We needed someone special to model our first anniversary at the london unity user group…we picked up some one off the streets…
Russ Morris on Metal Gear Solid 3 and Half Life 2:
(audio player in full post)
(Source: gameswehaveknownandloved)
blew.my.mind.
You can see the video here…. LUUG 9 Video
LUUG 10 has also been announced! More details here!
Continuing on from the initial ‘Highlights from LUUG…’ post last month, here’s the latest version!
It’s difficult to write a highlights package for an event you presented at without making out that you’re bragging, but luckily there was lots of other stuff to talk about, including our most successful ‘open mic’ session to date, which is something that we are looking to build on for the future. I’ll try and give as much detail for those that talked, so for those of you that were present, it gives you a chance to follow up on any ideas that you had about the things that were discussed.
I’m going to start with discussing the open-mic slots… so here’s what happend with those.
Open Mic sessions
We had our most successful open mic sessions since we began to introduce them, clocking up about 30 minutes of showcasing and general chat about what people were planning on doing.
Bertrand Nouvel showed off the upcoming ‘True Type Text For Unity’ package, which is likely to be available on the Asset Store very soon! You can find out more about it through the website.
Rob Stringer opened up discussion about his ideas of rewarding those that want to contribute to his Galaxy Seed project based on their contributions. The idea is that people will be rewarded credits, the amount of which depends on the work contributed. If the game makes a profit, they are rewarded their share of the profit based on the number of credits that they hold.
You can find out more about Galaxy Seed by either looking at the previous ‘Highlights Of LUUG…’ post, or by contacting Rob directly via email (rob dot stringer at parabolicgames dot com)
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We were also treated to some musical compositions from Ben Macdougall. Ben has worked on several commercial projects, and is interested in working in video games in the future. The demonstration he showed offered a great insight into the diversity of Ben’s skills, and I have no doubt that he’d be able to contribute something to whoever is looking for a composer. You can contact Ben via email at benmacdougall AT gmail DOT com , and you can check out his portfolio HERE.
CineStar 3-Axis with original music by Ben MacDougall from tabb firchau on Vimeo.
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I decided it was time for me to step up and provide a talk this month, and I tried to deliver something that focussed on those areas that aren’t discussed too often. Namely, xCode provisioning profiles, iOS distribution through TestFlight and internal profiling using xCode.
I tried to make everything I talked about in context with the development of Spring Break Hero, a game I had been working on PLA Studios over the last few months.
I’ll outline each section here briefly, but I’m hoping to document some of the sections in a bit more detail, particularly the TestFlight stuff…
Spring Break Hero for iOS.
I went over porting the original Super Spring Break Speedboat Hero SD Beta, a web game that we developed, and decided to port over to iOS. The talk focussed on how, even under the challenges of porting a project that wasn’t entirely optimised for Unity, we were still able to get a build of the game running just over 2 days.
The main area that held up the porting of the game to iOS was related to the way in which the game was coded. More specifically, a lot of the code I had written, which was in JavaScript, was dynamically typed. When compiling for iOS this causes problems. The main problem is that it just wont work, which is kind of important.
After working out the differences between dynamically typed and statically typed variables, and using the life-saving #pragma strict, I went ahead and started statically typing all those problem areas.
When it comes to Unity developers, like myself, who have come from a design background and have learnt to programme and code through Unity, you might not understand the more ‘technical’/’proper programming’ things, so this is one area that you might have an issue. I know I certainly did.
Xcode Provisioning.
This is a huge area that people really struggle with. Even the most seasoned veteran can have issues when it comes to setting up certificates, provisioning profiles, and the different between development and distribution profiles, so I tried to focus on the 3 steps you need to take, and the importance of doing these in exactly the right order.
The most important thing you need to be able to do is get everything done in the correct order.
The main three steps involve creating a certificate request form on your machine through Keychain. You then use that request form to create a certificate in the provisioning portal, which is then used as the certificate for your provisioning profile. Doing any of these in the wrong order just messes things up. It sounds obvious, but when you’re in the web of provisioning profiles, it can really mess you about.
Xcode internal profiling.
Getting your game running on an iOS device is one thing, but really understanding how it is running is another. There are two main things that you can do here; one gives you information about how the device is dealing with your game, the other looks at how your game is dealing with the device.
The first thing to look at is Activity Monitor, which can be access in Xcode after you’ve built your game. Using the toolbar, you can use Product > Profile, which will build your game and open up a window, in which you can select various tools to profile your game.
For the most part you can get away with using Activity Monitor. This will allow you to take a look at memory usage, CPU usage, and system loads. It visualises areas of high memory usage, which is useful. For a general look at how the device is dealing with your game, it’s useful.
The other side of things, is the internal profiling, which can be enabled inside of Xcode.
