Unity Game Engine coming to WP8
Some great news apparently on the gaming front today. I say apparently as I’m not that versed in the significance of it all but it appears Unity3D is indeed a very popular gaming engine and it’s coming to WP8. With Unity3D used on other platforms, it is expected that popular games can get ported more quickly for WP.
The Unity community have supposedly been asking for WP access and highly anticipating WP8.
John Richards, Microsoft’s Windows App Marketing senior director said:
“We are excited that the Unity community will now be given the opportunity to develop world class titles for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8…The number of high quality Unity-authored games for the PC, Xbox, and mobile devices already created is staggering and we’re looking forward to seeing these products appear in the Windows Store and the Windows Phone Marketplace.”
According to Unity Technologies CEO, David Helgason, it appears that at least 53% of mobile game developers have published games with the Unity Engine
Sources:
- http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Windows+Phone/Unity+news/news.asp?c=44329
- http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Unity+news/news.asp?c=44319
- http://www.edge-online.com/news/unity-announces-windows-phone-8-support
- http://www.wpcentral.com/games-development-windows-8-get-boost-confirmed-unity-support
- http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/22/windows-8-and-windows-phone-8-to-play-nice-with-unity-game-engin/
Cheers Pavel and Viipottaja for the tip!
Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone
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Yes, I think there is a fairly good chance WP8 will remedy the remaining app issues with Windows Phone (namely native game development). It is shaping up to be an interesting autumn.
Do you know if the engine was also ported to Harmattan/Meego? Most of the quality games for N9 are from Unity. In best scenario it would be both on WP8 and Jolla OS.
I don’t know unfortunately.
It was never released publicly, but there is/was a number of Unity-based games available on MeeGo/Harmattan – one of the most prominent ones being Samurai II Vengeance.
Given that the Unity engine comfortably exports to Linux and on it employs pretty much the standard components which MeeGo has, I guess it was a week’s job to make it MeeGo-compatible. Unfortunately, AFAIK, Unity never offered a MeeGo export to the wider audience. They did release an announcement that they will make it available, but given that the platform was executed I guess they won’t bother for the time being. It’s obvious there were test/private builds, but we’ll probably have to wait for Jolla to take a shot at it for a public release.
Thanks again.
Btw, now that you are here: could you explain the meaning of this: https://plus.google.com/113386402913695079840/posts/9LF6atjc455
@jiipee
Comments in the original post explained it well but it got lost.
Basically it’s going to make it FAR EASIER for hw prototyped on Android, to be usable by MeR/Nemo/Jolla etc.
Post there and ask Carsten if he can go into more detail.
Post what you find back here if you remember…
@incognito?
Please can you spare a minute to address this:
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/08/22/unity-game-engine-coming-to-wp8/comment-page-1/#comment-639343
Nothing to write home about for now. It merely means that it could ease the hardware adaptations of Linux-based platforms, in this case I guess more important to the Mer project and the likes.
In laymen terms, it could potentially allow use of drivers and specific hw-oriented libraries made for Android on a non-Android and/or non-tweaked kernels to match the Android stack.
@incognito
And this?
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/08/22/unity-game-engine-coming-to-wp8/comment-page-1/#comment-639343
Thank-you.
apologies, I see the response now, no email yet, weird.
@incognito
If the engine already comfortably exports to Linux (standard ditros) & is out there, can’t a re-adaptation to MeR/Jolla be done based on that?
Sorry for the long wait, I’ve been extremely busy lately so I barely get to visit the MNB let alone follow the comment threads.
Of course it can, AFAIK the Unity-based games that are available for MeeGo/Harmattan were done with almost a standard linux export with some tweaking to address specific differences. The structure of Mer goes in the line with Harmattan, at least when it comes to what is important for the Unity engine, so no reason to think that the same thing can be done with the platforms which steam from the MeeGo project.
The only difference I can think of is some radical hardware changes which might require different library/drivers linking and so, but even that shouldn’t be much of a problem. Other difference might be if X is dropped in favor of Wayland where the frontend stack would need a re-adaptation.
Should Jolla be successful in their goal, I see no reason why Unity team wouldn’t release a public export (instead of going with their Union service to help porting for a specific platform) straight from the Unity IDE much like it exports now for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, iOS, Android and Flash Player. If anything, the amount of work to make that export available is miniscule compared to the likes of iOS or Flash Player. Of course, Unity team probably won’t be interested for an official public support until the platform has enough of a strong following, secured future and the interest from the Unity-based developers.
@incognito
Yes but you seemed to be saying in your prior post that it’s already mostly ported to one of the major Linux-based environments/distros.
If that’s the case, then it should be relatively simple to port it to MeR/Nemo and derivatives right?
Yes, Unity 4 will come with a standard Linux desktop export (should work on most standard GNU/Linux distros using X.org). It was planned a long time ago, and they’ve worked quite some time on it, which is why it was probably quite easy for them to provide unofficial support for the MeeGo/Harmattan.
Of course, in order to export to a specific Linux-based platform, they need to make specific exports – in case of Mer, for example, they’ll have to build a support for targeting ARM instead of x86 (and packaging, some additional small changes etc.), something that was done through their Union service for the MeeGo/Harmattan. They probably won’t release a publicly available export for it until there is enough of a demand, but once there is it should be fairly trivial for them to add it to their support list.
@incognito
The Qn is will there ever be enough demand on Harmattan for them to release the entire ported engine, alas I fear there won’t.
Still as you say, at least there’s the work they’re doing for standard Linux distros…
That means Jolla or similar could use that as the basis for their own port from scratch to Mer/Nemo etc.
What’s their “union service” anyway?
Is that just code for:
“Closed source, not publicly accessible, ports”.
Re this prior post:
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/08/22/unity-game-engine-coming-to-wp8/comment-page-1/#comment-640353
Last sentence really should’ve ended with a “?”
There is Samurai II: Vengeance in ovi store for N9 which is the unity engine based game.
Um yes he knows, he even said that in his post, surprise surprise.
@incognito?
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/08/22/unity-game-engine-coming-to-wp8/comment-page-1/#comment-639343
Thank-you!
http://unity3d.com/union/
Samurai II: Vengeance – a great game for meego which requires the best class components in android phones (tegra 2/3). Meego is the best and most advanced system so far.
Again already known, he’s asking whether the “entire engine” has been ported, comprehension fail.
SV2 is working correctly, so I think the most important parts has been ported correctly. My first post was a silly mistake. There is no reason to believe that there is any problem to make any software for meego.
@XXX
“SV2 is working correctly, so I think the most important parts has been ported correctly.”
Right so you have proof for that?
They could’ve adapted SV for Harmattan without making a port of the engine readily available for others.
Mobile games improving their graphics but,I missed old games. Some of you will remember Ngage games,They were funny and high quality,Example “the One”,I wish I had it on my phone
Yes, but the screen was too small and it was very easy to hack the games and have illegal copies of them. I remmember to play N-Gage games on my Nokia 6600!
I thought this was a Llamasoft product circa 2004?
I remember those good old days playing snake on my 1100 in turns with my brother. . .
+1