Windows 8 and Tileable games

Ok from what I understand in the new Windows 8 which will run on ARM as well as PC hardware, in order to create a Metro app you have to use DX11, support touch etc. These are supposedly the only apps that will be for sale in the Windows 8 app store as well.

On top of that we have touch etc to deal with. What are the plans for unity supporting Windows 8?

 

A colleague of mine went to the build conference and I just played with the Samsung tablet that everybody got. I have to say, I can definitely see the tablet being a laptop replacement. It is powerful enough to use it at your desk with a monitor and keyboard but it is also very portable and tablet-like. The metro interface looks like it will work very well... At least on a tablet. It doesn't look very useful on the desktop. If Unity supported the metro interface that would be awesome

 

Win 8 will be great. A smart move from MS.

 

From what I understand to be a Metro app you need to support DX11 as well as use the WinRT calls as opposed to the old Win32 calls all our software uses now. I know the Microsoft XNA and Silverlight guys are all up in arms about this.

If your product is not a Metro app but a legacy app, it can be listed in the Metro App store but it is listed as legacy, and Microsoft does not handle the sales details. They point the users to your website for purchase etc. While i believe you do not pay a % to MS you do have to deal with all the issues yourself. I don't mind giving up 30% for them to handle payments and hosting and get preferred listing as a Metro app as opposed to the absolute ghetto that will be Legacy Apps.

 

Hopefully this means we'll see Unity move to DX 11.

God damn, Unity has allooootttttt of work to do.

 

Not sure whether to post into this thread or start a separate one ... but ... I'll go with this one: I think this is yet another opportunity that UT just can't miss. When Unity can build for Metro by the time Windows 8 is released, it's gonna be a huge "score" for UT. Think of all the great games that might make it to the Windows market (not sure what the current figures are but there was a time when a significant part of the iOS App Store top sellers were "made with Unity").

Unity for Flash sounds exciting - but this sounds much more exciting to me (hopefully, UT has different teams working on both right now ... and all the other great stuff that's to come ;-) ).

So far, I didn't bother about DX11 but ... well, times change ;-) ... drop the old OSs, drop the old architectures (DX7what???) and go full-speed towards "build target Windows 8 Metro"

 

I completely agree. It seems like both Apple and Microsoft are slowly pulling away from Flash and moving towards HTML5. If UT can be one of the first middleware developers to support metro I would be first in line to purchase a license.

 

Flash is a dieing breed what with HTML5 adding more features like WebGL. It seems to be a much more viable platform to make a Unity exporter to (By the same occasion get rid of the requirement for a WebPlayer, and even iOS/Android licenses unless building a standalone app).

From what I understood of the recorded conference bits, they talked about HTML5+JS for Metro apps. One more reason to push for a HTML5 exporter.

 

Agree about Flash. It doesn't sound like Flash will be all that relevant in a few years.

 

WebGL is 3-5 years away rom replacing flash independent of how optimistic you see it.
Not only do not all browsers implement it by default and mobiles will not and potentially never offer WebGL (there were some clear lines from google and apple on the matter of webgl on the mobile browsers), the performance is also on a level where you could use flash too commonly and the security concerns are even larger than for flash or obfuscated unity webplayers.

it is a thing that at some point might be viable, but for the time being, it definitely isn't. Its even a whole lot less attractive than Adobe Trash 11


But back on topic: Would love to see some more or less timed support for Win8 tiles too, unsure though how well thats possible given its all new and win8 is not even in beta yet, so its basically a "good guess of what it will be" going by past iterations

 

In addition, the c-based languages such as C++ and C#, along with vb.

 

I also hope Unity is working with Microsoft to support first class DirectX 11 apps for Win8 and the Win8 app store. Potentially a VERY huge market!

 

If you like this idea, add your votes (and comments) to: http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/suggestions/2272496-new-build-target-windows-8-metro

 

Voted!

I'm actually wondering if Windows Phone 8 might end up using WinRT, or a subset of it. So maybe porting games over to mobile might be fairly simple.

 

This would be awesome! I hope it's in the works, even as a new paid package it would still be awesome

 

I agree with dreamora, flash's market share is still huge and it's still very popular with a hug community of developers and uses on websites etc, it's going to take a long time to erode that with new technologies. I think Unity knows that and that's why they are very keen to piggyback the flash player to present Unity on the web to a wider audience.

