Unity 2011 Roadmap

[Thomas Pasieka]

Unity 3.4 is closing in. Read what's in it here:

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/06/16/unity-roadmap-2011/

Pretty exciting stuff coming our way! What do you guys think?



Thomas P.

[95KillerZ95]

Very very interesting.... I'm looking forward!
Please come immediately!

[Thomas Pasieka]

Personally I am looking forward to that "Pathfinding" system and RNM Lightmaps and surely LOD. So much good stuff coming it's insane.

Thomas P.

[MikeUpchat]

Looks like a few sellers in the Asset store are heading for harder times. Some great stuff coming by the sounds of it, thank you Unity, cant wait.

[spinaljack]

I thought the same thing about the asset store sellers. Well it's the risk you take when developing middleware like that but who's to say Unity's version will be better than theirs?

[Muzzn]

Also, Asset Store devs--! Check the feature list, and develop what's not on there! That's what I'm doing, anyway.

[Thomas Pasieka]

UI framework

We’re rewriting the in-game GUI system from the ground. We’ve made it simple and intuitive to create modern game interfaces with tons of animations and other effects. Everything is assembled in a visual GUI editor. A lot of effort is going into optimizing the GUI system for minimizing run-time overhead through automatic texture atlases and aggressive coverage-based batching.

That to me is also great news! The current solution isn't bad but anything that makes it easier is welcome! Looking forward to that as well.

[zipper]

I would really like to be able to use flash for GUIs. Any word on Scaleform integration?

[Codster]

Sheez their is so much on the menu I don't know where to start lol. The are all AWESOME! Makes me wounder what kind of things the would add in unity 4 0.0

[Eric5h5]

I would really like to be able to use flash for GUIs. Any word on Scaleform integration?

UI framework

We’re rewriting the in-game GUI system from the ground. We’ve made it simple and intuitive to create modern game interfaces with tons of animations and other effects. Everything is assembled in a visual GUI editor. A lot of effort is going into optimizing the GUI system for minimizing run-time overhead through automatic texture atlases and aggressive coverage-based batching.

--Eric

[JRavey]

Unity now gives you direct and exclusive control over the execution order in your scripts. Awake, OnEnable and Update calls are sorted by execution order. Execution order can be defined on a ‘per script’ basis in an easy-to-understand dialogue.

I won't comment on 3.5 as those are not promises, but the execution order is going to be nice. It's not too hard to work around the current limitations, but being able to control it a little more within the Unity way of doing things is a great improvement.

[LoneWolf_CGI]

Looks promising

[zipper]

@Eric5h5 A custom (read another GUI to learn), although exciting (and much needed), is not the same as Scaleform integration.

Scaleform integration would allow us to use a proven platform (Flash) and widely available talent which already know how to use it. I love UT, and they claim to want to take away barriers to development. Just today they said they wanted to focus on bringing UT up to "AAA" standards. Well, Scaleform should be included in the AAA focus. This is one of those no-brainers, and i don't understand the focus on a completely new UI system (unless it's flash based).

Visit Scaleform yourself and see how many AAA titles use it. (like over 700!).

zipper

[nopcode]

Integrated perforce and subversion version control

We’re working on fully integrated version control support for both perforce and subversion. There’s a complete UI including support for file locking.

It would be much better if instead you worked on support for both Git and Mercurial. Of course, if you exposed your source control interface (like Visual Studio does), then it makes using brand xyz easier.

[GuyTidhar]

That's it.

I'm getting married to Unity.

The wedding will take place near my work desktop.

You are all invited.

Oh, and I'm guessing in Unity 4.0 you will be able to beam yourself to the moon by adding a component "MoonBeam" to a game object.

[Eric5h5]

@Eric5h5 A custom (read another GUI to learn), although exciting (and much needed), is not the same as Scaleform integration.

That pretty much answered the question, though. Who knows, it could be too expensive to license (they're already paying for quite a bit of 3rd-party tech as it is), maybe they can do better.

--Eric

[Jessy]

Visit Scaleform yourself and see how many AAA titles use it. (like over 700!).

Look at how many professionals use Autodesk products and Pro Tools.

Illustrator + this new GUI system sounds like an awesome combo, and I can't wait to stop having to make my own boring solutions for atlasing and button mesh systems.

[Fidde]

Fantastic news! I jizzed my pants on the 3.5 features, can't wait!

[MattGPC]

It all looks great. Any plans for normal mapped terrain textures and/or some terrain tool updates?

[DavidB]

Text-based scene/prefab/… format
Unity will now write all data in a text-based file format for scenes, prefabs, materials and other binary files in your project folder. The format is based on YAML and is optimized for being easy to merge. Multiple team members can work on a scene at the same time and merge the resulting changes afterwards.

Does anyone know if this will be PRO only? Regardless, a move in the right direction. All of the listed changes look fantastic.