GameShrestha

What's new in Unity 5

2015-03-04T11:33:00.000+05:30

Unity 5.0 is our biggest and boldest release ever. Powerful new features in Unity 5 include:

The Physically-based Standard Shader to make your materials look consistent in any lighting environment, cross platform.

Real-time Global Illumination, built on Geomerics Enlighten technology.

The Audio Mixer, to massively improve audio in your game.

HDR Reflection Probes to enhance visual fidelity.

PhysX 3.3 to bring massive performance improvements to 3D physics.

Major updates to the animation system.

WebGL preview.

The blend trees for animations has undergone new changes.The editor had some major changes.
And of course, many more new features and updates. Keep reading to learn more.

TouchDevelop - Programming on the GO

2015-02-18T15:13:00.003+05:30

TouchDevelop by Microsoft research is an application development environment that can be accessed from anywhere from any device.It can be your phone,tablet or PC.

Through TouchDevelop, users can create scripts (i.e., apps/games written using TouchDevelop) to access data, media, and sensors on a smart phone, tablet or PC. The scripts can also interact with the cloud services for storage, computing, and social networks. TouchDevelop applications can serve many purposes and are typically written for fun, for personalizing the phone, and for creating productivity tools.

TouchDevelop brings the excitement of the first programmable personal computers to the now ubiquitous mobile devices. Scripts developed using TouchDevelop allow users to show and manipulate music and pictures stored on their own mobile devices, to use the device’s sensors, and to interact with friends in their social networks.

You may still ask Why TouchDevelop? Here's my simple answer before going hand's on

It makes building mobile games and apps easy.
It runs on anything (laptop, desktop, tablet, phone).
You can share your code and creations with friends.
It’s free!
All you need is a browser.

OK!!! How to get started??

It’s easy!

1.Go to http://www.touchdevelop.com

2.Click "Launch TouchDevelop" .

3.And Sign-IN.

TouchDevelop can be used to develop games such as “missile defense”, which is a full featured game where cities must be defended against incoming missiles (https://www.touchdevelop.com/zvpj). The script for this sample game can be downloaded to the TouchDevelop application installed on a Windows Phone or directly from the TouchDevelop web application. The user has full access to the script and can modify the game in any way imaginable. If someone has made improvements to the game, the improved game can be shared with others. It is as simple as tapping a button to upload the changed script back to the website. The script will be assigned a different identification tag (replacing the /zvpj letters at the end of the URL). If the author of missile defense publishes an update, TouchDevelop will automatically redirect the user to the latest version of that game.

If TouchDevelop is to be used for the first time on a Windows Phone, it will need to be installed. To install the app, follow these steps:

1. Tap the Store tile on the Windows phone.

2. Press the search icon at the bottom of the screen, and type the text ‘touchdevelop’ into the Store Search text box. Before you finish typing all the letters, the TouchDevelop app should appear as a choice on the screen.

3. Tap that choice to select it.

4. Tap Install.

Note : See https://www.touchdevelop.com/platforms for a complete and up-to-date overview of the different platform capabilities.

Scripting:

As i am also in the process of learning and enjoying TouchDevelop ,I will pause here as there are some awesome resources by Microsoft to help you learn scripting and other good parts of TouchDevelop.

Free Course : MVA -

CODExist: The Birth of Bot

Free eBook :

TouchDevelop — Programming on the Go

Courtesy : Microsoft Research

Level Up Ep.03 : 7 truths about indie game development

2015-01-29T18:30:00.001+05:30

News

[00:32] 7 truths about indie game development [Sarah Woodrow]
[01:13] Indie while Expecting: The story of Glyph Quest [Kristyna Paskova]

Interview - [01:46] Nicolas Sorel, CEO and Founder of Magma Mobile

Tips and Tricks

Courtesy : Channel9

Xbox : Project Spark - A gameground

2015-01-07T23:55:00.000+05:30

To simply introduce, Project Spark is developed by team dakota and skybox labs.It is published by Microsoft Studios.It is a game maker "Where Players Create and Creators Play". The website quotes project spark

"As a powerful, yet simple way to build and play your own worlds, stories and games. Experience the ultimate interactive playground, delivered as a free digital download with many options for enhancing your creative experience."

My definition -Its a playground where you can create your own Story --> World --> Game. To shorten A GameGround.

Building a game is not an easy task as it involves many stages which includes design,art,mechanics,development etc.Building a game for Xbox is much more difficult as the game art is the most strenuous part to crack.This platform gives you all the required content to built your game world.

Demo Time

If you are aware of canvas in HTML5, Project spark is also a digital canvas which can be used to make games,movies and other experiences.A player can download other user-generated content, remix that content or create content of their own. A player can use the Xbox controller, keyboard and mouse, touch-devices, Kinect and SmartGlass to build experiences. Kinect can be used to animate models and record audio. The created environments can contain mountains, rivers, and towns. The player can also create events, like inter-character battles. Created items and objects are able to be shared with other players.

Players choose whether to start from a blank map or a pre-designed level, but always have the tools to customize the topography, add plant and animal life, and program behaviors for specific objects, such as a rock that bounces when a player is nearby.The topography is modified by pushing and pulling the earth, digging through surfaces after changing the view to adjust a wall or create holes in it. Anything added to the terrain reacts to the circumstance, such as grass covering the floor and the vertical surfaces becoming rocks.

You can create a game for Microsoft windows 8.1 and Xbox.

Here's what Jason has to say about Project Spark,[Jump to 2:11 for the interview]

Course(s)

Creating Games with Project Spark [Course on Microsoft Virtual Academy]

Further Reading

Gaming : Anti-Aliasing Techniques

2014-12-27T11:48:00.002+05:30

Recently,I was learning CocosSharp.It is a game engine which provides technology for making cross-platform games.

As soon as you hit the first line of code, you see this
`application.PreferMultiSampling = false;`

Ok,I see that there is an application object and you are setting its property PreferMultiSampling of type boolean to false.But why should we do this ?

MultiSampling is an anti-aliasing technique, which is also shortened as MSAA (MultiSample Anti-aliasing) and in the above line we are not preferring multisampling in our game.

Why is this ?

Before answering this , i have to explain you about aliasing and how it impacts the game look and feel

Aliasing occurs when rendering a high-resolution signal (such as a sharp edge) at a low resolution (such as in a render target with a fixed number of pixel locations.
Anti-aliasing smooths sharp edges by partially rendering to neighboring pixels or in an other way removes jaggies or stairCase effect from your video game in real-time making them appear smoother.

This technique is also called multisampling because each pixel value can be the result of multiple samples.In our case, as we are targeting mobile or hand-held devices for our game , enabling multisampling may have a large impact on performance.

2D games generally doesn't use heavy or high resolutions sprites (Assets) as they have to be rendered on a screen which may be smaller in size or the distortion is negligible.So anti-aliasing aka MSAA is not required in this case and so we are setting it OFF or false.

All the different types of anti-aliasing and their strengths and weaknesses

SSAA (also known as FSAA): Super sampling anti-aliasing was the first type of anti-aliasing available. It's useful on photorealistic images, but isn't very common in games anymore, because it uses so much processing power.

MSAA: Multisample anti-aliasing is one of the more common types of anti-aliasing available in modern games. It only smooths out the edges of polygons, not anything else—which cuts down on processing power compared to SSAA, but doesn't solve pixelated textures. (MSAA still uses quite a bit of power, though.)

CSAA and EQAA: These types of anti-aliasing (used by newer NVIDIA and AMD cards, respectively) are similar to MSAA, but at a fraction of the performance cost.

FXAA: Fast approximate anti-aliasing, which we've mentioned before, has a very small performance cost, and smooths out edges in all parts of the image. However, it usually makes the image look blurry, which means it isn't ideal if you want crisp graphics.

TXAA: Temporal anti-aliasing only works on certain newer graphics cards, but combines lots of different techniques to smooth out edges. It's better than FXAA, but still has some blurriness to it, and uses a bit more processing power

GameHack Chat with Vidyasagar, Microsoft MVP (Gaming)

2014-12-22T15:47:00.001+05:30

Chit-Chat with Shrey from Gaming Central on Gaming in India at Game Hack Launch by Reliance Games in association with Intel , Gaming Central etc

Talk : Best Practices in Game Development

2014-12-21T11:51:00.000+05:30

This December 14th, I was invited to present and talk on Best practices in Game Development at VideoGameFest by Dumadu Games.

