Well, it’s been almost two years (again) since I’ve posted my previous unity plugin suggestions. So, welcome to my now officially biennial post…
As before, Unity received major updates in the mean time and now sitting at v5.3. Some of the previous plugins are not needed anymore such as Unibill (now integrated to 5.3+) or NGUI as native GUI finally become something useable.
So, I’ll cut to the chase and here are my current suggestions for must have add-ons to Unity as of today.
Most Useful Unity Plugins
- DOTween Pro (Link): Just go and get this, it’s super performant and useful. Especially if you are used to working with NGUI and switched to uGUI, you’ll find it’s Animation Component (pro feature) very very very useful.
- Grids (any version depending on your needs) (Link): That one depends on your needs. But if you are planning to use any kind of Grids in your game, don’t torture yourself by coding everything and simply use Grids instead. It’ll save you lots of time.
- InControl (Link): I’ve found this one by the suggestion from Amazon. You can support all kinds of game controllers and this is also very useful for developing games for TV’s (Apple TV, Chromecast, etc.)
- Marvelous Techniques (Link): That one contains bunch of shaders along with some sample scenes. If you’re after a special kind of look for your game, that’ll be a gem.
- CloudOnce (Link): One simple API to deal with iOS Game Center, Google Play Game Services & Amazon GameCircle. That was one the most time consuming parts of my work till that one came along. It also support Cloud saving for all 3 platforms, so do I need to say more?
And the rest
Those are still in my list, but I’ve already mentioned them before. Check out my previous post(s) for more information.
Time flies away, it’s been almost two years since I’ve posted my unity plugin suggestions for the first time. In the mean time, Unity received major updates, with added support for the new stores/devices. And of course new plugins appeared.
When it comes to scripting & editor extensions, usually there are more than one plugin that does the same thing. Plugins I’m listing here is the ones that stand out (based on feature set, support and updates) for my projects and I’m using them.
So, here is my current suggestions for most useful add-ons for Unity.
Best Unity Plugins
- NGUI (Link): You may ask why I still prefer NGUI over the other alternatives. First of all even if it might not be the most elegant GUI solution, it gets the job done. Also, support is phenomenal. If you hit a wall and report a bug (or even a new feature request) you’ll probably get it in the next update which is usually only few days away. To me, that’s as important as the feature set. Besides, native Unity GUI is on the way and I don’t feel like investing (both time/money) into another add-on GUI.
- Unibill (Link): If you are developing for multi-platform and planning to use in-app purchases that’s the only plugin you’ll ever need. It currently supports all the major stores (Samsung support is coming soon), the feature set and the support is great and the plugin is easy to implement. It’s also one of the most expensive plugins I’ve purchased, but if you don’t need it ASAP I would suggest keeping an eye on it for any possible discount promotions.
- xArm (Link): I wish I had this two years ago, but I’m happy to have it now! That is another tool essential for multi-platform development. It’ll give your the preview of your game for all different devices & screen resolutions you’ll need. That is especially important when developing for Android…
- Build Report Tool (Link): Provides an easy to read summary of your build size (iOS, Android, etc.) so you can effectively optimise it to reduce the size. You’ll know the importance of that if/when your app goes over the cellular download limit just with few megabytes…
- Pool Manager (Link): Garbage collection is not your friend (one of the biggest problems on mobile), it’ll cause frame drops, hiccups and generally bad performance when not handled properly. This plug-in does it for you, make sure to check it out…
Wait, there is more…
I haven’t actually used those throughly (yet) but each one of them is a gem… Make sure to check them out before making any decisions…
- EasyTouch (Link)
- MasterAudio (Link)
- Sound Manager Pro (Link)
- Advanced Builder (Link)
We have started developing mobile apps using Flash. Then saw it’s shortcomings and decided to move to CoronaSDK and released our fist app with it. Currently, we’re working with Unity3D.
