Xamarin now free (and supposedly open source)

http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2016/03/31/Xamarin-Now-Free-and-Open-Source.aspx

Granted this was announced at the event so it's hard to have a hard source (although the article above shows the Xamarin store has changed to reflect this), it still sounds pretty neat.

 

Yeah, hoping I can get a download link which doesn't require more registration. There is supposedly a link to the Xamarin CE hidden behind their registration-wall on the official Xamarin site, but I'm just so tired of entering my details for stuff all the time. If it's open source, why collect e-mails? They're not getting mine.

 

This is great for Xenko and other game engines that require Xamarin to run on Android and iOS. Unfortunately, I doubt it will make any difference for Unity.

 

Yeah - it's confirmed:

https://blog.xamarin.com/xamarin-fo...tm_source=twitter&utm_content=xamarin-for-all

And they've moved all of Mono to the MIT license... Maybe Unity can get that upgrade now!

http://www.mono-project.com/news/

 

Not really. It isn't about licensing any more, it's about performance. If IL2CPP is still faster then Unity is best served continuing how it is.

 

This is definitely a good thing for indie devs and another boost for open source freedom.

 

Let's see if Epic will be smart enought to bring C# to the engine ?

 

Probably.

 

My interest in having Unity update their version of mono/C# are the features. It's the main reason why myself and so many devs I know have started moving away from Unity. Unity has gained so many features in the engine itself, but no improvements in the actual coding of the scripts have happened. Coding in Unity feels like we're still in 2010.

IL2CPP might be faster than the super old version of C# that Unity has been using. Is it faster than C# 6 or 7? Maybe, maybe not. IL2CPP isn't magically adding all of the features that comes with .Net 4.6 or C# 6/7.

 

I guess we'll agree to disagree. From my perspective there is no gain from moving from C# to C++ for game logic. The only issue is one of performance, for me. I'm hardly constrained.

 

IL2CPP is still some months/years away, at least for desktop. Also it is bit more limiting compared to Mono as well (same limits as any AOT build type Unity supports, e.g. no reflection or runtime code generation). As intermediate solution, until IL2CPP is complete and in cases where IL2CPP's limits prove too much, a Mono upgrade would be good. Also, C#6.

 

But you guys are acting like it's negotiable, it's not. Unity have a clear plan for it as they've said time and time again. Is it some how preventing you from doing your game? If so, please specify exactly how?

 

And you know it's not negotiable... how? Are you working at UT? Because last time I've checked you are voluntary forum moderator from a company called Simian Squared Ltd.

 

Nothing is announced (and still Royalties won't go away).

Engine optimisation is a heavy task, and i would not bet on coding a lot , but on engine features
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXcw2IrIinc
Who knows if Unity will make some AAA moba or Multiplayer FPS ? we would benefits big improvments.

 

Now that Xamarin is free I would IMPLORE Unity to please put IL2CPP on the back burner and just use the world standard .NET library. Please remember you are first and foremost a game engine, not a competitor to make a better .NET compiler than Microsoft and Xamarin combined. I'm sure the IL2CPP devs have done some good work, but please don't continue to put everything else on hold until they prove themselves better at .NET than Microsoft, because I fear that day will never come. I do not share hippocoder's enthusiasm that you will some day be faster than MS and Xamarin if you just keep plugging away for a few more years, nor do I even care; I would much rather that entire team be reassigned to literally any other engine feature. Please at least try to think of the big picture and don't let stubbornness or inertia drive this decision.

 

I agree, why waiting two or three years if you can use Xamarin ?

 

Yep, it's free and available now. It will soon be open source (the Xamarin Runtime will) and will be part of the .NET Core Foundation on GitHub but it will take time to get the source out there.

Are you developing on Windows or Mac? If you're developing on Windows just update your Visual Studio 2015 to Update 2 and choose the Xamarin option which will install it. No need to register again. If you're on a Mac you'll have to enter the registration to get the Studio download.

Impossible to say because C# 6 is a language specification, not a runtime so it's not even something you can compare. You can't even really compare recent .NET releases to IL2CPP because the devices aren't running the standard .NET Runtime. You'd have to compare the speed of the Xamarin runtime. IL2CPP will be faster (and hopefully some day less buggy and easier to debug), and it will bring consistency to how you develop between platforms as you won't be dealing with AOT on some platforms and not others.