Here's the Invite mailed to all the GameDev

I also spoke about performance optimization Tips and Tricks

Catch my session -Best practices in Game Development at 7PM today at #VGFBengaluru #videogamefest #gamedev #mvpbuzz #fb
— Vidyasagar Mac (@iAmVMac) December 14, 2014

My talk on #unity3d performance optimization at #vgfblr is just done.Catch you at 7 PM for best practices #Gamedev
— Vidyasagar Mac (@iAmVMac) December 14, 2014

I am also attaching the presentation

VGFBglr_14Dev from vidyasagarMachupalli

Never ending love for 'Game' - A moment to cherish

2014-12-18T11:27:00.000+05:30

"It all started a year and half ago".

These were the words which i spoke yesterday at TechEdIndia 2014. But my gaming life started at Microsoft DevCamps last november when i met Sandeep Alur and Ujjwal kumar - My Mentor,Guide and Guru. Their guidance and support is never forgetting. I should also thank each and everyone who supported and helped me in this successful gaming journey especially MVP Team India Gamers Community

The Gaming journey Continues... My Technical Blog

LEVEL UP Ep .02 - Habitat’s Charles Cox, Founder of 4gency

2014-12-12T13:54:00.000+05:30

Level Up is a show devoted to game development. Each show will recap current news and events in gaming, deep dive with a game industry insider, and cover tips for programming or finding resources to help you with game construction. We would love to hear from you with feedback or suggestions for what you would like to see on the show, or just tell us about the projects you are working on. Write us at LevelUp@microsoft.com

News

[00:31] Visual Studio 2015 Preview Tools for Unity, http://unityvs.com/
[01:15] Gamepad API, Wave Audio, Ecmascript 6 features added to latest IE 11 update [David Voyles]
[02:04] Visual Studio Community 2013: The New Essential for Your Open Source Toolbox [Eric Mitt], Introducing Visual Studio Community 2013 [Scott Hanselman, Dmitry Lyalin], Visual Studio Community 2013

Interview [03:12] - Charles Cox, 4gency CEO

[05:38] Habitat

Tips and Tricks

[12:16] Introduction to WebGL 3D with HTML5 and Babylon.js [David Catuhe, David Rousset], Understanding collisions & physics by building a cool WebGL Babylon.js demo with Oimo.js [David Rousset]
[12:44] Top 5 Intro to Unity Learning Resources [Nathalie], Pluralsight Introduction to Game Development with Unity, Digital Tutors, Unity Stealth tutorial

HTML5,Javascript : Game engines and tools

2014-12-03T12:16:00.000+05:30

HTML5 game engines

The following are few examples of game engines implemented with HTML5 and JavaScript:

Construct 2: One of the first WebGL enabled HTML5 game engines. Exports purely to HTML5 and JavaScript. Uses Canvas only and is extensible with JavaScript plugins.
Isongenic Engine: One of the most promising engines out there today. Massively multiplayer networking built in, uses Node.js and MongoDB, and has canvas or DOM-based graphics.
Impact
CutJS: Lightweight, fast, interactable 2D HTML5 rendering engine for game development. Open-source and cross-platform.
Canvace
Crafty
PlayCanvas: A collaborative, cloud-hosted game engine with a visual editor, in-browser code editing and one click publishing.
MightyEngine: 2D game engine supporting Web, Android, iOS platforms. Build in editor to manage projects, assets, maps.
Game Develop: A game development software exporting to native and HTML5 games. Uses Pixi.js to render using WebGL or canvas.
EnchantJS: A simple Javascript framework for creating 2D and 3D HTML5 games. Has good documentation and easy to follow tutorials for getting started
WiMi5: A video game platform that eases the creation, publication and monetization processes of HTML5 games, using a cloud based editor.
Phaser: 2D game enginge supporting Web, Android, IOS platforms

HTML5 game tools

Clay.io: Distribution, Retention, Social and Monetization tools. Easy integration of user accounts, high scores, achievements, cross promotion, in-game payments, analytics etc...
Pixi.js: 2D rendering engine using WebGL with a canvas fallback.
stat.js: Simple JavaScript performance monitor

Useful technologies

The following can be useful in developing games based on Web technologies.

Canvas: 2-D graphics
WebGL: 3-D graphics
Audio: HTML5 element, Web Audio API
WebSockets: can be used for real-time communication between a player and the game server, to support multi-player games.
Node.js: Node is often used as a multiplayer game server, controlling the logic and handling the WebSockets connections to the players. It can be used for player authentication and the storage of data so game play can persist over multiple game sessions. This is all made relatively easy with great third-party modules, like Socket.IO for WebSockets, and others that handle Redis and MongoDB for storage, for example.
DOM Storage is great for storing data locally on the player's device. This way you can cache game data and allow the game to pick up where the player left off.
The Full Screen API allows you to expand any HTML element to ﬁll the user's screen, even if the browser isn’t running full-screen itself. The Mozilla implementation is not perfect yet because you can’t use the whole key board in full-screen mode, but it’s in the latest Nightly builds and works in all other respects.
Application cache: One of the main differences between Web apps and native apps is that native apps can be run offline. New technologies like the application cache allow for a website or a Web app to cache necessary assets so it can still run while offline. This includes things like JavaScript ﬁles, CSS and images. Combining this technique with intelligent use of things like localStorage will allow your game to continue working even if the Internet connection goes down. You just sync up all the changes when it gets connected again.
Emscripten enables you to port a game written in C or C++ over to JavaScript. TheBananabread demo used Emscripten.

Not every browser supports every part of HTML5. For example, Canvas isn’t supported out of the box by any Internet Explorer below version 9. However, you can use Explorer Canvas to replicate canvas functionality (but that is not ideal and does not perform as well). WebSockets is supported by IE only in IE 10, and it isn’t supported in the stock browser of Android. But again, you can fake this by using Flash for the sockets, such as with Socket.IO. WebGL has patchy support; Safari and Opera have it disabled by default and Internet Explorer requires at least version 11.

Game template

You can use the Mortar Game Stub template to get a quick start on an HTML5 game, or you can use it to get ideas on best practices.

Future APIs

The Gamepad API is one of the major improvements to input that is coming. Both Google and Mozilla are working on implementations of this and, as of Firefox 24, is available but disabled by default (to enable, set dom.gamepad.enabled in about:config to true, see bug 878828). What is most interesting about the Gamepad API is that it might be just what ﬁnally justifies HTML5 gaming on a TV or console. Who wants to use a keyboard and mouse while sitting on the sofa?
The Pointer Lock API is an attempt to improve the mouse as an input device. It would be used in situations like games and 3-D visualizations where the mouse position rotates or moves you around a 3-D space. As it stands, there would still be a cursor moving around the screen causing all sorts of trouble when you want to click on something in your game. With the new API you can lock your mouse position and stop it from getting in the way and being a nuisance.

