If you haven’t already tried the Unity game engine, then there is no better time than the present. One of the big announcements that has come out of Unite 09 is a change to Unity Indie: it is now free and it is just called Unity. For more details see this article: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25840.
This makes it even easier for indie and hobbyist game developers to get into Unity and I think it is a good move by the Unity team. They are obviously getting enough progression from Indie to Pro to make this model viable. At the same time, I’m a bit disgruntled as I forked out for an Indie licence in the dark old days when these things cost money.
Unity 2.6 comes with some good features added: http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-2.6. There aren’t many better IDEs around and all the features – particularly better performance, source control compatibility and the profiler – seem useful and should boost productivity. I think Adobe could take some pointers – especially for integrating the 3D features of flash player 10 into the IDE. How about, rather than gimmicky additions like the iPhone stuff concentrate on making the IDE a better experience to work with (faster, less buggy) and adding features that will be used day-in, day-out.
Unity 2.6 ftw.