Time to Move

So now that we have all of our seaweed, it’s time to start moving through them.

If you remember from before, we’re not actually going to move our fish.

Instead, we’ll move the seaweed past our fish.

Let’s create a new script named “MoveLeft”

Here’s our starting MoveLeft file.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class MoveLeft : MonoBehaviour {

  // Use this for initialization
  void Start () {

  }

  // Update is called once per frame
  void Update () {

  }
}

For our “MoveLeft” script, we don’t need anything in the Start method, so delete that now.

In our Update method, we want the object the script is on to move to the left, so add the following line of code.

transform.Translate(Vector3.left * Time.deltaTime);

The transform here is the transform you see in the inspector with the position, rotation, and scale.

Translate just moves the transform’s position in the direction and magnitude of the Vector3 we pass in.

What we’re passing in is Vector3.left multiplied by the amount of time that has passed since the last frame.

If you remember, our game will run somewhere between 30 and 90 frames per second.  Because the frame rate is variable, we want to use the amount of time passed since the last update.  This makes it so our seaweed move the same speed regardless how fast our device can run the game.

The final script should look like this

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class MoveLeft : MonoBehaviour {

  // Update is called once per frame
  void Update () {
    transform.Translate(Vector3.left * Time.deltaTime);
  }
}

….

Time.deltaTime is the amount of time passed since the call to Update().  This number is generally really small around 0.0166.  It’s calculated in Unity3D by dividing 1 by your framerate.  (1/60 = 0.0166)

Now go back to the Editor and select the “seaweed parent” in our Project View.

With the “seaweed parent” Prefab selected, look to the Inspector. (the one in the Project view is the Prefab)

Add the “MoveLeft” script to our “seaweed parent”.

Now try playing again.

If your seaweed isn’t moving, go to your code editor and make sure you saved your changes to the “MoveLeft” script.

If all went well, you should see your seaweed all moving to the left and your fish appears to be swimming forward.

Why Prefabs are Great

Once you’re done playing, I want you to select one of the seaweed’s in your Hierarchy (it doesn’t matter which one)

Notice that the “MoveLeft” script was added to it.

This is where the power of Prefabs comes into play.

Any change you make to the Prefab will be automatically applied to placed instances of that Prefab.  (this applies in all of your scenes when you have multiple)

If you take a closer look at the Transform, you’ll notice the Position & Rotation are bold.

Properties that are bold are not using the values from the Prefab.  If you modify a property of a GameObject in the Hierarcy View, it will become bold and no-longer take changes from it’s Prefab.

Speed things up

Right now, our seaweed is moving pretty slow.  Let’s modify the “MoveLeft” script to make the seaweed speed adjustable.

Edit your “MoveLeft” script to match this

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class MoveLeft : MonoBehaviour {

  [SerializeField]
  private float _speed = 5f;

  // Update is called once per frame
  void Update () {
     transform.Translate(Vector3.left * Time.deltaTime * _speed);
  }

}

Here you can see we’ve introduced a variable with the [SerializeField] attribute on it just like we did previously with the fish.

We then multiply our translation by that new “_speed” variable.

We set the default for _speed to 5f, so it should move 5 times faster than before.

Try playing again.

 

For me, 5 seems a bit too fast.  Because we used [SerlaizeField], we can adjust this speed directly in the editor.

Select the Prefab for our seaweed and adjust the speed until you find a # that feels right.

The final speed I used is 2.5

If you accidentally did your editing on an instance of the seaweed from the Hierarchy instead of the Prefab in the Project view, no problem!

You can actually apply your changes from a placed instance to it’s Prefab (and all other instances) by simply clicking the “Apply” button at the top of the inspector.

Let’s play some more

Give the game another try and see if you can get through all the seaweed.

They’re Gone!

If you’re any good at this game, you noticed all the seaweed disappeared to the left.

You may be wondering if you should add more seaweed to make the level bigger, or if you should move the fish, or maybe the seaweed?

If you weren’t, start wondering now and see what ideas you come up with.

…

…

While there are many different ways you could accomplish making this game go on longer, the easiest and best is to just move the seaweed once it goes out of view.