Courtesy : MDN

Unity 4.6 UI

2014-11-26T19:26:00.002+05:30

The new UI system is leaps ahead of the the old, it’s easy it is to build what you want and do it quickly with little or no coding necessary. Get all this out of the box:
Fast and flexible workflows
Low memory allocations and high performance
Easy multiplatform deployment
Unique animation capabilities

FEATURES

New UI System: Design UIs for your game or application using Unity's powerful new component based UI framework and visual tools.
- Create UIs in screen space with or without perspective and with support for pixel perfect alignment, or in world space for simple creation of in-world interactions.
- The layout system combines anchoring to sides, corners, or custom points in the parent container with the ability to stretch to a percentage or full extent of the parent width or height. Simple Scene View handles allows intuitive visual control and tweaking of the positional behavior.
- Build up designs and customized controls composed of image, text, masking, and effects. All graphical components have full support for custom materials and lighting.
- Built-in controls for buttons, sliders, scroll views, input fields and more have been designed for full cross platform deployment, supporting touch controls and mouse as well as directional navigation such as arrow keys or gamepad controls.
- The UI system integrates with Unity’s animation smoothly, meaning that you can use state machines and other animation features to control your UI elements and panels.
- The UI system is designed to be extensible so that it can meet the needs of your projects. Combine existing UI elements together to create new controls, extend existing controls, or write new controls from scratch.
- Easily set up callbacks for your UI controls in the Inspector using the new persistent delegate system. A lot of functionality can be hooked up to your UI with no programming needed!
New Rect Tool: In previous versions, rect handles were used only in 2D mode and only for SpriteRenderers. With the introduction of the new UI system that is a hybrid of 2D and 3D, more explicit control is needed to be able to efficiently position elements. The new Rect tool in the main Unity toolbar can be used for sprites, UI elements, and any other object as well. The rect handles have also received an overhaul to be more consistent with the other tools, and to be more useful for a wide variety of uses.
- Rect handles now support Pivot/Center mode as set in the toolbar as well Local/Global mode as set in the toolbar.
- Rect handle squashing (holding Control/Command while dragging a side) now supports preserving volume rather than area when holding down Shift.
- Rect handles for objects that appear small in the Scene View now show a disc handle that can be used to move the object in the plane of the rect. When zooming further in, the disc will fade out as the normal rect handles fade in.
Extensible Event Messaging System: Use and extend the new Event System framework. The system is used for the new UI to send and receive events, but it can be extended to support custom input devices and custom event logic.
- Inbuilt support for touch and standalone.
- Supports 2d, 3d, and UI components.
- Extensible; add custom input handling and custom events.
Persistent Delegates (Unity Events): A new way to set callbacks via the UI and have them be built into a player. This helps non-programmers quickly add functionality to your application within the editor.
New Android Build Targets: Support has been added for x86 as a build target. Fat binary support (x86+ARMv7) is supported as well and is the new default.

IMPROVEMENTS

Core Improvements

Added smart-allocating GetComponents<List> method which fetches components of type T and grows the list as needed. Non-generic version that supports interfaces has also been added.
Added StopCoroutine(Coroutine) function.
Added callback 'OnTransformParentChanged' to MonoBehaviour. This is called whenever a transform, or one of it's parent transforms has been reparented.
Added Transform.SetParent method that optionally allows setting the parent transform without changing the local position, rotation or scale. For RectTransform it also doesn't change the sizeDelta.
Implemented and exposed Transform.TransformVector and Transform.InverseTransformVector so it's no longer necessary to use localToWorldMatrix and WorldToLocalMatrix just to transform vectors with scaling included.
Added Vector2.SmoothDamp to be consistent with Vector3.SmoothDamp, Mathf.SmoothDamp, and others.
New API TouchScreenKeyboard.isSupported to check if platform supports on screen keyboard.
Added new WillFlushUndoRecord callback to Undo class.
Added Input.touchSupported API: it tells whether the device on which application is currently running supports touch input.

Editor Improvements

Reorganized GameObject creation menus with categories such as 3D Object, 2D Object, Light, etc. as well as improved functionality.
- "Create Empty" now also appears in the hierarchy Create dropdown.
- The context menu for Game Objects in the hierarchy can now be used to create new Game Objects as children.
More details on the error message when failing to add a Component due to already having another component that is incompatible.
If during play mode a hierarchy window takes too long to fetch new data a warning icon will appear to advise users frame rate could be affected based upon the chosen hierarchy sorting.
Editor: Made Scene View camera near and far clip planes use constant multipliers of size rather than four fixed ranges with fixed values that cause popping when transitioning over the thresholds of those ranges. The new ranges are about the same for close and medium zoom but has significantly larger near clip planes when zoomed far out, which reduces z-fighting.
Made main Game View used by CameraEditor visualizations and the Canvas be the last focused Game View rather than just the first Game View found.
Made sure the screen manager uses the correct game view size in the editor, which is only known on the managed side.
Increased Texture anisotropic level limit to 16 in the Texture Inspector.
Exposed "Generate Mip Maps" option in the Texture Inspector when in Sprite mode.
Renamed TextureImporter spritePixelsToUnits to spritePixelsPerUnit and made old property obsolete. The old name was misleading.
Curves can now be renamed in the animation window.
Made SerializedProperty.displayName public.
Enum options generated from SerializedProperty are now nicified just like for all other enum fields in the Inspector.
Added SerializedProperty.enumDisplayNames that return the names for enum values as they're shown in the Inspector.

Mecanim Improvements

Animation of PPtr types are now supported in the animation window (textures, sprites, materials etc).
SendTransformChanged is now only sent to transforms that are animated. Siblings with no animation will not receive SendTransformChanged.

2D Improvements

Default SpritePacker policies will automatically pack mipmapped sprites (padding power - 2).
Aniso level for sprites with mip-maps now defaults to 16.
SpritePacker will flood the atlas instead of adding 1 pixel borders to sprites.
A new pixelsPerUnit property has been exposed on the Sprite class.

Android Improvements

Support for profiling Intel GPU using the Unity Editor.
Added support for BGRA textures.

CHANGES

Editor Changes

T is now assigned as default shortcut key for Rect tool. The Sprite Editor trim shortcut key defaults to Shift-T to avoid conflict with the Rect tool.
Rect handles now do non-uniform scaling by default for consistency with a large range of other applications. Hold down shift to scale uniformly.
The preference default for script language in the Add Component dropdown has been changed from Javascript to C#, since that's the new default for documentation and examples.
Renamed spritePixelsToUnits to spritePixelsPerUnit in TextureImporterSettings.

Graphics Changes

Stencil buffer is now available in Unity Free.

2D Changes

Sprite Packer is now enabled by default.
New Sprites now have mip-maps enabled by default.

FIXES

Editor Fixes

Fixed occasional argument out of range exceptions when using Scene View tools.
Picking of locked scene view layers is now prevented.
ObjectSelector is now ensured to default to the Asset tab when selecting PhysicsMaterial2D objects.

Graphics Fixes

Fixed an issue where render texture was not being created due unsupported anti aliasing value on devices like Surface RT.
Compressed sprites are no longer deformed on devices that support NPOT textures.

Animation Fixes

Fixed issue where changing the animated property to be Rect Transform Scale and trying to transition between 0 and 1 failed.
Fixed crash when creating an AnimationClip on a humanoid rig.
Fixes crash when previewing transitions on an Animator with UnscaledTime update mode.

2D Fixes

Unity no longer crashes if a mesh is dragged onto a SpriteRenderer.
Fixed issue where 2D colliders break when used as prefab children.

Mobile Fixes

Windows Phone 8: Fixed a race condition in TouchScreenKeyboard which would cause ".active" to return false just after the keyboard was opened.
Windows Phone 8.1: Fixed an issue which caused InputField and GUI.TextArea to always receive capital letters from the on screen keyboard.
Android: Disabled shadows for Intel PowerVR devices to avoid graphics artifacts.
Courtesy : Unity

LEVEL UP -Project Spark Ep.01

2014-11-26T08:45:00.000+05:30

I am privileged to have my blog post referred in this Link to Actual Post

Level Up is a show devoted to game development. Each show will recap current news and events in gaming, deep dive with a game industry insider, and cover tips for programming or finding resources to help you with game construction.

Gaming : GameDev Terms to be aware of

2014-11-16T18:35:00.000+05:30

See examples of how these key terms are used and why they’re so important for your assets and games. If you ever encounter a term used in game development that you are unfamiliar with, use this as a reference.

MODELING

Asset

Assets are anything that must be created in an external software like 3ds Max, Photoshop, ZBrush, etc. Assets can
be models, textures, sound effects, animations, and much more.

Polygon Count

The “polycount” of your model is the total number of triangular polygons it takes to render your model in 3D space. The higher your polycount, the longer it takes for the system to render it.

Triangle

A triangle is a single three-sided polygon of a 3d model. Each polygon in a 3d model will be “triangulated” when it is imported into a game engine.

Quad

A quad is a single four-sided polygon of a 3d model. Remember that a quad is made up of two triangles.

