Unity 5.6 is now available as the final installment of the Unity 5 series. It comes with a Progressive Lightmapper preview, new Light Modes, Vulkan support and many more features.
Unity will be switching to yearly naming for future versions. If this is added to the splash screen, it will be a great way to force developers to keep updating their builds to ensure their games don't appear dated.
Source: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/03/31/5-6-is-now-available-and-completes-the-unity-5-cycle/
If you were hoping to buy today's 24 Hour deal, you might be out of luck at the moment.
The Unity Asset Store has been down for more than four hours. According to a tweet, they are recovering from server issues.
It is a little worrisome that this unscheduled maintenance is going on for a few hours now. Could the damage be extensive? Was it a malicious attack and is our information compromised? Only time will tell.
Update: The Store is back online but there's been no communication of why it went down.
Developers using Construct 2, Unity, Xenko and MonoGame can now integrate some Xbox Live features into their games without going through a rigorous approval program.
Microsoft really wants their products everywhere. This includes Xbox Live. We might see Xbox Live exist on Androids and iPhones before long!
Learn more here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/xbox/xboxlive/Creator
Unity 5.6 will be released on March 31 and will come in with a slew of new and improved features. On the distribution front, Facebook and Xiaomi platforms are now more accessible to Unity developers. And folks who jump on board the Unity Plus bandwagon now will get an Accelerator Pack for free.
It's interesting to see Unity start down the route Maya did which was integrating popular user made plugins (in this case, assets) into the software directly. While TextMeshPro is a good addition, I would rather see assets centered around accessibility and basic UX built into the engine instead.
More details here: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/02/28/updates-from-unitys-gdc-2017-keynote/
Improbable has announced SpatialOS Open Beta and is also launching the SpatialOS Games Innovation Program in partnership with Google Cloud. SpatialOS is a cloud-based computation platform which allows for processing of millions of persistent entities. It is currently integrated with Unity but Unreal support was just announced as well.
Improbable is a London-based startup that recently opened an office in San Francisco. With this new strategic location, an open beta and the subsidized development program it announced, it is clear that Improbable wants people using its technology to demonstrate the power of their platform.
Source: https://improbable.io/2017/02/27/improbable-announces-spatialos-open-beta-unreal-engine-integration-and-launches-spatialos-games-innovation-program
Learn more about SpatialOS here: https://spatialos.improbable.io/