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Microsoft and Unity tool up for Xbox One, Windows development
Soon developers using Unity Pro 4 will be able to port their games to the Windows Store on PC, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox One, the Unity blog has announced. This partnership will see Microsoft and Unity collaborating to add support for "enhanced Kinect gestures and recognition, multiplayer matchmaking, SmartGlass and cloud stuff" in Unity Pro 4 for Xbox One. If an outfit is using Unity to create a game for Microsoft Studios, then Unity tools for Xbox 360 and Xbox One will be offered gratis. Publishing games on the Windows Store will also be free. Unity is one of the more popular multi-platform engines out there right now. In March, Unity announced it had entered a similar partnership with Sony to offer tools tailored to Sony platforms, including the PS4, and last month Unity made its mobile development tools available free of charge to all indie developers.
MIT's relativistic OpenRelativity toolkit now freely available
MIT Game Lab's OpenRelativity toolset, which powered its psychedelic first-person collection game/physics demonstration A Slower Speed of Light, is now available for free through Github. The toolkit works in both free and paid versions of Unity. OpenRelativity allows for the real-time simulation of principles such as time dilation, Lorentz transformation and relativistic Doppler shift by allowing the designer to augment the ways in which light behaves. As it turns out, light moving at the speed it normally does is pretty dang essential to our world not transforming into a disorienting funhouse where cause and effect are meaningless. Who could have guessed?
Unity makes mobile tools free for small devs
Unity has announced that it's making its mobile game development tools free to use for most independent and small studios. Unity has always been a popular engine both for mobile game development and for cross-platform game creation, but up until now, you had to pay about $800 to actually publish Unity-created apps on the iOS or Android stores. Those basic add-ons have now been made free, so anyone can now download Unity, and then use it to publish an app for iOS or Android without paying a fee for the engine. Unity still has pro versions available for sale to both iOS and Android developers, and anyone making over $100,000 per year with their releases is required by Unity to go ahead and purchase a pro license. So there are still some limits on exactly how this all works, and if your iPhone app does hit it big, Unity still would like its due. But starting off for free should open the door for even more indie devs to get in and try Unity, and make for even more and better games on the App Store.
Unity drops licensing fee on game engine for mobile developers
Indie developers have been able to take advantage of a free version of the Unity engine for desktop game development some time now, and starting today they can extend that development to mobile games at no added cost. The company's confirmed that it's dropping the $800 licensing fee for its Android and iOS build options, with BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8 development also promised to be moving to a free option in the "coming months." As Unity CEO David Helgason explained at the Unite Nordic conference earlier today, the company has been hoping to make the move "for what seems like forever," with his ultimate goal being to push the "democratisation of game development further than ever before." He further explains in a blog post that the new option comes with "no strings attached, no royalties and no license fees," apart from the prior rules that require large companies to use the paid version of Unity. As for those who've recently paid up for the mobile engine only to find it now free, Helgason says they can expect to hear from him in the next two weeks with an offer of discounts on future purchases.
Unity mobile tools go free for indies and small studios
Unity Technologies, creators of the multi-platform Unity engine and its tools, is making its mobile tools free to indies and small studios starting today, taking tools that cost around $800 and making them free. Unity currently supports Apple's iOS and Google's Android, with support for BlackBerry and Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 to be added at no additional cost in the future. "Mobile games development is possibly the most dynamic and exciting industry in the world, and it's an honor to be able to help so many developers be so successful in fulfilling their visions and in building their businesses," said Unity CEO David Helgason. "We were able to make Unity free for the web and for desktop computers a while ago, but have been dreaming of doing the same for mobile for what seems like forever." To contextualize this, Unity is already a beast in the mobile field in terms of market share and developer relations. The company just opened the flood gates further.
Notch launches Drop, inspired by Super Hexagon, Fez and letters
In lieu of his Ludum Dare game, Notch today launched a Unity game called Drop, available online for free. Notch is, of course, the mastermind behind Minecraft, and Drop is a quick exercise in rapid wordsmithery, spinning and catchy tunes.Notch attributes inspiration for Drop to Super Hexagon, the ceiling of his apartment and the ending of Fez, and after playing for a little while, that all sounds about right. We would also throw in a vibe from Pippin Barr's 30 Flights of Loathing and Pottermore's Spells game.If you have some time today, maybe make nimble your fingers and give Drop a go. But first try to say that sentence five times fast.
Unity stops offering Flash game engine licenses, cites a lack of Adobe love
The Unity 4 engine has given Flash gaming a lot of TLC by simplifying web ports of complex projects. If you ask Unity Technologies, however, that love isn't being requited -- and the company feels jilted enough to stop offering new Flash licenses, effective immediately. Adobe supposedly isn't committed enough to the plugin, having halted work on both a re-engineered Flash Player Next as well as an attractive revenue sharing model. Unity is equally concerned about the broader developer community shying away from Flash at the same time as its own plugin, Unity Web Player, has soared past 200 million installs. While those with existing licenses should have Flash support for as long as versions of Unity 4 are in the field, the exit is bound to have game creators scrambling to find alternatives for any future web-based titles.