GAME DEVELOPMENT TERMS

Real-Time Render

Games are expected to render at a specific speed called Frames-Per- Second. When the player presses a button, they expect to see an action “render” immediately. The render time can be affected by a lot of different factors, but if a game is optimized, the art assets are usually the main reason for low frames-per-second.

Optimization

Optimization is the process of reducing memory usage of your assets. For example, models are optimized by reducing their polycount without drastically affecting its silhouette.

PROGRAMMING:

Game Engine

These engines are the systems for creating and developing your games. Most popular game engines use a software framework that lets game developers bring in assets, create functionality and publish their game for play.

Game Loop

The game loop is what lets a game run smoothly whether there is input from a player or not.

GameState

This can be considered part of a game’s internal logic and defines an object at that particular time and keeps track of items such as timers, kills and rounds. A game’s internal logic is one of the most important parts of any game’s development.

GUI

The Graphical User Interface are the elements that a player sees when playing. The interface can consist of remaining ammo and time, touch-screen buttons, points and much more.

AI

Artificial Intelligence is the computer’s logic when making decisions in a game.

For More Game development and Design Terms Click Here

Courtesy : DigitalTutors

Gaming , C# : Come..Fall in Love with CocosSharp

2014-11-08T17:30:00.000+05:30

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -Richard Buckminster Fuller

Reality Check

Every game development engine or framework has its own bottlenecks and difficulties.Especially, when it comes to 2D game development,the difficulties increase.You have to take care of performance,mobile device hardware,device resolution etc.There is one more difficulty which developers generally ignore.i.e., language used for game development.

As a developer and game developer (Read this), I feel that its good to continue with what you are good at.I am a C# developer and to start game development with a new programming/scripting language for me is a huge learning curve altogether.

Cocos2d-x is one such {open source} {cross platform} game engine which supports multiple programming languages where x-> C++,Lua,HTML5 and Javascript.I love this engine for its simplicity,easy to learn , multi-language support and easy use,but the programming language which i am comfortable is missing here - C#.

The Savior

With Xamarin, you write your apps entirely in C#, sharing the same code on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and more. Anything you can do in Objective-C, Swift or Java, you can do in C#.

After closure of Microsoft XNA this April and MonoGame picking up slowly in the market.

Xamarin introduced something called CocosSharp and here is a small intro

CocosSharp blends the power of the Cocos2D programming model with C# and the .NET Framework. Developers familiar with Cocos2D will feel right at home with CocosSharp, as the API has been designed to follow C# and .NET idioms. - Miguel de Icaza

Read the complete introduction here

CocosSharp has picked all the good parts from Cocos2d and polished it with what they already had handy (cSharp).So

CocosSharp=COCOS2d+cSHARP.

As a C# developer,

Xamarin has provided the best document to help your kick-start with CocosSharp.Rewriting the same stuff here in a new way doesn't makes sense.So go through the stuff and comment if you have any questions or if you are facing issues.

Introduction to Game development with CocosSharp

Building Gone bananas with CocosSharp

Video Intro - CocosSharp is an exciting new platform from Xamarin that enables developers to create stunning 2D games for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows from a shared C# or F# code base. Mike Bluestein will cover game development strategies and how CocosSharp can help you deliver cross-platform 2D games for apps on all mobile and desktop platforms. By the end, you'll have all the knowledge you need to start creating your own games!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj0QJlYvObk

This is just the beginning !!! I will be writing more posts about CocosSharp in future.So stay tuned to learn more !!!

Courtesy : Xamarin

As a GameDev,what to expect from #techedIndia ?

2014-11-03T19:50:00.000+05:30

The most expected and the much awaited Microsoft TechEdIndia 2014 is just around the corner and as a game developer or indie developer what should i expect from this TechEdIndia?

Let me answer this through the tweets from speakers

A good read before attending the session

DateTime : 5th November 2:45 PM - 3:40 PM

"Getting started with Universal games using Unity" @saurabhkirtani #TechEdIndia @msdevindia pic.twitter.com/HhxQ3mco7u pic.twitter.com/cyhOSGeBNO

— Ujjwal Kumar (@ujjwalkr) November 3, 2014

DateTime : 5th November 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM (Two Sessions)

#techedindia week! Have an idea, need plumbing for backend & data? don't miss @sampatpoonam & @infinitydlimit talk on #Azure mobile services — Aditee Rele (@aditeerele) November 3, 2014

Where to host your leaderboards,In App purchases and other questions will be discussed and answered here

Continuing the cloud stuff,we move to the start of comparison in our next session

DateTime : 5th November 6:05 PM - 7:00 PM

Microsoft Azure vs. AWS: A Fair Trial -> Want to know more, join my session at TechEd 2014 #TechEdIndia @msdevindia pic.twitter.com/uGS3X2q2Xd

— Sandeep J Alur (@saalur) October 30, 2014

As a game developer, its always good to have knowledge about mobile platforms and their development as most of your games are mobile targeted.

Topic: Cross Platform App Development #TechEdIndia @msdevindia pic.twitter.com/EvfHqDmSTW — Jay Khanpara (@JayKhanpara) November 3, 2014

Out of the Box

#TechEdIndia attend my session & win @Telerik #DoNet #Ninja #tshirt-#Nov6-#Magadh3-#13.45. hope to see you there... #FB @msdevindia

— kashyapa (@kashyapa) November 3, 2014

IoT (Internet Of things)

Excited to kick-off #IOT competition next week at #TEchEdIndia w/ Galileo demos @msdevindia @inteliot @microsoftiot pic.twitter.com/9HO6kOF5M5 — Vikram Khandpur (@vkhandpur) November 1, 2014

Last but not the LEAST

@iAmVMac @anubhavr05 @kashyapa @nishanil @saalur @ujjwalkr @narainabhishek @bpaul_msft We're looking fwd to seeing you all at #TechEdIndia!

— Microsoft Developer (@msdevindia) November 3, 2014

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Tweet Using #TechEdIndia

Gaming : Audio ,Source Control and Project Management free tools

2014-10-18T13:44:00.000+05:30

Audio

While there are plenty of free tools for development and art, for whatever reason I've always found it hardest to find good free audio tools. Here are some tools that I think are pretty useful for editing audio or creating music and sound effect.

Audacity

audacity.sourceforge.net

Audacity is a cross-platform open source audio editor and recording tool created by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg in 1999. Several years later, it's still being developed, with new improvements coming every release.You can use Audacity to record live audio, record computer playback, perform noise removal, add audio effects, convert, edit or mix multiple types of audio formats, as well as export to multiple formats.Audacity also supports plugins and allows custom effects to be made using a programming language called Nyguist.

Some of the most basic uses of this softwarewould be to remove lag in podcasts where the speakers are in different locations. This would be done by every participant recording their own audio stream using Audacity, and afterward stitching every audio stream together in the editor while accounting for the lag that happened while recording.

Another simple use for this software would be creating sound effects, or splicing up an audio track in case you needed to remove parts of it to make it better loop in your game.

Bfxr

bfxr.net

Bfxr is a browser-based synth program used for generating sound effects. Bfxr is based on Sfxr, a tool that was written during the 10th Ludum Dare, but has been extended over time with additional features. Bfxr has added new waveforms and filters, expanded the pitch and jump parameters, as well added a mixer and visualizer. It also allows for users to lock specific parameters during randomization and mutation for better control. Once you've created the sound effects you want,you can then download them as .wav files.

Top 5 Alternative Audio Tools

Audio audiotool.com

Audio is a web-based audio workstation which can be used to create music for your game. It also supports midi devices, and since it works within a browser you don't have to worry about installing any kind of software. The only downside you might find is that you have to publish your tracks to a public page. You still retain the copyright, but it does mean that the tracks will be seen by everyone.

LLMS lmms.sourceforge.net

LLMS is an open source cross-platform audio workstation that allows you to produce music. It supports midi devices, as well as a plugin system to extend the software.

Famitracker famitracker.com

This is tracker specially designed for creating NES/Famicom audio. This can be useful if you're interesting in creating a game that's trying to be a throwback to that era, or you're simply interested in seeing what you can produce with a more limited set of options.

MilkyTracker

milkytracker.org Milky is a popular cross-platform tracker used to create sound effects and music tracks for games. Milky exports to .mod, which is supported by popular game engines such as Unity.

