2D Alpha Release 3

I'm liking the look of the true alpha masking and runtime alteration of that smart sprite. Wasn't sure if smart sprite would ever be valauble in a procedural context, but this certainly would move it in that direction. I hope at least some of these features make their way into 5.2.

 

Hi, Paul! New features look great!

I have a question on masking in alpha mode. How is it implemented under the hood: do you use stencil buffer or do you project mask sprite on the maskable sprites (altering their secondary UVs)?

 

Looks great, Unity2D getting the features it deserves!
Smart sprites:
*Runtime Deform
* Undo support


Looking great so far.

 

@ColossalPaul Don't forget to update the overview page. It still says Release 2 is the latest release.

 

Thanks for the info! Is it correct that as long as masking is done using stencils - it is 1bit masking (a pixel is either masked or not masked, no smooth transitions)?

And another related question: if I understand correctly - while Mesh Filters may instantiate a copy of Mesh (when that property is queried), Sprite Renderers that were assigned a same Sprite always use a single shared Sprite instance. The question is - do you have any plans about exposing functionality of instantiating Sprite meshes and exposing their internals (uv2, uv3, etc.)?

 

@sandboxed

Yes, I've made a quick test and looks like it is a valid approach to use those Sprite properties to re-create a mesh of some sprite and render it via MeshRenderer. It is just a bit inconvenient to use SpriteRenderers for the regular sprites and MeshRenderers for sprites being rendered with advanced shaders.
I guess you're interested in keeping SpriteRenderer simple (and it is good). But maybe you could consider adding (in some future Unity version) some kind of AdvancedSpriteRenderer with more internals exposed, but that can still be dynamically batched with regular SpriteRenderers when possible.

 

Sorry for my 'dumb' question but ... any help on how to get brushes in the Palette ? I'm trying to make a simple platformer. Thanks !

 

That's not a dumb question. Actually, doing that is pretty complicated at the moment. Your best bet is to open one of the samples and look for the objects with the brushes script on them and then try to replicate what they did! I haven't done it myself yet, so...

 

Hi, does the Particle 2D Collision already support OnParticleCollision() calls? If not, is it planned in the future to add this support?

Thanks, much appreciated and I'm really excited to see significant improvements to 2D tools

UPDATE: I ticked the "Send Collision Messages" Box but it didn't seem to do anything. Maybe a bug, maybe intended? Can anyone confirm that this does not work?

 

Hi, Paul! New features are amazing!
I saw new Component "Batched Sprite Renderer" at the demo video.
Is it a native component of engine or a high level component(like c# Script)? Does it work like Sprite Render but with manual control of the mesh from code?

 

I'm wondering if the tilemap could be used for many more things than the terrain of the gameworld. Say if you make a top-down game, could you use a separate layer above the terrain as fog of war for example. Or in a turn-based tactics game, you could highlight tiles with an overlay to indicate on which tiles one of your units could move to on your turn. I'm wondering if those could be possible uses for this tool. It is possible to edit the tiles at runtime trough scripting, right?

 

Looks great. Would love to test it. Are there non-pro early releases? I'd make direct use of the tilemap in the title I'm working on. Pro is still too rich for my poor blood. I can't pay $75 to give you feedback, sorry.

 

Can you support scaling for the edge 9-slice sprites (maybe future ffd) as to break the monotone frow of the surface, to have wavy irregular surface for example (with free form deformation or local vertical scale).
Also can you choose the sprites when you change them (in multiple edge sprites) or are they random? thanks.

 

How batching sprite renderer works ? It's a better batching system or it is for the tile map ? Does it work with isometric sprites ?

 

I mean SmartSprite not 9-slice sprites, can you vertically deform the upper sprites in Smart Sprites and can you change them individually.

 

Edge thickness yes, sorry I couldn't formulate it better. you seem to have everything covered.
The last thing that remains in my checklist is the abitlity to have more than 1 sprite per edge (at the same time) and control their seperation point like the second picture above.
Thank you and keep up the good work

 

Hi, I just checked the Roadmap: https://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap
It says that 2D Particle Collisions are planned for the December update, which is great!

