Unity 2018.2 was released

The second large-scale update of Unity for the year boasts new rendering capabilities, convenient debugging of code in IL2CPP builds, a Burst compiler, a completely redesigned resource system and many improvements for 2D games, including support for vector graphics and hexagonal tiles in Tilemap.

The text was prepared with the participation of Valentin Simonov, Field Engineer at Unity

New rendering capabilities

Unity has been working on Scriptable Render Pipelines, or SRP, or a “Programmable Rendering Pipeline” for a long time. This is a technology that allows developers to fully control the rendering in the game from C#. In 2018.2, two ready-made SRPs became available to developers (still in the preview stage): LWRP for mobile devices and HDRP for PC and consoles.

In the new version of Unity, a huge number of new features received Shader Graph — a tool for visual creation of shaders, which allows artists to effectively create materials for objects in the game. Including now it supports HDRP.

Shader Graph

Two-dimensional graphics

With each new version of the engine, creating 2D games in Unity becomes easier and faster. In version 2018.2, there is support for vector graphics in SVG format, a special mode for pixel perfect rendering, support for hexagonal tiles in the Tilemap tool, and much more.

Tilemap with hexa

Scripting

In Unity 2018.2, programmers will finally be able to debug C# code on IL2CPP platforms. You no longer need to read into the generated C++ code trying to find the problem.

Also with the new version, developers have access to the IL2CPP Burst compiler, which speeds up the C# Job System code by 10 or more times. The C# Job System itself and the Entity-Component-System (ECS) are actively developing and should exit preview soon.

IL2CPP-Managed Debugger

Resource system

In Unity 2018.2, so—called Addressables appeared – assets with unique names that can be downloaded both from the build and remotely from the CDN. The Addressables system is designed to significantly facilitate the division of the game into downloadable modules, their testing and update. More information can be found in the report from the Unite Berlin conference.

And also…

As a result of close cooperation with Google, an Instant Games publishing plugin is now available for Unity. We are talking about the possibility to create a demo of a mobile game that runs directly in the Google Play Store. You can read more about the plugin on GitHub.

Instant Games functionality on Google Play

Along with the big new features of 2018.2 brings with it a huge number of other improvements and almost one and a half thousand bugfixes. The full list can be found on the engine’s website in the Release Notes section.

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Source: Unity