OpenMPT openmpt.org

OpenMPT is a tracker for Windows which allows you to create music and effects for your game. OpenMPT also supports a plugin system which allows it to extend the functionality of the software.

Misc.

Finally, I've decided to throw in a few pieces of software we use on a day-to-day basis, or have found to be useful at various times.

Document/Spreadsheets

Microsoft OneDrive onedrive.live.com/

One place for everything in your life .Keep all your files and photos in OneDrive. Access and share them from your phone, tablet and computer.

Google Docs docs.google.com

This comes in pretty handy if you're trying to put together documents for your project and want to collaborate with someone else.

Libre Office libreoffice.org

Libre Office is useful if you'd rather store all your documents locally, or know you're going to be without a connection and need to work on those spreadsheets!

Source Control

Bitbucket bitbucket.org

BitBucket provides Git and Mercurial source control,a wiki, and issue tracker. Free accounts are provided for up to five users, but after that you'll need to start paying.

Github github.com

Github provides source control, a wiki, and issue track. Unfortunately, unlike BitBucket, all free accounts are publicly viewable unless you pay for a private account. However, a pretty neat feature in Github is Github pages. These allow users to create a static website for the projects they host there. A lot of users use this feature to host their own blogs. You could do the same thing for your game website and save yourself some money.

Project Management

There are many project management tools out there, but unfortunately most of them are bloated, or filled with junk I don't think is particularly useful. Here are some free ones I've found myself going back to.

Slack slack.com

This software is used for team communication. It allows users to separate out conversations into different channels or topics to help keep track of conversations and issues. It also allows users to hook in different pieces of software, to provide different kinds of notifications to teams. To those who have used IRC it's essentially an IRC web front end with a bot.

Trello trello.com

Trello is used for creating, organizing and tracking tasks. This comes in really handy when collaborating with other people.

Asana Asana.com

Teamwork without email.Asana puts conversations & tasks together,so you can get more done with less effort.

Feel free add any other resources which you are aware of .

Courtesy : Game Career Guide

GAMING : THE BEST FREE ART AND GRAPHICS DESIGN TOOLS

2014-09-30T07:26:00.000+05:30

FREE Assets to start your game

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.

Sydney Smith

Art/Graphics

Here are some free art tools that can be used to create various types of visual content for games.

Blender

blender.org

Blender is a cross-platform open source 3D graphics suite

developed by the nonprofit Blender Foundation in collaboration with hundreds of others around the world. It supports modeling, animation, rigging, texture mapping, UV wrapping, compositing, morph targets,sculpting, simulations such as clothes and hair physics, and several other features. Any features you feel are missing can be added using Blender's Python API, and generally any custom features that become popular enough in the community end up being part of future Blender releases. The most recent well know addition has been Cycles, adding a new powerful rendering engine to Blender.There are plenty of books and online tutorials about Blender, and several new books have been released that show off some of the newer features available to users.You can check out projects made using Blender in their showcase reel on their website.

GIMP

gimp.org

GIMP is an open source raster graphics editor originally started by
Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis in 1995. Today it is developed by The GIMP Development Team, and has gone to become one of the most popular graphic editors in the world. GIMP supports various paint tools common to most raster graphics editors such as Photoshop. It also has support for animation, layers and channels, path tools, quick masks, exports to many formats and can be enhanced via scripts and plugins. GIMP also supports Photoshop brushes,so you don't have to worry about looking for GIMP specific brushes. One of the most interesting things about GIMP is that because it's open source, it can be repackaged by its users with different default settings and plugins, which allows it to be configured by for a more specific kind of task. This had led to the popularisation of configurations like GIMP Paint Studio.

Inkscape

inkscape.org

Inkscape is cross-platform open source vector graphics tool
similar to Adobe Illustrator. It's designed to be used in creating icons,logos, diagrams, maps, web graphics, and much more. It does this through SVGs,implementing an open standard set by the W3C.Inkscape supports advanced drawing tools,object manipulation,styling, text manipulation,as well as many other features. It can also export to several formats such as SVGZ, AI, PDF and PNYesG. Probably one of the most useful things I've done with Inkscape is generate game terrain.This is extremely useful when creating terrain similar to games like World of Goo, or Worms.

Top 5 Alternatives for Art/Graphics

Graphics Scale

humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html

This is a popular tool designed specifically for pixel art.It
supports all the features commonly found in pixel art tools, and while there is
a pro version, chances are you won't need that since the free version supports
all the features commonly needed.

Hexels

hexraystudios.com/hexels

Hexels is a grid-based art program that lets users paint with
shapes. The specialised nature of this tool means that artists may find it easier to distinguish their game. If you're interested in seeing the kinds of things possible with Hexels, check out madeinhexels.tumblr.com

Piskel

piskelapp.com

This is a pretty new open source web-based pixel art tool. It
supports layers, frames, previews, imports,and all the other basic functionality you'd expect from a pixel art program. One of the coolest things about Piskel is the fact that because it's web-based, it allows its users to create accounts and save their progress online. The most obvious advantage of this is being able to pick up where you left off without carrying the files around with you, or worrying about the machine you're currently using having the software installed.

Spriter

brashmonkey.com

Spriter is a relatively new animation tool which was created though Kickstarter backing. It allows you to set up advanced animation sequences using an editor,without the need to worry about which development environment you are using. It also allows an artist to create, preview and tweak animations without the need of a programmer, which can remove a lot of the overhead in getting a game looking right. Spriter was used on Gunhouse, made by this magazine's editor (Brandon Sheffield) and his team.

Wings3D

wings3d.com

This is a 3D modeling software program similar to Blender. While
Blender supports more features then Wings3D, people often prefer Wing3D because of its simpler UI and refined feature set.

Courtesy : Game Career Guide

Gaming : The Best Free Tools To start your game Development

2014-09-15T21:11:00.000+05:30

“Who needs sports stardom when you can shoot fireballs from your fingertips?”
― Ethan Gilsdorf

MonoGame monogame.net

MonoGame is a C# framework that allows developers to target desktop, handhelds, mobile,and consoles using a single
codebase. The framework is written on top of Mono, an open source implementation of the .NET framework. The framework was originally designed to implement Microsoft's XNA 4.0 API, but Microsoft's decision to abandon XNA has meant that the MonoGame project has started to grow beyond the stagnated XNA implementation. Developers can choose to use MonoDevelop or Visual Studio as their IDE (integrated development environment), though to build content to the xnb format you will also need install Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 (installing XNA 4.0 doesn't work anymore), which means you will need a Windows machine to build the content. Once you've built it though, you can continue

using whatever OS you were working in. You can read more about the specifics of these issues on Gamasutra or on the MonoGame
wiki. Although there are some issues present, the MonoGame
Team is working on solutions. To date the framework has been used in multiple successful titles such as Bastion, FEZ, Mercenary Kings, TowerFall Ascension, and Transistor. You should also be aware that Ethan Lee, the developer behind the ports of games such as Escape Goat 2, FEZ, Rogue Legacy, and TowerFall Ascension, has been working on a fork of the project know as FNA, which aims to reimplement MonoGame

using SDL2 (see below), and can be found here:

https://github.com/flibitijibibo/MonoGame

Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) libsdl.org

SDL is a cross-platform library written in C, designed to act as a
wrapper around operating system specific functionality. Some of this functionality includes audio, input devices, graphics hardware, file access, timing, and threading. SDL allows developers to write more generalized code, rather than worrying as much about the underlining specifics of the system they're targeting.Beyond this, any extra functionality can been added through libraries that sit on top of SDL. Some of these libraries include support for multiple image formats,audio mixing, networking, TrueType font, Rich Text Format support and many more, via third party libraries.SDL provides bindings for several languages such as C#, Lua, Python, Lisp, Haskell, and others. It's also commonly used as the base code for other game libraries such as LÖVE, PyGame, ScummVM, and even the CryEngine,as well emulators such as MAME and ZSNES. SDL is probably the most commonly used games library I know of - you'll see it in games such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, FTL, Portal, Psychonauts, Team Fortress 2, The Cave, The Walking Dead and many, many more.