 

Unity for Flash sounds boring and outdated for a number of fields of applications but what should they say, look we've invested all this resources into it and we think it sucks?

Unity supporting the next Windows version must come, will come and i'm very much looking forward to Windows 8. :O)

 

Flash is boring right, but for the time to come, Stage 3D will be the 3D tech with the largest install base on the web. It sucks but its a fact.
It has some major limitations over unity webplayers though so it is no one stop for all tech and neither date nor licensing detail for it are known.

And I agree, Win8 support is a must. But given the fact that UT does not even test and develop against iOS betas I am unsure that we are going to see day1 or even quarter 1 support for it given the deep breaking. Currently there is not even a DX11 layer and I doubt we are going to see one prior Unity 4

 

I don't care about Flash export this much because my clients pretty much gave up on Flash technology, therefore charge 1 million for Flash export, hand it out for free, it doesn't matter. Vimeo works wonderfully with HTML-5 on many devices, ... although as it's publishing for the web i would have expected it being free but you never know how expensive David's green couch really was. :O)

Wasn't there a first steps in DX11 blog entry from Unity at the beginning of this year? Anyway the final of Windows 8 isn't there yet, so they have some more time left. Considering how long the updates of Unity took in the V3 product cycle so far i honestly expect to see Windows 8 support in a V3.x release.

 

Windows 8 is not even in beta yet, the only thing handed out was the tech preview. its still 12 months+ away from release

And yeah there was a blog on DX11 but we also can easily see whats in and what not on the features required to even target DX11 (multithreaded renderer that works performantly is a basic) and it will require some deeper changes and yeah drop of any fixed function pipeline support basically to make sense, thats why I think that it will happen with Unity 4, along drop of support of any pre SM2 and potentially OpenGL ES 2.0 support

 

Yep but if i remember things correctly the beta of Windows 7 was already pretty good and useable. Personally i would be fine with cutting out everything pre OpenGL ES 2 related but i don't know how large the percentage of Unity users who still want to support older platforms is. I could imagine providing a more basic DX11 support in V3 but offering DX11 with all the bells and whistles later on. Anyway didn't they want to get serious with 3.5 already? ;O)

 

Its not about usable, its about breaking it. Its like OSX 10.2-> 10.3 or 10.4->10.5, stuff will just cease to work or won't go to the metro store and tiles surface at least

also the work for Win8 ARM support is no small one

 

But especially ARM combined with Windows 8 sounds so sweet.

 

yeah by the end of 2012, start of 2013 with the ARM15 - PowerVR6 gpus, I agree

as long as we don't see tegra trash

 

Unity is publishing to Flash I believe in order to ditch their own plugin. That makes good sense from a business standpoint. They redirect those developers to work on publishing to Windows Metro / Phone while Flash helps Unity maintain the publish to Flash codebase.

While HMTL5 is nice and open I don't think Apple or Google have interest in it as a platform to publish apps too and we know Flash doesn't.

 

Well, if this would be the case it would speak against every statement they gave about this topic in the last years.

On the other side i don't see a prospering future for web plugins anyway and they never were able to get it fully working in all those years, it was working somehow but not in a seamless way on all the browsers clients care about and the plugin used to screw up a number of things with each release, typical B movie quality product were the Unity experience they advertise just doesn't stands a reality check.

If using Flash and building on top of the errors Adobe brings in results into a more convincing overall product, well, let's just wait and see but after using Macromedia and Adobe products for many years i would be very much surprised. But in the funky land of 0s and 1s a lot is possible and i'm generally a friend of better supporting less platforms more reliable instead of everything in a sluggish way.

 

Tomas posted a link on the metro feedback page: http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/06/windows-8-works-hard-to-meet-the-needs-of-all-gamers/

This is awesome news!

 

Nice find! Great to know Unity will be supporting all these features, I must say it's took me by surprise. I wonder why there's been no announcement from Unity themselves? (Unless I've missed it...)

 

Yes, nice find. The evidence builds... looking pretty certain that Unity3D will support Win8 Metro and the new Windows8 marketplace. Could be a huge market if things go right for Microsoft.