To do this, we need to go back to our “MoveLeft” script.

Change your script to match this

 

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class MoveLeft : MonoBehaviour {

  [SerializeField]
  private float _speed = 5f;

  // Update is called once per frame
  void Update ()
  {
    transform.Translate(Vector3.left * Time.deltaTime * _speed);
    if (transform.position.x < -15)
    {
      transform.position = new Vector3(15, 0, 0);
    }
  }
}

Let’s focus on the new lines of code. Lines 13-16
First, we look at the X value of the transforms position.
If that X value is less than -15, we execute the code inside the brackets { }
The code in the brackets is setting the position of the seaweeds transform.
The value we’re setting it to is 15 for the X and 0 for Y & Z. [15, 0, 0]

So all we’re really doing here is checking if a seaweed moved far enough to the left. (negative X values are left of our fish who’s at 0)

If the seaweed is far enough over at -15 or further, we move it back to the right, but far enough off the right side that our players won’t see it on their screen.

 

 

Save the script and play again.

I’ve split my Scene & Game views again here.  I recommend you do the same to get a good idea of what’s going on.

 

Next – Randomization & Ground – We’ll add some randomization, some ground, and a couple props.

Prefabs – Moving with Parents

If you’ve followed along so far, you have a pretty fun game.  You can fall down and die, or keep hitting space to stay alive.

While I’m sure that will lead to hours of fun, let’s try making it a bit more difficult.

Adding the Top

The first thing we need to do is add a top seaweed.

To do this, we’ll duplicate the bottom one, then move it, and flip it over.

Select the seaweed in the Hierarchy

Right Click and select Duplicate  (the hotkey for this is ctrl-d or cmd-d)

 

The duplicate should be selected automatically and be named seaweed (1) since it’s the first duplicate.

 

Set the rotation Z axis of the new seaweed to 180.

Set the position Y value to positive 6.

Your Game View should look like this

Go ahead and hit play.  Try to balance between the 2 seaweeds without dying.

Clean Up

Let’s do a little cleaning of our game object names.

Rename the bottom seaweed from “seaweed” to “seaweed bottom”

If you don’t remember how to rename, select the seaweed in the Hierarchy and hit F2.  Alternatively you can rename it in the Inspector by typing where the name is.

Next, rename the top seaweed from “seaweed (1)” to “seaweed top”.

While the names of these game objects doesn’t technically matter, it’s useful for us to have good names for our objects.  It makes them easier for us to find and differentiate later in our development.

Empty Game Objects & Parenting

Now, we’re going to create a Game Object that has nothing other than a transform.

To do this, select GameObject->Create Empty from the menu.

You should see a newly created Game Object in your Hierarchy with the name “GameObject”

Let’s rename this right away to “seaweed parent”

Now set the X, Y, & Z values of the position to 0.  If the were already 0 for you don’t worry about it

Becoming Children

Next, we’re going to make our seaweed bottom & seaweed top into children of seaweed parent.

To do this, just drag them one at a time in the Hierarchy view onto the seaweed parent.

Now that the top and bottom are children of the parent, changes to the parent will affect them.

If you move the seaweed parent around, you’ll see the children move along with it, but always stay the same relative to each other.

If you haven’t done it already, go over to the Scene View now and try moving around the seaweed parent.

Select the move tool

Move it around

 

Now let’s reset the position to 0, 0, 0

Prefabs

A Prefab is a GameObject that exists in your Project, not only in a Scene.

Think of them like a blueprint or design of a GameObject that you want to re-use multiple times.

Since we want to create a Prefab now, let’s first make a folder to hold our Prefabs.

Right click and Hit Create->Folder

To create a prefab, you can drag a GameObject from the Hierarchy to a folder in the Project View.

You’ll notice the “seaweed parent” turned blue.

A blue GameObject is using a Prefab.  (if you see a red GameObject, that means it’s using a Prefab but the Prefab is broken or missing)

Duplication

Now we need to add a few more seaweeds to our scene.

To do this, select the “seaweed parent”, right-click, and select Duplicate.

