Unity technologies announced March 1st that their popular game development tool Unity now supports the Android. The pricing model is the same as for iOS, $400 for Unity Android and $1500 for Unity Android Pro.This release allows any existing Unity projects to be easily ported to the Android. Naturally, all of the integrated physics, audio, rendering, and scripting tools are available.
The Unity platform’s 3-D engine includes advanced features such as deferred rendering. Unity has integrated light mapping support courtesy of Beast, which allows for easy global illumination. Physics are provided by NVIDIA® PhysX® next-gen Physics Engine, used in games such as Age Of Empires III, Medal of Honor: Airborne, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas.
Unity uses the fmod audio toolset; this includes live previewing, Instant-on streaming for Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis audio files, and extensive audio filters with a full scripting API. JavaScript, C#, and the Boo Python dialect are available as interoperable scripting languages with access to the.Net libraries.
Unity technologies worked directly with hardware manufacturers like Nvidia and Qualcomm to maximize performance. Additional optimizations to the Android runtime were made in order to ensure high-quality performance and full sound. Android remote allows remote control and on-the-fly testing of your Unity project from the Android.
As its name suggests, Unity is designed to abstract away most platform differences. This allows the same game to be released as both a mobile app and a PC/Mac standalone with minimal pain. Unity currently supports Windows, Mac, Web, PS3, XBox 360, iOS, and Android.
More than 50 games have already been created for the Android using the Unity platform since the release of the preview version in the summer of 2010.
To commemorate this event, Unity Technologies are giving away four Android Pro licenses. For your chance at a license, see the instructions.