Unity ending Flash support
Multiplatform game engine Unity is getting a little less multiplatform. "As of today, we will stop selling Flash deployment licenses," CEO David Helgason announced. " We will continue to support our existing Flash customers throughout the 4.x cycle."Helgason said that the decision to stop supporting Flash was motivated by what Unity sees as a lack of commitment to Flash on the part of Adobe, because of player instability, canceled projects, and various other factors.Besides which, "Developers are moving away from Flash, and while Flash publishing has gotten little traction, our own Unity Web Player has seen unprecedented growth in recent months."
Bacteria completes epic Unity project, crams 15 consoles in one
When it comes to modding consoles there are two names that generally stand above the rest: Mr. Benjamin J. Heckendorn and the man known as Bacteria. The latter has done his fair share of portable machines, but his latest completed project takes console hacking to lofty new heights. Unity crams a stunning 15 different consoles (including classics like the SNES and not-so-classics like the TurboGrafx 16) into a single, admittedly bulky box. The one of a kind entertainment center is the culmination of three years and $700 invested in bringing this dream to life. All of the hardware inside is either from the original consoles (no emulation of clone systems here!) or custom built -- such as the 16-position switch. And, it should go without saying, that it took a whole lot to get these gaming machines to share a single power supply, video cable and control pad. Now that the epic project is finally complete Bacteria has provided a rather lengthy walk though of all the various features and the work that went into it, which you can check out after the break.
Unity and 'Nintendo Web Framework' offer new Wii U dev tools
Announced during GDC yesterday, the Wii U's "Nintendo Web Framework" allows developers to use HTML5, Javascript, and CSS to make apps that can run on Wii U, supporting both GamePad and Wiimote controllers. We'd guess this would be most useful for app development, given the web focus of these languages, but it would be possible to make games as well.A more directly game-focused tech developers can use is Unity. The popular multiplatform development environment is available for Wii U as well, Nintendo revealed. Both of these technologies are advertised on Nintendo's GDC site, which also offers links to the developer questionnaire for those interested in becoming licensed Nintendo developers.
Microsoft showcases Windows Phone middleware partnerships at GDC, we go hands-on (video)
Building on yesterday's announcement that Temple Run and several other games are coming to Windows Phone, Microsoft's been actively courting developers at GDC 2013. To that end, the company's booth showcases several games that highlight cross-platform development and middleware. Now that WP8 and Windows 8 share the same NT kernel, DirectX APIs and tools, it's easier than ever to write games that use the same code base for both platforms. Microsoft is sweetening the deal with a few significant middleware partnerships -- Unity, Marmalade and Havok, to be specific. We talked with Larry Lieberman, Senior Product Manager for Windows Phone development, who was kind enough to explain what these partnerships mean for developers and to give us a tour of the games. Hit the break for our hands-on video. %Gallery-184180%
Unity to bring Qualcomm optimization to its game engine
Unity already supports development for (nearly) all mobile platforms and now the game engine maker's working on an optimized version for those with Qualcomm processors -- ie, quite a chunk of them. On the heels of freshly announced competition, it announced that it's collaborating with the chip-maker to release a new version of its multi-platform engine "in the coming months" to speed up Unity-authored games for Android and Windows Phone 8 devices powered by most flavors of that CPU. So far there are over 1.5 million registered developers building games for around 770 products that pack the necessary Snapdragon / Adreno combo, according to Unity -- meaning there's a decent chance you'll soon see some extra oomph in one or another of the games you play, whether you're in Redmond or Mountain View's camps. Hit the PR after the jump for more.
Sony and Unity enter 'strategic partnership' for tools optimized for PlayStation platforms
Sony has announced a partnership with Unity that will result in tools built for "optimized deployment" to the PlayStation 4, PS3, Vita and the PlayStation Mobile platform.Games developed on the "Unity for PlayStation" platform will be able to take advantage of system-specific features – like the Vita's touchpads and cameras – and can integrate easily into the PlayStation Network. The tools also allow developers to more easily port titles across to other supported Unity devices, such as iOS and Android.Sony's platforms already support Unity's tools, with Might & Delight's Pid and Funbits' Escape Plan built with the engine. The full Unity for PlayStation toolset will be available along with the rest of the PlayStation platform development tools later on this fall.