You should see a GameObject named “seaweed parent (1)”

Look to the Inspector and set the X value of position for “seaweed parent (1)” to 5.

You should now be able to see your second seaweed, it’s just moved a little to the right. (5 units to be exact)

Now, let’s recombine our Scene and Game views back into tabs so we can get a bigger view of the Scene.

If you’ve dragged your Scene or Game view to a second monitor, you don’t need to do this.

Select the Scene view tab and zoom out using your mouse wheel or touch pad.

Duplicate your seaweed parent again. (or the copy of your seaweed parent, they’re both the same thing)

Set the X position of the new one to 10.  (in the inspector)

Repeat this process 4 more times.  Each time, add 5 to the X position.

The end result should look like this

 

Continue to: Part 5 – Unity3D – Moving our Fish

Unity3D – Physics & Collisions

In this part, we’ll add some seaweed and learn about the Unity3D physics system.  We’ll learn how to handle collisions in Unity3D and kill some fish.

Let’s get started

Now that we have a fish that jumps in place, let’s add something for him to jump over.  You may have noticed in the Art folder we have a sprite named “seaweed”.  Let’s place a seaweed in our scene by dragging it from the Art folder (in the Project View) over to the Scene View.

Once it’s placed, let’s adjust the position in the inspector.  We’ll set the X to 0 and the Y to -6.

Let’s Play

Before you hit play, think for a second about what you expect to happen.

• Will the fish fall through the seaweed?
• Will he hit it and die?
• Will he land on top?
• Once you’ve picked an answer, hit play and watch what actually happens.

What’s Missing?

If you guessed that the fish would fall through, great job.  If not, let me explain why it happened.  For our fish to collide with the seaweed, we need to tell the Unity3D physics engine that these GameObjects should collide.  Luckily, that’s a very simple task for us to accomplish.  What we need to do first is add a collider to our fish.  A collider is just another component and we add it just like any other component.

1. Select the Fish.
2. In the inspector, hit Add Component.
3. Find the PolygonCollider2D and add it.

Once you add the Collider, your fish should get a green outline.

Let’s think again.  If we hit play now, what will happen?  If you’re not sure, give it a try.

The fish is still falling through.  You probably already guessed, but what’s missing is a collider on the seaweed.

Let’s add one now.

The Seaweed

Select the seaweed, then add a Polygon Collider2D, just like we did with the fish earlier.

You should notice the collider on the seaweed.

Now hit play one more time.  I promise something will happen now.

If you want to see why the fish is rolling off the side, separate out your scene and game view.

To separate the views, just left click and hold the mouse button.  While you’re holding the button, drag the mouse and the panel will detach.  If you move to the right a bit, you should be able to dock them side by side.

Now hit play again and watch the fish falling along the collider of the seaweed.

 

Collision Handling

What we need to do now is handle the collision.  The physics engine in Unity3D can detect collisions or make things roll and bounce on it’s own, but what we want to do is make the player lose the game.  In Flappy Bird, if your bird touches a tube, you lose the game.  We want to do the same thing here.  To do that, we need to create a new script and attach it to our seaweed.

Create a new C# script in the Code folder.

Name it “SeaweedCollisionHandler”

Double click the “SeaweedCollisionHandler” file to open it in our editor (MonoDevelop or Visual Studio).

The file should look like this.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class SeaweedCollisionHandler : MonoBehaviour {

  // Use this for initialization
  void Start() {

  }

  // Update is called once per frame
  void Update() {

  }
}

Since we won’t be using Start & Update on the SeaweedCollisionHandler, let’s delete them and add in some collision handling code instead.

Change your file to match this.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class SeaweedCollisionHandler : MonoBehaviour {

  void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other)
  {
    Debug.Log("Entered");
  }

}

Save the file then go back to the Unity3D Editor.
Select the “seaweed” GameObject in the Heirarchy then add the “SeaweedCollisionHandler” script to it in the inspector.

Next, on the PolygonCollider2D component, check the IsTrigger checkbox.

Now hit Play and watch what happens.

Because we checked IsTrigger, the fish no-longer rolls off the seaweed.