Unity unity3d.com

Unity is a game engine developed by Unity Technologies that allows developers to target desktop,web, mobile, handhelds, and consoles using a single codebase. It comes with a fully-fledged
game editor as well as the MonoDevelop IDE, which provides code auto-completion and debugging.The engine provides scripting through Mono, and allows developers to write games in C#, a JavaScript like language that most people call UnityScript, or a

Python-like language called Boo. While some new developers to Unity start off using UnityScript or Boo due to its perceived lower
barrier of entry the majority of developers use or eventually switch to C#.Unity comes with full support for 3D and 2D games, and generally anything that you feel is lacking can usually be found through their online Asset Store or somewhere else online. Games like Kentucky Route Zero, Night in the Woods, Superhot, Shadowrun Returns, and Gone Home have all been made in Unity, showing that as an engine it's versatile enough to be adapted to any number of genres.While the free version should allow a lot of developers to write their entire game without the need for Pro features, they should be aware that there are restrictions, which you can read about here:

unity3d.com/unity/licenses.

A developer can use the free version provided their annual gross revenues does not exceed US$100,000, otherwise they will have

to purchase a license for Unity Pro, which will cost $1,500 or
$75/month. Check out unitypatterns. com for some useful tips and tutorials, as well as the tutorial in this issue.

Top 5 Alternatives Libraries/Frameworks

If none of the above suggestions appeal to you then maybe check
out one of the following.

Cocos2d

cocos2d.org

Cocos2d is a 2D framework designed for mobile and desktop, but the majority of games made with it are for mobile. It's divided into multiple branches, the most popular being cocos2d-x,cocos2d-swift, and cocos2d-html5. Each branch is written in a different language, though they do try to keep some consistency. Cocos2d also comes with an editor called CocosBuilder, which can be used for designing UI, and setting up scenes and events without code.

LÖVE

love2d.org

LÖVE is an *awesome* framework written in Lua design for making 2D games. The nice thing about LÖVE is that it's well documented,there are loads of tutorials, there's an active community, and a lot of cool libraries built on top of LÖVE to help you add features you feel are missing. The fact that LÖVE is written in Lua is also a big plus to me since it's an extremely

popular scripting language in the game industry. So even if you later decide LÖVE isn't for you, you can still apply that Lua
knowledge somewhere else.

OpenFL

openfl.org

OpenFL is a Flash API-compatible library designed for desktop, mobile and web. OpenFL is built on top of a library called Haxe, so if feel like you want lower level access then check that out. One of the cool things about OpenFL is that because it's compatible with Flash you can also use popular Flash libraries such as Flixel and FlashPunk if you feel more comfortable using those

libraries. OpenFL has been used in such titles as rymdkapsel and the IGF winner Papers, Please.

Phaser

phaser.io

Phaser is a HTML5 framework designed for desktop and mobile, built on top of Pixi.js. Although Phaser is relatively new, it
supports a lot of features such preloading, animations, tilemaps,
sounds, physics and WebGL rendering, that are not commonly found in most competing JavaScript frameworks.

SFML

sfml-dev.org

SFML is a C++ library similar to SDL, but with additional features
such as networking within the core library. Like SDL, SFML comes with additional third party libraries, and also supports bindings to multiple other programming languages.

Courtesy : Game Career Guide

Gaming : Windows Universal Apps with Unity

2014-08-17T23:01:00.000+05:30

We are pleased to announce the full support for Windows Phone 8.1 and Universal Windows Applications with the release of Unity 4.5.3.

-Unity3d

What are windows Universal Apps?

At //Build 2014,Microsoft launched this new feature where you DEVELOP ONCE for all windows devices using a unified Windows runtime and VS tools that allow you to both support experiences unique to a device in XAML, HTML, and DirectX, and share the code that supports those experiences across all devices using C++, C#, or JavaScript. When your work is finished you can you can produce the app packages that you will submit to the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store with a single action to get your app out to customers on any Windows device.

[caption id="attachment_699" align="alignnone" width="660"] Courtesy : Microsoft[/caption]

Collection of links to know more about UNIVERSAL APPS - Curah

On Windows devices, Universal Apps behave identically to Windows 8.1 apps, which Unity has supported since 4.3. On Windows Phone devices, Universal Apps run as Windows Phone 8.1 apps, which is a new feature of Unity 4.5.3.

Figure 1. Universal Applications build window

What does Windows Phone 8.1 bring to table?

If you worked on Windows Phone 8 and Windows Store games in the past, you know that even though the two platforms are similar, they still have their differences. With Windows Phone 8.1, that changes. There are no longer two separate platforms; they have converged to a single one. To reflect that, building for Windows Phone 8.1 is located under Windows Store platform in our Editor.

Other features of Windows Phone 8.1 player include:

Access the full power of .NET 4.5.1 in your C# scripts (Windows Runtime APIs, async/await, etc.);

Efficient multithreaded renderer – up to 33% less time per frame (measured on Angry Bots on Nokia Lumia 520 running Windows Phone build 8.10.12359.845);

GPU profiling is now available thanks to a new graphics driver for Windows Phone 8.1 (On devices which received the driver update).

Figure 2. GPU profiler running on Windows Phone 8.1

How do Universal applications work?

Figure 3. Universal app Visual Studio solution

So what does the name “Universal” mean? When you press build, Unity will generate a Universal app Visual Studio solution, which will contain 3 projects: ProjectName.Windows, ProjectName.WindowsPhone and ProjectName.Shared (as illustrated in Figure 3).

The shared project, as its name implies, contains all the shared elements: XAML layout, Unity data and asset files.

Target specific projects (ProjectName.Windows and ProjectName.WindowsPhone) contain platform specific files: application manifests, icons, splash screen and tile images. Since Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 aren’t binary compatible, each project will also contain their own set of DLLs. Fear not – Unity will automatically make your managed plugins compatible with either target.

When you press the deploy button in Visual Studio, only the necessary files will get copied to the target device (or local machine, if you prefer), thus minimizing the application size which the user would have to download from the Windows Store.

Great, what do I need to get started?

You will need:

Unity 4.5.3 or later;

Windows 8.1 (any edition);

Visual Studio 2013 with Update 2 installed (Express for Windows, Professional, Premium or Ultimate edition).

If you want to test your application on Windows Phone 8.1 emulator (rather than a physical phone), you’ll also need:

Windows 8.1 Pro;

At least 4 GB RAM;

CPU that supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP).

Further reading

As always, before updating Unity, backup your project and don’t forget to read the docs:

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/WP8-1.html

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/WindowsUniversalApps.html

Courtesy : Unity 3D

Unity and C# : Performance Optimisation tips

2014-08-03T10:30:00.000+05:30

“Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”
― Donald Ervin Knuth, Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms

Optimization is a term which is familiar to any developer. Game developers are more aware of this because of three reasons,

They realize the importance only at the fag end of game development.

They see this as a game-specific term.

They think that this only applies to mobile devices.

Optimization should be considered even before starting the game. In fact even before choosing your assets more importantly 3D Meshes. Let me provide you some important tips which I collated after reading some books, web links and going through videos.

Tip # 1:

Minimize Vertex Count

The unity renderer has lots of techniques and optimizations built in to draw meshes quickly and efficiently across different devices, but you can really help that renderer do its work even more efficiently if you reduce the vertices in your meshes so far as possible. Note that the

Stats panel displays the number of triangles and vertices currently being rendered—and not the total number of vertices and triangles actually in the scene, which will often be more because the camera usually does not see the entire scene at once.

Tip #2

Minimize Materials

Unity allows you to create as many materials as you need for your meshes and objects and you can even assign multiple materials to the same mesh. Using materials comes at a performance cost, however, in terms of draw calls and draw calls are relatively expensive on any platform. Try to avoid using multiple textures for a single mesh; instead, share the same image for all parts. Using Atlas Textures for 2D games, Objects could share the same texture and material. Sharing materials in this way between objects allows the Unity renderer to internally batch those objects into the same draw call, and this typically improves on performance than if those objects had been drawn in separate calls. Refer Texture2D.PackTextures.

