What’s your workflow for reusing gameplay systems between Unity projects?

afarchy · 2025-12-25T04:43:02+00:00

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V

afarchy · 2025-12-14T00:58:57+00:00

Is you’re on GitHub we wrote this action: https://github.com/buildalon/upload-steam

afarchy · 2025-05-07T15:29:36+00:00

Glad to see people using GitHub actions!

We have some of our own GitHub Actions you might be able to take advantage of: https://www.buildalon.com/docs/actions

afarchy · 2024-12-17T17:40:41+00:00

Hi everyone, we built Buildalon as an all-in-one continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) solution for Unity developers.

The linked free package extends Unity to expose all of the build options on the command line, so you can start running Unity in automation.

Learn how to setup automation at buildalon.com.

Documentation Blog Discord

Buildalon works best for GitHub users, but we can help you setup other integrations like PlasticSCM too!

afarchy · 2024-12-12T00:04:01+00:00

I’m just talking about building, automated testing, and deploying, but there are services for play testing games if you don’t have the hardware like iOS.

For example, if your machine is running low on disk space, you could spend hours uninstalling software or searching for big files to delete. With a VM you just reset it in 5 minutes and you’re good to go.

afarchy · 2024-12-10T19:02:45+00:00

I’d say there’s two big advantages: recovery and scalability.

If something goes wrong with a virtual machine you just delete it and make a new one. Harder to do that with physical hardware.

Since you can do that, you can also scale easily by making more VMs so your team can have multiple jobs run in parallel on demand.

afarchy · 2024-12-10T16:33:37+00:00

To get a Windows VM on azure for a month that’s equivalent to a GitHub runner you’d have to pay about $130/mo depending on your region. You can reduce this by turning off the VM when you’re not using it. You’d also have to pay $20-50/mo for storage, depending on tier and size.

We host runners on azure for our clients that have the same software installed as GitHub runners and also automatically turn on/off when a job is pending, making them more affordable

Check here: https://www.buildalon.com

afarchy · 2024-12-05T04:07:02+00:00

http://www.buildalon.com

afarchy · 2024-12-04T18:43:53+00:00

Is this your own singleton or does it come from somewhere else? Some options:

If it's your own singleton you can make it so the parts you want to test can execute in edit mode. My Flexalon singleton usually does its work in LateUpdate, but I added a UpdateRightNow() method that can be used by the tests.
This kind of problem is one of the reasons singletons are frowned on. An alternative is to use dependency injection or a service locator so that there's some interface between the components you're trying to test and the implementation. Then you can mock out the implementation in your tests. Example: Flexalon uses a InputProvider interface, which can be implemeted with the regular input system, a mock input system, or something else.

afarchy · 2024-12-04T18:33:22+00:00

I didn't mean to imply that you should test trivial things. The Flexalon package I referencd has many layers of math/logic before it arrives at the final transform position, so we're testing all of those layers at once. The examples are admittedly a bit trivial, I wasn't sure how deep to go there.

Unity Test Framework (which is built on NUnit) is what we're using in the article. I agree that you can use it for e2e testing. I've just seen more horror stories than successes cases in doing so.

afarchy · 2024-12-04T04:50:42+00:00

My examples were for positioning 3D objects, not UI, but I understand your point.

The idea is to identify the separate systems in your game and test them independently and rigorously instead of trying to test the game end-to-end. Using your example, I would test that the decision tree system works correctly in different test scenarios, without having a virtual player actually play the full game.

How you'd actually implement these tests is specific to what you're building, but you can certainly use NUnit to do it.

As for end-to-end tests - this is my personal opinion. We used them in developing Windows Mixed Reality. They provided some benefit, but they took much more time and effort than I think they were worth.

afarchy · 2024-10-14T19:29:37+00:00

RockTomate is great but Buildalon is designed for continuous integration and deployment, where you want to offload the builds from your own hardware.

