Unity 1.1 Released: Windows Deployment, Big Game Workflow, C/C++ SDK
Extensibility
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — August 23, 2005 — Today OTEE announces a major
revision of the game development platform Unity, targeted at medium to
small game developers.
Unity is a 3D game editor which happens to contain one of the most advanced
game engines in existence. Packed with power it is built to meet the steep
demands of next-generation game developers and cut cost at all stages of
production.
Unity is the only Mac-based high-end game development tool sporting a
stylish pro-app GUI, no-friction workflow and top-of-the-line technical
features such as extensible graphics, great particle effects, highly
optimized scripting, the Ageia physX Engine, skinned character animation
and ragdolls.
“Wow! This is the game development engine I’ve been waiting 12 years for!
I’m simply amazed at how elegant this program is in design and function. It
is one of the very best Macintosh applications I’ve seen in, perhaps a
decade. It is a tool, in the true sense of that word. It amplifies my
abilities and makes my job easier,” says Norm Dwyer, president of casual
game studio Snap2play.com.
With Unity 1.1 it is for the first time possible to publish games for both
Windows and Mac OS X with the click of a button. This will allow games
created with Unity to be distributed to that dark side of the moon “the 95%
that don’t have Macs”. To many game developers, Windows is where the market
is.
“Casual games on multiple platforms are predicted to be a $2bn business by
2008. What the casual revolution needs most is not huge art teams, but
creative individuals with clever, different, wacky ideas. With Unity,
creative teams can develop on their beloved Macs with the best workflow and
tools available on the market,” says OTEE CEO David Helgason.
Highlights of new features in Unity 1.1 include:
* Windows standalone deployment of games made with Unity is now fully supported
* Several next-generation render-to-texture effects, and virtual
displacement mapping
* A 30 page scripting tutorial making it a lot easier to get started with
scripting
* Greatly expanded documentation with many new examples of how to achieve
various effects
* Possibility to extend the functionality of Unity-made games with through
a new C/C++ plug-in SDK to interface with any hardware or software Unity
doesn’t support out of the box
* Big game workflow has been greatly improved allowing the entire flow of
arbitrarily sized games to be designed, tested, and tuned inside Unity.
* Asynchronous internet access supported in an easy-to-use API
* And of course the usual host of minor improvement and bug-fixes are included
Unity 1.1 is a free upgrade for existing customers, and the early adapter
rebate will still be available for a short time.
For more information go to (http://otee.dk)http://otee.dk
BACKGROUND
OTEE released Unity 1.0 at WWDC this summer. Onstage at the first session
of the conference Apple’s VP of Platform Experience highlighted what fun it
is to use Unity. Since then Unity has been gaining adaption in independent
game studios, game design education and amongst creative visualization
professionals.
Creating their first game GooBall this spring, OTEE demonstrated how Unity
can uniquely improve productivity. GooBall contains 60 varied levels of
acclaimed graphics, and was made by a team of three over the course of just
4 months. GooBall was published by the proven Macintosh publisher Ambrosia
Software. Now, the content creation package powering it is ready for the
world. The next game production of OTEE is a serious game title about the
Israel-Palestine conflict produced in collaboration with Electronic Arts
and the United Nations.