Oh, and to Unity team. If this is true and you need a beta tester please contact me. I currently have a game (Krashlander) on the Windows Phone and a much better version of that game built with Unity3D and almost ready for release on iOS. Would love to test it out on Win8 as well. I'll keep it on the down-low. ;-)

 

Okay, so the new Unity 4 announcement of DX11 support means Windows8 support. Right?

 

Unity will have DirectX 11 support Unity 4.0.

I'd have to disagree. I think Win 8 is a big flop for Microsoft; it's sure to be another Vista.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to say that. If Windows 8 was only targeted towards the desktop, I'd probably agree with you. However, after playing with a beta build on a tablet, I have a little bit of hope for Windows 8. It works very, very well with the tablet interface. However, on the desktop, don't like the ideas of merging the tablet and desktop interfaces together with the metro interface (and I am really hoping there is a way to get the start menu back).

After seeing Microsoft's announcement of Surface yesterday, I have to say that I am honestly thinking of picking one up shortly after launch (with one reason being that I am hoping Unity will support WinRT at/near release). With the iPad, I was really hoping for some kind of an Apple inspired tablet that ran Mac OSX that worked well with the touch/portable interface. Instead, we got iOS on a big screen. I bought an iPad to use for testing, but I don't really use it for anything other than that. I am thinking that Surface will be perfect for my needs - tablet for most things, but it has the power behind it to run real programs. It sure beats carrying a laptop around.

 

for sure not.
Mac Users will want to use it, its the fastest windows in VM I've ever used.
Also usage experience wise it feels like the most responsive one even when compared to Win7

Yes the metro surface can be a gimmick but interestingly when you start messing with it, it can even help you be more productive and the various special features and hotzones are a great step forward (I had that before through 3rd party hack-plementations).
The only problem it will have is getting a reasonably fast penetration, but those who really give it a try will gonna like it more sooner than later, as soon as their 'urgs ugly tile' self destruct-protection behavior vanished

On the other hand I disagree on the Surface comment. I like what MS has shown there, but only the full thing has the power behind it for your use case and that does not use Win8 RT but the real Win8 and runs on an Ivy Bridge Core i processor, not Tegra or ARM.
I'm unsure on how well the ARM one will work out as MS isn't doing enough to push it for a reasonable Day 1 support with apps as it will otherwise start absolutely dry as no past mobile MS platform is compatible to the Win8 RT requirements nor are Windows programs

 

It's kind of curious, in having looked around at this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh452780.aspx

Then we get into this bit:

And the following which raises the question...

...how is Unity going to do it?

 

It's official! Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 Will be supported by Unity!!
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...Services_store_promises_Windows_8_support.php

 

Windows 8 will be the death of indie game dev. Due to their digital copyright take, if you plan to release on the console be prepared for loses. This is one of the main conflicts currently between Steam and Microsoft, and also Steams porting to most standard linux kernels.

 

Um... um.... no... lol.

 

HAHAHA really the whole Linux threat is so 2000... The only way I see anyone using linux for steam is if steam makes their own hardware based on linux.

 

Whilst writing some automated build scripts for my game, I came across some new BuildTarget values: BuildTarget.MetroPlayerARM, BuildTarget.MetroPlayerX86 and BuildTarget.MetroPlayerX64
I immediately tried building my game with them, but Unity told me it didn't support building to these targets in its current version
Still, it at least implies that Unity is planning on supporting building Metro apps
Using Unity Pro 4.0.0f7 btw

 

Not Windows 8. Maybe Windows RT (where the Store is the only way to get third-party apps), but the desktop isn't going anywhere soon. However much Microsoft wants to earn a royalty for every app you buy, they're not going to remove the desktop functionality.

Don't believe me? Hit Start and type "cmd". That's basically DOS, and it's still around. The parallels are striking - both the command prompt and the desktop were phased out in favor of a more intuitive input method (mouse and touch-screen, respectively). Both are implemented as a component of the new interface (the command-line is a window on the desktop, the desktop is an "app" in Windows 8). And finally, both the desktop and the Windows 8 interface were met with explosive negativity from closed-minded techies, even though they don't really affect advanced work. The command line was eventually phased out by the desktop except for the most advanced users, and I can only imagine that touch interfaces will do the same to the desktop.

I don't really know what point I'm trying to make up there, I just started thinking out loud.