The partnership will also involve Unity bringing in support for Unreal Engine to its cross-platform commerce platform. The announcement for this happened at Unity’s Annual Developer Conference – Unite – and will provide more choices for developers that make use of Unreal Engine when it comes to managing various things like payment providers, digital catalogues, and web shops across PC, mobile and web.

“We’re excited to partner with Epic Games to create more opportunities for game developers around the world,” said Unity CEO and president Matt Bromberg in the press release. “Choice and open systems create growth for everyone in the gaming ecosystem.”

“Just like the early days of the web, we believe that companies need to work together in order to build the open metaverse in a way that’s interoperable and fair,” said Epic Games CEO and founder Tim Sweeney. “Working alongside Unity we’re helping developers build fun games, reach bigger audiences, and find success.”

This partnership was likely the result of both Epic and Unity wanting to compete with one of the biggest UGC-based (user generated content) titles in the world – Roblox. Epic had previously taken this step when it had announced Unreal Editor for Fortnite back in March 2023. Through this initiative, Epic had essentially opened the doors to just about any developer to make their own video games that can then be published directly into Fortnite.

Sweeney had previously also spoken about how the major next step in engine development for Epic would be to bring Unreal Engine and Fortnite together to an even greater extent. In an interview from earlier this year, Sweeney confirmed that development at the company had been split into two teams – one for Unreal Engine 5, and another for Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

“The idea is that the shipping version gains more and more features over time, but maintaining backwards compatibility with old versions and continuing to improve and approach the ultimate version of it as we go,” said Sweeney. “And we’ve been doing this experiment entirely within the world of Unreal Editor for Fortnite for now. We want to test this and iterate with Fortnite creators in just the metaverse usage case before we make it available to all of our partners using Unreal Engine for all of their projects.”

Ultimately, these two teams coming together will end up forming what Sweeney believes to be the foundations for an Unreal Engine 6. “It’s a few years away, we don’t have an exact time frame, but we could be seeing preview versions of it perhaps 2 to 3 years from now. And we’re making continuous progress towards it,” he said.

“We have heard you,” reads the post by Unity. “We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused.”

The company recently came under fire for its new monetisation policy, which revolved around charging developers any time a game made in Unity was installed on a player’s system. When originally announced, this included players reinstalling games. The new policy was also set to be retroactive, applying to older Unity-based games as well.

“We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy,” the statement continues. “We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.”

Quite a few indie developers have spoken out against Unity’s new policy, including the studio behind Among Us, as well as the developer behind indie roguelike title Caves of Qud.

Indie developer Rami Ismail has criticised Unity’s new statement, stating that the company taking so long to clarify its new policy and the statement is “terrifying”. Ismail goes on to call the issue between developers and the engine maker an issue of trust.

We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of…

— Unity (@unity) September 17, 2023

It's terrifying to think Unity leadership dragged this over the weekend leaving every studio out there with genuine existential concerns, and even now cannot simply go "our intent is to drop the per-install fee". We have to be worried longer & we have to keep talking about this. https://t.co/p9JKgaxNGI

— Rami Ismail / رامي (@tha_rami) September 18, 2023

Revealed via an official blog post on Unity’s website, the company recently announced that they have acquired tech company Ziva Dynamics, a company responsible for creating complex simulations and deformations, while also dabbling in machine learning and real-time character creation.

This acquisition comes in line with Unity’s other acquisition of companies such as Weta Digital, SpeedTree, SyncSketch, Pixyz, and RestAR, and the company explains that the purchase will help them make tools accessible and available to creators, while at the same time making realistic character creation accessible to creators of all scales and sizes.

The acquisition was announced by a digital human created by Ziva Dynamics, Emma, which was running in real-time in the Unity engine, and gives everyone a glimpse of what the tech enables. The blog post has more details about Ziva Dynamics, so make sure to have a look at it. Ziva has worked on games like the upcoming Ninja Theory game, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2.

Hopefully, we can see more visually stunning and creative creations by various creators of all scales, as Unity keeps on making the necessary tools available.

The game is currently set to be published by Microsoft Studios exclusively on Microsoft’s Xbox One and on PC’s using Microsoft Windows operating systems. While there is no official release date yet, the game is expected to be published at some time between Q3 and Q4 of 2014 and will be made available exclusively through digital distribution.

