Finally, Unity 3D Game Engine Adds Linux Support

Next version of Unity 3D game engine has been unveiled and with it comes much requested support for Linux.

Starting with Unity 4.0, Linux will be supported as a publishing platform allowing Unity games to be played natively on Linux. Only standalone desktop games will be supported initially. There is no word on  Linux support for game editor and web player.

Few days back, Brian Fargo announced that Wasteland 2 will use Unity 3D game engine. He said that Unity3D developers have handed him source code of the game engine so that a Linux version can be developed. 

Now, surely the efforts of Brian Fargo and Linux users have finally brought the game engine to Linux.

Unity 4 will include a preview of a new deployment option to publish games to Desktop Linux, clearing a path for the Unity community to bring exciting new content to the estimated 10% of the game-hungry PC market. Desktop Linux standalone publishing will be available for all Unity 4 users at no additional cost.

Linux games are thriving even though the platform is comparatively underserved. The success of distribution initiatives, such as the Humble Indie Bundle and the Ubuntu Software Center, prove that Linux users are happy to pay for games.

Unity 4 have following new features:

• Shuriken particle system supports external forces, bent normals and automatic culling
• 3D texture support
• Navigation: dynamic obstacles and avoidance priority
• Major optimizations in UnityGUI performance and memory usage
• Dynamic fonts on all platforms with HTML-like markup
• Remote Unity Web Player debugging
• New Project Window workflows
• Iterative lightmap baking
• Refined component-based workflows
• Extensible inspectors for custom classes
• Improved Cubemap import pipeline
• Geometry data improvements for huge memory and performance savings
• Meshes can be constructed from non-triangle geometry -- render points & lines efficiently
• Search, live preview and buy Asset Store assets from the Project Window

Unity 4 is already available for pre-order from official website and it will be demonstrated and discussed in further detail at the Unite 2012 developer conference that takes place August 22nd - 25th in Amsterdam.

Checkout ShadowGun, a game made using Unity 3D:

via Marketwire