Instead, it calls into our OnTriggerEnter code that we added to the SeaweedCollisionHandler.

And in our OnTriggerEnter code, we write a line of text to our debug console.

To view the debug console, just click the Console tab next to the Project tab.

You should see a single line of text in there that says “Entered”.

If you didn’t get that, double check that IsTrigger is checked and that the SeaweedCollisionHandler is attached to the correct GameObject (“seaweed”).

Now let’s Save our Scene

Before we save, let’s create a folder for Scenes

To create the folder, just right click and select Create->Folder

Now go to the File menu and select Save Scene As

Browse to the Scenes folder and Name our Scene “Fish“, then hit Save.

Time to Die

We really want our fish to die when he hits the seaweed (at least we do if we want our game to be like flappy bird).

Let’s go into the SeaweedCollisionHandler script and make it happen!

Edit the script to look like this:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;

public class SeaweedCollisionHandler : MonoBehaviour {

  void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other)
  {
    SceneManager.LoadScene(0);
  }

}

That’s it.  Now play the game and watch what happens.

When you hit the seaweed, your fish appears in the starting location again.

This happens because we’re reloading our level.  (level & scene are interchangable terms for the Unity engine)

The LoadLevel command will load a Scene by Name or Index.

In this instance, we’re using the Index 0.  (that just means it’s the first in the list of our scenes.  1 would be the second scene, 2 would be the third)

Application.LoadLevel(0);

Because we don’t have our project setup with a list of scenes, it’s just using our current scene.

Let’s change that now

Under the File Menu, select Build Settings…

Click the Add Current button.

You should see your scene added to the list.

Saving our Project

Up to this point, we haven’t really done anything that required us to save our project.  We’ve saved our scene and scripts, but the project itself hasn’t been saved since we created it.

Because we changed some project settings, we need to save the project to make sure those settings aren’t lost.

When you were setting up your build options, you may have already seen the Save Project button.

Go ahead and hit that now to save our new settings.

Click File, then Save Project.

A saving dialog will pop up and disappear shortly after.  If your computer is fast, you may not even notice it, but your project should be saved now.

Great work so far.  In the next part, we’ll turn this into an actual game.  We’ll add more seaweed, and start making the fish swim through them.

Continue to:  Unity3D Intro – Building Flappy Bird – Part 4 – Prefabs

Building Flappy Bird in Unity3D – Part 2 – Let’s code

Code in Unity3D can be done in either C# or Javascript.  If you don’t have a preference, I’d recommend C# for your development.  It’s much more popular in the Unity3D community.  Most samples you find will be in C# only.  For this tutorial though, I’ll provide both the C# & Javascript versions.

Moving the Fish

If you’ve played Flappy Bird before, you know the bird flys to the right of your screen past a bunch of tubes.  Or at least that’s what it looks like.  In reality, the bird is just going up and down and the tubes are moving.  So for our game, all we need the fish to do is go up when we tap the screen (or click the mouse).

First we need to create a folder for our code.  In the root of the Project view, create a new folder named Code.

In the Code folder, right click and create a new C# script.

Name the new file “Fish”

If you need to re-name a script, just select it and hit F2.

Windows Only Section (Optional)

If you’re using Windows, I want you to switch your editor to Visual Studio now.  You can use MonoDevelop (the default editor), but the benefits of using Visual Studio make me HIGHLY recommend it.

To switch to Visual Studio, select Edit->Preferences

Go to the External Tools section and set your External Script Editor to Visual Studio 2015.

 

Back to our Code (Mac & Windows)

Now, double click the newly created Fish script.

You should be presented with a code file that looks like this.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Fish : MonoBehaviour {

 // Use this for initialization
 void Start () {

 }

 // Update is called once per frame
 void Update () {

 }
}

In Unity3D, every Component on a GameObject must inherit from MonoBehavior.  If you don’t know what this means, don’t worry, you’ll pick it up.  What this means for us though is that our Fish script has some default functions we can hook into.  You can see two of these functions in your code now.

