Unity

2013年7月18日星期四

What makes a great game?

What makes a great game?

Social
- High scores with possible sharing
- Competitive against others scores/profess/achievements
- Easily shared
  - Twitter
  - Facebook
  - URL
Casual
- Quick and easy to play levels
- Gameplay is intuitive and easily picked up by the player
- Can be picked up and left easily
- Playable by a wide range of ages
- Appeals to a broad range of people
Great looking
- Very polished
- Attention to detail
- High quality graphics
- Strong and consistent theme
- Unique, fresh
Feedback
- Players need to be able to give feedback or praise
  - Comments
  - Rating systems
- Players need to feel their voice is being heard
- Bug reports
- Website stating bug fixes, update changes
Story
- Needs to be suitable for game type
- Interesting, not overly complex
- Can be skipped or ignored
- Compelling for those that want involvement
- Can be summarized in one line
- Immersive
  - Player loses track of time while playing
Audio
- Accessible settings for volume/mute
- Large variety of sound effects (helps with repetition)
- Music that compliments the atmosphere
Demo version
- Allows easy upgrading to full version
- Extensive enough to enjoy
- Gives a good taste of what gameplay and levels are like
Gameplay
- Upgrades
  - ONLY if they add to the gameplay, not just foe their own sake
- Multiple ‘paths’ and endings
  - Must be good enough to justify the effort of the player
- Quick restart of levels
Statistics
- how far players get
  - Is the game too easy or too hard?
- What are players seeing and not seeing?
  - Are there ui stumbling blocks?
- Are players replying?
- Are the range of scores what was expected?
  - Is there hacking of scores? Obviously out of the average?
- Where is the game proving most popular? Why?
Player Rewards
- Achievement badges
  - Tie in with recognized systems
    - Game center
    - Mochi
    - Xbox
    - Raptr
- Downloads that are rewarded for achieving game goals
- Unlock extra gameplay modes
- Unlock extra levels
- Unlock difficulty settings
Platform
- Choose the right platforms for the game type and target market
- Must be able to easily update with bug fixes, updates etc
Interface/Experience
- Pausing and resuming handled intelligently
- Auto saving
- Persistant
  - Scores, progress and medals are all stored
  - Players feel sure their hard work will be safely saved
- Uses easy to recognize symbols
- Possible multiple saves (if gameplay justifies it)
- Easy login methods (if required)
  - Facebook
  - twitter
  - Gmail etc
  - mochi
Updates
- More levels
- Bug fixes
  - Good to introduce features when bugs are fixed, helps distract from the negative
- Extra features
  - Rewarding for the price
Marketing
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Blog posts
  - Sharing behind the scenes development
  - Secrets and tips of the game
- Building hype
- Promotional images
- Gameplay video
  - Available on YouTube for sharing
  - Well edited & compelling
  - High resolution available
  - Easily embedded on blogs
  - Several versions
    - Promotional
    - Gameplay examples
- Website support
- Free to play demo that upsells
- Contacts within the industry
  - Can feature your game
  - Know someone who knows insiders
Fun
- Repeat gameplay
  - Game changes slightly with each game
  - Levels have enough interest to warrant further play
- Player feels they have achieved something
- Rewarding gameplay
  - Player feels their efforts meant something
  - Achievements to mark players successes
  - Needs to be fair
  - Player needs to feel they have a chance
  - Your character, skills etc grow the longer you play
  - A way to win the game – become the champion
  - Surprises, avoid repetition
- Quick results
  - Short levels?
  - Short bursts of gameplay are fun
  - Can be picked up/put down very quickly
- Controls & skills to master
Intuiative
- Clear easy to use UI
- Customizable controls
- Simple controls

2013年7月16日星期二

Unity Custom Assets

Original Link: http://www.jacobpennock.com/Blog/?p=670

Excerpt:

Create simple serializable data container for each individual dialogue speech element as so:

 [System.Serializable]  
 public class DialogueElement  
 {  
   public enum Characters{ David, Megan};  
   public enum AvatarPos{ left, right};  
   public Characters Character;  
   public AvatarPos CharacterPosition;  
   public Texture2D CharacterPic;  
   public string DialogueText;  
   public GUIStyle DialogueTextStyle;  
   public float TextPlayBackSpeed;  
   public AudioClip PlayBackSoundFile;  
 }

The ScriptableObject class will give us the magic of being able to turn our dialogue class into our own custom asset files.

 public class Dialogue: ScriptableObject  
 {  
   public List<DialogueElement> DialogItems;  
 }

Create CustomAssetUtility.cs:

 using UnityEngine;  
 using UnityEditor;  
 using System.IO;  
   
 public static class CustomAssetUtility  
 {  
   public static void CreateAsset<T> () where T : ScriptableObject  
   {  
     T asset = ScriptableObject.CreateInstance<T> ();  
   
     string path = AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath (Selection.activeObject);  
     if (path == "")  
     {  
       path = "Assets";  
     }  
     else if (Path.GetExtension (path) != "")  
     {  
       path = path.Replace (Path.GetFileName (AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath (Selection.activeObject)), "");  
     }  
   
     string assetPathAndName = AssetDatabase.GenerateUniqueAssetPath (path + "/New " + typeof(T).ToString() + ".asset");  
   
     AssetDatabase.CreateAsset (asset, assetPathAndName);  
   
     AssetDatabase.SaveAssets ();  
     EditorUtility.FocusProjectWindow ();  
     Selection.activeObject = asset;  
   }  
 }

Once you have that installed in your project you can turn that dialog class or any of your classes that inherit from ScriptableObject into a custom assets super easily with just a couple lines.

