Hey, whats up Game developer buddies… Hope you heard the news from Unity about the release of the latest official version of the Unity Game Engine…..UNITY 2020.1
New features of Unity 2020.1
Changes in Project Templates
You can see that Unity removed the “3D With Extras” Template in the new Unity 2020.1 Version.
Asset Store window update
In Unity 2020.1, You can access all downloaded asset from Package Manager. If you wan to search new asset then you have to visit the Asset Store in the Browser.
New Package Manager
On the Package Manager window, below indicator lets you know that there are preview packages currently installed in your project.
- If Unity releases or introduces any package that is in testing phase(beta version) then it will be marked as “Preview Package” in the Package Manager.
- If you want to see which are the Preview Packages then Go to Project settings > Package Manager.
- List of Preview Packages or Upcoming Awesome features
https://docs.unity3d.com/2020.1/Documentation/Manual/pack-preview.html
- The Package Manager UI provides better information about the status of packages and, specifically, the impact of using preview packages, which are not recommended for production.
Editing Prefabs in context
- You are more flexible with the new Prefab mode. You can edit any prefab without leaving the current scene. Prefabs with the background grayed out. This includes entering a nested Prefab in the context of its parent Prefab. You can still choose to edit Prefabs in isolation.
Asset Import Pipeline v2
- The Asset Import Pipeline v2 is the default asset pipeline in Unity 2020.1.
- Unity 2020.1 also introduces a new status button in the cache server status bar, providing additional information and actions for your asset pipeline.
Focused Inspector
- Download 3D asset from Asset Store & import it in Unity
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/humans/bodyguards-31711
- Unity 2020.1, With a Focused Inspector window, you can now easily see the Inspector details of a selected GameObject.
- Right Click and select “Properties”, so you can open a floating Inspector window for the selected GameObject or asset.
- This is very useful in complex object editing, you can edit more than one object at a time with a custom floating inspector window.
Presets
Use Presets to reuse property settings across multiple components and assets.
- It means you can save the current object setting for future use like prefabs.
New Progress Task window
In the previous version of Unity, sometimes developers are stuck with the problem that happens in the background, to overcome that situation Unity provides new a Progress Task Window feature.
It will show you what kind of process or warning or error occurs while performing tasks like shader compilation or occlusion culling, etc.
You can even monitor sub tasks, filter tasks by status, view global progress, and more.
Unity Accelerator
The Unity Accelerator is a software agent that allows you to share Unity Editor content faster. An Accelerator coordinates Asset sharing when your team is working on the same local network so that you don’t need to rebuild portions of your Project.
Basically, in large game projects, more than one developer could be working on the same functionality or module so at that time they would use Unity Collaborate service.
When used with Unity Teams Advanced, the Accelerator also shares source Assets. This significantly reduces download time from the Collaborate service.
for more info: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UnityAccelerator.html?_ga=2.80163671.1156308601.1595820714-1734822878.1595820714
New Programmer tools
- A debugger allows you to inspect your source code while your application or game is running.
- Unity supports debugging of C# code using the following code editors:
- Visual Studio (with the Visual Studio Tools for Unity plug-in)
- Visual Studio for Mac
- Jetbrains Rider
- Visual Studio Code
- Unity adds the Jetbrains Rider package and VS code support in the new Unity 2020.1
- JetBrains Rider can debug code in Unity on Windows or Mac. Please visit the JetBrains website to install it.
- You can change the external tools here:
Profiling tools improvements
Unity provides the option to launch the Profiler as a standalone app. This will move the tool to a separate process outside of Unity, reducing the performance overhead when profiling the Editor and creating cleaner profile data.
2D Development tools
- The 2D default template has been updated. It now includes all the verified 2D tools, precompiled, so new projects load faster with the entire 2D toolset at your disposal.
- Increase the performance of 2D Animation.
- Improved 2D Physics – 2D Rigidbody.
AR/VR
- The new XR plugin framework comes and has an improved workflow to enabling AR/VR in your project.
- In Unity 2020.1, AR Foundation officially supports the Universal Render Pipeline. Feature support for ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap, and Hololens is also enhanced.
Summary
In this article, you’ve got some ideas about the new unity version – UNITY 2020.1. I highly recommend you to explore this new unity version with all those new features.