Tip #3

Use Per-Platform Texture Settings

If you select a texture in the Unity Project Panel and examine its settings in the Object Inspector, you’ll see its options regarding size and compression are customizable on a per-platform basis. This means you can adjust the size and compression of textures differently for each target platform: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and so on. The trick is to try and build your game so that optimization is possible without being too noticeable, using tricks such as reducing the amount of alpha transparency in textures so that you can use a nonalpha compression system, system, or using texture atlases to put everything onto a single texture rather than several separate ones.

Scripting Optimization:

Tip # 4 -Cache Components and Objects

One of the most common C# scripted statements when working with the Unity API, is

transform,or just transform. This statement (and others like it, such as audio) accesses a C#property, which returns a reference to the transform component of an object. From this, you can directly set the GameObject’s position, orientation, and scale. However, accessing the transform component in this way indirectly calls on additional functionality that can have an accumulative impact on performance, if called enough times in events, such as Update or OnGUI. You can optimize such expressions from the outset, however, by using Object Caching. That is, by getting a reference to the component or object, and by storing it in a local variable. An example of object caching at work.

[code language="csharp"]

void Awake()

{

//Cache Transform (MyTransform is a class variable)

MyTransform = transform;

}

void Update(){
//Update position using cached transform
MyTransform.localPosition = MyPosition;

}
[/code]

Tip # 5 :  Avoid Using Update

This is not a good idea since Unity has to invoke the update function and you are performing work every frame. A better solution is to disabling the behaviour until the player comes closer. There are 3 ways to do this:

Use OnBecameVisibleand OnBecameInvisible. These call backs are tied into the rendering system. As soon as any camera can see the object, OnBecameVisiblewill be called, when no camera sees it anymore OnBecameInvisible will be called. This is useful in some cases, but often for AI it is not useful because enemies would become disabled as soon as you turn the camera away from them.

[code language="csharp"]
using UnityEngine;

using System.Collections;

public class example : MonoBehaviour {

void OnBecameVisible() {

enabled = true;

}

void OnBecameInvisible() {

enabled = false;

}

}
[/code]

Use triggers. A simple sphere trigger can work wonders though. You get OnTriggerEnter/Exit calls when exiting the sphere of influence you want

[code language="csharp"]
using UnityEngine;

using System.Collections;

 

public class example : MonoBehaviour {

void OnTriggerEnter(Collider c) {

if (c.CompareTag("Player"))

enabled = true;

}

void OnTriggerExit(Collider c) {

if (c.CompareTag("Player"))

enabled = false;

}

}
[/code]

Use Coroutines. The problem with Update calls is that they happenevery frame. Quite possibly checking the distance to the player could be performed only every 5 seconds. This would save a lot of processing power.

Tip #6—Avoid OnGUI and the GUI class

The OnGUI function and the GUI class can be two of the biggest drains on performance, especially for mobile games. OnGUI is expensive primarily because it’s called multiple times per frame. This means you almost never use it to perform game-logic or core functionality—the purpose of OnGUI is exclusively for drawing GUI elements. The GUI class can work well for smaller and simpler interfaces, but should really be avoided for complex interfaces with many interactive elements, such as inventories, statistic panels, mini-maps, option screens, and type-in dialogs. I’ve almost never seen high-performance come from the default GUI class when implementing more feature-filled GUIs. To implement these, Unity offers very little native support. There are two main and popular solutions to this: either a custom solution is developed, using Atlas Textures and, or a third-party add-on must be purchased, such as NGUI or EZGUI.

Tip #7—Use Object Pooling

Imagine this: the player character is firing a fast-reload weapon (such as a chain gun) and each shot spawns a new bullet into the level. The fire-rate for this weapon means that two bullets are generated per second. Assuming the bullet object is created in the project as a prefab, how should the bullet generation be scripted? One way to handle this is to call the Instantiate function for each bullet, whenever the gun is being fired. This method might be called “Dynamic Object Creation.” However, there’s another method: at level start-up you could generate a large batch of bullets (perhaps 30), and store them off-screen. Then, whenever the player fires a weapon, you would continually show, hide, and move these pregenerated bullets, as required, to simulate bullets being spawned, as opposed to really spawning them. This latter method is known as Object Pooling. In general, Object Pooling is to be preferred over Dynamic Object Creation because it avoids the performance issues that sometimes comes from dynamic memory allocation, especially on mobile operating systems. The upshot of this is: avoid instantiating and destroying objects dynamically. Instead: generate objects at level start-up, and then show and hide as required to simulate object destruction and creation.

Profiler (Pro only)

What Is the Profiler?

The profiler is an advanced tool for finding out all kinds of important information about your system resources during playback. It can be used to profile CPU, rendering.memory, audio, and physics so that you can find ways to optimize toward a better-performing game.

Simple Checklist to make Your Game Faster

Use skyboxes to “fake” distant geometry.

Learn benefits of Occlusion Culling and use it to reduce amount of visible geometry and draw-calls in case of complex static scenes with lots of occlusion. Plan your levels to benefit from ccclusion culling.

Do not use fog when it is not necessary.

Use compressed texture formats when possible, otherwise prefer 16bit textures over 32bit.

Do not use dynamic lights when it is not necessary - choose to bake lighting instead.

Do not use Pixel Lights when it is not necessary - choose to have only a single (preferably directional) pixel light affecting your geometry.

Set Static property on a non-moving objects to allow internal optimizations like static batching.

Keep the number of different materials per scene low - share as many materials between different objects as possible.

If you’re using built-in shaders, pick ones from Mobile or Unlit category. They work on non-mobile platforms as well; but are simplified and approximated versions of the more complex shaders.

Keep vertex count below 200K..3M per frame when targetting PCs, depending on the target GPU

Use pixel shaders or texture combiners to mix several textures instead of a multi-pass approach.

If writing custom shaders, always use smallest possible floating point format:
- fixed / lowp - for colors, lighting information and normals,
- half / mediump - for texture UV coordinates,
- float / highp - avoid in pixel shaders, fine to use in vertex shader for position calculations.

Minimize use of complex mathematical operations such as pow, sin, cos etc. in pixel shaders.

Choose to use less textures per fragment.

Courtesy : Unity3D

Gaming : Developer to Game Developer - A transition

2014-07-19T21:45:00.000+05:30

“Never too old, never too bad, never too late, never too sick to start from scratch once again.”~ Bikram Choudhury

When i introduce myself i say "I am a software developer and work on game development too".The reaction will be "Is it? I am also a developer.How and where should i start game development?".

Let me answer this in a broader way.

Transition/change is an on-going and repetitive process.There are two ways to handle this

Come out of your comfort zone and try new.

Leverage the knowledge which you gained in your existing field.

Let me quote an example here - I am a Dotnet developer and i am planning to develop a game.There are two ways

Learn a new language like HTML5/javascript/Lua and use tools namely construct2 or Love.

Use my C#/VB knowledge in tools like Unity3D for scripting.

The above example is purely on the Game programming (scripting) front.But for the real gaming magic to happen,you should come out of your comfort zone a bit.

So by now if you are reading this line.you should have made up your mind to develop a game.So let us see what you need

Disclaimer : There is no handbook or rule book for game development/design.The points below are purely what i follow as a gamedev.

Game Idea: All you need is an idea to start the gaming journey.

It can be an original idea which would have hit your brain like an asteroid falling from sky.

A polished oldie. A game which would have done pretty well in the past and you will be relaunching the polished version of it by making changes here and there (keep the terms & conditions in the mind).

A spoof of a super hit game (E.g.,Console or war games).

A failed game which had a better idea but poor execution.

Sketching : Sketch your idea on a paper or use any tool like MS Paint.

Save the copies for showcasing or for your reference.

Come up with a final draft.

Indie or team : Decide whether you want to be an independent developer or a team player.

[code language="csharp"]
IF (INDIE)

{

Obj game=new Obj();

game.Developer=You;

game.Designer=You;

}

else

{

Obj game=new Obj();

Team team=new Team();

game.Developers=team.Developers;

game.Designers=team.Designers;

}
[/code]

Prototyping :

Based on your technical expertise and knowledge,decide a game engine to develop your game.

Prototype your game with free game assets . If you are an indie dev, either use free assets or hire a designer for some time.