I don't necessarily share the enthusiasm either but mainly because of the number of issues I've seen crop up on IL2CPP and they're different on different platforms. In some ways it is a bit of a black box. It will be faster, but now that .NET Core and Xamarin will be open source and with .NET Native finally getting completed and being used for Windows Universal Apps, I wish iOS hadn't forced Unity's hand and they could have instead investigated something like .NET Native which has been longer in development and is more mature (though not currently cross platform outside of Windows devices).

 

I thought they were going to continue to support Mono? Is it going to be completely removed?

The roadmap still says:

Seems strange to support it in the editor, but not in at least the desktop players. Hope Unity will have something more to say on it.

 

Yeah, there are like a thousand reasons that I thought IL2CPP was a bad idea, some of which I'm sure are still scattered around archived posts here. The original sole motivator for its invention was that it would be cheaper than buying the iOS license from Xamarin, and now that that's no longer true, it doesn't really offer much other than a hope that maybe it will be faster when finished.

Yeah they were going to use regular .NET on Windows but they didn't want to update until they got IL2CPP perfect on iOS, to avoid having different .NET versions on different platforms.

 

Technically they do for Windows Store apps (and Windows Universal Apps). I have a beta for my asset right now that supports Windows 10 Universal apps. It's precompiled using .NET Core (4.6). I have a different version that runs in editor, and Unity pushes the 4.6 version to the VS Solution during build and it works just fine.

 

Well cos I spoke to them, they seemed pretty set on what they're doing. Since you haven't you'll just have to continue stirring and doing whatever it is you're doing.

In any case, the reasons IL2CPP are interesting go beyond just converting a bit of your C# to whatever target. It allows Unity to take a deeper engine-specific look at optimisations. They can (when the dust has settled) bridge a lot of stuff, make a ton of Unity-specific optimisations that you just can't do if you're using C# directly.

 

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/04/01/unity-joins-the-net-foundation/

 

Sorry, I was referring to .Net 4.6.1 or Mono 4.2.

 

April 1 ?

 

Apparently Unity has broken time, went into the future one day, and brought back a blog post with it. Also, woohoo C# 6, Upgrade Mono Runtime and Class Libraries, and High Performance Garbage Collector! That's all I ever wanted from Unity.

 

Yeah, it doesn't bode well for the amazing realistic announcements in the post.

April 1:
Unity: "Hey guys, everyone's been asking us to upgrade the version of mono. We're finally going to do it!"

April 2:
Unity: "FOOLED YOU!!!"

 

That better not be the worst April Fool's joke in the world.

The post sounds both good and bad... I'm very glad they're working with MS and Xamarin cooperatively now, but not exactly thrilled that they are going to keep pushing IL2CPP as a part of the .NET ecosystem. Like I said, I'd rather they focus on being a game engine rather than a .NET runtime.

 

Having a recent garbage collector could be nice...

 

I kinda like the crap GC, it forces you to write better litter free code.

 

Strange how people keep bitching about wanting a support newer version of .net but somehow no one ever mentions what exactly it is, like no one tries to be specific.

I mean having a better garbage collector is nice, but that wont change the way how you make your game and none of the newer .net features would increase productivity that much. It will look and feel good, but honestly it wont save you noticeable amount of time in relation to the whole project.

 

Kinda the same way I feel about upgrading my PC. While it would be nice having a modern computer, using a crap one really forces you to be concerned about performance all the time.

 

Combine it with a slow language (I was using QuickBASIC on a 386SX) and you're really forced to become better.

 

There's garbage created everywhere, unfortunately, not just in "bad code". Overall performance gains and a less intrusive GC is basically all I'm interested in.

 

How is "a newer version of .NET" not specific? I'd guess specifically, we'd all like 4.5, with an attempt to remain current (within a year, at least) going forward.

 

Are you serious, there's some real time savers in c# 6 specifically composite string formatting, null conditional operator, improved dictionary initializer, the async/await stuff for c#5, etc etc. Not to mention the faster and less buggy runtime. If you want to continue using only features found in 3.5, go ahead, but to complain about bringing .net up to date boggles the mind.

Another small point jumping back and forth from 3.5 to 6 on different projects is annoying.

 

So just like Unreal, when Unity pulled the plug, Xamarin was forced to change their ways.

