Google Analytics and Unity3D

We've just released an extension which enables your Unity3D game to post data off to Google Analytics.

It's called Analytics, funnily enough.

Unity3D and Linux.

It can be done, didn't you know? In fact, the smart folks at UT have already done it.

I hope this makes the leap from prototype to production.

You cannot trust HTTP.

Our current project uses HTTP to communicate with the game server. Part of our code requires some custom metadata to be sent with the HTTP headers down to the client.

Did you know you cannot rely on custom headers being delivered to your HTTP client? I didn't. It turns out some firewalls will only allow a whitelisted set of headers through to their clients, which I imagine will break many different web applications. To get around this, we've had to munge the metadata into the HTTP body, and pass things around with query strings, turning something that was looking rather elegant, into a total abuse of HTTP.

Sad face.

The Dark Side.

Oooh look at all those lights! (You may have to zoom in to see what I'm talking about! :-)

Planet Atmospherics.

My planets can now have procedural animated atmospheres. This is not simple UV animation. The clouds form, twirl and evaporate over the planet surface! This will be available as a free update on the Unity asset store.

Procedural Texturing of Planets.

Unity3D doesn't support volume textures. This makes procedural texturing of models using object or world space (instead of UV coords) very hard.

After much banging of head on keyboard, I think I've succeeded in using a 2D noise texture to fake 3D noise, and create a reasonable looking planet texture. Next step, atmosphere.

Unity3D will run in the Flash Player.

What the title says. This is a rather epic advance for Unity. Yes, the previous statement is an understatment.

Connect Unity3D to Google Spreadsheets.

I've just uploaded a package to the Unity Asset store, which allows you to easily source and cache data, in a secure manner, from a Google Spreadsheet!.

It is called GlobalData, and allows you to have truly global data across your game instances. You could use it to provide item stats, character stats or any kind of tabular data to your game, and you can even modify your core data after the game has been released.

It caches data locally, so your players won't require a constant internet connection to play.

SSL and Unity3D

I've just committed code to support HTTPS with UnityWeb, as well as a disk cache system. Hooray.

Apple Extortion

A Macbook Pro in the US will cost me $3899 USD.


A Macbook Pro in Australia will cost me $4709 AUD.


How many AUD will $3900 USD buy me?


$3835 Australian Dollars. I get to pay $1k more just because I live in Australia. This is just wrong, especially when you consider we are so much closer to China, where all Apple stuff is built.