• Start – Any code in here will be called when the GameObject is created in our game.  If it was placed in the Hierarchy (like our fish will be), it’s called when the game starts.
• Update – Any code we place in here will be called once per Frame.  In a typical game, we’ll have 30-90FPS (Frames per second).  This means that the code here will get called 30-90 times per second.

InputManager

To move the fish, we’ll need to read the players Input.  Because this is such a common thing to do, there’s a very simple way to get it.

Modify your Update function to look like this.

// Update is called once per frame
 void Update () {
   bool pressedFireButton = Input.GetButtonDown("Fire1");
   if (pressedFireButton)
   {
      Rigidbody2D rigidbody = GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>();
      rigidbody.velocity = Vector3.zero;
      rigidbody.AddForce(Vector3.up * 1000);
   }
 }

Now let’s look at the code and see what it’s doing, line by line.

bool pressedFireButton = Input.GetButton("Fire1");

Here, we’re creating a new variable named pressedFireButton.
It’s type is bool – A bool variable can be either true or false.

We’re assigning it a value from our Input system by calling the GetButton method.  The GetButton method takes one parameter which is the name of the button.  We’re passing in the button name “Fire1” and the function will return True if we’ve pressed one of the inputs mapped to it.

Fire1 is a default button in Unity3D that is mapped to many things [Space, Left-Ctrl, Left Click, A button (Xbox), X button (PS), etc].

Checking Conditions

Next we have some conditional code.  This line checks to see if the result of our input check was true.  If so, the code following it in braces {  } will be executed.

if (pressedFireButton)
{
 ... everything in here will execute
}

So if we have pressed the “Fire1” button (ex. tapped space), everything inside the braces will execute.  This will only happen ONCE per press.  You must release and re-press the button for the GetButton(“Fire1”) call to return true.

Handling Physics

The first thing we do inside the braces, is get the RigidBody2D component.  This is the same component you added to the Fish earlier (when it started reacting to gravity).

Rigidbody2D rigidbody = GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>();

The properties we care about are X, Y, & Z.  These are numeric values that represent a measurement on their corresponding axis.

We assign the RigidBody2D of our fish to the variable named “rigidbody”.

The “velocity” of our rigidbody is how fast it’s moving.  It’s measured in a Vector3, which is just a simple data structure containing 3 values (and a couple calculated properties we’ll worry about later).

On the next line, we set the velocity of our rigidbody to Vector3.zero.

rigidbody.velocity = Vector3.zero;

 Vector3.zero is just a shortcut to get a Vector3 with 0 for all 3 of it’s values.

This completely stops our rigidbody.  If it was falling, going up, or in any other direction, this line of code stops it.

So setting the velocity of our rigidbody to Vector3.zero is setting the rate of movement to 0 in all directions.

Adding some Force

Next, we want to add some force and push our Fish upward.

rigidbody.AddForce(Vector3.up * 1000);

AddForce does exactly what the name says.  It takes a single parameter, which is a Vector3.  We pass in Vector3.up, which is just another shortcut to get a Vector3 pointing in the default upward direction.  But before AddForce evaluates the Vector, we multiply it by 1000, so the resulting input is a Vector3 with the values [0, 1000, 0].

You may have already skipped ahead and tried it out.  If not, get in the editor, hit play and try out our input handling.  You should be able to click space, left-ctrl, or your mouse’s left-click.  Notice how the fish STOPS, then gets force added.  If we didn’t Stop the fish, you’d have to click very fast just to keep from falling.

It’s too much!

You may have noticed that the amount of force we’re adding is too much.  Your fish is probably flying way off the top of the screen.  We have a couple ways we could address this problem.  The simplest is to just change that value of 1000 that we used earlier to something smaller.  Go ahead and try that now.  Make sure to SAVE the changed file or Unity3D won’t pick up your changes.

Another way to make these changes is to expose the multiplier we’re using in the Unity3D editor.  Specifically, we’ll exposed it on the Fish component of the Inspector.  To do this, we need to introduce a variable to our Fish class and add a special attribute to it so Unity3D knows we want to edit it.

