Unity for Playstation Mobile Hotfix2 Release

Unity technologies have released an update for PSM Unity and it brings alot of much needed updates. This was released awhile ago but I only came upon it few weeks back.

The installation process is the same as previous of Unity
You will need to update both the Editor and the DevAssistant (the PSM ToolSet is unchanged).
If there is a mismatch (only updating one or the other) then this will result in an error message when trying to launch the application ("Application is using an unknown runtime version")

Direct links for the Hotfix2 Release

Unity Editor 4.3.7p3 with PSM build option incl. the updated hotfix, MonoDevelop and offline PSM documentation:

http://beta.unity3d.com/download/psm_official_release_hotfix2/UnitySetup_update-4.3.7p3.exe​

PSM Tool Set for Unity 1.1.0.7 (no changes, same as before) (PSM sign-in required):

http://psm-resource.np.dl.playstation.net/psm_resource/general/all/PSMToolSetForUnity_1.1.0.7.exe​

Development Assistant for Unity v1.06 (PS Vita application)

http://bit.ly/psmdevapp (Use PS Vita's web browser to download).​

Online "Unity for PSM" documentation

https://psm.playstation.net/static/general/all/unity_for_psm/en/​

 

Changes & fixes with Unity for PSM Hotfix2 Release

Unity Player:

• Fixed incorrect TexGen calculation (fixed-function 'shader' setup).
• Fixed crash when switching render targets.
• Fixed physics capsule colliders not working.
• Fixed audio clips being incorrectly streamed from memory (using up more memory than necessary).
• Fixed memory leaks in WWW error handling.
• Fixed crash because of using BlendOp Min/Max when creating shaders.
• Fixed splashscreen being removed too soon in published applications.
• Fixed Debug.isDebugBuild; it was always returning false.
• Fixed stencil buffer write for render targets (handle inverted projection).
• Fixed implementation of UnityEngine.Ping.
• Fixed rendering of medium/high/very high resolution shadowmaps.
• Fixed potential crash in WWW get/post.
• Fixed broken AssetBundle loading from a WWW stream.
• Fixed preset attributes when opening the on-screen keyboard.
• Fixed crash when disposing of an MD5CryptoServiceProvider object.
• Fixed some cases of broken rendering, because of incorrect attributes bindings.
• Improved Asset Bundle error handling when loading bundles with the incorrect runtime version.
• Improved error handling of WWW "405 Method Not Allowed".
• Improved handling of HTTPS certificates that caused errors/warnings.
• Improved shader loading times slightly.
• Improved out-of-memory handling when running from the DevAssistant.

Unity Editor:

• Fixed incorrect size being reported for audio clips (in the inspector).
• Fixed a problem where the Editor would not import classes from a pre-compiled assembly.
• Added graphics emulation option for PSM.
• Updated Input & Motion sample - removed reference to PSVita-only inputs (buttons L2/R2 and L3/R3).
• Added note about OnApplicationPause/OnApplicationQuit in the documentation.

The above is from the development forum by a member of the Unity team. There is still much work that has to be done for Unity PSM but great to see there is still updates being released and work being done.

Below are some of the issues I have experienced with the old version:

• Occasional hangs up or crashes when first running a session of Unity for PSM.
• Random performance spikes which cannot be identified unless you have Unity profiler which is only available for Unity Pro.
• Default shadow resolution was set to low and could not be changed.
• Due to not being up to date, a user was not able to download latest assets from asset store.
• Unable to save build configurations ie. if a test build was selected with certain scenes you would have to remember the config and order if you were to redeploy the build on a later build.

Now on the hotfixv2

• We have several things added the most apparent is the emulation option of PSM Mobile, therefore we can run the build in Unity player and do quick tests for projects. Still not the most ideal as it is not the same as testing on the device itself.
• A problem with this fix is that once you have updated any scene you have built and deployed onto the Vita will have to be rebuilt again!. This is a major drawback as I no longer to have working version of older updates for comparison as dependencies have changed and scripts.
• There is also audio skipping if you have multiple audio sources in scene, this is another huge problem as soon as I tested a build using the new update, I immediately experienced issues with the audio in my projects.
• And lastly shadow quality and overall performance of the projects running on the Vita do have better frames per second and slighlty less loading of scenes.

So that's about it with this update, hopefully more updates soon!