Author: by Thomas Grove, Staff

Danish-based game engine firm OTEE has been holding its Unite 2007 user conference in San Francisco this week, discussing the state of the engine with existing users. Gamasutra was there to see the firm showcase its Unity 2.0 multi-platform game engine (an earlier version of which was used in Global Conflicts: Palestine) and its new features. The conference, which was held at the San Francisco Film Centre in the Presidio, saw a keynote with OTEE founders speaking about the origins of Unity, as well as demonstrating features from the newly debuted Unity 2.0. When speaking of the company's origin, OTEE CEO and co-founder David Helgason called out their commitment to continual Unity updates, despite a slow early adoption rate, as well as their responsive support as key to the growth in users that they are now experiencing. OTEE's mission for Unity, which has been in development for 6 years, is to be an essential tool for 3D on the web - with a Unity 2.0-specific plugin for complex 3D games in a browser available. In particular, Unity 2.0 features a new streaming Unity Web Player, which organizes assets by level and downloads them in order. Therefore Unity games will start immediately after assets in the first level have finished loading, and multiple levels will finish downloading silently in the background while the game is being played. The Unity tool, which itself runs only on Mac OS X currently, exports to Windows, OSX, and the Web. In addition, as a prior announcement has stated, OTEE is planning on extending their support for the Wii. Information on the OTEE jobs page also indicates that a Windows port of the Unity editor software is planned. The Unite 2007 conference continues until October 12th, and more information is available at the official Unite 2007 event website.