• 1. Development
• 2. Gameplay
• 3. Story
• 4. Characters

Development

Developers Moon Stories have been working on Ori and the Blind Forest for the past 4 years, since some time in 2010 following the release of their first person shooter / real time strategy game, WARSOUP. Approximately a year into developing the game, the rights to publication were acquired by Microsoft as well as Xbox One and Microsoft Windows exclusivity.

Moon Studios are a team of developing professionals with careers that are based in the AAA development side of the video game industry, one such lead developer working on the game is Thomas Mahler who was formerly a prominent artist within the industry power house, Blizzard Entertainment.

Microsoft producer Daniel Smith has confirmed statements saying that the developers working on the game aren’t situated in any one particular location like most development parties. Many of the active developers are located in different countries across the globe ranging from Australia to the United States.

Running on the famous Unity Engine, Ori and the Blind Forest is being designed with the much loved metroidvania gameplay style in mind with the game drawing inspiration from classic video games like the NES era Metroid and the much more modern Rayman remakes that are running on the UbiFramework that powered the recent World War 1 themed Valiant Hearts. Gameplay programmer David Clark has said that these inspirations are being used to make the game a “love letter” to those games.

The themes of the game have not been revealed yet in any great amount of detail, but we do know that the game has been built around multiple concepts, one of which is a classical coming of age story. Similar to gameplay inspirations, the theming has been inspired by classics like Disney’s smash hit The Lion King.

Plans have been announced to make the entire game world one large map with no loading screens (in the style of Metroid) and have it all run in 1080p at a full sixty frames per second.

Unlike most modern games that use a set amount of limited in game art assets that are replicated throughout multiple areas to help increase the feeling of a large but connect world, Ori and the Blind Forest is said to feature no repeated assets with each games background remaining unique, stating, “You see this tree in the background and this mushroom and this rock? That’s the one and only place you’ll ever see those assets.”

E3 2014 was the first time that Ori and the Blind Forest was shown to the public with a playable demo being available on the show floor. Amazingly, this was also the first time that a lot of the developers on the game had actually met each other face to face because of the global spread of developers.

Gameplay

Ori and the Blind Forest is a sprawling metroidvania platforming adventure game set in a large world with no loading screens. The game will include a number of role playing game elements that will see the players character, Ori gain new abilities as the game progresses and Ori grows stronger.

Players can create checkpoints at any time in the game, but at the expense of an item that can be attained through gameplay, however this item is finite and forces a strategic choice onto the player of when to create these save points. These save points will be known as Soul Links in the game.

Story

As mentioned, story specifics have been well guarded but thus far the story has been described as being “a story of self identity and discovery, of sacrificing yourself for others”. The player takes control of a character called Ori, a white spirit guardian spirit that fell into the forest and is then raised by a bear like creature. An evil creature known as Kuro appears and steals Ori’s surrogate parent away, thus forcing Ori to explore the forest alone. As Ori adventures and grows older, it gains more than just the ability to jump and will meet new friends to journey with.

Characters

Ori – Ori is the players character and is a white guardian spirit that fell into the forest at a young age. Adopted by a bear like creature that acts as it’s mother.

Kuro – Kuro is an evil creature that steals Ori’s surrogate mother away, forcing the young guardian spirit to explore the forest at a young age alone.

Sein – Sein is an entity that meets Ori and soon befriends the young spirit, Ori acts as both friend and protector to the young Ori, helping it fend of opponents.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

Sunset Overdrive developer is branching out slightly with a small team of five developers working on a project in Unity called Slow Down Bull. Designer Lisa Brown says the project is inspired by the approaches of Double Fine and Vlambeer.

“Slow Down Bull is a small action game about a stressed out, overachiever bull named Axel. He loves collecting beautiful things, but has to overcome his innate bull nature to accomplish his goals.

“Axel tries very hard to be graceful and cautious while he collects, but it’s very stressful! What if he bumps into someone? What if his bull-like nature erupts and ruins everything he’s trying to collect? What if he messes up?

Can you help Axel reach his goals without goring the hell out of everything that moves? That remains to be seen. It will be shown on Insomniac’s Twitch channel on June 27th at 2 PM PST. Let us know what you think of the game in the comments.

Unity Technologies has announced its acquisition of Applified, which handles Everyplay and GameAds, the former allowing players to share replays with each other and the latter to create video ads for monetizing non-paying users. While Everyplay will now be a part of of the Unity dev platform, GameAds will be heading to Unity Cloud.

