TechCrunch
Vine For Android Gets Updated With Front-Facing Camera Support
When Vine started shipping for Android, there was one, big, near-universal complaint amongst its users: it didn’t support front-facing cameras. While the existing iOS port had been supporting front cameras for months, Android users looking to take Vine-selfies (Velfies?) were stuck contorting their wrists like some sort of chump. Users were hopeful it’d come baked into the update that shipped last weekend — no such luck.
In an update pushed to the Google Play store just a few minutes ago, Vine for Android finally learned how to play friendly with that front lens.
Meanwhile, this update also brings a few other new tricks: there’s a new upload manager for the Vine’s you’ve yet to finalize, a few tweaks to the settings screen, and an overall speed improvement — most importantly, the camera is said to load notably faster, now.
Here are the complete patch notes:
• Front-facing camera
• New upload manager for unsubmitted posts
• Improvements to settings
• Improvements to camera loading time and support for more devices
• Speed improvements overall
• Bug fixes and UI improvements
This update comes just 5 days after the last — a remarkably quick turnaround, from build-to-build. Say what you will about Instagram pickin’ up video support, but a little competition really does help kick things into gear.
You can find the latest version of Vine on the Google Play store here.
Unity Game Engine Announces Xbox One Support, Goes Free For Windows Phone 8 Developers
Unity, the cross-platform 3D engine and game development tool that’s been on something of a roll lately, has a few more bits of good news today. At Microsoft’s Build 2013 conference this morning, Unity announced two new tricks: Xbox One (and Kinect!) support, and completely free support for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 games.
It’s been a few good months for Unity. Back in March, they announced support for Sony’s Playstation 4. Then, after dropping support for the hot mess that is Flash, they announced that iOS and Android game developers could now build their wares on Unity free of charge — ditching their requirement that mobile developers pay $1,500 for a Pro license and then a few hundred bucks for each platform. They’d continue to offer pro versions of both Unity ($1500 for the Pro build) and the iOS/Android add-ons (another $1500 per platform) for those who needed advanced functionality, but the free versions would cover the use cases for anyone just getting their feet wet.
With today’s news, Windows developers are getting a similar deal — in fact, the one they’re getting is a bit better. As with iOS and Android, developers using Unity’s basic/free product will be able to build their Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 games for free. But that Pro add-on? The one that iOS/Android developers need to plunk down an additional $1500 for? Unity and Microsoft have worked out a deal to eat the cost of that. If you buy (or already own) Unity Pro, the Windows Store Pro add-on and all the advanced functionality that comes with comes free.
For Windows gamers, that’s pretty good news. It means that pretty much any game built on-top of Unity can be ported to Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8 with minimal effort, without that developer having to drop a dime on engine licensing to do it.
Meanwhile, the company also announced that Unity would be deeply supported by the Xbox One, including gesture/skeletal recognition through the Kinect. While tying into the 360′s Kinect from Unity has been possible for a while now, it’s always been a bit of a hack; once Xbox One support makes its way into Unity 4, it’ll be official. Alas, it’s not clear if the One-specific tools will be made available to everyone — while Unity says that they’ll be free to anyone published by Microsoft Studios, there’s no word on how much they’ll cost (or if they’ll even be available) to anyone just looking to tinker. We’ve sent an email to Unity asking for more details here.
[Update: A Unity rep tells us "Unity can still be used by [Xbox] developers being published by someone other than Microsoft Games Studios, they’ll just need to pay for it. We ask developers interested in using Unity to publish to consoles to contact us directly to discuss pricing.”]
With today’s news, Unity can now claim cross-platform support for every next-gen console, as well as every popular mobile operating system.
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