You will need to ‘ENABLE_INTERNAL_PROFILER’ inside the iPhone_Profiler.h class in xCode. It will then send out detailed information to the debug window.
You can see detailed information on how your game is performing, which is the main key difference to something like activity monitor, which allows you to see how the device is dealing with your game.
Getting the stats for how much time is being taken with rendering, physics, or even checking if the CPU is waiting for the GPU to finish. It’s incredibly useful when looking at improving performance, and the general areas that your game might be causing issues.
Test Flight distribution.
The third key issue with iOS development, is how to get around distribution and testing.
Simply the best way to deal with this is to use TestFlight.
TestFlight is free, and offers over-the-air distribution of the games you are making. It handles most of the fiddly stuff, mainly the UDID retrieval from the user’s device, meaning that all people really need to know how to do is respond to an email.
Once you have the UDIDs, you are free to create distribution lists, so you can supply specific builds to specific users. For example, you can have a list purely for clients, so you can make sure they get access to the games that are nearing completion/ specific milestone builds, and you can send the builds that might not be considered ‘reliable’ to your dedicated test team.
Emails are sent to users on lists when new builds are uploaded, and as the developer, you can check to see what builds users installed last, or whether they’ve bothered to open the email.
Installation is handled automatically, with users just needing to click an icon of the games they have access too, and they will be on the device, ready to play. I’d love to know how this actually works…but for now I’ll just assume it’s magic.
As previously mentioned, I’m aiming to write some detailed documentation on how to get this running with very little fuss…
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So that was about it for LUUG9! Thank you all for coming. Incredibly excited for the next one, and I’m VERY excited for the quickly approaching 1 year anniversary!
See you soon.
The last 12 months have been excellent. I was lucky enough to be asked to join the wonderfully talented guys at PLA Studios, who offered me an opportunity to not only develop games, but have a massive say in what those games were. I got to continue teaching at South Bank university, building on from the work and fun that I had with the second year group that I taught the year before.
Most of the students had decided to use Unity as their engine of choice for their third year project, having used it in our 3D Level Design module. Being involved in the first major individual project for most of the students is a special experience, and I hope that I’ve been of some help to them along the way, not only with the Unity side of things, but also in terms of bashing out design theory, documentation and general professional practice.I’m really looking forward to the end of year show, I’ll be very proud of them all.
The last 12 months have also seen the conception and growth of the London Unity User Group (LUUG), which I co-organise with Jasper Stocker.We’ve had very pleasing attendance figures, and we’ve been lucky enough to secure inspiring Unity developers to not only show off their amazing projects, but discuss their own personal experiences using Unity. It’s a real community feeling, and there’s often a few sore heads the morning after.
All of this has played a pivotal role in allowing me the opportunity to join a company, and more importantly, the individuals who have provided me with a platform that I’ve tried so hard to launch my career from.
Unity was a catalyst to allowing a self-proclaimed game designer the opportunity to learn the intricacies of game development in a manner that was accessible and intuitive. I had a blast during the first few weeks of developing Starlings, and that kept me learning new things every day.
I’m going to be joining Unity Technologies as a Product Evangelist, so essentially my job will be to grow and communicate with the community, and with such an amazing community, and one that has played a huge part in allowing me to be in this situation, how could I not be excited?
As I write this I’m on the plane over to GDC, gearing up for my first week of work, and my first experience of the USA.
I’m incredibly excited.
See you soon.
Colossal dumb Valentine
The next LUUG event is coming up on the 29th February, and it features the one and only..me!
More details can be found on the meetup page, but the general overview is below.
We’re still looking to book another speaker, so get in touch…
Another month, another LUUG! Back in the same lecture room I think. Same set-up as usual.
We have an open slot at the start of the night if you’re interested. Contact us about anything to want to talk about, show off, etc! Also -we have our usual open mic - so if you have something smaller to speak about - by all means!
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Russ Morris – Creating ‘Springbreak Hero’ for iOS
A few months ago, we got to see ‘Super Spring Break Speed Boat Hero SD’, an asynchronous multiplier game for web browsers, created by PLA Studios. This month sees the return of the game, with a streamlined name and running on iOS devices.
Russ will give an overview of the game itself, focusing on the experience of taking an existing game and porting to iOS, as well as discussing the important design decisions that were made to make the most of the iOS hardware.
Whilst Unity makes it an almost identical process whether your creating a game for iOS or desktop, there are areas in which you need to plan your development. Following an overview of the game, Russ will focus on the areas of developing for iOS that provided the biggest challenge, and how to get around them. These include :
The challenges of creating a universal game for iOS devices (iPad, iPad2, iPhone 4 and iPhone3GS).
The minefield of xCode provisioning profiles & ad-hoc distribution.
Making the most of TestFlight for testing and distribution.
Using xCode to profile and help with memory management.
What better way to see out January than to reconnect with the Unity community.
