Unity Technologies has detailed some of the changes to its development tool with its 2020.1 updates.

As detailed in a recent blog post, one significant change has come in the form of the package manager. The feature has received several alterations, including a new user interface with iconography and an improved layout. Also, there will now be clear warning labels to show what packages are in preview.

"The list of packages we display in the Package Manager UI will also be more strictly curated, meaning only packages closest to the verified stage will be available. We do this to offer a stable experience for the broad user base in general," said Andrew Bowell and Ralph Hauwert.

Moreover, changes have been made to toolsets to aid with the editor and team workflows. For example, users can now "visualise the scene context or parent Prefab while editing your Prefab asset." Furthermore, the asset import pipeline version two is the new default, while a new focused inspector window allows users to inspect a selected game object.

Get with the programme

Unity 2020.1 has made some improvements to the programmer tools. Firstly, the profiler can now be run as a standalone app "which reduces the performance overhead when profiling the Editor and gives you cleaner profile data." Up next, a C# debugging workflow makes for an easy switch between debug and release mode.

Earlier this year, Unity Technologies made its premium learning tools permanently free, following a free month period where all users were given access during lockdown. So far this year, the company has acquired scripting tool Bolt and artificial intelligence specialist Artomatix.