Uni2D tool: A new amazing way to create 2D games in Unity!!

Today i built the very first scene/level for our upcoming game with the Levelassets my artist made. I made 5 big TextureAtlasses (4096) with Uni2D and then i "puzzled" the Level together.
We have exactly 130 Gameobjects (128 Uni2D Sprites, 1 Camera and 1 GUIText for the FramesPerSecond) within the scene with 20-30 Drawcalls
-> the Framerate is between 20-23 on my iPhone 4. I thought the iPhone4 could manage way more DrawCalls, or did i forget something? Could I made some mistakes using Uni2D?

 

@Mayhem Number of parameters can impact the frame rate.

The most important things to keep in mind during the optimisation process are:
- Fillrate (too big object on the screen or superposed objects)
- Physics: compound mode is seriously demanding
- Draw calls: try to keep the draw calls as low as possible. 20 is a reasonable number.
- Don't know if the 4096 textures are well supported. Moreover, 5 x 4096 atlases may be very impacting (~320Mo)
- Scrpits: 130 gameobjects can be very consumming depending the things you do in your code.

To finish, I think the perf you desrcibe are pretty good concerning this target and the scene setup.

To find some optimization source, look at the profiler that could gives you better answers about the perf consumation in your project.

 

Hello all Uni2D users,

We see that many of you are waiting for animation. Be happy: we have an new version in the work with support for animation, that will mark the start of many changes in uni2D.

In preparation for this new release, we would like to invite you to participate in a beta preview of the new features. Here is a short Q&A about the new release, and the beta:

Why this new release(s) ?
We would like to go much further with Uni2D than we have gone so far. The new releases will have many new functionalities (animation, for sure, but can't tell you too much yet about the rest...) but also many changes. We would like to see how much people like these changes, and hopefully you will be as excited as us about the new features !

Why should I participate to the beta ?
Because you will get to try a whole set of new features before everybody else ! Of course, you should probably not use this beta for your most-important-next-project-that-will-make-or-break, because there may be still bugs, and incompatibilities with the final version (as well as the current version). But it'll let you use a variety of new features, including animation, that should open a lot of possibilities for your games.

How do I participate to the beta ?
You need to have bought already the current version of Uni2D on the AssetStore. Then, simply send us an email at uni2dbeta@bento-studio.com , including your name, and your invoice number. Once we have verified that you are indeed a Uni2D user, we will send you the information to get new package. That's all !

How will I give feedback ?
We will follow-up with you through email. We will also open a thread on the forum, so that everybody can share his/her experiences, and exchange feedback.

When will be the next official release, then ?
A big number of surprises will happen in the next weeks. We really want to transform Uni2D into the best tool for everybody. The road will be long, however, and we would love to share it with you. For now, we don't want to announce anything, because we wouldn't want to disappoint you in any way. But just know we do our best to release it very soon...


The Bento Team

 

I was using Graphics Gale I'll try and download photoshop and see if the problem persist,is it good for Sprite Creation tough?Sorry this has nothing to do with Uni2D

 

Hello there, i have just a little issue:

My 2D Level is built on Uni2D-(Physic)Sprites, and my Character is a SmoothMoves-BoneAnimationObject. All these (Plattforms and Character) are on the same Layer and the same Z-Position (0). For the Levels i use a Concave-Physic-Shape with an Edge Simplicity of 1, there Character has an CharacterController with a Script to Move attached. So the thing is:

Sometimes, when i move my Sprite on the Plattform (it is on the top) some parts of it "disappear" behind the Level, like the Feet or the Stomach, i move a bit around, and they reappear again.

Is this a Uni2D-thingy?

 

What kind of camera are you using, Mayhem? Perspective?

 

Orthographic

 

The "Disappearing" also pushes the Sprite back in the Z-Axis, so it is really "behind" the Plattform.

Character-Z = 0
Plattform-Z = 0

Character is moving a little bit, at some point, the Plattform pushes Character back:

Character-Z = 5.174 (or something like that)
Plattform-Z = 0

The Plattform is a static Physic Sprite.

As said, the Camera is orthographic.

 

Hello,

This may be a physic setup problem.
Please check your 2D constraints are ok:
- Rigidbody component > Constraints > Freeze Position > Tick the Z axis checkbox. Do the same about rotation on the X and Y axises.

