Welcome to Junior Programmer! Designed for anyone interested in learning to code or obtaining an entry-level Unity role, this pathway assumes a basic knowledge of Unity and has no math prerequisites. Junior Programmer prepares you to get Unity Certified so that you can demonstrate your job-readiness to employers. Unity is the ultimate game development platform. Use Unity to build high-quality 3D and 2D games, deploy them across mobile, desktop, VR/AR, consoles or the Web, and connect with loyal and enthusiastic players and customers. We recommend that all developers actively building for Google Cardboard migrate to the new Cardboard SDK: iOS, Android NDK, Unity XR Plugin (SDK) October 15, 2019 update: The Daydream View VR headset is no longer available for purchase. Package: com.unity.render-pipelines.lightweight: 4.6.0-preview Known Issues There is sometimes an issue when opening the project for the first time that textures set in the Material Inspector aren't being applied properly; the current 'fix' is to open the related Shader Graph, click the 'Save' button and the Material should update.
Use it to learn about the latest features in Unity, extract and use the parts you need or use the full project as a starting point for your own games.
Introducing the FPS Sample
The FPS Sample was created for internal validation of features and packages available at the time of Unity 2018.3 and is available for download including all assets. In the project you will find:
1 fully populated arena level, including high-quality assets for HDRP
2 fully rigged characters with 4 unique weapons
Game code that includes unsupported custom netcode with an authoritative server architecture supporting up to 16 players (not recommended for use in production)
Deathmatch and Assault game modes
Support for PC
It’s intended as a source of inspiration and learning for intermediate and experienced developers using Unity 2018.3 or Unity 2018.4 LTS releases. It’s using experimental tech. Please note that the project is not supported and we highly recommend upgrading to supported packages if you wish to use parts of the project as a starting point for your own.
Getting Started with the FPS Sample
In this session, recorded at GDC 2019, you'll learn how to get started using the FPS Sample. Unity Evangelist Andy Touch will provide an overview of the project – which was designed to demonstrate product-grade implementations of Unity features, including graphics and networking – in a real-time multiplayer context. You'll also see how the netcode of a fast-paced multiplayer shooter like this sample works.
Unite LA keynote
At the Unite LA 2018 keynote we unveiled FPS sample, an example project you can open up right in the editor. FPS Sample demonstrates not just what's capable when creating a fully functioning multiplayer game with Unity, but also how you can go about achieving it yourself.
Deep dive into graphics of FPS Sample - Unite LA
This LA session will take you through the structure of the project from an artist's point of view focusing in particular on the High-Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP).
Deep dive into networking for Unity's FPS Sample - Unite LA
Take an in-depth look at how the netcode of a fast-paced multiplayer shooter like Unity's FPS Sample works. Learn about snapshot generation and compression, client-side prediction and lag compensation. See how the game code has been structured into server and client parts to enable a small, dedicated server to run the game.
Introducing the FPS Sample
Get a quick walkthrough of the FPS Sample project. Get an overview of which features it uses and how you can use it as a starting point for creating your own First-Person Shooter project, or as a learning resource
What is a sample project?
While Unity provides you with many ways of solving particular game mechanics and genre challenges, a sample game provides you with inspiration in the form of one specific approach, which has actually been implemented in a project.
Hear Lead Dev Peter Andreasen and Lead Technical Artist Martin Kümmel Vestergaard describe the project.
Learn how to use HDRP with FPS Sample
The FPS Sample uses the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). Use the project as inspiration on how to use Unity features like layered materials, HDR lights, post-filters and light modes in HDRP.
In this video, two of the people behind the project, Lead Developer Peter Andreasen and Technical Art Director Martin Kümmel Vestergaard, talk about their approach to creating graphics in the sample game and what they think you can learn from it.
How to get started
The project, including documentation, is available on GitHub for Unity 2018.3.8f1. Please note that the project is using technology and packages which are undergoing massive updates, including networking, meaning we recommend using the project as a source of inspiration only.
Join us on our FPS Sample forum to talk about the project, exchange information and give feedback.
FPS Sample on Github Getting started guide
Distributed under the Unity Companion License ('License'). Unity Technologies ApS (“Unity”) grants to you a worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, and royalty-free copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute the software that accompanies this License, subject to the following restrictions, terms, and conditions.
