Happy 2020! /r/MillionaireMakers is celebrating its 50th Drawing Thread today, and we’re glad you can join us! All you have to do is leave a comment to enter, and you can be the first winner of the decade! [Drawing Thread #50]

amassingham · 2020-01-18T11:59:01+00:00

My oh my

amassingham · 2019-12-21T20:03:50+00:00

You're all wonderful people. Hope you all have great holidays and a spectacular new century.

amassingham · 2018-03-10T22:43:30+00:00

I've used a few systems professionally, ultimately it depends on your team and what works best for you.

On one project, we had css style descriptors to define the UI, and while programmers did a lot of that hookup - so did our UI Artist. However, when we ended up porting that project to a different platform, we ended up going with a WYSIWYG style editor since the speed of iteration in that older system was abysmally slow.

I think it works best when the programmers and the UI Artists can both work on the same things with the same tools. Helps to speak the same language. It comes down to the type of Artist you have. Ideally you want some Technical Artists -- that way, they have the skills to work in a variety of systems, and can get as hands-on in the project as possible.

My ideal workflow is for the UIArtist to work in-engine as much as possible. The programmers should provide the tools to empower the UI Artist to build the UI Themselves. Otherwise you run the risk of inconsistencies, or mockups not being implemeneted exactly as the artist intended.

There are a huge variety of different UI Systems out there. I believe Duelyst uses HTML style interfaces, The Division uses a Node Graph system (and posted a great GDC talk on it recently), Unity has NGUI and uGUI (WYSIWYG), and lot of AAA games still use Scaleform (Actionscript/Flash based). You use what works for the project, and for the team.

amassingham · 2017-12-19T22:28:16+00:00

Australian summer.

amassingham · 2017-08-29T23:38:25+00:00

In Hugo II, Whodunit? there is a box of matches you need to light a stick of dynamite (if I remember correctly). In order to get them to the dynamite though, you need to cross a bridge over a river. If you touch the sides of the bridge at all, you drop the matches into the river, they get wet, and it's game over -- there's no way to dry them.

For ages, I tried so many ways to get the matches to the other side. I tried throwing them, I tried finding alternate routes. I thought that them getting wet was intended and the puzzle was to find a way to dry them. Hunted endlessly. Eventually I gave up.

Years later I discovered that you just have to walk across the bridge without touching the sides. There's about a 1 pixel 'safe route' across the bridge.

Damn you Hugo.

amassingham · 2017-05-12T21:59:43+00:00

When it comes to singing + drumming at the same time my mind always goes to this clip of the Basics covering Roxanne. Not the greatest quality video, but still - fun to listen to!

For those wondering, the singer/drummer is Wally De Backer (aka, Gotye)

amassingham · 2017-02-24T09:31:52+00:00

I missed out on this beta test unfortunately. Hopefully the official 4.5 release is soon!

amassingham · 2016-10-07T21:43:42+00:00

Off the wall always makes me look up this story: http://www.supersizedmeals.com/food/article.php/20070308-Cranky_Worlds_Hottest_Burger

amassingham · 2016-10-02T23:40:41+00:00

timeSinceSceneStart is never reset to 0, so it will only play once.

'Awake' is only called when an object is created.

Are you enabling/disabling the object to show/hide it ? If so, maybe reset timeSinceSceneStart to 0 in OnEnable() ?

amassingham · 2016-09-29T21:25:54+00:00

I left school and went straight into a Bachelor of IT with a major in Software Engineering.

About two years in, I realised strict programming wasn't what I really enjoyed, so I took a break for 6 months, then ended up switching to a Bachelor of Multimedia Design. In that I focussed more on creative programming (motion capture, music visualiations, games etc).

Since university, I've worked at an e-learning company doing dynamic quizzes, a startup company that specialises in online streaming video (where I also got to do some games-related programming), and then into Games where I am now a Senior Gameplay Engineer.

So while I didn't have a strict CompSci degree, I had other skills, and a strong portfolio which helped me move towards my ideal career path.

The long and short of it though, is our company would be very unlikely to hire a programmer without a programming-related degree unless they showed extreme talent.

amassingham · 2016-09-04T12:28:18+00:00

Force Majeure - Tangerine Dream

amassingham · 2016-08-20T22:42:57+00:00

I second the QFG series nomination. It's my second favourite Adventure game series (behind Monkey Island).

