

Unity 4 to offer support for Linux - mtgx
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/unity-4-will-let-devs-do-so-much-more-with-so-much-less

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sounds
The title has been changed here on HN and doesn't reflect the article:

    
    
      Unity 4 is also the first version of the engine to
      offer support for "the estimated 10 percent of the
      game-hungry PC market" that runs Linux, though the
      feature will only be available in "preview" form
      for the time being. Those that pre-order Unity 4
      starting today will get access to a beta test for
      the new engine, ahead of a full release that is
      still undated.
        -- from the article

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FrojoS
Couldn't find an official statement, that the Unity3D development software
will run under Linux. It sounds more like the new update will only allow to
build _games_ that run under Linux [1].

I hope I'm wrong.

~~~
bilbo0s
Still... VERY interesting possibilities open up if a game server can be run on
Linux. Cloud based Windows licenses KILL the pocketbook once your users grow.

So even if it is not the Unity IDE... it's still good news.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Game servers for Unity can already be run on Linux. You'd write a multiplayer
game in such a way that it just uses vanilla C#, and data structures that are
easy to replicate (like Vector3, Transform, etc).

Running Unity apps themselves on the server even with this announcement would
be a big mistake, IMO. It is not a stable piece of software.

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jordanthoms
My first thought looking at this was the unity desktop in Ubuntu... that was
confusing.

~~~
Evbn
Yeah, it is unlikely that Ubuntu Unity will ever work properly on Linux.

~~~
drostie
On this off-topic excursion, I must say: I have to give Unity another shot. I
tried it and ran back to KDE screaming, but it occurs to me that it wasn't
really fair and I didn't spend a couple weeks with it, to get over the "new
interface aaaah!" reaction.

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thijser
The momentum of Unity is quite amazing, one out of every 20 installs of new
apps on the Google Play market is using Unity 3D currently:
[http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/unity/unity-...](http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/unity/unity-3d)

------
Spittie
That's a great news! Seems that Linux is getting a lot of gaming love in the
last period. We should thanks the guys behind Wasteland 2 for helping or
providing the port[1].

[1]
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/228226)

~~~
pygy_
In the 2D world, Moai now runs in Linux too. I started working for Zipline
recently (working on the docs ATM), and (shameless plug) the more I become
familiar with the engine, the more I appreciate its simple yet powerful
programming model and its architecture.

Each graphical element (a "prop" in Moai parlance), when moved, rotated or
scaled, defines its own coordinate system, and other props can be added as
children and share some or all of the new coordinates. It makes it very easy
to compose elements. People familiar with 3D graphics would know this as
affine transforms and UV coordinates.

For example, you can tie the position and scale of a text label to a sprite,
but not its rotation, and tie the scale, rotation and position of the sprite
to the background. You can then zoom everyting in one command, rotate the wole
game world or and keep the label next to the sprite and rotate the whole scene
or the sprite relative to the map while leaving the label straight. You don't
have to track the relative angles, the engine does it for you.

Similarly, every object whose properties depends on time ("actions") can be
attached or detached not only to the root action (which provide a tick each
frame) but to other actions as well. When you detach an item, its descendants
are also paused. Actions include animations, coroutines, physiscs worlds, you
name it...

Both trees are defined declaratively in Lua, and implemented in C++, giving
the best of both worlds: expressivity and speed.

Moai's biggest flaw at the moment is the sparse documentation, and we're
tackling it. Right now, the main focus of the dev team is the cloud offering
(which is our revenue source, after all), so it does not proceed as fast as we
would like, but come back in a few weeks and you should see a vastly improved
documentation.

<http://getmoai.com>

~~~
davedx
I did have a look at Moai (I work with Unity normally) but indeed, the
documentation just wasn't there so I gave up and went back to Unity. I'll keep
an eye on it.

------
koeselitz
I got very excited, because I thought at first from the headline that this
meant that Ubuntu's Unity interface now supports Linux. Kind of disappointed
to realize that's not the case. I guess we'll have to wait a few more
versions..

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brusch
I was really shocked when I found out, that Unity is not running under Linux.
They are flooding the Monologue (Mono) news feed - but their product is not
running under linux. Couldn't quite understand this.