CEO of Unity Technologies David Helgason stated that, “Unity was founded to democratize game development, and we are incessantly searching for tools that can make our community more successful. By welcoming Everyplay to the Unity platform, we’re arming our developers with an incredibly powerful and authentic way to connect with a rapidly growing community of passionate gamers.”

Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen said, “The challenge for today’s developers doesn’t end with releasing awesome games – they also need to attract and retain legions of true fans. We are thrilled to join forces with Unity and, with the help of the incredible Unity community, overcome these important challenges together.”

Unity has released Unity v4.3 of its popular multiplatform game development engine; Unity is used by mobile and indie developers extensively, and has been embraced and heavily integrated into the SDKs of the Wii U, Xbox One, and PS4 by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony.

The new update includes includes the highly anticipated dedicated 2D development tools, huge additions to the Mecanim animation system, an upgrade to the re-written Umbra 3 occlusion culling, and much more.

“4.3 is a huge update in the history of Unity,” said David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies. “The addition of 2D tools is an important milestone that will help developers make incredible 2D games, and with major improvements to Mecanim and greatly increased performance, this is a weighty, productive update that we’re thrilled to release.”

The new 2D tools integrated into Unity 4.3 allow for more sophisticated 2D games to be made, not just visually, but also in terms of object interactions and physics.

Unity 4.3 is now available for download.

On whether the 8 GB GDDR5 RAM and unified architecture posed an advantage to developers using the Unity Engine to develop on PS4, Helgason replied, “Absolutely. This architecture simplifies development, and makes techniques that previously were in the realm of science fiction doable. We intend to make this extremely powerful and extremely easy to use, like everything else we do!”

That doesn’t mean that the company won’t be catering to the needs of Microsoft’s Xbox One as well. “Unity is a facilitator. We want to make tools that make it as easy as possible to put games and other products in front of as many eyeballs as possible. We will, of course, offer complete compatibility with any unique features that the various platforms from Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft.

“As you’re likely aware, Unity’s own philosophy is largely about inclusiveness. We’re doing what we can to get professional and powerful tools in the hands of as many developers as possible. We want every developer, whether they’re large publisher funded studios or one man teams, to have the same chance at success. SCE, and more recently Microsoft, have been moving towards a position of being much more open to smaller developers putting games on their systems and we’re very happy to see that shift. It’s something that we think is good for the industry as a whole and the gamers themselves.”

We’re less than two months away from the release of the PS4 and Xbox One but the competition just keeps heating up. What are your thoughts on Unity for both consoles and its use in next-generation development? Let us know below.

One of the initiatives from Microsoft as part of their indie game push is to make the Unity engine and all its development tools available on the Xbox One and its software development kits (similar partnerships with Unity were also announced by Nintendo for the Wii U, incidentally). For those (developers and consumers) who were awaiting Unity on Xbox One, however, there is some bad news, reports OXM.

“During an interview with OXM in July, I misspoke and suggested that Unity for Xbox One would be available sometime in 2013,” Unity CEO David Helgason said in an email statement. “At that time, work had only just begun on those tools so while there will be a very few developers in very early testing phases this year, the Xbox One tools for Unity will not be widely available to developers until 2014.

“We are currently hard at work on the technology and are making great progress but we are not yet ready to announce any specific release windows. I apologize for any confusion my statement may have caused.”

He also about the relative advantages that Unity Engine would allow Xbox One developers.

“From a technical perspective the idea is that you work on your game once and then you can bring it to any platform,” he explained. “But we also make sure you can really make use of the hardware. So if you’re running a really high-end device, you want to go crazy with shaders, you want to go crazy with particle systems, you want to really use what is there.”

Looks like it will provide developers a genuine advantage once it goes live next year.

“Because it’s so powerful – it’s actually [laughs] I don’t know which kind of words to put on it – if I say it’s ridiculous it sounds negative, but it’s just an amazing piece of hardware. And the software behind it is actually a big part of that, the software that the engine has to support well to make this good. And so we’re working on that.”

Unity is also working to make sure that the engine will also support Cloud computing and SmartGlass. Given Microsoft’s reversal on its indie publishing, decreeing that independent devs and small studios could now self-publish on Xbox Live for Xbox One, Unity’s support will go a long way towards making the experience better.