It was our eighth London Unity User Group last Wednesday (at the time of writing!), and whilst I can’t speak for Jasper, I’m sure he’ll agree that we didn’t think that LUUG would be the success it has been so quickly. From the very first meeting we’ve seen a steady increase in attendance, with the regulars that sometimes can’t make it having their seats filled with new attendees.
The biggest news over the last month has been the release of the developer preview for Unity 3.5, which includes our first look at the Flash exporter. The clever folks at Unity HQ decided that the best way to get us testing this new feature was to make a competition out of it. Over the Holiday period. Excellent.
So, we took time out from our time out with the families and leftover turkey to create something for ‘Flash in a Flash’, which is what we made the main topic for this months LUUG.
We sent out the call to invite those who had entered the competition to show their projects and offer their experiences, and the call was bravely met by LUUG regulars Cat Burton, Mike Renwick and QuickFingers.
Cat Burton - Find Heidi.
Cat did an excellent job of explaining the iterative nature of game development and design. Sometimes the initial ideas, whilst on paper might seem the best way of marrying form and content whilst taking into account strict time constraints, can sometimes come crashing into the brick wall of logical gaming sense. A hamster in a ball is a great way to get around the need for any complex animations, until the player needs to jump that is.
A quick redesign and a favour from a friend later and Cat was well on the way to creating a cute game of love, cats and mice.
We also got a nice insight into the importance of testing and user feedback during the early stages of game development, which might be one of the most important messages delivered on the night.
You can read an in-depth blog post into developing ‘Find Heidi’ as well as links to playable builds HERE.
Follow Cat on twitter here.
Mike Renwick - Spitfire.
Mike took a different approach to working with Flash, mainly by ripping apart an older project and shoe horning it through the Flash exporter, piece by piece. It might not have been a complete success, but what we saw of Spitfire looked very interesting. A comic book inspired player feedback system, supported by controls that look tight and fun. The real shame here is if Mike never goes back and finishes it off, because I for one would love to have a go!
Follow Mike on twitter here.
QuickFingers - Covert.
Born out of a love for Deus Ex key code systems and reading mundane emails for subtle clues, Covert is a remarkable piece of work for such a short development period, which isn’t surprising really, coming from QuickFingers.
Play Covert Here.
Follow QuickFingers on twitter here.
QuickFingers homepage.
Jasper Stocker - Hot Wheels
Jasper discussed how the Hot Wheels game was built, the lessons learnt and how much fun it was making it. Covering the basics of implementing analglyphic 3D in Unity and using Flash with Unity to allow the game to use AR binary markers to steer the car.
Many of the challenges facing the project involved allowing it to be fun while easy enough for a kid to play it with the AR marker. He covered the physics, setup and tricks he used in implementing a loop the loop, jump and wrecking ball. Along with useful tips on building racing games in Unity, putting experience before simulation.
You can follow Japser on Twitter here.
You can play the Hot Wheels game here..
Open Mic Sessions
We also had a couple of ‘open mic’ presentations from members of the group. One in particular was Rob Stringer’s ambitious ‘Moon-em-up’, ‘Galaxy Seed’. I’d promised I would update you all with the details for Rob, and he wanted to extend his thanks, as well as offering contact information…so I’ve pasted it below.
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I want to say thanks for the positive and honest feedback that many of you gave after LUUG, I really appreciate it. Here are a couple of links for a more cohesive idea of what Galaxy Seed is and the game’s story:
http://www.parabolicgames.com/content/faq-about-galaxy-seed
http://www.parabolicgames.com/content/background
You can also play the current version in it’s glorious (but ugly, buggy and short) form here:
Windows - http://bit.ly/x4pGAo
Mac - http://bit.ly/wwqJmI
If you want to help in the production of the game, or just have some questions about it, feel free to get in touch rob.stringer@parabolicgames.com.
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Since the event, and the original writing of this blog post, Unity have announced the winner and runners-up of the Flash In A Flash Competition. Huge congratulations to Cameron Owen, who’s ‘Tail Drift’ claimed first prize. Our very own ‘quickfingers’ was amongst the runner-up awards, with Covert, which you can play by following the link further up in this post.
You can see ‘Tail Drift’ and all the runner-up games by clicking here.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
The Word of Notch: Coding skill and the decline of stagnation -
I am a decent programmer. I know a decent amount of computer science theory, I can type correct code fairly easy. I don’t let my classes expand too much. But I still struggle some with math, and I have a tendency to have too many cross-dependencies in my code.
I used to think I was an awesome…
Purplelilgirl Makes Games: Unity 3D Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide: Game #2 -
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post on #AltDevBlogADay reviewing a Unity3D book written by Ryan Henson Creighton, Unity 3D Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide (buy the book, it’s pretty good, so far), but I only gotten around to Chapter 4.