If your setup was already good:
- Be sure you don't apply a force somewhere in your code.
- You may have/create a conflict with an other geometry which pushes your model. (example: a trigger which is actually a collider)

 

This product looks awesome! Congrats!

Not sure if it's because its new to the asset store but a search for "2D" didn't list your product for me. I was able to find it by searching the full name.

The price looks reasonable, maybe I will have to pick it up so I can start porting/modernizing my 2D iPhone apps over to Unity!

-Tim

 

I'm very excited with this tool and looking forward to buy Uni2D very soon (like today). But I have a question: how Uni2D is managing sprite animation? Like a mega-man walking (with spritesheet or atlas)? Is it live on beta, or you guys still working on it?
Thanks

 

Sprite animation is only part of the private beta that has started this week. So if you buy the current version, send us an email with your invoicer number, we'll send you the beta. You won't have to buy again when it's released officially, of course.

Re. how the sprite animation is managed: it's using spritesheet.

Hope it helps !

 

This looks like an excellent toolset, however I do plan on creating a 2.5D game will this support rotation and manipulation?

 

Hey there,

i got (again) a problem. It's an issue with the Texture Atlas.

I imported some .psd graphics in my project:



and puzzled them together and got this result (for the background):



I made them "pixel perfect":



As you can see, everything looks fine. So i thought: "Okay, put them in an Atlas to reduce DrawCalls!" I did that, and THEN some issues occured (same exact coordinates as before):





here is a "Before / After" comparison:


.PSD Files NOT in an Atlas - Scene View (Before Atlassing)



Before Atlassing i have this clean cut.





.PSD Files IN an Atlas - Scene View (After Atlassing)



After Atlassing i got this added pixels an the sides, which overlapp with the other sprite, which doesn't look good ingame.


I tried EVERY TextureSize, Padding-Size, and nothing worked.
I used the Photoshop-Stamp/Solidify Plugin to get some Alphachannels, but i tried it without that, didn't make any differences. I also tried to use .PNGs instead of .PSDs, didn't make any difference either.

Where is my mistake? IS it my mistake anyway ?

 

Hey Mayhem,

Try using the point filter mode on your textures rather than bilinear. Ex2D has the same issue. Here's how they describe the solution on their FAQs page:

 

Bryantdrewjones, sometimes i think i should pay you for your help. It did the job, thank you very much

 

@Ericks89 Yes sure!
@bryantdrewjones Thank you very much!

 

Hey there,

i got (again) a little problem. This time, sometimes occurs a slightly jitter in the background.

I have seven 960x640 images setup as my background. They are all in one Atlas to reduce DrawCalls.
The thing is, everytime i move with my Player (a default Capsule, just for Testing), there occurs a little jittering in the back, like the background also moves a little bit. Is this any Uni2D related?

I uploaded a video:

(please fullscreen it, so you might see/understand what i mean)

 

I have been using Uni2D for about a month now, it's great. I'm really glad I bought it.

I have experienced a couple of issues though.

1) On Windows 7 Uni2D rebuilds all GUIDs (and I think updates all atlases) every time I sync or submit changes to SVN. This doesn't happen on my Mac with the exact same project. This means I have to wait nearly two hours whilst all the GUIDs are updated every time I sync or submit changes. It's a real pain and I'm losing a lot of development time to it.

2) I get the impression that when a texture is added to an atlas Unity loads both the original texture and the atlas into memory, even though the sprite is set to using the atlas that contains the texture. Which means I'm seeing double the memory usage. I might be mistaken though. I'm on the non-pro versions of Android and iOS Unity.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

 

@kuposquared

From our side, we now are using the AssetServer.
Anyway, we just finish testing with SVN and it seems to works as expected.

When you convert a project from an OS to other, the folder library(cache) will always be reconstructed one time but it's a normal behavior.

So before going further, please verify these points and make sure:
- your SVN is not versionning the library folder.
- you are in "metafile mode" (edit/project setteings/editor/version control mode/)

About the second problem, we will investigate and let you informed about this potential bug.

 

I've checked, and the project is definitely set up as you describe. I've also created a new project to try it out and it's also suffering from the same problem.

I notice there is a review of the Uni2D package on the Asset Store where a person is also struggling with the same problem.

The second issue appears to be fine. The atlases are working properly.

 

Will there be any new updates in the near future?

 

Hello,

@ kuposquared
Could you please send us a mail with the both projects

@Mayhem
We really work hard to ship the soon as possible the new version.

