[img=http://gangbeasts.com/posts/gb_montage.jpg] It has taken several months and a significant amount of work to finish porting Gang Beasts to Unity 5 with PhysX 3.3 but we are now in a position to announce 31st March as the release date for the public build of the Unity 5 version of Gang Beasts (for reference the build number will be 0.2.0). The 0.2.0 build has fully rebuilt character animation (see 1,2,3 and 4 for some short video examples), game audio, and game management systems with a number of Unity 5 specific implementations including Global Illumination, Physically Based Shading, procedural Audio Mixing, multithreaded physics simulations, High Dynamic Range Skyboxes and Reflection Probes. The 0.2.0 build also replaces the current game input framework with the Rewired framework (an advanced input system for Unity) with improved support for keyboard and game controllers (see the Supported Controller page for a platform specific list of currently supported controllers). We will make additional posts with more specific information about the new game modes, stages, character moves, and other improvements coming in the 0.2.0 build before the March 31st release date. The summary of key improvements coming in 0.2.0 build are:

• a rebuilt character animation system (with significantly optimised performance and stability)
• a new procedural game audio playback system (with 6 reworked music tracks from Doseone and Robert Larder)
• a series of new voice and effect samples (for leg, thigh, hip, crotch, waist, stomach, chest, upper arm, forearm, fist, and head collisions)
• a rebuit GUI (Graphical User Interface) using Unity's new UI system
• numerous rebuilt stages (made from modular environment assets)
• a waves mode with AI enemies (and an associated Rooftop stage)
• improved enemy AI (AI characters can differentiate between enemies and non-enemies, AI enemies are less aggressive)
• an exposed debbuging mode (for identifying issues with game environments, objects, and characters)
• a prototype Day to Night cycle
• a prototype single and co-op enemy waves game mode
• a prototype competitive obstacle race stage
• a prototype object destruction mode (with associated garage workshop stage)