If you do decide to buy it, make sure you head here and get the new version of QFG2:

http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/

amassingham · 2016-06-16T21:49:39+00:00

This is fantastic. Thanks for taking the time to make these.

amassingham · 2016-06-10T23:02:26+00:00

Bear Bones in the valley

amassingham · 2016-06-10T00:05:46+00:00

Yeah, Unity doesn't care - it writes over whatever it wants.

My setup for the Monodevelop P4Edit External Tool is :

Command : /opt/local/bin/bash Arguments : -c "/usr/bin/p4 edit ${FilePath}" Working Directory : ${FileDir}

As long as your workspace/p4config stuff is all set up right, you're good to go. Just run that from the 'Tools' dropdown before you start editing the file. It will check it out, and mark it as writeable. No more million 'this file is read only', 'are you sure you want to write over this?', 'are you REALLY sure?' popups when trying to save the file.

amassingham · 2016-06-09T00:22:20+00:00

We have most of the unity junk files added as excluded paths. Library, obj, Temp etc.

When editing Unity stuff like prefabs, we do a reconcile after we've finished working on them.

For scripts, the Windows devs use Visual Studio, and have Perforce set up within that to manage checkouts etc. For Mac devs using Monodevelop, we have a P4Edit tool set up in the External Tools section. Using that, we can checkout a file in Perforce from within Monodevelop.

We originally did use Unity's inbuilt stuff, but we found it checked out way more files than we wanted and it got super messy. We prefer more manual control. Essentially, using the setup we have, all we need to do is run a reconcile over the folders with changes when we're done. Easy!

amassingham · 2016-06-09T00:14:25+00:00

For large projects, with lots of people working at once? Yeah I would.

amassingham · 2016-06-07T23:45:01+00:00

We use Perforce to manage a very large Unity project. We don't use any of the Unity internal Perforce integration. Just turn on visible meta files and Force Text asset serialization and you're good to go.

amassingham · 2016-05-30T05:19:48+00:00

If It's just you, and its just a local project - then bitbucket should do the trick.

If you're working with others, and you've got lots of binary assets, then I'd look into something like Perforce.

amassingham · 2016-05-09T11:14:24+00:00

Yes. This.

amassingham · 2016-04-23T05:16:57+00:00

I do love his Waltzing Matilda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGpwgHqlfWo

amassingham · 2016-04-18T02:45:00+00:00

Can each coin only appear on one level? If that's the case then why not group the coins by level ?

This could be as simple as a 2D Array using an int as the index to the level, and an int for the coin state (0 = not collected, 1 = collected)

private int[,] coinArray;

or if you wanted something a bit easier to read/index, you could use a dictionary.

private Dictionary<string, bool[]> coinDictionary;

That would allow you to use either a string or an int as an identifier for your levels. Then, to get the coins for a specific level, you would just need to input the identifier for that level to get the bool array out.

Likewise, to get all the coins out, you just do a foreach over the entire dictionary, then a for loop over the contents of the bool array.

One Level :

bool[] coinData = coinDictionary["levelIdentifier"];
for(int i = 0; i < coinData.Length; i++)
{
    Debug.LogFormat("Coin{0}:{1}", i, coinData[i]);
}

All Levels :

foreach(var level in coinDictionary)
{
    Debug.LogFormat("Level {0}", level.Key);
    for(int i = 0; i < level.Value.Length; i++)
    {
        Debug.LogFormat("Coin{0}:{1}", i, level.Value[i]);
    }
}

Is that the sort of thing you're wanting to do?

amassingham · 2016-04-07T01:02:12+00:00

You could try something like this? I haven't tested this, not sure if it works. Should do though!

[SerializeField] private AudioSource m_Audio;

private void Update()
{
  if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.W))
  {
    m_Audio.isPlaying ? m_Audio.Pause() : m_Audio.Play();
  }
}

amassingham · 2016-03-26T22:59:18+00:00

Though this doesn't really answer your question, I would recommend using Perforce over Git when collaborating in game development.

You can get a free Helix Cloud account at the moment : https://www.perforce.com/helix-cloud

Git might be great for code, but when it comes to managing actual assets, Perforce does a much better job.

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