Game Dev

What's NEW in Unity 6.1

Unity 6.1 is finally released! This is part of their new release schedule which they explain in detail in the post announcing this version, honestly it's a little bit confusing.

First you have numbered releases instead of yearly releases like they had previously, right now it's Unity 6 and Unity 7 is not expected until at least next year. Then in between those big versions there are what they call "Update" releases like 6.1 and 6.2. Importantly is how they are meant to be as stable as an LTS version, as opposed to the TECH versions that existed previously that were mainly only for people that wanted to try out new features but not for production. Nowadays Unity recommends you use the latest version which is stable, so right now (unless you're literally a week away from release) you should be using 6.1

But then there are also 2 types of dot "." releases, 6.1 is only Supported until 6.2 comes out, then that one is supported until 6.3 comes out which is apparently an LTS release which will be supported for 2 years. So it seems a bit strange to have 2 types of dot "." releases but one is Supported and one is LTS. Either way the answer for you is simple, use the latest LTS or Supported release, right now that’s 6.1

What's NEW in Unity 6.1? It's mainly various improvements, nothing too drastic.

• For rendering, you've got Deferred+ which should have better GPU performance, also Variable Rate Shading.

• For workflows, you've got the Project Auditor package fully released, this is the one big thing I want to look at. And you've got some build automation improvements making it easier to work directly in the editor.

• For platforms, you've got support for large screens and foldables, Unity Web with experimental WebGPU, Instant Games on Facebook and Messenger, Android XR, and general improvements on PC and console.

So nothing too drastic, just nice solid improvements across the board. In the post they also talk about how they make sure this version is stable by going through their Production Verification program where they work together with external devs to solve issues, as well as having an internal Unity team making their own game, Survival Kids.

There was also a livestream where they talked about this version in more detail.

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Game Dev

How to port your game to Consoles

Steam is awesome and huge, but it's not necessarily the entire market, Consoles also have a very high market share. So if your game is playable on a gamepad, you should likely try putting it on consoles. That process is more tricky than putting your game on Steam but it's doable.

Here is a post from a dev talking about that process. Usually people cannot talk about this since Console SDKs are always behind strict NDAs, that's why you can't google "how do I upload my game to Xbox?" and get a step by step tutorial. But this one dev managed to talk in quite a bit more detail without apparently breaking any NDAs.

The post talks about how long it took (1 year), how it got accepted by Xbox (successful Steam release), how the porting process was (lots of manual talking to support due to no public tutorials), how certification went (heavy under NDA but supposedly not that bad), how to adapt the game to consoles (Steam Deck but more polish) and how did it sell (630 copies)

For some big Indie games, the stats are about 60% revenue from Steam (the biggest chunk) and then 40% from Xbox/PS/Switch which is smaller but still significant! Especially thanks to how the tools nowadays make it so easy to make a console build, the bigger barrier is just dealing with all the bureaucracy and learning all the various backends. But again that's knowledge you build up over time, so your first game onto consoles (or Steam) will be tricky to learn the platforms, but the second one will go much smoother.

Tech

How popular is AI?

AI is everywhere nowadays and the conversation around it is always so polarizing. Some people love it and think it will change the world, and other people hate it and think it will destroy the world. So which one is it? One thing that helps in seeing whether AI is just hype or an actual important thing is to see just how much are people actually using it.

Google is currently involved in an antitrust trial, and from there came a bunch of docs including one showing that Gemini has reached 350 Million Monthly Active Users! That's an insane amount! It's also a huge jump from last year where they only had tens of millions MAUs, still pretty huge!

However that is actually small when compared to the number one AI which is ChatGPT at 600 million monthly active users!

Meaning in total there's over 1 BILLION monthly active users trying all these AI tools, that's a ton of people and if they keep using it month after month then it likely does have some utility for those people, meaning it seems there's real demand and real use cases for this tech, and not just hype.

Fun

Fun Web Sim in your browser!

Everyone loves physics simulations, here is a really cool one simulating a spiderweb!

This demo runs in your browser and has an impressive amount of parameters. You can change the type from Spiderweb to Grid, change what the mouse does (drag or break), change the stiffness and how tear resistant it is. Fun!

If you want to learn how it works the dev has posted a link from where he learned the basics.