Unity Portfolio

Around Ludum Dare #38, I came across two great portfolio tools: Unity Connect and Itch.IO. The combination of the two can help your Unity portfolio grow overnight.  The general idea, is that Itch.io has a great system for uploading and sharing WebGL games (and other downloadable forms), and that Unity Connect has a great system for sharing projects over all.

                       

(links)

We'll start with the basics.  You need WebGL Samples of your unity work.  try looking through any old sample that shows something.  It doesn't need to be complete.  You can take a failed game idea that successfully shows working with changing gravity, and cut everything but that gravity feature away.  

Then build to WebGL and upload to Itch.io.  (its uploaded in private mode so you can test before releasing)

2 key instructions:  1) set Itch's project type to HTML to get the WebGL option later in the page and 2) upload a zip of the WebGL Build folder created from your Unity project.  It will figure out the zip structure.    

Next, with the game live and playable, add a new project in Unity Connect.  Add a thumbnail, and have a separate thumbnail for the WebGL playable.  (I.e. something that says 'play now' or similar on it.)  Add any other content, and be sure to describe it for what it is.  Was it a Proof of Concept, where you are focused on one key element?  Was it a starter test project?  Is it actually released somewhere?  Is this just level 1 of a larger pay project?  Is this part of Steam Greenlight?

The more items you have on Unity Connect, the more your profile will stand out.  Keep it up.

SOLID Development in Unity.

A couple years ago, I worked at a company who wanted to get SOLID development practices in Unity. I was unable to accomplish it then. After unsuccessfully moving on in my career, I kept a focus on figuring out how. Unity seemed to block every attempt. A large portion of the common commands are static, and unable to be replaced. Any attempt to even run test cases of Unity code causes it all to break down.

But 8 months ago, I got it working. I've used it in a major project, and spent time honing it for improvement. With a lot of companies looking to bring in 3D, and Unity being the most popular 3D game engine, the only thing missing was a way to use professional business standards when creating unity projects.  Its here.

In this presentation, I'll demonstrate how it was done.  I'll give some code examples and discuss some of the real difficulties it brought.  I'll also show what some of the key remaining hurtles are, and how they will be over come.

I'll be publishing another book, and having some more presentations on this at other conferences.  I also have a plan to affect unity assets to work with the business world.

On Sunday, June 4th, 2017,

I'll be speaking on this at the SDC.  Please RSVP to this free event.  Lets meet.  What challenges do you faces as a Unity developer?  Lets make Unity development better.  

SDC EVENT LINK  RSVP Now.

Ludum Dare #38

I decided to take on Ludum Dare #38, which theme was "A Small World".  So I created the theme: lost on a small world, chart star constellations to figure out where you are.  So below is the game play.

You can play it here:



One concept I really wanted to experiment with, was using the same mechanics as game play to drive the opening menu.  I.e. in the game you look through the star field to find constellations, and match them up with one on your screen, including rotation.

In this starting scene, you can see I've flat out said what the controls are, and you can see the lines that say START.  But to the right upper corner and rotated, you can also see the letters STA written in stars.  It emphasizes there is a constellation in that corner.  By any movement, you see how that camera movement works.

In my opinion, this helps clarify the game pretty directly.  You leave the start screen by use of the same mechanics as in game.

I'd love some feed back as to whether this concept works well enough, and what ideas you might have to improve.