29 Oct 2009

Unity 3D Game Engine, now totally FREE!

Author: wgstone | Filed under: Articles & Press

Picture 3In a most unprecedented move, Unity Technologies have announced that with the release of the fantastic new version 2.6, that Unity Indie will no longer be a commercial product, but instead provided as a free download.

Coming from Open Source roots, and using the Open Mono Library as a core part of Unity, the UT team are no stranger to sharing and giving, having a history of fantastic support and an emphasis on community. However, it can only come as a surprise to many that Unity is now available free for the thousands of would be developers that perhaps couldn’t afford it previously – fantastic news, and full credit to UT for this decision, hopefully it will help grow the community exponentially.

Having just written the first beginner’s guide to the software – Unity Game Development Essentials (yes, a shameless plug, but hey), I too am personally very excited as this means my book may prove useful to a lot more people as they can get started with making 3D games for very little initial cost – something that would have been out of reach of many of my own students outside of our games courses previously.

My congratulations to David, Joachim, Nicholas, Tom and everyone in the growing UT family for this excellent pre-christmas gift to the community. Cheers guys, you rock!

Where to start?

Unity Beginners book

Unity Beginners book

To get started in Unity development, why not order Unity Game Development Essentials from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or directly from Packt Publishing, and get started in 3D development today?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 2:42 am and is filed under Articles & Press. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

24 Responses to “Unity 3D Game Engine, now totally FREE!”

  2. I just tried the free version and for some reason i can’t seem to be able to use the Place Trees tool in the Inspector panel for terrain. This causes unity to crash. I’m on Vista. Can you help?

  4. That’s the best news I could get, thanks :)

  5. Will Goldstone says: October 29th, 2009 at 3:51 am

  6. Hi Pradeek, should be fine, when you say you can’t use it, what are you trying to do? Are you definitely on the correct tool – the Transform tool (W – shortcut key) – if you are not it will not apply whatever tool you have selected..?

  7. Will Goldstone says: October 29th, 2009 at 3:53 am

  8. No worries, enjoy it!

  10. Here’s a pic http://twitpic.com/ndfpt . Its a empty project with a
    terrain and everything is left at the default values. When i try to
    use the “Place Trees” tool, Unity crashes. Haven’t found any solutuions
    yet

  11. Will Goldstone says: October 29th, 2009 at 4:11 am

  12. Sounds like a bug. First things first, are you on Vista 64 or 32 bit? Shouldn’t matter but useful to know, secondly, I’d try adding some height to the terrain, using the Raise Height tool, then going back trying trees but frankly if Unity is crashing, its kind of a bug. You’ll find the bug reporter tool in with your installation and it’ll help everyone if you can submit that bug. Does the reporter pop up when Unity crashes for you? if so use it then, if not find it in the install directory.

  14. 32-bit Vista. Submitted a report. Would like to know if others are having
    this issues too. Raise height didn’t help either. Thanks for the reply.

  16. I’m not sure this is a unity 2.6 bug, but after applying the BatteryCollect script to the Battery GUI Inspector, the fields for charge1tex, charge2tex, etc. are not appearing below, in the inspector.

  18. and here is my code for it:

    static var charge : int = 0;

    var charge1tex : Texture2D ;
    var charge2tex : Texture2D ;
    var charge3tex : Texture2D ;
    var charge4tex : Texture2D ;
    var charge0tex : Texture2D ;

    function Start() {
    guiTexture.enabled = false;
    charge = 0;

    function Update () {

    if (charge == 1) {
    guiTexture.texture = charge1tex;
    guiTexture.enabled = true;
    }

    else if(charge == 2){
    guiTexture.texture = chargetex;
    }
    else if(charge == 3){
    guiTexture.texture = charge3tex;
    }
    else if(charge == 4){
    guiTexture.texture = charge4tex;
    }
    else{
    GUITexture.texture = charge0tex;
    }

    }

  20. oops sorry! just found my error (not closing brackets, charge2tex mispelled)
    thanks!

  22. ok, so here is the problem:

    Assets/Scripts/BatteryCollect.js(32,28): BCE0020: An instance of type ‘UnityEngine.GUITexture’ is required to access non static member ‘texture’.