Each of those changes had a big impact on how we work and yet, the change was necessary. But there is one tool we are using since the day 1 and I’m sure it’ll be a major part of our workflow for a long time, it’s Texture Packer from Code’n’Web.
Andreas Löw created an exceptional tool for working with sprites and the more you use it on your workflow the more you’ll understand it’s value. First of all, as I noted above we have switched our core tools 3 times but the Texture Packer was compatible with all of them. That was a big plus for us as working with sprites, bitmaps and optimising the texture memory is the core part of mobile development no matter which SDK you are using.
Texture Packer has many time/life saving features that’ll be hard to cover in one blog post. So, today I’d like to mention one particular feature that recently saved the day for me. It’s a little tick box located in Layout section called “Reduce border artifacts”.
Let me explain the problem first. When dealing with the sprites & sprite sheets, you’ll use transparencies in almost all cases. Your alpha transparency might good look on Photoshop, but depending on the device (or your framework/SDK) hardware accelerated textures & transparencies might be handled a little bit differently.
In Photoshop, transparent or semi-transparent pixels have an undefined color and Photoshop handles them in software based on layer blending methods among other things. But with graphics hardware / OpenGL transparent pixels still have a color, even if it’s fully transparent. When the graphics card mixes a transparent pixel with the image below it, color value of the transparent pixel also gets mixed in. This colour is black and as a result “ghost” outlines, a thin grey border might appear around your sprites.
Unity uses straight alpha blending, and alpha textures needs a special treatment to prevent that problem as explained here. The trick is expanding the RGB section of the image (not alpha) so transparent pixels would have proper color. They have even provided a AlphaUtility (actions for Photoshop) to help you with that problem.
But if you are working with Texture Packer, fix is one click away. Simply enable “Reduce Border Artifacts” checkbox and Texture Packer will handle that for you when exporting the sprite sheet!
Here is a simulated sample image, take a look at the three light green dots on the top left. Image on the left shows expected/fixed result while image on the right shows the alpha problem.
Texture Packer is simply the best sprite sheet generation tool you can get your hands on and it will save you many precious hours. Andreas just released v3.0.0 and I must say it’s now better than ever…
This is just landed to my inbox and I had to share it! Guys at the Code’n’Web have made a very informative (and hilarious) video about spite sheets. This is part one, take a look at their web page for more.
I’m using Texture Packer for my projects and it’s one of our indispensable tools. I’ll post a review/tutorial as soon as I have some free time…
http://www.codeandweb.com/what-is-a-sprite-sheet
It’s been a while since we started working with Unity 3D. One of the fist thing I’ve noticed is the community contributions and the great stuff that you can find at The Unity Asset Store… Simply put, The Unity Asset Store is a place to buy things you can import and use in your own Unity 3D projects. Of course there are other plugins available at developers own web sites too.
As my main motto when start working with a new platform is “do not re-invent the wheel!”, I’ve looked at most of them. Many great programmers developed top notch applications that will save you loads of time & even inspire you to do something you’d never thought before.
Since we had a limited budget, reviewed most and decided on few which stands out. And finally chosen few of them to purchase first.
Here is our short list of best Unity 3D plugins *
If you are looking for a way to greatly enhance your Unity 3D experience, I’ll strongly suggest looking at those… Hopefully, in near feature when we have enough experience with those, I’m planning to write a short review on each of them…
* Best match to our current workflow and planned apps. This is not a complete list and there are other great ones. So, make sure to check asset store for yourself…
iHeartThisApp.com posted a review of the Witches’ Brew HD today…
Witches’ Brew over all is a fun Halloween game to play with all age levels.
148Apps.com & AppTudes.com just posted the first review of the Witches’ Brew HD…
A simple holiday offering, Witches’ Brew HD is a surprisingly fun little Halloween game. Using tilt controls whose sensitivity can be adjusted, players guide a cartoonishly funny witch as she tries to fill her cauldron with the ingredients to her magical elixir.
Read full review by clicking the following link…
