Unity 2.5 Coming Soon! (the official announcement)

Unity "prods" 3DS Max to export your file to FBX, so it's using the same exporter in the end.

Your license or activations won't compel you to update both installs to 2.5 if you don't want to, you can leave one with 2.1 and the other with 2.5. But why?

We spent a lot of time and effort in minimizing the platform specific so that typical need to "focus on Windows" (due to high volumes of platform specific code) isn't something we'll face. We've planned for this.

As Charles said there are no guarantees, but I can assure you that we, from top to bottom, are committed to both Mac and Windows going forward. Not one or the other, but both.

I don't know if that's enough but then again I don't know what would be.

I don't have the information handy and it's the early hours of the morning for my European cohorts. We'll obviously have that to share later on, maybe one of them will chime in with info here.

Yes, eventually. It's still to be seen whether it makes it out simultaneously with Unity 2.5 (it's obvious why it should, I'm just being honest about where it sits in terms of timing).

 

This is fantastic news. I personally have six friends who will be purchasing licenses post-haste. I foresee this being a much-deserved sales boost for the Unity team.

And now, the floodgates of questions

- Are there any plans to integrate any of these changes into the iphone license? A lot of the usability enhancements made (view compass, grid snapping, tear-away windows, etc) would be very much useful in both versions of Unity.

- I may have missed this one, but what does the windows release do to the current indie restriction of not publishing windows stand-alone builds?

-not so much a question as a typo fix, but on the announcement page, the 4th screenshot thumbnail links to the third image when opened in a new window :wink:

 

Long term of course, but for now we're focused on this non-iPhone update.

With the 2.5 release, both Unity Indie and Unity Pro will be publish Mac and Win stand-alone builds. Unity Indie published stand-alone builds will show a Unity loading screen, Pro published stand-alone builds will not.

Hah, thanks for that!

 

- beat me to it -

 

And now fixed. (thanks Charles!)

 

Really great to see all the excitement in this thread. We've been working really hard on this, and I think Unity 2.5 is going to be an incredible experience for everyone on all platforms! Some addtional follow-ups...

I can confirm that in this case, activating Unity on both OSX and Windows on the same computer would indeed use both of your allowed installs. You might want to consider using Unity on only the OS you use the most, so you can save your second install for a completely different computer.

I know Tom said no to this one, but actually yes, you can do this with number fields (floats and ints), excluding the transform fields.

All the new API hooks are only for customizing the Editor. The intended purpose is really to make it quick and easy for you to make your own game design tools and extend the Editor in various ways that suit your development needs.

One more clarifying item here, is that the Asset Server client-side interface will be accessible from WIndows. It's the Asset Server server-side installation that may come a bit later. Unity 2.5 on Windows can already access an Asset Server that's installed on an OSX or Linux machine.

 

I know it's not part of the 2.5 release, but just wanted to voice my desire to be able to work on my iPhone projects from Windows. It's understandable why publishing wouldn't work, with the dependency on XCode, but opening the same projects with Unity and Visual Studio running on Windows with Unity Remote on my iPhone would be amazing!

 

Any idea when this will be changing?

i mean, currently, the invesment for using 2 computers with Unity iPhone is 1 license of Unity and 2 macs. Thats a lot if you dont have the 2 macs already. But it reduce at least USD1,000 if you could be able to work also with windows (altough at the end you will need a mac for porting your app to the iPhone)

thanks a lot.

 

Love it!

One of the things that I hope gets addressed is having two versions of Unity for development for PCs and development for the iPhone. REALLY want to have one development platform.

 

I know that it has been said before that this is a goal, but yes, the sooner the better! I almost exclusively use Unity iPhone nowadays (until we can build for X360! :wink: ). The 2.5 release day will only make me sad, because I won't have the cool new features. :cry:

Well, I will be happy for UT, due to the SEVENTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS that they amass that day.

 

since you guys are so kind to answer.....

1) support for 3dconnexion peripherals or similar ? (wacom tablets....and similar?)

2) on my mac pro i have vista with bootcamp; does it count as single license or is per OS? i can use only one at once, but if i am doing something on pc i do not have to reboot anymore in mac and then back in PC and vice versa (i start to work on unity without any idea of where i end up, so wherever i am working this is where i usually launch it )

3) file types and project structures are the same for both versions? so for example, can i make an external drive with a project started in MacOs and load it in windows, continue there and then open it again from mac? may be a stupid question, i know

Thanks!!!!!!!!!

 

Well, it was already possible, although not smooth realized, with "normal values" but obviously it would ne nice having this consistent for every value.

But does that mean that it's now working in other input fields beside of the transforms like for instance the Texture Tiling?


Regarding the licence i think this is a nice compromise and i guess if something reasonable forces you to need more licences you still can talk to UT. Obviously a licence like Luxology's one is still far better as it's really user centric and allows YOU as many installations as YOU need (maybe we can get there at a later point ;O) wihtout any questions but you also have to honour that you get a crosslicence at all which we, although requesting for years, never got from either Macromedia or Adobe.

