The viability of Linux as a gaming platform continues to grow, with today’s news that Unity 3D (no, not that one), one of the most popular games engines used by developers of all calibres, will be supporting Linux.

The self-described ‘intuitive and flexible development platform’ allows games developers to “author once” but “deploy everywhere”. This move will allow gaming titles created using the development suite for Windows or iOS the option to be exported for use on Linux, too.

With Unity becoming a popular tool in the creation of “AAA gaming titles”, this introduction could pave the the release of mainstream gaming titles on Linux.

Linux = 10%

Interestingly, Unity Technologies say adding support for Linux will open up titles developed on the platform an estimated ‘10% of the game-hungry PC market’.

Even the Linux share breakdowns from the Humble Bundle collections aren’t quite as generous as Unity Tech’s ‘10%’ statistic, but as we’re in an unquestioning mood we’ll take it.

‘Smart User Base’

In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Unity co-founder and CEO David Helgason elaborated on the decision to add support for Linux further, saying:

“Linux is something we’ve had a lot of questions about from the indie community, and the Humble Indie Bundle has showed that there’s a business on Linux. So we’re trying to commercialise on something we’ve been working on for a long time internally – we actually had some of our engineers kind of doing it in their spare time and on weekends.

We’ll be the first mass market engine to support Linux, and it’s not the biggest user-base, but it’s a very passionate group of people that are willing to pay, they’re smart, and they really love the platform.”

Continuing:

“I actually think our move will be a huge boost to Linux on the desktop. The most important ecosystems of our lifetime such as Windows, OS/2, and later Facebook and iOS, have been made, or undone, by having games, or not. It’s too early to say just how big the impact will be, but I’m excited.”

Other Features

Unity 4 is set to ship with a wide range of new features, options and support, including:

Shuriken particle system supports external forces, bent normals and automatic culling

3D texture support

Navigation: dynamic obstacles and avoidance priority

Major optimizations in UnityGUI performance and memory usage

Remote Unity Web Player debugging

New Project Window workflows

Iterative lightmap baking

Refined component-based workflows

Extensible inspectors for custom classes

Improved Cubemap import pipeline

Geometry data improvements for huge memory and performance savings

Meshes can be constructed from non-triangle geometry – render points & lines efficiently

Search, live preview and buy Asset Store assets from the Project Window

Many of the above features will be demonstrated at the Unite event ion Amsterdam later this year (August 22nd – 25th).

The full press release for the Unity 4 update can be found behind the button below.

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Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity multi-platform engine and development tools, is excited to announce Unity 4, the next generation of the Unity development platform. The launch of Unity 4 demonstrates the platform’s AAA push that levels the playing field between the largest and the smallest studios, enabling anyone from the most indie game designer to the biggest multinational AAA studios to develop amazing groundbreaking games, and effortlessly deploy to multiple platforms. Customers who pre-order Unity 4 will be offered early access to the Unity 4 beta.

Unity 4 includes an overhaul of the Unity engine and tools suite to accommodate critical new features such as the highly anticipated all-new Mecanim character animation system, DirectX 11 support, hypermodern mobile graphics, and the addition of Adobe® Flash® and Linux as new publishing platforms. These new features and improvements comprise the first in a series of Unity 4 releases that will empower developers with the first truly democratic AAA game engine.

“We’ve been working on Unity 4 for a long, long time and are happy to finally be able to unveil its imminent arrival and outline its core features that will change the industry,” said David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies. “The revolutionary animation system and add-on deployments to Adobe Flash and Linux are some of the critical features introduced in Unity 4, which together maintain Unity as the strongest, fastest evolving modern games development platform available.”

Unity 4 includes a host of new features, updates, and improvements:

Mecanim – Groundbreaking character animation technology

Mecanim, Unity’s powerful and innovative animation technology, brings your characters to life in a few mouse clicks with incredibly fluid and natural motion. Mecanim combines a slick interface with powerful tools for creating state machines, blend trees, IK rigging, and auto retargeting of animations all inside of the Unity editor.

“The introduction of the Mecanim suite of animation tools into Unity will completely change how developers integrate interactive animations and will result in awesome new gameplay experiences from the Unity community,” said Robert Lanciault, Lead Animation Developer, Unity Technologies. “These tools will allow animators to work directly in Unity to create advanced and detailed animation blend trees and state machines for incredible and natural character animation.”

An impressive array of retargetable animation will be available in the Unity Asset Store. Developers will have access to a wide range of options that will help bring their characters to life with fluidity and grace.

Visual Fidelity and AAA Rendering

Unity 4 fully supports Microsoft’s DirectX 11. This offers developers the ability to take advantage of the GPU in new and exciting ways: increased shader capabilities with shader model 5, tessellation for smoother models and environments in game worlds, and compute shaders for advanced GPU computation.

Mobile platforms have also received a boost in visual fidelity with optimizations and new features. Unity 4 features real-time shadows on mobile, skinned mesh instancing, the ability to use normal maps when baking lightmaps, and a refined GPU profiler. It’s easy to make extremely high-end visuals that scale across the best of what’s available on modern PCs and the most advanced mobile graphics chips.

Extend multiplatform publishing with Unity add-on for Adobe Flash Player

With Unity 4, developers can create a new game, or take existing Unity 3D content — for iOS, Android, desktop, or the Web — and publish it to the Adobe Flash Player, installed on more than a billion PCs worldwide. Leveraging its industry leading Editor productivity tools, Lightmap and Lightprobe baking, and Occlusion Culling tools, Unity 4 is the powerhouse development tool for creating 3D content for the Adobe Flash Player.

Linux Publishing Preview

Unity 4 will include a preview of a new deployment option to publish games to Desktop Linux, clearing a path for the Unity community to bring exciting new content to the estimated 10% of the game-hungry PC market. Desktop Linux standalone publishing will be available for all Unity 4 users at no additional cost.

Furthermore, Unity 4 introduces a great many additions and improvements such as:

Shuriken particle system supports external forces, bent normals and automatic culling

3D texture support

Navigation: dynamic obstacles and avoidance priority

Major optimizations in UnityGUI performance and memory usage

Dynamic fonts on all platforms with HTML-like markup

Remote Unity Web Player debugging

New Project Window workflows

Iterative lightmap baking

Refined component-based workflows

Extensible inspectors for custom classes

Improved Cubemap import pipeline

Geometry data improvements for huge memory and performance savings

Meshes can be constructed from non-triangle geometry — render points & lines efficiently

Search, live preview and buy Asset Store assets from the Project Window

Unity 4 is available now for pre-order from the Unity store (https://store.unity3d.com/).

Unity 4 will be demonstrated and discussed in further detail at the Unite 2012 developer conference that takes place August 22nd – 25th in Amsterdam. For tickets and more information about Unite, visit http://www.unity3d.com/unite/.

About Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies is the creator of Unity, an intuitive and flexible development platform used to make wildly creative and intelligently interactive 3D and 2D content. The “author once, deploy everywhere” capability ensures developers can publish to all of the most popular platforms. Unity Technologies boasts a thriving community of 1,000,000 registered developers including large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists. Unity Technologies aggressively re-invests in its award-winning 3D development tools and democratization initiatives, such as the Asset Store digital content marketplace and Union game distribution service, in order to remain at the forefront of innovation. Unity Technologies is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Canada, China, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea. For more information, visit:http://unity3d.com.

Unity and all other product names are trademarks of Unity Technologies or its subsidiaries or affiliates. Adobe and Flash are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other product names and trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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Marketwire, Via John Pugh