Change your Fish.cs file to look like this.  Bold parts show the changes.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Fish : MonoBehaviour {

 [SerializeField]
 private float _upwardForceMultiplier = 100f;

 // Use this for initialization
 void Start () {

 }

 // Update is called once per frame
 void Update () {
   bool pressedFireButton = Input.GetButton("Fire1");
   if (pressedFireButton)
   {
      Rigidbody2D rigidbody = GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>();

      rigidbody.velocity = Vector3.zero;

      rigidbody.AddForce(Vector3.up * _upwardForceMultiplier);
   }
 }
}

What we’ve done here is introduce “_upwardForceMultipler”.  We’ve set the default value to 100f.  The “f” on the end just signifies it’s a floating point value.

Most positional math in Unity3D and other game engines is done with floating point numbers.

Save the changes you’ve made here, then jump back to the editor.

Select the Fish.

You should now see an extra field in the Fish component that matches our variable name.  If you don’t see the component, hit Play, then Stop.  Playing forces a compile, which makes the engine update to your most changes.

Now we don’t have to change code to modify our force.  We can simply adjust the number in here until we get a value we’re happy with.  Go ahead and try it now.  Make sure you’re NOT in PLAY mode when making the changes though.

Changes done while you’re in Play mode do not save.  There are good reasons for this that we’ll cover later, but for now, just make sure you’re not playing when you make your changes (or they’ll be lost and you’ll have to do them again).

After a little trial and error, I ended up with 200 for my multiplier.  If you have a different # that’s okay, go with something that feels right to you.  You can always adjust this value later, and now that it’s in the Inspector, you can do it easily.

Continue to: Part 3 – Unity3D Physics & Collisions

We’ll add some Seaweed, learn about Physics & Collisions, and even kill a fish.

Building Flappy Bird in Unity

Unity is a great engine, but like all game engines it has a little learning curve.  This tutorial is designed to take you through the entire process of building a 2D game in Unity that will run on the web, pc/mac, and mobile.  By the time you complete this project, you’ll understand:

• The different areas of the Unity editor
• Importing Art
• Using the Physics system
• Handling Input
• Writing a little code (even if you’ve never written code before)

Let’s get started!

Importing the Art Package

Select Assets->Import Package->Custom Package…

Browse to the Art assets package.  If you don’t have it, you can download it by clicking here.

You’ll be presented with a file list dialog.  This dialog allows you to select which files in the package you want to import.  By default, all files will be selected.

For now, click “Import”.

Next, focus your attention on the Hierarchy section of the editor.  It should be in the top left corner and contain a single GameObject named “Main Camera”

Select the Main Camera by clicking on it.

Selected GameObjects in your Hierarchy will show blue.  You can select any number of GameObjects at the same time.  For now though, we only have one available to us, so let’s look over to the other side.

On the right we have the Inspector area.  Here you can see or inspect details about your selected GameObjects.  Notice that the inspector shows 5 components because we’ve selected the default camera object Unity creates for us.   The 2 components you care about today are the Transform and the Camera.

Transform

EVERY GameObject in Unity has a Transform.  The transform controls the objects Position, Rotation, and Scale.

• Position - The location of the object in the world or relative to it's parent.

• Rotation - The direction the object is facing.

• Scale - The size of the object.

Camera

This component allows our game to render.  This is the area we want to modify now.

First, try adjusting the “Background” value and notice how the background changes in the Game View (located in the center) or the Camera Preview.

To change the background, just click on the area showing the current color in the inspector.  The default is blue.

Once you’ve found a water color you like, you need to make sure the Camera Perspective is set to Orthographic.  (It should be by default, but we need to make sure)

Project View

It’s time to put something in our game.  Look to the bottom of your editor where you’ll see the Project area.

Browse to the art folder and select the Fish

Drag the Fish to the Hierarchy.

You should see the fish in your Hierarchy and in your Scene or Game View.

You can toggle between the 2 views using the tabs, or drag them out to separate them

Play Mode

Now, I want you to hit the Play button and watch what happens!

If you’ve followed along so far, nothing should have happened.  The Game View will automatically focus, but nothing should be moving.

Let’s make something happen…

With the Fish selected, hop over to the Inspector.

Click the big Add Component button.