Just make a new class/file called DialogueAsset.cs and make sure it’s inside an Editor folder. Then inside that class create a menu item for your new asset that just calls CreateAsset from the downloaded utility class like so:

 using UnityEngine;  
 using UnityEditor;  
 using System;  
   
 public class DialogueAsest  
 {  
   [MenuItem("Assets/Create/Dialogue")]  
   public static void CreateAsset ()  
   {  
     ScriptableObjectUtility.CreateAsset<Dialogue> ();  
   }  
 }

2013年7月7日星期日

Blender Modelling - Human Head

Add Cube -> Subdivide x 2 -> Shift + Alt + s (scale to sphere)
Pull mesh to match image. o (enable soft selection)
Extrude and scale neck
Edge Loop at middle
Smooth out top points
Add Loop cut to top margin of eyes
Smooth the vertices as shown (1)
Extrude the eyes
Extrude the eyes - Scale down
Tweak Eye Shape
Mark the mouth
Extrude and Scale Mouth
Tweak vertices for mouth to give a round shape
Smooth vertices (2)
Extrude nose and scale sideways
Tweak nose vertices
Delete middle mouth points
Extrude this edge loop twice
Fill Lips

2013年7月4日星期四

NGUI ScrollView

Organize game-objects as seen in the Hierarchy Tab below.

All background goes into Panel-Window.

All scrollable items goes into Panel ClipView.

Attach UIGrid.cs to UIGrid (Component -> NGUI -> Interaction -> Grid)

Set Clipping in Panel ClipView and attach UIDraggable Panel.cs to it (Component -> NGUI -> Interaction -> Draggable Panel)

Attach BoxCollider and UIDraggable Panel Content.cs to Outline (Panel-Window)

Prefabs, Resources & Scripts

Resources

To add resources such as textures, 3D/2D models, other scripts, simply drag and drop the resources to the destination folder either in Unity or File Explorer.

Scripts

To create a script, right click the "Scripts folder" -> create -> and choose "C# Script".
**Rename the file immediately so that the file name is consistent with the script name.

Prefabs

Prefabs are pre-made resources/game objects. This is extremely important because it can save any progress you made on any game object. For example, a GUI element can be made into prefab for future use. Let's say we have a progress bar made with appropriate backgrounds, colors, textures, scripts, etc. We can simply drag and drop that element from the Hierarchy Tab to the Prefab folder in Project Tab.

**Recommended that the "Prefab folder" to be made inside the "Resources folder".

NGUI Basics

Adding GUI Elements

To add GUI elements, follow the steps below:

Go to Widget Tools
On the drop down menu next to the word "Template", you can choose what elements to add.

When you click the drop down menu next to the word "Background",
you can choose different textures.
These textures are already packed inside the Atlas prefab.
To choose other textures, you must use the prefab with that texture.
For resources loading sake, it is recommended to use as few Atlas prefabs as possible.
To know how to add a texture to a prefab, please visit:

On the circle button next to the "Add to" option,
you can choose which object to add the GUI element to.
Only add to the Panel or children of the Panel, since the Panel will be the parent of all GUI in this scene.

Different Elements

Label
Labels are simple text boxes

Sprite
Sprites are simple textures, they can act as background, decors, etc. There are 4 kinds of Sprites:

Simple - A sprite that is spawned at the texture resolution. You can scale them but they will be distorted on scaling.

Sliced - A sprite that is spawned at texture resolution. Scaling them will ignore the border and scale at the center.

Tiled - A sprite that is spaned at texture resolution. Scaling them will tile them.

Filled - A sprite that is spawned at texture resolution. You can change the fill amount. For example, a health bar will be made to proportionate the fill amount to current health.

To change the type of sprites, add the sprite similar to Fig.3.
Select the sprite from the Hierarchy Tab.
The Inspector Tab will then show the components of the sprite.
Change the type as shown in red.

When the sprite type is changed, different options will be shown in the Inspector Tab. Change them to fit your needs.

Button
Buttons are simply spawning a Label on top of a background (sprite). NGUI does this automatically and will scale the whole thing to the right size. A collider is also added to capture the on click event.

Texture
A texture is used to add a simple texture to the scene. It is used to for texture not added to the Atlas prefab. Since it requires full self-customization (like manually adding scripts components), it is not recommended to be used.

Progress Bar
Progress bar is used to make fill-able bars like timers, health/mana bars, etc. It is comprised of 2 sprites, a simple and a filled.

Input
Input can be used to make a type-able box for use in chatboxes.