Will this update (presumably) also include the "OnParticleCollision2D" Functionality? I'm kind of counting on this and if this is not planned, I will have to work around this.

Can anyone tell me more, please?

 

What is batchingSpriteRenderer ? It is a independant system of tileMap ? I mean can I use this system for batching my sprites ( there are isometrics ) of a better way than dynamic batching without use tileMap ?

 

Any word on Unity Pathfinding getting 2D support? Would be nice to use it instead of relying on 3rd party plugins.

 

Thanks for answer.

If I understand well I will not have any improvement until TileMap system go out ? For summarize, I have many thousand sprite ( isometric) to render and dynamic batching take huge time for that so I search for better system.

 

Guys can you provide a direct link to the Unity-with-2d-alpha build besides the download assistant?
Also something interesting I have been wondering about, is if SmartSprite and Tilemap Editor will work together: like creating the scene with the Tilemap editor and let SmartSprite assign the slope sprites based on angles.and control thickness and so on...
Now that would definitely be raising the bar!

 

I think this might help!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb3plLIH39Ff2nz2Ps2YNOA

 

Are there any updates that would make retro physics easier to implement? I've been struggling with the simple problem of getting a 2D tile-based character to walk to the 1-pixel edge of a platform and not fall off for ages. With a wheel collider for feet, you roll off when you get too close; with a box collider, you tend to get stuck all over the place (walls, floors between box colliders, slopes). I've been examining one person's solution for a while, and am currently looking into designing a 2D physics engine to implement this type of control.

 

Tile map work with a non-ortographic camera? IE: 2D game with some 3D elements between layers.

Also, is there any limitation in the number of tiles in the "palette" (Sprite Tile for example limits the maximum number of tiles avaliable to 32768 for the entire project, no matter how many textures do you use)

 

Yes I mean the full installer, my connection is spotty and I use a download manager to resume downloading.

Thanks anyways for the consideration, it would've been cool but I realize it's out of your scope. But can you at least make holes in the SmartSprite? like a closed cave or a tunnel?

 

How will colliders be implemented within the new Unity Tilemaps? Will all tilemap colliders be merged into one large polygon collider, like is usually done in Tiled Map Editor via Tiled2Unity? Or would we be able to access each individually-placed collider within the object hierarchy and code?

 

Well, I believe this is the use-case many people is thinking about . Notice the combination of perspective + sprites shown in that editor at 14:15 (And that lighting... wow...)

As xCyborg said, mixing Smart Sprite with Tile Editor would be indeed really awesome if people want to make a more "classic feeling" 2D game.

Example: Metroid Fusion terrain is varied and not quite uniform (Rocks, plants, etc)...

But in reality the whole game uses uniform tiles as seen in this video of the debug room:

A combination of several layers of Smart Sprite + Tiles + 3D models and you could have a nice looking classic feeling 2D platformer.

Related to this, as mentioned by bluefoxicy:

I agree that using a wheel collider for feet can be messy...

 

Thanks for the info. I mean accessing an individual tile's collider. Would this be possible?

 

That works for me. I may still meddle with the physics, but starting with something closer to my needs will sharply reduce my workload. I've actually looked at Platformer Pro and such, though I'm doing more calls by programming than by decorating in the engine.

I guess we'll see when it's released. Even just the tile engine as-is is a huge step forward.

 

for tunnels etc I expect one can just use multiple smart sprites for now?

 

Caves are just room outlines, so you should be able to do this by simply flipping the wall sprites in Y, and disabling the collision on the SmartSprite? You'd still need your own collision data for the cave, but if you're building procedurally you should already have this (or you could perhaps build it from the SmartSprite points/edges).

Ditto Tunnels, turn off Draw Bottom, and use flipped in Y sprites for the ceiling.