The LTS stream offers a stable version of Unity for those who want to lock in their productions on a specific version of Unity for maximum stability.
The latest long-term support release of Unity
With the LTS and the TECH stream releases to choose from, you can pick the release that best fits your needs, depending on where you are in your development cycle. For creators who are about to embark on projects that are past the prototyping phase, Unity 2019.4 LTS provides stable, high-quality features that are supported for two years. You can confidently create your projects with that version during development and release.
Unity 2019 LTS stream has the same feature set as the 2019.3 TECH stream release.
Explore Unity 2019 features
Since the release of 2018 LTS, we’ve added hundreds of improvements and new features. Unity 2019 LTS makes artists and designers more productive with better tools and a new Editor UI. Our Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) technology, now out of Preview, helps you achieve best-in-class graphics on all platforms. We’ve also optimized Unity under the hood to facilitate more immersive experiences at runtime and to accelerate your project iterations.
Graphics
If you need scalability for all supported platforms, high performance, and best-in-class visual quality, the Universal Render Pipeline is our recommended production-ready solution. To help you achieve stunning high-fidelity graphics on high-end hardware (PC, consoles, and future hardware), the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) is now out of Preview, which means those of you already working with it will have a consistent upgrade path.
Scripting
Our default code editor is now Visual Studio 2019, and IDE support has moved to packages. This LTS release also brings huge improvements to profiling, such as Player Deep Profiling and Call Stacks support. In Unity 2019 LTS, the Burst Compiler optimizes your output for the platform you’re compiling for, which can lead to huge performance improvements. Burst Compiler 1.3 offers native debugging and improved scalability and usability. .NET 4.x is now the default scripting runtime. Incremental Garbage Collection minimizes garbage collection spikes. Also, several quality-of-life improvements to scripting workflows reduce iteration times and make you more productive.
Artist and designer tools
Shader Graph is now our production-ready solution for building shaders visually. Visual Effect Graph empowers you to create beautiful VFX in real-time, without coding, and is now compatible with Shader Graph. Unity 2019 also helps artists achieve more, directly within the Unity Editor, with new and improved terrain tools, as well as ProBuilder, our unique hybrid of 3D modeling and level design tools.
Editor updates
We’ve given the Editor UI a new look and feel by updating icons, fonts, and user feedback systems. Unity 2019 LTS increases clarity in the Editor, so creators can focus more on their content. Since Unity 2018 LTS, we’ve also added loads of workflow improvements to make you more productive in the Editor, such as Prefab Asset Editing in Inspector, Quick Search, Presets and Shortcut Manager. Unity 2019 LTS uses Asset Import Pipeline V2 to provide you with asset-dependency tracking and many other improvements, laying the foundation of a more reliable, performant and scalable pipeline and speeding up your import times significantly.
Platforms
For mobile developers who aim to push mobile graphics and performance, Unity 2019 LTS brings improvements such as on-demand rendering, Adaptive Performance and improved OpenGL support.
Throughout 2019, we’ve also added and polished lots of tools for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) developers. AR Foundation, our framework for multiplatform AR development, gives you the power to build your app once and deploy across ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap and HoloLens platforms. With the High Definition Render Pipeline for VR, you can push your VR experiences to the next level of fidelity without sacrificing performance.
We now also offer support for approved developers to create and ship their games on Google’s Stadia cloud gaming platform.
2D Tools
Unity now has the 2D feature sets and workflows you need for bone-based 2D animation, tile-based and organic world-building, and 2D physics, for projects of any scale on any platform.
Addressables
Efficiently manage complex live content. The new Addressable Asset System gives you an easy way to load assets by “address,” while also handling asset management overhead by simplifying content pack creation and deployment.
Visual Effect Graph with Shader Graph integration
Visual Effect Graph now lets you use Shader Graph to create high-fidelity visual effects, so you can visually author your own pixel and fragment shaders and use them in VFX Graph to create custom looks.
Timeline Signals
Timeline Signals offers an easy way for Timeline to interact with objects in a scene. Timeline Signals lets relevant systems know that it’s time to react to a specific event, for example, when a cutscene created with Timeline ends and you want to load a new scene and enable a physics system.
