New Unity 4.0 Beta Build Improves Linux Support

Unity Technologies adding Linux publishing support to their Unity3D game engine is doing lots of good to Linux gaming.

Two million dollar Unity based game projects, Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity have already announced Linux support. Not to mention numerous other Unity based indie games coming to Linux and Rochard which made its debut on Linux with Humble Bundle.

Now Unity Pro 4.0 Beta Build 2 has gone live today bringing in lots of new features and fixes for Linux platform.

Below are some Linux specific changes in this release:

• Support for hardware cursors on the following platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Flash.
• On Linux, fixed lower resolution blit texture getting broken due to quality settings change.
• Improved deferred lighting depth buffer sharing workaround for some OpenGL systems. Mostly, much faster now on some Linux GPUs/drivers.
• Disable screensaver while game is running.
• Report video memory more accurately for Nvidia and AMD/ATI cards.
• Improve player startup time.
• Fixed mouse warp on middle-click.
• Fixed issues with deferred on ATI cards.
• Improved graphics experience for Intel cards.
• Fixed resolution switching stability issues.
• Fixed bug where garbage resolutions were reported.
• Fixed issue where some input keys were mapped to garbage.
• Handled case where joysticks had many more axes/buttons than Unity can use were connected.
• Fixed issue with native plugin look-up.
• Fixed issue where mouse delta reported was too high when mouse cursor is locked.

These improvements are quit great and will encourage more Unity game developers to port their games to Linux.

Unity Technologies has also announced a new office in Berlin. The Berlin team will aim to provide web-based tools, necessary to allow game developers to have key insights into online experiences and it will work on every screens including Linux.