Full credit goes to Takuan Daikon (of DFGUI), but we happen to share a mailing list, and this is worth spreading.
Throw this script in an Editor folder in your project, and anytime you save and switch back to Unity, it’ll automatically stop playing.
We’ve been slowly working towards a build pipeline. The code below expects that you have your project organized in a specific way.
With this build pipeline setup, you’ll get:
Note: Someone pointed out on Reddit that this is Pro-only. (I’ve always been a Pro-user, so I wasn’t keen to look out for those things. I’ll try to do that more in the future.)
Import ZapdotBuildTools.unitypackage to get started.
For most of this to work, my scripts expect the folder hierarchy to mimic what is described here. (Mainly that BuildTools and Unity exist in the same folder.)
If you’re going to be putting builds of a game in development into the hands of testers frequently, keeping track of what build they’re playing with can be crucial to tracking down bugs. For the most part, you might be able to tell a build by a major new feature or other visual change. As those builds become more frequent though, especially between strictly bugfix builds, you’re going to have a much harder time determining what build the user has without explicit definition somewhere.
What you could do is simply throw a static string in some class, and update it every time you kick a new build out. You could also stick your hand on a hot oven. Neither of those options sound very fun to me, though.
I create a static class that I call AppInfo. In this class I have a bunch of strings and ints that don’t change very often, if ever:
With this, I can easily create build scripts or UIs that use this information. The most important string that I’ve got in this class is AppInfo.fullVersion, which includes the major version, minor version, build date, and build count.
The build date is formatted YYMMDD (for sorting purposes) and the build count is simply an incremented integer to differentiate multiple builds on the same date.
I want the data to be easily available to both the editor and the built project. I’d also prefer that the user cannot easily access the data of this file to edit it and potentially introduce confusion with bug submission. To accomplish this, I store the data in a comma-separated format within the Resources directory.
Throw AppInfo.cs in Scripts/ProjectSpecific/AppInfo.cs
Whenever you need to increment the stored build number, call the following function (editor only):
AppInfo.IncrementBuildNumber();
Whenever you want to print or display the full version, simply print or display this string:
AppInfo.fullVersion
What do you get, when you do a game jam, in one* hour, with thirteen people?
An hell of a time, for one.
We spent a Frunch at the Collective pulling together a game. Everyone had something to do — art, audio, PR, programming, design… and we not only ended up with a game for you to enjoy, we ended up with a documentary too.
Give it a shot with a friend, or read the press kit.
* I was the only one in Unity, so I actually spent about 2.5-3 hours on the game, integrating the assets, and getting gameplay in. Next time we need a tech artist. :)
This past July, I was one of the organizers for the Boston-area MolyJam. This year, the prompt was from a selection of quotes from Peter Molyneux himself.
I was worried I might be pulled off due to duties that organizing the event might entail, so I decided to whip something up on my own.
I’m not punishing you for button mashing; I’m rewarding you for not button mashing, and that is a really big distinction.
I took some heavy inspiration from the humor that QWOP evokes from making movement difficult. Multiplayer games like WrestleJump are very easy to pick up, and a blast to play. What if there was a Western-style duel game, where you had really floppy arms?
After a short amount of time, I had some joint constraints working:
Thanks to the magic of the Unity Asset Store, I quickly whipped together a scene:
After a little bit of work on the joints, it was simply too easy to get the player to manipulate the shoulder/elbow joints. I decided to switch gameplay to be a bit more based on timing.
After a weekend of work, I ended up with a finished game. I don’t think I’ll pursue the idea much further — through this little experiment it became pretty obvious that much of the challenge and enjoyment of QWOP and Wrestle Jump come from balancing against gravity.
I spent a few hours this weekend fixing up a build script to drop into some prototypes that I’m working on. Much of the work originates from the lessons I’ve learned shipping multiple Unity titles to various storefronts. I started writing a post to describe it all, but it had so many various dependencies that it made a bit more sense to break it up and go a bit more in-depth when needed.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at how I’ve crafted this build script. If it goes well, I may continue the series with more “Best Practices” that I’ve picked up over the past few years.
Cooking is a pretty big hobby of mine. In the same ways that drive my infatuation with games — I’ve had some incredible experiences with some incredible meals, and I couldn’t simply leave them to hand-wavy magic. There was talent and knowledge behind the preparation of the food I was eating, so I set out to learn what it took to make a good meal or three.
One of the first cooking lessons that you should learn is a simple concept called “mise en place”. It’s French for “put in place”, and it refers to the constant organization of your kitchen. Time is incredibly valuable, especially in a professional kitchen, so efficiency must be at it’s highest point wherever possible. Keep your knives, measuring utensils, spices, and cookware in the exact same location, and preparation becomes quicker, allowing the chef to put their time and effort into the creation of their dish, not the assembly.
This applies to game development too. Spend the majority of your time on your craft. Don’t waste your time looking for the damned cinnamon.
Here’s how I currently set up my projects. Certain things get moved around and changed as I find slightly better ways to consider the organization, but after a few projects, I’ve arrived at this.
From here, I add everything except the “Builds” folder to version control, and I’m on my way. Since the BuildTools will be included, and I can find all the included tools via relative paths, *any* computer that syncs to version control will be able to run the build on their machine.
My “Scripts” folder gets broken up a bit more, but that’s a bit dependent on the project . For instance, with Ugly Baby, level generation and PCG were very important, so there was a “Level” folder with a dozen or so scripts related to that.
The “External” folder is generally where I put all the plugins and assets I grab from the Asset Store, GitHub, and the ilk. If there is some unmanaged code that I’m compiling on my own to include as a plugin, I’ll put the source in a folder of its own at the same depth of the Unity and Build_____ folders.
“Builds” and “BuildIncludes” follow the exact same folder structure. (StoreName/BuildTarget) This is important, but I’ll get to it in a later post.
I still haven’t found a perfect solution for my “Art” folder. I’ve previously separated things into Models, Prefabs, and Textures, but that doesn’t work well when you have many assets for a 2D game. With the new 2D system from Unity in beta right now, I imagine that might change how I deal with sprites going forward.