Spoiler

j/k, Microsoft acquisition.
Might as well drop the need for ILC2PP now and rather modify Xamarin.

 

That's exactly what I mean by not specific.
Do you want to have for example Threading.Tasks namespace? You can't interact with the main thread from other threads anyway and all parallelization would work much better with threads or cooroutines.
Or maybe you want LINQ? Sure, it's nice to have and it's easier to write, but changing 0.1% of the code in an environment where you spend more time deciding what to do than actually typing will it really matter?

@Lightning Zordon And what exactly is it that you're going to do in unity that could be done easier with async/await?

And to be clear I'm not complaining about the update and if there was a runtime update I'm sure going to use some of the new features, but I just think of all the things that could improve your productivity this is one of the least significant ones.

 

Threading. Async/await along with the threadsafe collections make writing threaded code a lot nicer.

I feel having more robust, better performing scripting will save time in ways you're not thinking about. If your game runs better with less hiccups that means less time spent trying to minimise those hiccups and performance glitches we get from running on a version of mono that is so out of date.

 

For whatever threading you're intending to do I'm sure I can give you an example that uses the current runtime and is at least as fast and easy to write as your code.
But lets not spam the thread. If you want to disprove that be my guest and send me a pm.

 

Sorry for my earlier hasty reply, I've edited a more thought out response. Anyway I agree we've said our part.

 

I want all of it! If parts of the runtime are randomly missing or broken that's a problem.

You can't interact with Unity-specific objects, but any regular classes on the main thread are fine.

Er... we already have LINQ. If you're not even aware of that then I don't think you really can have a strong opinion on what is or is not missing from .NET.

Overall though, if you're just saying "Welll IIIIIIIIII don't need ANY features, I can code everything with nothing but three assembly functions and one hand tied behind my back" well, that's great buddy. Real great, I'm proud of you. But I'd rather have access to the best tools and the newest features and use them as much as I want, regardless of who thinks I'd look so much tougher and cooler if I used nothing but old S***ty libraries all the time.

 

There are some subtle but important changes as well. One example is HashSet<T> which is now easier to dynamically serialize and deserualize in newer iterations because they've added an additional interface that allows you to identify it as a keyed collection instead of just an ICollection<T>. The difference is subtle but important.

Async/await are great. Thread safe collections are fantastic. As are lazy initializers (I.e. Lazy<T>) which let you delay instantiation until the object is first used and also automatically provide thread safety. I could probably easily list a dozen more productivity enhancing additions. I'm excluding C# 6 because that's language, not runtime and dependent on Roslyn. Unity could update their compiler to support c#6 language features (not a simple task unless they use Roslyn) and they can be used for .net 3.5. There's nothing runtime or framework specific about them.

 

Ok I admit I forgot about this. I almost never use it and I happen to think of it while writing the post. But that's just one less thing that would require an update.

 

Yep its under the MIT license now: https://www.xamarin.com/licensing
Anybody can use it for anything now!

 

Looks like Unity will be updating their version of .net

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/04/01/unity-joins-the-net-foundation/

 

Yes, it's a huge and potentially risky undertaking. That said, I think it's a really good sign that MS/Xamarin have brought Unity into the .NET Foundation, for a couple of reasons.

First up, that's not something I think they'd do if they thought Unity's guys were crackpots chasing rainbows. To the contrary, there's some acknowledgement of their expertise in the area. Keep in mind that there's more to this than the current work on IL2CPP. Unity have previously done extensive work getting the Mono runtime working on platforms it didn't support at the time. (On that note, Unity aren't trying to make a better C# compiler than MS, at least not in the .NET context. They're making a replacement system for the runtime, and that is indeed something they've got extensive prior experience with.)

Secondly, it means Unity might now have better access to more expertise. Who better to help them with making a .NET runtime replacement than MS themselves, right?

 

Exactly. In fact, since they've joined the .NET Foundation I would not be at all surprised to see Unity move over to the Roslyn compiler so they can support C# 6 language features but still build for their own runtime (IL2CPP).

 

Yup but IL2CPP is a big part of the story still (for speed and WebGL). So everyone has to be a little tiny bit more patient. Exciting though!

 

Well,
I think that there are 1.5 billion causes to follow multiple routes that lead to *cough*WorldDomination*cough making a great game engine.
Link
p.s. Please consider adding a strikethrough option for text formating