near future.

Unity 2.6

Unity 2.6 is our next big release in the Unity 2.x series (And will be available as a free upgrade). We are planning to release Unity 2.6 sometime later this summer. Here’s some of the things to come:

Read the rest of this entry »

Whooosh! First release candidate of Unity iPhone 1.0.2 just went out to our beta testers. It’s a good time now to overview our planned releases and directions we will be taking in the near future.

Unity iPhone 1.0.2. Based on custom builds we’ve been sending to devs in need, this release will address engine memory leaks and fix other outstanding issues:

• Physics and audio related memory leaks
• Asset leaks while reloading scenes
• .NET sockets and threads
• Compressed audio related issues
• Stripping away too much of GUI components
• Occasional crashes in AOT compiler
• Support for both portrait and landscape splash screens

Next will be Unity iPhone 1.5. Since the release of 1.0.1 we’ve been working on a number of performance and memory optimizations. Most of the work on 1.5 is finished already and we’re doing an internal bug fixing round before it goes to beta testers too. Along with optimizations this release will include number of important features such as:

• Binding custom ObjectiveC/C++ functions to C#/Javascript
• Native on-screen keyboard support and interoperability with Unity GUI
• Movie playback support
• Performance optimizations:
  • significant C#/Javascript performance improvements
  • general rendering loop optimizations resulting in less OpenGLES state changes and less CPU work per object
  • number of internal routines were rewritten using VFP coprocessor assembly
  • way much faster mesh skinning utilizing VFP
  • batching small objects, given that they share same material, into single draw call

• General distribution size optimizations which allows applications below 10Mb
• Number of significant memory footprint optimizations

We don’t have strict versioning past 1.5 yet. Some of the following features will end up in the next big release and some might find a way to sneak into 1.5:

• Compressed audio streaming directly from disk
• 3.0 downloadable content
• 3.0 bluetooth networking
• GPS/Location support
• Vibration support
• Post-processing and render-targets support
• Terrain support
• Per-pixel DOT3 lighting support for skinned meshes
• Reduce load times
• Reduce distribution size even further
• Improve GarbageCollector collection patterns to reduce spikes
• Prepare a pack with iPhone optimized shaders

Update: Unity iPhone 1.0.2 is released.

Update: Unity iPhone 1.5 is released

With 2.5 out the door, I finally got some time to work on new features. I love that part – to me new features are so nice – the first couple of weeks always feels like you’re the world’s fastest coder (after that, reality sets in and you actually have to make it work in real life – even for corner cases).
Rune and I are busy on the new animation timeline. (Actually, I’m stealing his thunder – he’s doing the real work while I’m just mocking up in Photoshop and spreading general confusion) We’re basically going for a complete rewrite that gives you control over all curves with key editing, tangent dragging, the works. – have a look at what we’re thinking:

Upcoming 2.6 timeline WIP

I’m really excited about this. I’m thinking that it should be able to require a lot less scripting work for a bunch of stuff. It will also support material animation (so you can actually just make some curves for a UV scroll – instead of having to code the thing from scratch).

Yes, it’s true, we’ve done it. Yesterday we shipped Unity 2.5 which among other things finally offers support for Unity authoring on Mac OS X and Windows! From the announcement email I sent out (as company front-man):

Today we are extremely happy to announce the release of Unity 2.5. For the first time Unity development is now available for use on both Mac OS X and Windows! True cross-platform development with Unity has now been realized. This has been an enormous project that has taken well over a year to complete, it’s a release that we’re very proud of having accomplished. What’s more is that during this effort we’ve also nearly doubled in size as a company and so there is a lot more on the way, it’s going to be an exciting year!

While a key feature of this release is in fact the introduction of authoring support on Windows it’s worth noting that we put a lot of work into general editor improvements that all content authors can take advantage of. What that means is that this is a significant release for both our existing users and all those potential new users waiting to try Unity for the first time. Here is the high-level overview of what you’ll find in Unity 2.5:

• Windows editor support
• An all new tabbed, and fully customizable authoring interface
• 3DS Max support on Windows (ala our Maya support on Mac OS X)
• New and improved scene navigation and object placement tools
• Google Chrome support
• and more…

I don’t want to repeat too much information here as we have a bunch on our site already. Check out the what’s new page we have posted:

What’s New in Unity 2.5

Both existing users and those wanting to evaluate Unity can download the latest installer from our trial download page:

Trial Download

Or you can of course just cut to the chase and buy now by visiting our online store:

Buy Unity

It goes without saying that these are some exciting times for both Unity Technologies and the awesome community we have around us. And 2009 is just gettin’ started!