Do you already know what Unity is? It’s the next-level game engine in my opinion. But right now having many other game engines, game developers who are addicted for such as Unreal, GameMaker Studio, Godot, CryEngine better take note on why Unity is the number one as of my personal experience!
If you are wondering how Unity is standing out from the rest here’s why. One of the very special reasons is that it gives developers just everything needed to build the games in one package. Also, it enables developers to build their own applications and games with a free edition lesser than a few functionalities compared to pro edition. Thereby the dream of a developer in building a game engine as well as selling it with a free edition has finally come true. And apart, Unity decreases the complexity of game code and increases developer comfort along with capabilities primarily because it’s based on the high-level programming language C#. C# is a high-level programming language that allows developers to enter the game development process easily. And its capability of supporting multiple platforms, where now they support 25 platforms is also outstanding.
Unity was first announced and released in 2005 at Apple Inc’s developers’ conference. The engine can be used to create two-dimensional, three-dimensional, virtual reality, and augmented reality games, as well as simulations along with other experiences.
Once they launched a game engine that could be used by anyone and is also affordable. This outstanding approach is still being continued effectively. Why I’m saying that is when you are watching youtube you can find many resource tutorials on unity, which proves that there are many individuals interested in this game engine. It ensures to learn from beginner level to intermediate, very simple and not very heavy (less than 4GB required hard space to setup entire game engine). Up to now, Unity released several versions from unity 3.x to Unity 2019.x. And above all something remarkable is that every released version was introduced with a newly added set of outstanding features.
Next, I will explain the latest released version of Unity which is Unity 2019.x with a set of mind-blowing features.
Unity 2019.x new features
DOTS (Data Oriented Technology Stack)
DOTS is One of the coolest features that I personally prefer from the newer version of unity. DOTS which enables with burst compiler takes the C# job system and highly optimized machine code for your target platform. It reduces heavy workflow to low-level coding but the output quality is just amazing. Coding flow never changes because of this and gives the capability to continue writing with C#. Let me elaborate on an example. Assume that you initiate thousands of bullets in the gun and when the number of bullets is increased, definitely it will try to freeze over your development pc. But coding through C# job system will reduce that complexity and you can instantiate millions of bullets without lagging. What happens there is that the place where you save your data in memory pass to one place after utilizing with DOTS.
AR Foundation
Unity introduces a new framework called AR Foundation in which AR creators can build their apps once and deploy in both ARCore and ARKit. Also, they introduced AR Remote with AR Foundation which streams data from AR-enabled mobile with Unity editor. One of the key advantages that it provides ID that it enables developers to see real-time streaming sensor data without publishing.
Real-Time Ray Tracing
If you are working with the Nvidia RTX platform, you can experience that Unity enables real-time ray tracing with photorealistic image quality and lighting via mass visual fidelity. The first time they showcase this cool feature in “reality vs illusion” demo by Unity Real-Time Ray Tracing, half of filming BMW 8 series is a real physical car vs a CG vehicle. This is built on top of Unity HDRP with C# and updated shaded graphs.
Adaptive Performance
Most of the mobile game developers built their own app to look in a way where smooth and good appearance is maintained. But they never look at the overtax of hardware which is leading to poor and inconsistent performance and short battery life. As a solution Unity partner with Samsung and built their game SDK to create an adaptive performance to optimize your projects for Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Fold.
More than that they have introduced features like Mobile notifications for WebGL Linux Editor, Animation Rigging, UI Elements, newer particle system HDRP & Shader graph, improvement of 2D Worldbuilding capabilities and etc.
Therefore stay tuned with Unity. If you are willing to be a game developer, Unity will be the recommended place to build your first game as a beginner to an intermediate level.
On behalf of team LiveRoom, written by Binoj Isharah
