Update - April 2017

Hi All! First up, let me apologise for the lack of updates recently. Quite a lot of things have been going on but we're back with more stuff coming soon, and we will get better at this.

So with 5.6 , quite a few 2D features moved from Experimental Preview to Release and we're excited and looking forward to seeing them being used in full productions.

• 9-Slice
• Sorting Groups
• Axis Distance Sort
• Outline Editor + Tessellation options
• CompositeCollider2D
• Edge Radius for BoxCollider2D and EdgeCollider2D
• Physics2D Contacts API

Thank you all who have been contributing, participating and providing feedback during the development and Experimental Preview!

Hot on the heels of that are a few more 2D features currently in the 2017.1 beta

• Sprite Masking
• Sprite Atlas
• 2DPhysics - Simulation

There's still a lot more in development or experimental and you can check it out on the Roadmap.
Just to highlight a few things -

• Tilemap is still in Experimental but we are targeting a 2017.2 release.
• SmartSprite is back in development. We've been working on solving a few problems and hopefully getting it into Experimental Preview in a few months.
• 2D Character Animation is actively in development but still a lot work to be done and will be some time before it hits the Preview. We'll update more on this.

Finally, 2D Experimental Preview 4 - We're working on packaging this. Its based of the 2017.1 beta and the main focus will be Tilemap. We've made some improvements and we're also preparing a special Project for it too.
At the Unity booth at GDC this year we showcased a game project that highlighted some of the awesome things one could do with scripted Tiles and Brushes. The focus was to demonstrate how setting up the Tiles and Brushes can super enhance workflow for level design and production. This will be the Preview 4 demo project and we're just cleaning up and preparing documentation/videos and we'll be releasing it really soon!

Here's a short video on the demo project.

 

I'm very excited about tilemap. The RoboDash video was also very impressive, but that music... why? I can't help but laugh.

 

Awesome! I am super excited for all of this! Will TileMap break between Preview 4 and release?

 

I've been using it in a real project since the first release over a year ago. The only time it "broke" is when they completely redesigned it after the first release. I think at this point it's safe to use, but there's a small chance I'm wrong. I'll be using it either way, as I'm already heavily invested in it.

The more important question is will the version of Unity they package it with be stable enough to last until the 2017.2 beta? I hope so!

 

Fantastic! Thank you for the tools and the work. Looking forward to playing with the new feature set.

 

This is super impressive, guys! I was a bit disheartened by the lack of updates but now 2017.2 can't come around fast enough!

 

Ah, the original speed runner music...

Maybe it's a subtle attempt to increase sales of bmx bikes and nurses at the asset store?

 

Fantastic news!

 

Hello Bro!! i am so excited about this! i see some of these tools released!! but i am a little sad because i am so new driving unity plugins or extensions, i have seen the tilemap editor but i cant use it in unity 5.6, how could i use it? there is a link to download a version compatible with unity 5.6?? thanx

 

Download the latest Preview Build from these forums.

 

Can't wait for the tilemap

 

This looks great. Will the RoboDash project from the video be part of the Preview release? I'd be interested in digging in and learning how some of those brushes were made.

 

@Lavenblade , @Jay-Pavlina : There will be a couple of breaking changes for Preview4. Naturally we can never really 100% guarantee but we do want to avoid any breaking changes from P4 to Beta.

@MatthiasStuetzer: Yes it will be part of the release.

 

Amazing work, looking forward to ditching my own terrible solution!

 

The tilemap component is awesome, and with all of these scriptable brushes Unity finally has a chance at being the top choice for 2D devs out there.

 

Looking forward for the Tilemap editor in Unity 2017.2

That's what basically stopped me to start learning seriously and developing with Unity (I tried though, until I saw the lacks in 2D), because the possibilities we have right now for tile-based games are not good and make the games very unefficient.

Another thing that will be awesome is to support the TMX format (import at least), so we can build maps and collision layers using the popular Tiled, including properties and data per tile that we can later read from the game code.

That would be awesome and will speedup the 2D development process a lot and will increase portability of existing 2D games.

 

This is easily done via tiled2unity.
I think this tool has to be (at least) better than tiled for people to start using it.