The Indie Game Magazine June 2014 | Issue 38

DEVELOPER REVIEW ORTHELLO 2D Framework for Unity by Chad Stewart Orthello 2D is a Unity plugin created by Wyrmtale Games that has been on the asset store since June 2011. It aimed to make Unity, the game creation tool set and engine, a full-featured tool suitable for the development of two-dimensional games. It provides a flexible framework for rendering and more in two different flavors: The free one, dubbed Orthello 2D Framework, and Pro. Orthello 2D Framework Orthello 2D Framework provides most of the functionality required to create a sprite-based game for the low price of free. It provides a rather large feature set. It’s large enough that it’s plausible to make a game without resorting to the Pro features. You can create a scene using 2D sprites and treat them like any other GameObject. It provides animation with support for TexturePacker sprite sheets, and scrolling textures if you want to implement infinite scrolling. The plugin comes with 9 example scenes; each one demonstrates a different technique using a charming pinwheel sprite. They show you how to do parallax scrolling, collision, and more. All told, Orthello 2D Free could stand on its own. Orthello 2D Framework Pro Wyrmtale also sells an assortment of upgrades, the most essential one being the Pro version. For $35.00 USD, the pro version provides additional features such as Sprite Batching, an importer for TILED tile maps, and more. The performance gains aren’t negligible either. In the same reliable fashion, Pro comes with 8 more examples to show off the feature set. There are also four other Orthello 2D Framework plugins available. Each is a specialized feature set meant to work with the base Orthello plugin. I cannot comment on them as I did not test/use all of them, but they are each built with a specific purpose that you may find useful. Using the Beast The Orthello 2D Framework can be a bit of a beast to use. It requires a master OT prefab to be dropped into the scene, which is a bit of a GOD object. It adds a new way to control sounds. It coerces the camera to work with the Orthello 2D Framework. It has a hierarchy beneath it with four folders. One is a place to store Prototypes for easy creation, 14 The Indie Game Magazine | www.indiegamemag.com

The Indie Game Magazine June 2014 | Issue 38 | Page 14