by John Moore

New Unity Features for App Makers

The Unity game development platform offers professional features for app makers and supports a range of platforms, from Android to Windows. Here's what's new

Unity, the widely used multi-platform game engine, continues to expand, offering new features and targeting additional platforms.

Unity Technologies released Unity 4.1, which includes support for Apple's AirPlay wireless streaming technology and an updated memory usage tracking tool. Also last month, Unity Technologies entered an alliance with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. that will make Unity tools available for the upcoming PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Mobile platforms.

In another alliance, Unity Technologies is partnering with Oculus VR Inc., which is developing the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Under that arrangement, Unity will offer Rift developers an extended Unity Pro trial license at no charge. The Unity tool comes in free and professional versions, with the latter, Unity Pro, priced at $1,500.

What's New in Unity 4.1

Yury Yarmolovich, Unity developer at Elinext Group, a custom software developer based in Minsk, Belarus, says his company uses Unity to create augmented reality apps, among other things. He's happy about the new features of Unity 4.1. "What is really good is the new Memory Profiler with a detailed overview of the resources used," Yarmolovich says. "Also, shader improvements deserve recognition."

The Memory Profiler update, available on Unity Pro, provides a greater level of detail as it breaks down non-managed memory usage. According to Unity Technologies, the feature lets developers track consumption "right down to the level of individual objects, assets, textures, meshes," among other elements.

Unity 4.1, meanwhile, also offers multi-screen AirPlay support, which lets developers press iPads and iPhones into service as game controllers. Users control games on the handheld devices as the action is streamed to an HDTV. "I have not used much of AirPlay, but I think it's a cool thing," Yarmolovich says.

Chris Skaggs, founder and chief technology officer of Code-Monkeys, an application and web development company based in Newberg, Ore., cites Unity 4's animation capability as a standout component. "Our favorite new feature is the new animation tool -- being able to set those things up inside the IDE is a big time saver and helps tremendously with animation prototyping," Skaggs says.

Support for Additional Platforms

In general, Yarmolovich cites Unity's cross-platform capability as an advantage, noting support for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, PS3, and Xbox360, with upcoming support for Wii U, Windows Phone 8, BlackBerry 10, as well as current and next-gen PlayStation systems. He also lists other pluses, including support for C#, JavaScript and Boo; a comfortable MonoDevelop editor with a debugger; Asset Server for sharing code from the development environment; Asset Store for downloading additional applications and scripts; and support for various multimedia formats, including 3ds Max images.

Looking forward, Unity Technologies is moving to extend its platform reach. In late March, the company announced a Unity 4 open beta program for Windows Phone 8 apps. A spokesman for Unity Technologies says the company has yet to announce a release date for Windows Phone 8 support. "We just entered a more public beta period at [Game Developers Conference] and are inviting a much larger group of developers in to test," he says.

In addition, Unity Technologies plans to let developers create games for PCs or tablets running Windows 8 and Windows RT and publish them to Microsoft's Windows Store, according to Unity's blog. That support will start with Unity 4.2.

Skaggs is also very interested in support for Windows 8. "As a matter of fact, Win8 with multi-touch support for things like the new Ultrabooks is something we bug Unity about on a weekly basis," he notes.

"Whether or not it becomes a real player in the game space again will partly depend on how much developers are supported and then can deploy quality titles," Skaggs continues. "For us, we live and die on the 'multi-platform' proposition and Win8 is just another platform that we want to be available on. Unity is so good with multi-deployment already...we want more."

Developers can also anticipate Unity support for BlackBerry 10 smartphones. In February, Unity announced plans to build a development add-on for BlackBerry 10. At press time, a free beta version was expected to shortly debut. The final release is expected this summer, according to the company.

John Moore has written about business and technology for more than 20 years. Moore's articles have appeared in Baseline, CIO.com, Federal Computer Week, iHealthBeat, and TechTarget. Areas of focus include cloud computing, health information technology, systems integration, and virtualization.

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