NimbleBit's Nimble Quest coming to iOS and Mac March 28
NimbleBit has announced that its latest game, Nimble Quest, is due March 28, right in the middle of next week's Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco. I've been playing the game for a few weeks, and it's great. It's definitely more arcade-y than NimbleBit's other games (including Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower), but it's a lot of fun, and there's no shortage of heroes to unlock and high scores to earn as you play through the Snake-based RPG dungeons. The game is coming to iOS and to the Mac next week, which I believe is a first for NimbleBit. The team has released its games on both platforms before, but not at the same time. This is probably a result of the team using Unity to build this one. The Marsh brothers used developer Matt Rix's Futile framework in the Unity engine to make Nimble Quest, and it likely made bringing the title over to OS X easier. Finally, the game will also include Everyplay integration, which is a video-sharing service designed to record and share videos from iOS games. Nimble Quest is hardly the first title with Everyplay integration, but it may be the biggest title to release with the service included, so we'll have to see how that goes for both the game and the service. At any rate, if you've been waiting to play Nimble Quest, the wait is almost over. We'll see the game live on the App Store, for free, next week.
Canonical announces Mir, a custom display server that will serve up future versions of Unity
The X Window Server has been serving Linux users faithfully for the better part of a decade. And Ubuntu has been using the standard-issue display server to push its GUI to monitors across the globe since its color scheme was more sludge than slick. Canonical originally planned to replace the aging X with another display server called Wayland, but the developers apparently couldn't bend the compositing-friendly protocol to their cross-device whims. So, Mir was created. The goal for Mir is to easily scale from the TV, to the desktop, to tablets and phones while providing "efficient support for graphics co-processors." That means Canonical is relying heavily on GPU acceleration, which will require the cooperation of manufacturers like NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and others. As part of the cross-form factor convergence, Unity will be getting a rewrite entirely in QT and QML (the current version uses a Nux-based shell on the desktop). The Unity Next project will incorporate several core components from the Ubuntu Touch interface, inching the Linux OS closer to its goal of a truly unified codebase. Mir should make its debut on the mobile variants of Ubuntu soon, with Canonical aiming to get the UI unified and stable in time for the next LTS in April of 2014. For some more technical details check out the source links.
Rise and Shiny: Game of Thrones Ascent
There are several things that Game of Thrones Ascent, a social game by Disruptor Beam, does right. At the top of that list is the way the game works as a vehicle for easily digestible content, content that comes from some of the densest reading material in modern fantasy. For the record, I still haven't read any of the books that the Game of Thrones television series is based on, but luckily I have a wife who will simply burst with excitement when she reads some new tidbit... unless she tells the nearest person (me). It must be hard making a game based on such a popular piece of fiction. The fact is that I didn't expect the little-known developers to do much good. I thought players would be smashing through a game that served as nothing but a cheap commercial for the HBO series. I was very wrong.
Unity co-founder Nicholas Francis leaving to make games
Unity Technologies, licensor and proprietor of the popular 3D engine Unity, co-founder and COO Nicholas Francis revealed he will step down from the company. His next project: making games."So I will be leaving Unity in order to join your ranks and dedicate myself to creating games," Francis writes on the Unity site. Francis says that in more recent time he's actually felt more fulfilled when creating things in Unity, rather than working on the engine itself. "As great as it has been building Unity, I have come to feel that actually using it is what really scratches my itch. On days where I can just get into the zone and fidget around with some shaders, gamecode, a custom editor tool or whatnot, I feel really fulfilled."Francis has yet to reveal what his new project is, whether he'll found a studio or, well, anything about what he's up to, really. But we're almost positive it'll be a mobile game ... running on the Unity engine.
'The Drowning' controls distilled to taps and swipes
The Drowning will forgo traditional emulated joysticks seen in other touch-interface shooters, instead opting for taps and swipes as the chief means of control.
Audojo kick-starts iPad gaming case, we go hands-on (video)
While many of us love playing games on the iPad, we often lament the lack of physical controls inherent to the platform. Audojo is hoping to change this with an iPad gaming case which is launching today on Kickstarter. The accessory works with any iPad 2 or newer, and features a pair of analog joysticks, two shoulder buttons and stereo speakers. Unlike other mobile game controllers like iFrogz's Caliber Advantage or PowerA's Moga / Moga Pro, Audojo skips Bluetooth for a low-latency microphone-based interface. The case slides open just enough to accommodate an iPad and, once closed, wraps around both ends of the tablet without interfering with any of the cameras, buttons, or the 30-pin / Lightning port. Audojo automatically connects to the iPad via the standard 3.5mm audio jack, which is replicated at the bottom of the case next to a power switch, LED and mini-USB connector (for charging). It's important to note that the accessory is not designed to charge the iPad, something that would require a larger battery and increase complexity / cost. We spent some time with a prototype iPad gaming case and came away pretty satisfied -- head past the break for our impressions.
Epic Citadel and other 'development showcases' for Oculus Rift available with dev kits in March
The impressive Epic Citadel demo we got to explore using Oculus Rift's incredible virtual reality development kit will ship alongside the headset this March, the company tells Engadget. "Any content you can load into UDK [Unreal Development Kit] and Unity, you can load and explore with the Oculus dev kit," we were told, in addition to the Citadel confirmation. And beyond that, Oculus is providing, "development showcases" alongside the dev kits, though it's unclear exactly what that means. We'll no doubt hear more about said showcases as we draw closer to the headset's March dev kit launch.