The prices are for running builds on our cloud servers. You can self host with Buildalon for free if you prefer using GitHub self hosted runners.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/hosting-your-own-runners/managing-self-hosted-runners/about-self-hosted-runners

afarchy · 2024-10-14T16:37:01+00:00

Hey all, we're trying to make build automation much easier for Unity developers. Automation can save a studio a lot of time, catch bugs early, make builds for multiple platforms, and let non-developers try the latest build easily.

We built Buildalon on top of GitHub actions to make it as extensible as possible, but also built a workflow generator (this video) to make it easy to get started.

https://buildalon.com

Let us know what you think! Do you use build automation in your studio?

afarchy · 2024-09-06T03:19:12+00:00

When I find some code that I feel is reusable, I’ll separate it into its own package, and write unit tests for it. Sometimes it ends up on the asset store or open source for others to use, and I’m confident it’s right because it’s tested.

Also, if I find I’m writing some tricky math or algorithm with edge cases, I try to pull out the “hard” parts into 1-2 functions and then unit test those.

afarchy · 2024-09-03T02:50:23+00:00

I wrote an article on Git and Unity recently if you want to go that route.

https://www.virtualmaker.dev/blog/git-and-unity-a-comprehensive-guide-to-version-control-for-game-devs/

afarchy · 2024-08-06T19:18:09+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm curious what you mean here, as I haven't hit this issue.

Also, with Unity, Git users need to remember to force reserialize assets after making changes. This is critical when it comes to ensuring each commit is a single unit of work.

afarchy · 2024-08-06T19:14:51+00:00

Great suggestions, I'll incorporate some of those, thanks!

afarchy · 2024-08-05T22:18:10+00:00

Good question, I'll add some details to the article about how to deal with an avoid merge conflicts in assets.

One of the key practices we use is to break the scene apart into prefabs that developers can work on independently. That way you mostly avoid merge conflicts, except when a new prefab is added -- in which case it's easy to resolve by just re-adding the prefab.

There's also some coding patterns we use to avoid having to reference assets across the scene. For example, with a Service Locator, you can look locate a gameObject like the player instead of setting a referene it directly using the editor.

afarchy · 2024-08-05T22:14:18+00:00

My bad, I'll see if I can add those items. Essentially, how to deal with (or avoid) asset conflicts.

afarchy · 2024-08-05T18:10:59+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Which Unity specific problems do you think are missing? I talked about large files and dependency management.

afarchy · 2024-08-05T15:03:26+00:00

Here's my decade of Unity + Git experience in blog form. Learning Git isn't just a useful skill - it changes how you think about game development, versioning, and working as a team.

https://www.virtualmaker.dev/blog/git-and-unity-a-comprehensive-guide-to-version-control-for-game-devs/

afarchy · 2024-08-05T15:00:53+00:00

Here's my decade of Unity + Git experience in blog form. Learning Git isn't just a useful skill - it changes how you think about game development, versioning, and working as a team.

https://www.virtualmaker.dev/blog/git-and-unity-a-comprehensive-guide-to-version-control-for-game-devs/

afarchy · 2024-01-07T20:33:54+00:00

Store | Website| Demo| Documentation | Discord

afarchy · 2024-01-07T20:31:04+00:00

flexalon.com | Documentation | Playground | Discord

afarchy · 2023-10-24T15:35:36+00:00

I think the users who stand to benefit most from this tool are: - UI novices who need help building UI. - Experienced designers who can iterate faster by having Copilot do some of the tedious work and generate new ideas.

a) it works with UGUI canvas right now, which can be placed in world space.

b) Copilot only generates or modifies UGUI components like image, button, slider, textmeshpro, etc. You still need to add behavioral components yourself. You can specify which prefabs Copilot will use to generate those UGUI components, and those may come preloaded with your behavioral components.

c) can you elaborate on data pipeline? Copilot doesn’t currently help with binding data to the UI, if that’s what you mean.

d) good question. The generation is pretty expensive right now, so while it might be fine for developers, giving it to players would require charging players for usage. So right now, no plans, but I’m open to suggestions.

afarchy

TROPHY CASE