 

F*** YES!!!! I knew putting in a request for this on the wishlist two years ago would pay off.

No, but seriously, this is great. And per usual, you guys weren't just satisfied with getting it to run on the PC. You went above and beyond and full support for 3ds Max just makes my day!

Cheers,

Tyler (One happy mofo)

 

This is great news! Hoping for a quick release. Hopefully a bit sooner than late March.

The screens look great.

 

Thank you for this fantastic free update. Windows and the best of all 3D Studio Max support!!................................I think I just fainted!

Harald

 

Just freaking amazing! Almost peed my pants seeing about this in my inbox this morning.

 

Purely amazing. UT underlines again that those guys are the most emergent, innovative and customer-friendliest corporation on the planet.

 

A revolution in the game industry, with a "simple" free update : just wow.

A special mention for the new editor : looks like we will be able to put the game window on a second display - a TV set, for example. This is a great improvement in ergonomy ! You guys know exactly what we need.

If more companies were held by people like you...

 

very cool

finally moving away from apple style to industry standard.

Great work on that everyone

 

Yea, i waited for this news for months

So first question coming up:
Will the price of unity indie/pro change with 2.5?

EDIT:
any chance to get the beta-version?

 

Woo Hoo!

Thank you guys, can't wait to get the Win version to finally get my perfect workflow. No more crummy Mac!

 

Personally thrilled by this... I think community excitement has quadrupled over night

I foresee the move to officially announce support for Windows platforms and also improve integration with 3DSMAX will open up a lot of interest from Universities, particularly Architecture, Product Design etc; It's a bit of an irony that many campuses have become littered with Mac hardware but it's still predominantly used by Audio, Illustration, and Graphic Design courses etc.

At least where I studied the Architectural software was all Windows based. Industry too tends to favor CAD, Solidworks, Revit, ArchiCAD, 3DSMAX, on Windows platforms, economic and familiarity decisions still drive the present day drawing office.

This opens up some exciting opportunities to look for Industry / University linked developments and knowledge partnerships... I for one am going to be putting ideas down starting today after this announcement!

Congrats all round; a new dawn beckons for many people for many different ideas and applications of Unity

 

This ^^^

We (myself and Zante)work at a UK university and we run a module called 3D Interactive Media as well as developing. PC's out number Macs 20 to 1 (at least) and with the Windows version we would be in a greater position to start using Unity. Max is the 3D app of choice with maybe 10 Maya licences in the whole place so there was no way we could even think about trying to teach cross platform working.

Once again... Wooooo!

 

Hey that's really cool news for the windows plateform, As I am working on XSI I will appreciate to be able to work on the same computer ^^.

I am really feel lucky to be a unity user, even a recent one, but things go forward for unity that's pretty cool !

Well we all have to work hard to make fun and nice game to show the world how unity is the tools of choice for building game

 

This just made my day!

Looking forward to this release.

Simply awesome.

Joe

 

So it means that Unity Indie on Mac won't be able to publish to Windows? If so... that wasn't nice from you guys!

 

\o/ weeeeeeeee !!!

I knew you were in the path of the light, jedi!!! hahaha

see you!

 

Great work!

But i hope you will upgrade soon Unity iPhone with these new features at least on the Mac version!

For now i'm using only Unity iPhone license...

Thank You.

Andrea

 

great work UT!

 

The thing I'm most concerned about with the new features in 2.5 is the experience of the 2.1 update, where many new features were added but were not documented (especially the editor classes), they often just named the function and provided no examples.

Can I look forward to a good coverage in the new docs (and hopefully the old ones too)? It just needs a brief explanation of each function and how it works. This is very important for using a tool (knowing how!).

 

Does this mean that there isn't any new stuff in UnityGUI (e.g. combo box, accent support, a "usable" textfield)? How about performance, has it improved (especially on some cases like GUILayout using scroll views, where the hidden elements would still generate draw calls)?

 

Awesome!!! Congratulations to the announcement and congratulations to the progress ... and congratulations to the awesome community response!

And hey: Thank UT that you didn't come up with this 1.5 years ago. Otherwise, I would have missed the great opportunity to get my Mac and completely fall in love with it.

Unity FTW!!!

 

Can't wait. Getting my hands on the 2.5 beta might even be the sole reason to consider joining the game jam :wink:

 

I haven't used Unity in some months due to circumstances (heck I still have a 1.5 license) But the release sounds like it will coincide perfectly when I can start using it again, which makes me giggity giggity!.

Loving the Max support and absolutely loving the cross platform support.

I wish the Unity team all the best going forward, I'm sure you know to expect great things with this release.

~t

 

I just posted a thread in CGtalk about this, hoping to being some more people to the table. Countless people at cgtalk have said "looks perfect, but no windows" for a long time.

Now they have no excuses!

 

Hey! Congratulations on the official announcement
I don't have any questions right now - just: You guys rock!

ps - I'm a little mad because I would probably have stuck to windows if you had annouced the realease a few months earlier but oh well ... Mac Os is cool so it's okay for me ^^

 

Thanks for clarifying that Sam, I read VegasDev's question as "will the Asset Server be available for Windows?" and went to that answer. But yes, of course the Asset Server will be accessible from Unity on Windows.