Start typing and find the RigidBody2D.

You can alternatively browse to it under Physics2D.

 

The RigidBody2D component will make our GameObject (the Fish in this instance) interact with the games physics system.  One of those interactions is gravity…

Let’s Play

First, I want you to think for a second.  When you hit “Play” what do you expect will happen?  Say it to yourself, then hit the button and see if you’re right.

If you thought the fish would fall, great.  If not, don’t worry about it.  Because our fish has a RigidBody, it uses gravity (unless Gravity Scale is set to 0).  If there are no other forces acting on the object, the RigidBody will make it fall straight down.

In Part 2, we’ll start handling input and adding some additional force to keep the fish from falling away.

Continue To: Part 2 – Let’s Code!

 

Sign up here to be automatically notified about new posts

Email address:

You should be using GIT

If you’ve been using source control, but haven’t made the change to git yet, let me try to convince you.  I first heard about git a few years ago.  It sounded interesting at the time, but my source control was working fine (or so I thought), so I didn’t pay too much attention.  Around 4yrs ago, I started a new project and had to pick a source control system.  One of the options we tried out was git.  Like most people, I searched google, read a bit of the docs, then hopped into the command line.  It was a disaster….

I’ve used command lines since the C64 days, can easily handle dos, powershell, and USED to be good with with linux.  That said, I’ve been primarily developing on windows, building games, websites and apps since the 90’s.  Using git via the command line felt un-intuitive and confusing.  Combining that with a new set of definitions for commands made it more confusing.  All this combined into the perfect storm of confusion.

Around 2 years ago I attended a few “Intro to Git” talks that explained the basics.  They always covered how git works and how to get around the command line.  They’d occasionally touch on the fact that visual tools existed, but they’d  focus on the command line because people who love git enough to do talks on it, love command lines.

The first thing I want to say if you’ve been avoiding git because it seems complicated/confusing, ignore the command line.  You can learn to use it later.  For now, grab one of the good graphical tools and get a bit of experience with git.  My preferred git tool is SourceTree.

Graphical tools have existed for every other source control system, so you may still need some more convincing.  The typical git pitch mentions things like offline commits & easy branching.  I won’t be covering those today.  Instead, I’ll focus on 4 points where git excels which I think may be more convincing.

#1. No file locking / read-only files

This may not be an issue for everyone, but if you’ve been a long time perforce user then you’ve fought with read-only files.  If you also happen to use Unity3D, you’ve realized just how terrible it can be.  With git, your files will no-longer be locked, read-only, or need to be checked out before you can work.

#2. Partial file commits

This one alone may be enough to convert some people.  Before switching to git, I can’t count the # of times where I was working on a feature, but needed to make a quick minor fix.  Before git, I’d stash my changes to the file in question, make the fix, and hope everything still built.  Then I’d commit, un-stash, and hope I didn’t mess up my previous work.

Git offers the perfect solution to this.  Partial commits.  If you’re using source tree, you can see just how easy it is in the image below.  It will find the different areas of your file that have changed, and you just choose the part(s) you want to stage for commit.  You can simply commit what you want, and leave out everything else you’ve been working on.

 

#3. Commit changes without pushing them

You can commit, without pushing out your changes to anyone else.  If you’re still working on a feature, not sure about your code, or you’re just afraid to break an upcoming release, you can still commit.  Until you PUSH, your code is only committed locally.  You can roll back your changes, modify them, etc, without anyone else having access to the code until you’re ready.   It’s liberating…

#4. Finding changes is EASY

I can’t speak for all version control systems, but in many, finding your changes can be a pain.  Some systems like P4 require you or a plugin to specify each file (there are ways to find them, but they’re a pain too).  With git, it looks at the file system and sees your changes every time.  In the graphical tools, you get a nice easy view of all your changed files where you can choose which ones (or parts) to stage for commit.

There are of course many other reasons to use git.  It’s taken over as the primary source control system because it’s better than the competition.  I’m happy to have made the switch, and can’t imagine ever going back.  I hope I’ve convinced you as well.

The summer session of SoCal Code Camp is coming up soon.

