Unity Engine - New 2D Tools

Unity Technologies announced that the Unity Engine will be getting new 2D tools and workflow as well as an editor for developers who create 2D games.

The first iteration of the 2D tools will be released with the Unity 4.3 update this Fall.

Unity CEO, David Helgason, said

“We want to be relentless in the improvement of Unity and its usefulness to all developers. Unity can and has been used for the development of many amazing 2D projects, but we knew that it could be better. So we are taking a leap forward by introducing fundamental tools to make Unity a truly great 2D engine.”

According to Unity’s press release, below you can find some of the tools and how the development process works:

The charge to improve workflow begins with the introduction of a dedicated scene view, which includes specialized 2D scene manipulation tools. Scene view can be toggled between the traditional view or set as the default when creating a project.
Importing, manipulating, and working with 2D assets are made easier with the addition of a new sprite texture importer type, automated atlasing, and dedicated 2D renderer
component. Adding 2D art to a scene is as easy as dragging a sprite from the asset library into the scene where Unity will then automatically create an object.
Additionally, the Unity animation editor has also been upgraded with “dope sheet” functionality and visual sprite animation editing leading to much greater control over complex animations.
Finally, the specialized Box2D physics engine has been integrated into Unity. This means better performance, more stable simulation and smaller game builds. Additionally, polygon collider generation from sprite textures means quicker creation of accurate, but fully editable, physical collider meshes for refined physical response between objects in a scene.

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