Why are 2 Macs required? That's just not true. In the case of being Windows-based then you need a second computer anyway (a Mac) for iPhone work due to needing XCode so we're not really adding to that "need" in any way.

Not in 2.5.

I've already offered clarity on the terms, you have _one_ license, it allows _two installs_. Additionally, Sam answered your question, if you installed on your Mac OS and on Vista under Bootcamp that would use both of your allowed installs.

You can move project folders between the two just fine, no worries (or use an external shared folder) as you described.

None of our prices are changing.

Only by participating in the Global Game Jam later this month. Go read the "Unity 2.5 Coming Soon" page I linked in the first post of this thread.

Well, I cannot guarantee 100% depth, coverage and completeness I can say that we're working on doc improvements as well. But don't let it worry you as you're getting more features and the app is in a better state than 2.1 so it's always a step up!

 

Very good for us and very bad news for Apple. Some people (including me) bought a Mac only because Unity. Now, we can return to PC (is less expensive). Sorry Mac fans!!!

 

Honestly i don't feel sorry for Apple. They had more than three years getting a convincing machine out, a.o. caring about gfx, some reasonable expandability and a non glossy display in the less pricy regions. They couldn't deliver and at the moment the hardware benefits of a PC outmatch the software benefits of OSX. Windows7 feels a lot better than Vista. Maybe this will change in the future again but for now the possibility to plugin just the gfx card you want into your dev machine sounds so sweet to me.

 

Tell that my GTX280 with the 8800GTS SC 640MB "PhysX Coprocessor" ...
That does not even exist for OSX, neither actually, independent of the money you fork out ...
Its a shame that a want to be "high end pc company" tries to hold its space there with low end mobile components.

Too bad that Unity iPhone authoring (without build) is not planned to be possible on windows as well. My dev machine would generate the occlussion several times faster than my 8600M GT ever will in its wildest dreams

 

I'm a Windows PC user and I've literally been looking for a integrated package like Unity for Windows ... but I doesnt exist (at least not like Unity).

Arent Mac's better for graphical/art development? So I dont see why it would be bad to own a Mac along with a PC. I'd like to have both.

Personally to have something like Unity work perfectly between PC's and Mac's, and create games that work on both is a dream come true for many indie devs.

To the person who said be prepared for the influx of Windows PC users .... he's right. This forum is about to get huge once Unity 2.5 is released.

 

Sorry, I just have a question to ask. Did you guys make any preparation to prevent the piracy? For what I know, almost all softwares or tools running on windows can be cracked much easier and the free version is available everywhere very soon.

 

Hi all,

I´m really looking forward to getting this release. It looks amazing. Thanks for the news Tom.

Cheers,
HexDump.

 

Like and Mac software.

BTW, existing fbx exporter is too bad. As I have understood, the exporter will not exchange in the new version. It remains same bad?

 

why it is not true?
imagine that i have a desktop mac, but i need to go out from home a lot (and i'm able to work out of home). I would need 2 macs (desktop and laptop).

Now imagine that a new member comes into my project. And he has exactly the same case than me but he only has windows pcs, not macs. Now.... the investment would be buying 2 macs... not just 1.

Thats why for me (and i think a lot of more people) would be great to be able to work from unity iphone from windows....altough at the end we all will need a mac for using xcode.

Is there any chance this will be possible?

 

I don't think its likely that the merge will happen any time soon as unity iPhone needs to run an older version of mono to get AOT compiling. So I guess its mostly up to the mono team.

Furthermore building for iPhone on windows is not going to be likely *ever* as that requires Xcodes iPhone builder running on windows (which I highly doubt that apple would see as a priority or even desirable).

 

Is there any chance of getting native Lightwave support in future versions?

 

Sorry to say that, but from that logic, it would follow that I need 5 Macs for Unity development: One for my home location, one for my office location, one for carrying around and working while I'm on planes flying around the world, and 2 more for my vacation appartments. And it would follow that the 4 "non-mobile" Macs need to be super-high-end 8-core Mac Pros because I really don't want to waste my time waiting for my computer.

Me poor ;-)

If you want to avoid having to have too many computers, you can always buy Macs - they run both Windows and Mac OS (but are a little more expensive ... and ... um ... glossy displays are stupid). One Mac Book Pro should be sufficient for all your Mac and Windows needs (and spares you the synchronization issues).

I *believe* (and don't quote me on that) ... and hope that eventually, Unity and Unity iPhone will be merged ... at *some* point in time (maybe some happy day in the not-so-near future). That would mean that you could open and work on your iPhone projects with Unity, and you'd only need to have a the Mac/XCode setup and the Unity iPhone license to do your iPhone builds. It would also mean a lot of other cool things (which are discussed in other threads).

But I doubt this will happen any time soon ... (one reason is the one Emil just pointed out ;-) ) ... so I'll just say "pretty please" ;-)