Just a thank you to Unity for making awesome 2D tools, made me rethink so much, incredibly useful for both 3d and 2d development 
I still should learn this tools, but Iâm a bit worried. In the first video (with aliens and bridge) they used layers. I read some time ago that itâs very bad to use layers in mobile games - performance may be hurt. So I want to investigate a bit and then use these tools in my games.
Layers are just layers, they are neither good nor bad. If you pile on tons of layers that will hurt performance anywhere, nothing to do with mobile; the key (as always) is just not to do more than the hardware can handle.
âEric
Indeed. Much more than I had expected. Some great stuff.
I was realy surprised when I could rotate sprites, be interesting for use in some of my projects. I seem to have problems with my animated sprites moving upwards though 
Probably just me not using it right though.
Iâm stymied with using shuriken and sprites together - particles donât appear to use the sorting layers, the renderer has no Sort Layer option, so even with fudge distance you canât go higher than the default layer (no Z sort).
I am also already wondering if there will be (or already is?) a tile-editor for everything thatâs not based upon unique graphic blocks.
Also it would be cool to be able to use materials that are affected by dynamic lights together with the sprite objects.
Sorry if I am missing something here - I didnât have time to dive deeper into the 2D stuff yet, unfortunately. These are just two things I noticed.
Thereâs a diffuse sprite shader which works with lights, but it breaks the batching.
They mentioned the fact that there is currently no tile editor in this release during the Unite conference video.
Guys and what about atlases?
They say itâs better to use atlases and round textures for iOS games. But in that video (with aliens and bridge) they didnât, they just used different textures as sprites. Is it still necessary (or at least better) to use atlases for iOS games? Sometimes itâs difficult, especially whet creating a sprite animation.
You can use different textures and still have atlases, since Unity creates them automatically (as long as you apply a packing tag to textures that you want in an atlas). Although this is apparently a Pro feature.
âEric
The only thing I am sad about is how far I am on my current project - if I go back and use these excellent tools, Iâll wind up rewriting half of my project, when Iâm nearly done with it in the first place!
Next project, for sure.
Atlases are critical for both the 2D features and the upcoming GUI stuff. Makes it REALLY compelling to upgrade from 3.x pro to 4.x proâŚ
Gigi
Watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qS7DD5Tz_A
Now I know how to make animations 
Looks interesting. Will see what will be nextâŚ
Yes!!! 2D and 3D both tools are really very great!!!. These are easy to handle!!!
I am crazy about â Kopi Luwak
2D tools are just great +1 to that. Now all we need is that new GUI / NGUI, I really hoped it would be shipped with 4.3 but oh well, we waited 3 (4?) years we can wait a few more months I guess.
Well, the more I learn Unity the more I have the same opinion. Briefly, if Iâm asked âhow to make gamesâ I will say âlearn Unityâ. If Iâm asked âhow NOT to write programmsâ I will say âlearn Unityâ. Yes, Unity tutorials are terrible from the point of programming style, principles etc. Itâs a very veeery bad style. It seems Unity team doesnât know anything about object oriented programming. I would prefer to organize my code in absolutely another way, but Unity tutorials use different GetComponent, Instantiate and similar methods.
Iâm still investigating this Alien sample. Itâs too complex, really too complex. Itâs some kind of mess, I would say. Some time ago I was advised to set orthographic camera size to Screen.height / 2. But this sample has it equal to 11. I was advised to set objectsâ scale to their size / 10 (texture size, I mean). But this sample has them equal to 1. And now all the objects in my test scene are just points which move with very high speed :))) Also the new Sprite objects have a parameter âPixels to Unitsâ which is 100 by default. But in the Alien sample they are different for different objects. I think itâs bad - if you make your game, then make all the objects in the same style!
Today I found this tutorial. Maybe itâs a bit better.
Anyway, I still think Unity is a great tool. But it provides us a really bad programming style. Itâs possible to organize everything like we want, but itâs difficult in this situation.
The 2D engine is fantastic and is probably first choice for a game like The Other Brothers going forward. It contains everything you need to make a decent 2D game.
If you want tilemaps or other features, check out 2D Toolkit as well, they both work well together.
No, it seems you didnât understand what I mean. I donât want any other tools like 2d toolkit or so. I have investigated the new 2d feature a bit and I like the way it works with sprites. Itâs very easy to make an animation, a sprite sheet now. But programming is still the weak part of Unity - thatâs what I mean.
Is that the sound of an artist blaming his tools?
I think the guys behind the 2D stuff will be the first to say itâs a work in progress - thankfully itâs a lot less complex than the Mecanim stuff so that (should!) mean weâll get to see more features rolling up in the near-term. Yes, my glass is half full today.