~~~
cdmckay
They use Mono to power their scripting engine and MonoDevelop is the Unity
code editor.

------
jiggy2011
I thought that Linux support was already basically provided via Chrome native
client exporting?

The part that was interesting to me. _"the estimated 10 percent of the game-
hungry PC market" that runs Linux_

This kind of runs contrary to the popular philosophy that gamers are very
unlikely to be running Linux, mainly because the games support has
historically always been very bad.

Of course there may be a mass of people who are running dual boots and are
just waiting for a load of games to be released in order to delete their
Windows partitions (people like me).

On the other hand, I run a dual boot and mainly use Linux as my desktop but
since Windows is only a reboot away whether or not a game is available for
Linux is not a massive part of my purchasing decision for the game. So it's
possible it won't really affect their sales figures.

This surely also brings DirectX into question in terms of it's future as a
platform. If I were to develop a game today I would almost certainly use
OpenGL for portability reasons even if DirectX was a better library and it
doesn't make a load of sense to make seperate DirectX and OpenGL versions.

~~~
nbard
Native Client only really gives support for browser-based games. This export
option will let you ship standalone games for Linux, that run natively on the
platform.

------
Paul_S
This is really good news. I think the second most important thing holding
Linux back in taking over the desktops (after OEMs) is gaming. But if you look
at Humble Indie Bundles and kickstarter (so many projects using Unity and/or
promising Linux support) - things are changing for the better.

~~~
flyinRyan
I think there's a bit more than just OEMs and gaming preventing Linux from
overtaking the desktop. When netbooks first began they were mostly linux for
cost cutting. Games also wouldn't have been an issue because netbooks weren't
sold as gaming machines. In any case the market wholly rejected Linux on the
netbook in favor of windows.

~~~
Paul_S
Netbooks are not desktops. The market rejected netbooks altogether in favour
of notebooks and tablets.

What's the other thing holding Linux back from the desktop in your opinion
that ranks higher than either of reasons I mentioned?

~~~
flyinRyan
Only after the iPad recreated the tablet market. For a while netbooks were
gaining traction. Just not linux netbooks.

>What's the other thing holding Linux back from the desktop in your opinion
that ranks higher than either of reasons I mentioned?

You're shifting the burden of proof here. For what possible reason would
anyone believe the market _wants_ Linux on the desktop? I can think of no
reason. It doesn't look as nice, it doesn't run the major apps people are used
to (e.g. Photoshop, Office, etc.). What "killer feature" does Linux have that
would make the masses want to switch to it, and don't say "open source" since
I doubt that even a majority of people who know what that means care about
that.

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jebblue
Good news I'd say, hope it continues to progress and become the number one
engine on Linux. Epic from my understanding gave up on Linux but not Id and
now there's Unity.

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ginko
It makes sense for Unity to do this in anticipation of Steam for Linux.

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rex64
RMS must be furious.

~~~
dllthomas
As I understand things, he doesn't care so much about games.

~~~
coffeeaddicted
Unity is not just about games, but more generally about 3D application
development. And with Unity Web Player we even got a new closed source browser
plugin that starts competing with Flash. I don't care about closed source
games (generally I think it increases my freedom to have those compared to not
having them at all - kind of like fun manacles which increase choice of action
in some moments despite being used to restrict movement). But I do care about
the base of software on which other software depends no longer being free and
am a little worried about yet another proprietary browser plugin gaining
popularity when flash is finally starting to get replaced by html.

~~~
Arelius
To be fair, if that's going to happen, it's going to happen if Unity is on
Linux or not, Thus it's better to have it on Linux I figure.