Even if you have a team,its always good to start prototyping using free assets.

These are just few points to get you started.There's always a scope to improve your prototype.Even angry birds evolved as a complete game from being started as a prototype.

We decided to prototype the game using Unity, and went forward into production... Link

MOOC : Learn gaming interactively

2014-07-07T20:45:00.000+05:30

A Massive Open Online Course(MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web.

This MOOC ,sponsored by Open2Study explores key ideas in game design, programming, architecture, game engines, player experience and game AI.

What's it about?

There are lots of different skills that go into game development. This course is about key technical concepts in game development, and has been developed for people of many different backgrounds and skills. Some programming experience would be nice but is not required.

We start by looking at the central role of game design and common development processes used in the industry. You will see how game software can be broken into parts that work together, and in particular the idea of game engines. We’ll explore the relationship between game design, balance and player experience. Lastly we’ll look at enhancing player experience though the use of AI techniques.

What's involved?

MODULE 1 :ESSENTIALS OF GAME DESIGN	8 videos, 7 quizzes, 1 assessment	7 Jul - 13 Jul
MODULE 2 :MAKING IT HAPPEN	9 videos, 8 quizzes, 1 assessment	14 Jul - 20 Jul
MODULE 3 :RULES, MOVEMENT AND INTERACTION	8 videos, 7 quizzes, 1 assessment	21 Jul - 27 Jul
MODULE 4 :AI FOR GAMES	9 videos, 8 quizzes, 1 assessment	28 Jul - 3 Aug

What will I learn?

Essential game design elements and the role of a game designer

Key game development stages and principles of agile game development

How games are like magic and real-time systems

That programming is made up of simple steps, and how procedure and object oriented programming can help us structure our game code

How messages and events are key concepts in games at different levels within game architecture

About graphs and other data structures that help represent game worlds and characters

How a game design can be described, modelled and implemented as simple game architecture

About the emergence of game engines and the relationship of games to other data-driven applications, including concurrent and distributed architectures

How to implement games using iterative step-by-step processes, by selecting, implementing and testing

That rules are central to games, and that game balance relates to fairness and bias for players

How physics can be used to create realistic force-based movement, for individual characters and groups

About AI techniques that can add interesting behaviour to game characters, including decision making, action planning and path planning

This course requires approximately 2 - 4 hours of study per week, but can vary depending on the student. This includes watching videos, and taking quizzes and assessments.The total video time for this course is 3 Hours 28 minutes.

If you pass this course you'll receive a Certificate of Achievement. While this certificate isn't a formal qualification or credit, you can use it to demonstrate your interest in learning about this area to potential employers or educational institutions.

More Information @ Open2Study

List of other game MOOCs

Courtesy : Open2Study

Gaming : Kinect for Windows V2

2014-07-04T08:38:00.000+05:30

Kinect for Windows gives computers eyes, ears, and a brain. With Kinect for Windows, businesses and developers are creating applications that allow their customers to interact naturally with computers by simply gesturing and speaking.

Pre-orders for the upcoming Kinect for Windows v2 Sensor have kicked off at the Microsoft Store! (release date -July 15, 2014)

Develop interactive applications that recognize peoples natural movements, gestures, and voice commands. The Kinect for Windows v2 sensor gives developers more of the precision, responsiveness, and intuitive capabilities they need to develop interactive voice- and gesture-based applications for the Windows desktop and Windows Store. The v2 sensor is intended for use with the Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) 2.0. The Kinect for Windows v2 sensor does not ship with any software. It is intended for use with the Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0 (licensed separately) and will operate only with applications developed for Kinect for Windows v2. Developers can use the Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0 to build applications with C++, C#, VB.Net, Cx, or JavaScript.

What is new compared to Version 1 ?

Ben Lower explains this in his video on Channel9. He also demos some of the capabilities of this new Version.

Link to the Video on Channel9

Kinect Common Bridge : http://aka.ms/KCBv2

PreOrder V2 sensor : http://aka.ms/K4Wv2preorder

V2 Training : http://aka.ms/K4Wv2Jumpstart

The Xbox One will launch in India on September 23 with the price tag of Rs 39,990. The Xbox One with Kinect will be sold for Rs 45,990.

Courtesy : hawtwired and MSDN-Channel9

Gaming : Free Assets to start

2014-06-24T20:40:00.000+05:30

“If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

To start a game, the first thing you should and must have is an IDEA to be precise a GAME IDEA.It can be a new one or an extension of an existing popular game or an idea generated while playing a game.To have all this you should first TRY.

Joe : Ah ok!!! I Tried and have an idea what's next???

Gamaster : Put your idea on a paper (SKETCH)

Joe : I will do that... But.... i don't have an expertise in graphic designing and also i can't hire a graphic designer.

Gamaster : Hmmm...Why don't you try with Free Assets ? one's without license headache.

Joe : Where to get them?

Gamaster : Let me give you some pointers to start with (links)

Photos/illustrations/Audio/Video/Fonts - Link

Assets for your game (Reddit) - Link

20 Best Free Art Resources for game developers - Link

2D Graphics / Textures - Link

Game Design/Ideas/Graphics/Art/Sound/Fonts/Maps-Link

GLITCH is dead but Assets are still ALIVE - Link

Free resources for Games/Apps - Link

Unity3d Asset Store (Search for freebies) - Link

More :

Game Icons-Link

2D game assets - Link1 Link2

Art Assets For Gamedev-Link

Free+Paid - Link

Gamedev Wiki List-Link

Note: The above links are just to guide you to start your game.Please carefully go through the license agreements before using.These links internally will point to multiple other links which in some cases are repetitive.

Please feel free to add any other links which you know/use in your gamedev.

Please credit the designers/websites by following their twitter/Facebook accounts.

Unity : Porting labs - Takeaways

2014-06-08T16:30:00.000+05:30

On May 28th of this year,I was fortunate and privileged to attend Unity3d Porting Labs held at Microsoft India,Signature building,Bangalore.This was an event targeting gameDev and hosted mainly for India Gamers Community members . The event had sessions by Microsoft,Dumadu Games and Intel.

Session 1: Unity3d Games Targeting Windows Phone and Windows Store

Speaker : Ujjwal Kumar (Tech Evangelist,Microsoft)- Blog

Takeaways :

Steps to follow for porting your existing/New games to Windows phone and windows store through Unity3d.

There were also some add-on's by unity3d for windows platforms.

What's new in Visual studio 2013 for porting your games on windows phone 8.1.

Importance of Charm settings and Privacy Policy . Click here

Exporting your game as a DirectX VS 2013 solution or a C# + Xaml solution.

Note : DirectX 11.2 is only from Windows Phone 8.1

Session 2 : Performance Optimization of Unity3d games for windows platform

Speaker : Dumadu Games

Takeaways :

Draw Calls has to be checked for more optimization.

Target your devices ahead of your game development E.g., Lumia 630 has a quad core processor compared to Lumia 920.So choose your target devices more wisely for easy optimization.

Have an eagle eye on Core Rendering/Final Rendering.

GPU Optimization is important and Images with compression types DXT1 or DXT5 are better on windows.

Always have images with a power of 2 and reduce the alpha layers.

Merge all textures to one single texture (Static Batching).Dynamic batching is supported by default in Unity3d.

CPU Optimization: Avoid Mesh colliders.

Script Optimization :
- Keep references avoid finding objects.
- Avoid Update() unless necessary.
- Avoid Raycasting instead calculate the distance between two objects.

Session 3: Intel's Real Sense with Unity3D

Speaker : Swetha from Intel

Though the session is on real sense,Swetha even spoke about the analyzers by Intel for game analytics and performance monitoring.

Intel's Graphics Performance Analyzer (IGPA)

Power analyzer from Intel.

Battery Life analyzer.

Intel Perceptual Computing -Real Sense

The closing session was on GUI framework by Dumadu games (used in-house).They are planning to release the same as a SDK shortly.The framework relieves you from the pain of developing and aligning the GUI elements in your game.

The best takeaways from attending these events are socializing and developing professional relationships with the best brains in the marketing.Also you will get a chance to clarify some doubts and questions you had.