UI Toolkit
UI Toolkit(formerly UIElements), a retained-mode API, helps you create Editor tools. You build your UI hierarchy of objects while the system renders it optimally, for better overall performance. By decoupling hierarchy and styling from functionality, UI authoring is more approachable for both programmers and artists with UI Builder.
Unity as a Library
Unity as a Library lets you insert features powered by Unity directly into your native mobile applications, including 3D or 2D real-time rendering functions, such as augmented reality, 2D mini-games or 3D models, and more.
AR Foundation
AR Foundation combines the full power of the Unity platform with essential core features from ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap, and HoloLens for rich immersive AR applications that you can build once and deploy across platforms.
Incremental Garbage Collector
With incremental garbage collection, rather than processing garbage collection all at once, we split the operation over a number of frames. This helps reduce occasional spikes in CPU usage due to garbage collection.
We prepared a series of upgrade guides to help you go from Unity 2017 LTS or Unity 2018 LTS to Unity 2019 LTS. For complex productions with a high number of dependencies, find out how our Success Plans can ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly.
What to expect from Unity LTS
Making the current LTS stream the most stable version of Unity is our top priority. Biweekly updates are intended to address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their projects.
Unity release plans
We’re committed to supporting 2019.4 LTS releases with biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022.
Unity 2018.4 is now the legacy LTS and will be updated once every month until it reaches the end of its support cycle in spring 2021.
Archive
Looking for a specific Unity LTS release? We’ve organized all LTS releases in one simple archive page. Or subscribe to our RSS feed and get access to the latest LTS as soon as it’s released.
What’s an LTS release?
The last TECH stream release of the year becomes a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and receives continued support for another two years in the form of biweekly updates with bug fixes. In terms of versioning, we increment the final TECH stream release of the year by one and add “LTS” (for example, TECH stream release 2018.3 became 2018.4 LTS).
The LTS releases do not include any new features or breaking API changes compared to the TECH stream releases that they are based on. Their updates address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
The LTS stream is for developers who want to develop and ship their projects on the most-stable version and remain on this version for an extended period.
Unity 2018.4.20f1
What is a TECH stream release?
TECH stream releases are for developers who want to access the latest features and capabilities. The 2019 TECH stream had three releases (2019.1, 2019.2, and 2019.3). We add updates and bug fixes to the current TECH stream release on a weekly basis until the next TECH release is officially launched; then the cycle begins again.
What new features does Unity 2019.4 have?
Unity 2019.4, which we also refer to as Unity 2019 LTS, doesn’t have any new features, compared to Unity 2019.3. Updates to Unity 2019.4 include only fixes for crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
Which version of Unity should I use?
If you are in production or close to release, we recommend the latest LTS release. If you want to use the latest Unity features in your project or are just getting started with production, the TECH stream is recommended.
Unity 2018
How often is Unity 2019 updated?
The 2019.4 LTS releases will receive biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022.
Are you going to backport fixes from Unity 2020.1 and 2020.2 to Unity 2019 LTS?
Yes. Generally, our process is to fix bugs in the next release of Unity, and then backport the fixes to current TECH streams and LTS branches. The exact mechanics for doing that depend on the nature of the bug, the dependencies it may have to other components, and other factors. We have a team fully engaged to backport fixes to Unity 2019 LTS.
Unity 2018 Download
What’s in your alpha and beta releases, and how do I get them?
Unity 2018 Vs 2019
Alphas are the first public releases of a new TECH stream version of Unity. During the alpha phase, we’re progressively adding all the new features that are scheduled to be part of the final release. At the same time, the features get tested collectively for the first time. While a TECH stream version is in alpha, we release updates with new features on a weekly basis until we reach feature completeness. As such, alphas come with a higher stability risk than beta releases, which are feature-complete and receive only stabilizing updates. With both alphas and betas, you have an opportunity to influence our development process by using the new features and providing feedback via forums and bug reports.
Download Unity 2018.3
Because there may be feature-stability issues with these early releases, we do not recommend them for projects in production; we highly recommend that you back up any project before you open it with an alpha or beta release.
Both our alpha and beta releases are open to everyone – no signup is required. Get started by downloading them from the Unity Hub.