    Again, after applying the BatteryCollect script to the Battery GUI Inspector, the fields for charge1tex, charge2tex, etc. are not appearing below, in the inspector.

    Thanks a lot!

  24. found it out! it was the use of capital letters in “GUITexture”.

    unitron should avoid auto-suggesting them, then!

    sorry for the mess!!!!

  26. Hi, I’ve used Unity before, and I was psyched when they came out with a free version! But when I try to use it, I get a little window saying, “This version of unity requires authorization for you to use it. Please press the ‘register’ button to begin the authorization process. A one time 30-day free trial is available for everyone.” Did I download the wrong one or something? By the way, I’m working from Mac OS 10.5.8. Thanks!

  27. Will Goldstone says: November 2nd, 2009 at 9:11 am

  28. Hey man sounds like some confusion with your old version, and the new free one. Basically I imagine that you still have files in your prefs folders relating to unity, so the new one thinks its the old version, or similar. Either search Mac HD > Library > Preferences for anything Unity related and delete it or get AppDelete – a free app for mac which you can use to do that for you. Also be aware that the Pro version of Unity is still available as a demo because its still being sold , so perhaps you downloaded that by mistake? Can’t be totally sure but i’d ditch all related files and download from scratch, couldn’t hurt?

  30. Hello,

    I’m having problems with the coconutThrow script, can you please help?

    When including

    if(!newCoconut.rigidbody){
    newCoconut.AddComponent(Rigidbody);
    }

    I get the error:

    Assets/Scripts/CoconutThrow.js(16,36): BCE0019: ‘AddComponent’ is not a member of ‘UnityEngine.Rigidbody’.

    I will comment that line and keep working on the script, but could you please check if that’s anything wrong with the code? 2.6 issue, maybe?

    Thanks a lot!

  32. Another issue:

    The drop down menu for selecting prefabs in “Coconut Object” gives me only the “None” option, and not my prefab (Coconut Prefab). When i drag when drop my prefab from the project window (or from the hierarchy window), no coconut will be thrown during play time.

    thanks a lot!

  34. Hello

    The script is running fine now, except for the

    newCoconut.AddComponent(Rigidbody);

    which gives me the error:

    Assets/Scripts/CoconutThrow.js(16,36): BCE0019: ‘AddComponent’ is not a member of ‘UnityEngine.Rigidbody’.

    A tip: Do not drag the script to the Launcher object before adding the “@script RequireComponent” line and saving the script.

    Thanks a lot!

  36. All correct, now! Please ignore the issue about the error

    “Assets/Scripts/CoconutThrow.js(16,36): BCE0019: ‘AddComponent’ is not a member of ‘UnityEngine.Rigidbody’.”

    Thanks a lot!

  38. I know I’ve been asking too much, but If you have some free time, could you please take a look at:

    http://nongames.com/chico/collisionfails.gif

    Any ideas on why the collision of the coconut is not activating the animation and sound?
    I have tried removing the “if” conditional, and it plays like the target is not detecting collisions (the coconuts bounces, though!).

    Oh, and I’ve noticed that, in the book (page 177), your target has a sphere collider, not a mesh collider collider. I’ve even changed mine to sphere collider, but it didn’t work either.

    Thanks a lot!

  40. Incredible that this amazing software is now free.

    Just one question:

    has any virtual world been built with Unity that uses an economy?

    Rock

  42. Chico, you’ve really got to double check your spelling on things before
    posting here, it’ll save us both time. You have a lowercase ‘o’ on
    onCollisionEnter, its OnCollisionEnter as stated in the book and script
    reference.

  44. Sorry for that! I’ll make sure to double (double) check my code from now on.
    Thanks a lot and sorry for the trouble!

  45. LamptonWorm says: November 26th, 2009 at 7:19 am

  46. Hi,

    The place tree bug is a common bug in the free 2.6 and the first thing I hit when I installed it.. search the forums there are a few threads and workarounds, I also submitted it as a bug btw so fingers crossed for a fix soon, but you’re not the only one, lots of folk hitting it.

    For the ‘press to register’ question on install – press that button! It takes you to a web page where you select if you want to be a ‘free’ user or trial the 30-day pro, it then actives your software accordingly.

    Cheers!
    LW.

  48. Tree problem is solved in 2.6.1!

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