- We planned to release the new version in January.
- Currently we are to the third beta on five.
- The 4th beta will be released before the holiday season.

 

How do you go about anchoring Uni2D sprites to the screen? Is it like 2DTK? I basically need it for a GUI. And does Uni2D support some kind of text method (like 2DTK textmesh)?

Cheers

 

I would recommend you "nGUI" if you need a GUI-solution. Uni2D is great for building your Level in 2D and SpriteAnimations, but has no Text-Methods.

 

New beta available! (the next one will be the last!)
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/155343-Uni2D-beta?p=1115149#post1115149
Totally new atlas system and new sprite animation workflow!

 

Hey ! It works fine !!! Can't be easier !!! Congratulations Bento-Studio...

Because your included .pdf file is the old one (?), I explain what I did... Am I right ??? :

* I simply select all the pictures I want for the clip.
* I create an animation clip in the new Sprite Editor in one click !
* I create (or drag and drop) a simple sprite with the first picture.
* I add the animation clip in the properties of this simple sprite ! Finished !!!

6R

 

I just can't wait to use the new official Version of Uni2D. I also would like to see with the new Version some new Videos and a new Manual, maybe also a little Tutorial for Sprite-Animations?

 

Hi all, does Uni2D provide an easy method for implementing parallaxing

I'd love to see more vid tutorials and also a better manual.

If these existed I would most certainly purchase Uni2D without a second thought.

 

The Swindle does interesting things for its parallax view: http://www.sizefivegames.com/2012/11/07/using-unity3d-for-the-swindles-2d/

 

Can't wait! It will be very helpfull for my game Dodge A Pill. The face of the player changes depending on how much lives he have but because I have to swap the texture, I can't add all the faces to my texture atlas for now. With animation, I'll just have to play 1 frame forward or backward ;-)

 

@ p6r @Mayhem @vertigostudios
The documentation is not up to date yet. But be sure we will do our best to provide a documentation with the best quality as possible for the final release, including video tutorials.

@vertigostudios @orb
Parallaxing is not currently supported by Uni2D and is not planned for the current release (but why not for future updates). Thank you for showing what you are expecting with this sample!

@loicteixeira
Good to see that our tool will help you!

Thanks again to everybody for your concern and your support, I hope the next beta will surprise you because I think we have some good stuff in stock

 

Great, looking so forward to it!

I hope the documentation provides information about certain functions like accessing certain Frames in a Sprite-Animation. For example:

- My Character has a Walk-Animation and is attacked by an Enemy, now at certain Frame of the Walk-Animation that animation is stopped and the Hit-Animation of the Character is played.

Uni2D has such a nice and good Workflow, would be great if the Scripting-Part with Uni2D would also be such as great

 

I think it would polish off an already great product.

Thanks for the update.

 

I shared these links on Twitter, but for anyone looking to use Uni2D for GUI/HUD stuff, these scripts let you position and scale objects based on the viewport. So you can easily have resizable, resolution independent sprites. I keep them separate because I also use the positioning script with my GUI text stuff (using Catlike Coding's Text Box) and because the positioning script works with any transform so you could even put a 3D spinning cube in your HUD with it.

https://gist.github.com/4354434
https://gist.github.com/4354479

 

Are there any trial version or discount for students?

 

@magarcan Sorry but unfortunately the asset store does not provide any system for self promotion nor discount for students... You could ask Unity to add this feature!

 

I need this, now!

 

If you really believed in Christmas you'd put this product on sale for 99% off.

If you don't want to be a communist, that is.

 

Great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Uni2D seems to become more and more the perfect EASY Tool I need for my actual projects (static backgrounds and animations) :



6R

 

Hi, I need a little help here:
First of all the uni2d.com is offline from a while ago. There was a forum there, but as I can't access it, I will make my questions here, if you don't mind.
- What did happen with the uni2d website? Will this tool be keeping under development? I'm worry about still having support and bug corrections.

- I'm having huge Z-fight problems with the sprites and I have no clue how to fix it. I already generously increased the space between sprites, but still the same. Any idea what it could be?

Cheerios.

 

@mangojambo

Hello,

Uni2D.com is offline but this is not our website!

This domain was already taken when we choice to call our plugin Uni2D.
We have not a specific website (check for bento-studio.com), but it's coming for the new release always planned for this month.
So be sure the tool is always under (heavy) development.