So for this blog…
[video]
I’m incredibly lucky.*
It seems that whatever I’m doing, it’s something that I love.
Over the christmas holidays I went to visit the various branches of various families, most of which don’t have a clue what it is I do. Among one of these families is a 13 year old boy that is pretty much a replica of myself at that age. Whilst we spent a good few hours over that time playing Skyrim, Halo and Call Of Duty (age restriction issues are for a different day), the most fun was had showing him what I do, as it’s something that he’s very interested in. He’s asked a few times about doing work experience at a game development studio, so I figured I might as well just show him what I do now, rather than waiting a couple of years. We downloaded the version of Unity and spent a few hours messing around.
Now, I’ve taught Unity to a fair few students over the last couple of years, all with varying degrees of competency of 3d modelling, game design and game development, but never a 13 year old with no experience of game development, the intricacies of game design and not a GCSE to his name (not really his fault, he is 13).
The amazing thing was that the process of teaching a 13 year old and a final year game design degree student was no different. The straight forward nature of creating content in Unity is self explanatory, you just point the users in the right direction and let them do the rest. After the initial explanation of how Unity combines game objects and components together, the main thing we focussed on was where to find the cool stuff, and how it can be used to make games.
There’s a big different between how to DO the cool stuff and where to FIND the cool stuff, but even with the basic packages that come with Unity, it really is a case of where to find it.
The most important observation I made though is that within about 30 minutes of explaining Unity’s UI, game object and component based systems, I was already talking about how things are done within the game industry. I was talking about the little tips and tricks to speed up development, rather than how to get the software working. We were playing with physics and coming up with ideas of games through playing with the software, rather than battling through it’s labyrinthine network of menus and stacks to do something, to do anything.
After an hour we were walking through hurriedly painted mountains and pushing down walls of blocks with giant bowling balls. Two hours later we were back fighting ice trolls on Skyrim, but at least he can go back to school in a few days and say that he made a *game* over the holidays, as well as playing the shit out of them!
Happy New Year.
Unity Present image created by Mike Renwick
*luck really does come down to hard work and putting yourself in the right positions though.
[video]
Skyrim is wonderful. It’s alive.
Wherever you go there is something going on. The characters you meet have stories, thoughts, desires. They have lives.
The more you talk to people, the more you have in common with them. You’ll do anything for them, as long as you get an XP boost in return.
However, once you finish the task that you’ve been asked to complete, they don’t want to know you. They’ll revert to the stock lines and VOs that come out of the mouths of any other Skyrim inhabitant, the same things the unimportant people say… the ones you can’t click on.
Soon you’ll have cleared out a small village. Then Whiterun. Then Winterhold. The people that once greeted you with open arms simply pass by and tell you the origin of their surname. Just like everybody else.
You’re sucking the life out of Skyrim. You monster.
Last Thursday was the 7th London Unity User Group.
Each month the attendance is increasing, and we’re getting new members signing up to the meetup page on a daily basis.
The success of the event so far has been purely down to the fact that there are so many talented people that can potentially talk at these events. There is a also a broad range of topics that can be covered. It allows us to provide you with a varying degree of talks and complexity.
All credit for the latest event needs to go to Jasper, he pretty much organised the whole thing.
Whilst we had the highly anticipated Unity 3.5 preview from Will and Chris from Unity Technologies, we were also treated to fun and informative talk from Iestyn Lloyd.
I first met Iestyn at one of the first meetups for the previous Unity group, organised by Tim Whitlock, about 18 months ago. I liked his style, it was a no-fuss approach to development, built on his former experience in game development, but without the air of snobbery which can sometimes come from experienced developers looking at new technology.
His talk, “Why I’m not even slightly worried about this whole Flash thing”, was a show and tell into some of his previous work, as well as a peek into future projects. The most intriguing of which was based around Gyroscopic Camera controls with Unity iOS.
He showed a few prototypes using the tech, and his honesty when answering the question of how it was put together was refreshing. “I got it from the Unity forum, someone had already done it. If you want it, I can send you the link”.
No lengthy explanation on the intricacies of effectively moving the camera based on the gyroscope data, just the facts. Even one of the prototypes used to the Unity FPS Tutorial environment.
I did a little google search…and here’s the link to that forum post.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/98828-sharing-gyroscope-controlled-camera-on-iPhone-4
Thanks to the original poster for this! All credit goes to them!
I then played around with it for about 15 minutes, and these are the results…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzPlu_QxeBQ
(The environment is just a bunch of assets I took from our Super Springbreak Speedboat Hero SD project at PLA Studios.)
It’s incredibly easy to set up. You pretty much just drag and drop the script onto your camera.
I did some extra work with the FPS character controller and iOS Joystick script to allow walking with onscreen controls and direction dictated by camera movement, which can be provided upon request.
Hope you have fun with it.
