Exploring new features in Unity 2020

Before we start our first project, let's take a moment to look at the new features introduced since the previous edition of this book. We'll cover all of these, and much more!

Starting with Unity Hub, while not technically part of Unity 2020 (it is a separate application), it makes it easy to manage multiple Unity projects and versions. I will guide you through creating a new project using Unity Hub in this chapter. Once an empty project has been created, we will import assets using the new Package Manager — an easy way to manage a project's assets (more on this shortly).

In the world of 2D, a new tool called Sprite Shape will help us create more dynamic and flexible environments from within the Unity editor. Whether 2D or 3D, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an ever-evolving field, and not to be left behind, Unity has introduced a new machine learning toolkit called ml-agents. This is an exciting new way to create intelligent agents (any dynamic non-playable character) in a game. Rather than defining exactly how an agent should act in every situation, we can provide the tools for the agent to learn how best to achieve their goals, whatever they may be.

It's an exciting time for Augmented Reality (AR), with the inclusion of ARFoundation in Unity, an AR toolkit, which we will use to blend reality and gaming. Lastly, we'll take a look at state of the art and investigate how we can optimize our games by using DOTs, a multi-threaded data-oriented technology stack. Don't worry if that sounds scary; it will all become clear as we progress through the book.

Now that we have an understanding of the some of the new topics covered in this book, let's design the first game we will implement in Unity 2020.