If you’re in the area, come check out my talks.

Intro to Unity Part I – 2D Games

In this session we’ll build a clone of a popular 2D mobile game in under an hour.  You’ll be introduced to the basics of the Unity3D engine and editor.  We’ll cover 2d physics & collisions, sprites, input, movement, and more.  By the end of the session we’ll build the working game to an android device.  After the session you should be able to recreate the basics of a few popular games.

Intro to Unity Part II – 3D & VR

The final session in this series is all about 3D game development and Virtual Reality.  Here, we’ll cover the differences between 2D & 3D games.  We’ll import some assets, setup animations, launch baseballs, then turn it into a VR experience.  After the session, you’ll be able to try out the virtual world we’ve built on the GearVR.

Yesterday was my first time attending the Seattle Code Camp.  It was a great event and I had a great time meeting new developers and learning.  The organizers did a great job setting it up and keeping everything running smooth.

Some of the stuff I learned:

• MVC tag helpers are pretty amazing and I’ll be using them next time I build a webpage
• SQL Unit tests are easy and there’s no excuse for not using them (if you haven’t checked these out and work with a database, do it now)

If you didn’t make it this year, you should definitely attend the next one.  And if you’re in SoCal (or really like to fly), come check out the next SoCal Code Camp in LA.

 

If any attendees to my sessions have questions, please toss me an email jasonweimann@gmail.com

I’ll be giving two talks at the upcoming Seattle Code Camp. If you’re in the area, come by and check out the code camp. It’s free and always a lot of fun.

These talks are aimed at developers who’ve never done any game development or maybe tinkered around a bit here and there.  The code is all in C# (though you can do it all in JavaScript too), and you’ll be surprised just how simple it is.

Get the info and pre-register here

Intro To Unity I – 2D Games [2:15 PM-3:15 PM]

In this session we’ll build a clone of a popular 2D mobile game in under an hour. You’ll be introduced to the basics of the Unity3D engine and editor. We’ll cover 2d physics & collisions, sprites, input, movement, and more. By the end of the session we’ll build the working game to an android device. After the session you should be able to recreate the basics of a few popular games.

Intro to Unity II – 3D & VR Games [3:30 PM-4:30 PM]

The final session in this series is all about 3D game development and Virtual Reality. Here, we’ll cover the differences between 2D & 3D games. We’ll build a softball batting game then turn it into a VR experience. After the session, you’ll be able to try out the virtual world we’ve built on the GearVR.

If you’d like to get more info or slides, just sign up for my mailing list.

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human:

The summer SoCal Code Camp is just one week away and I’ve just finished preparing my 3rd talk.  If you’re in the San Diego area and interested in code or game development, it’s a great free event you should register for HERE.

My talks start Saturday June 28th at 12:15 PM.  I’ll run through a wide range of topics introducing you to 2D, 3D, and Virtual Reality development.  We’ll start with 2D games by building a flappy bird clone.  Next we move on to Unity’s GUI system.  We’ll use the system to build a twitter search client for android.  For the last session, we’ll move on to 3D game development and build an experience for the GearVR.

Intro to Unity – Part III – 3D & VR Games

The final session in this series is all about 3D game development and Virtual Reality.  Here, we’ll cover the differences between 2D & 3D games.  We’ll import some assets, setup animations, launch baseballs, then turn it into a VR experience.  After the session, you’ll be able to try out the virtual world we’ve built on the GearVR.

Demo

Intro to Unity – Part II – Application Development (Twitter app)

This session will build upon what you learn in part I, but instead of building a game, we’ll make a twitter search client.  The focus here will be building UI systems using Unity’s UGUI system.  We’ll cover things like panels, scrolling, and images.  We’ll finish the session off with some mixing of 2D & 3D in the same app.

Intro to Unity – Part I – 2D Games

In this session we’ll build a clone of a popular 2D mobile game in under an hour.  You’ll be introduced to the basics of the Unity3D engine and editor.  We’ll cover 2d physics & collisions, sprites, input, movement, and more.  By the end of the session we’ll build the working game to an android device.  After the session you should be able to recreate the basics of a few popular games.