Unity announces two new versions and a certification program

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Unity made some exciting announcements for developers at the Game Developer's Conference Tuesday morning.A full public beta of Unity 5.4 is now available alongside the latest stable release 5.3.4. In addition to these two new versions, Unity Technologies is launching a new certification program, which allows you to become a certified Unity developer on your journey towards making games.

According to the announcement, the beta for Unity 5.4 is being made available to everyone "in order to get more feedback on real life use before we push anything to final." The beta features "enhanced visuals, better performance, tighter Unity IAP integration and a major VR rendering upgrade." It also has new sizing control for particles, a new trigger module which allows you to modify particle properties inside a list of colliders, and large particle systems are now able to be lit more realistically using Light Probe Proxy Volumes.

You can download the Unity 5.4 beta from this link. Meanwhile, the stable release of 5.3.4 adds a number of improvements and fixes and can be downloaded here.

Unity Certified Developer Courseware is an online training program that combines tutorial videos with hands-on exercises to prepare you for the developer exam. These exams are happening in various locations around the world, and cost $250. If you're at GDC this week, you'll get a discounted price of $125. It's pricey, but getting certified could make you stand out to potential employers.

There's also a new program entering closed beta called Unity Collaborate, which is a way for small teams to save, share, and sync their Unity project in the cloud. Sign-ups are now available if you're interested.