About your question, your issue concern more Unity than Uni2D because we only use the render pipeline of Unity (no specific shader, internal graph scene,...) From what I know, nobody seems to have report this problem yet.

If it's really Zfight problem try to change the near and far value of the camera and it would solve your issue.

But I think your problem is more in relation with Z order transparency.

1. Check your pivot position (the engine order with the pivot point).

2. Try to change the camera transparency sort mode to Orthographic http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Camera-transparencySortMode.html

3. You can modify the rendering order via a script (Material.renderQueue) http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Material-renderQueue.html

4. If nothing works, you could always change the default shader with a cutout shader that will solve your problem but it depends of your visual need.

Hope this helps!

 

Hello Bento!! Your plugin is perfect for 2dGames but I only have one question, animated sprites?
Are you thinking in develop this feature? When will be released?

Thank you!!

 

Hi DjEmix!
Thank you for your support! So yes classic sprite animation will be supported in the new version of Uni2D... and a special new killer feature for animating sprites! Can't wait for the new release always planned for this month. If you bought Uni2DV1 you can always request a private beta access by sending your invoice number to uni2Dbeta(.at.)bento-studio.com The beta is now close to be released even if we have some problems that slow us to maintain our initial planning for the beta.

 

Hey Bento, thank you very much for your answer, helped a lot. I was testing other techniques and still giving Z fight. The orthographic is the way to solve it. Too bad if you want to mix 2d and 3d style.

Another 2 questions:
- How do I deal with huge 2D image maps (like 60000x1000 px)? Should I import in pieces or Uni2D can do it automatically?
- Is there a way to use a tiled image on a terrain? To make myself clear: Import the image alpha channel to define the terrain and apply another small image as tile.

Cheers

 

I want to dev some 2D game for mobile using Unity3d (iPhone Android) and realized that there were a couple of 2D Frameworks on Assets Store, like Uni2D and 2D Toolikit. My question is how does Uni2D stands up against 2D Toolkit in ease of use, learning curve, performance and well effectivity during the completion of a project.

If someone who has had the opportunity of working with both frameworks compare the pros and cons of each? I know that from a price point Uni2D is looking very attractive right now.

I am a newbie Unity programmer, as im teaching myself as I go so I would like to aquire the easiest most complete tool I can so I can learn more as I go.

Thanks!

 

I haven't got much experience at all with Unity, but as a programmer (I write travel systems for a living) I just want to get into the depths of code without much mucking around. The last language I used for writing games and apps was GL Basic. Worked well, but is an old school language where you do pretty much everything yourself from the ground up. Not bad though and I got a few apps out.

After a few days of mucking around I knew within Unity I needed a decent additional tool to help me do 2D games. After a bit of browsing I bought 2D Toolkit. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but I just couldn't gel with it. Then I heard about Uni2D and bought that. Straight away I was making progress much easier than 2DTK. Now I just use Uni2D, and my main problems with learning a whole new SDK/language etc has mainly been with Unity. Uni2D very rarely caught me out. Hopefully 2.0 will be an even bigger leap.

Oh, quick question, does anyone know how to make a Uni2D sprite fill the entire screen, regardless of resolution or screen ratio. It's fine to be stretched etc. I've tried a few options but can't really get it to work properly. Any advice would be great.

Cheers

 

@mangojambo

You may find help with using this new component at start used for the new release. It change the way the transparent object are sorted.
You have to attach this component to the camera. This would solve your problem and you can continue to use perspective camera.
http://www.bento-studio.com/Forum/TransparencySortOrder.cs

About your other questions : No uni2D doesn't split big texture into small textures. So you have to import them detached.

About the tiled texture you can achieve this by doing a tweak on the material.(Uni2Dv2 beta) following these steps:


On UNi2Dv1.x Transform your object in prefab and extract the physical mesh from it. Then apply the same method.
(this method collapse the mesh so you can't edit it anymore after the generation)

@Crivens

Thanks for this very interesting feedback! We are very excited by the new version too and we hope you will be happy with it!
About your question there is no option to do this but it's an interesting feature.
For the moment, you have to write a simple component that modify the size of your sprite from the transform component of the Uni2D sprite depending from the screen proportions. Send us a mail if you need more help.

Hope this helps!

 

I actually wrote a script to do this that you're free to use: https://gist.github.com/nickgravelyn/4354434