Yet another introduction

[Samuel Hindmarsh]

Hey Wellington Game Dev!

I joined this group shortly after it was first created, but until now have only been lurking. I'm keen to come along to the next meetup, so I thought I should finally introduce myself!

I'm currently a couple of months into my Master's degree in Software Engineering at Vic, while working part time as a mobile developer. I love game design, but so far I have struggled to find the motivation to see games through to their completion. Until recently, I've been mostly a 2D developer, writing my engines from scratch for each game I work on. However, my major issue has always been not being able to prototype rapidly enough to have a functional game in a short enough time that I don't get frustrated with my lack of progress and lose interest. I've recently started developing 3D games using Unity, and I've found I'm able to prototype ideas incredibly quickly - it's revolutionised game development for me, and so I'm finally starting to enjoy developing games (prototypes) on a more regular basis (starting with my first Unity game for Ludum Dare 26 over the weekend!). As you would expect after that spiel, my "portfolio" - if you will - is quite sparse at the moment, but I'm looking forward to developing lots of prototypes soon now that I've discovered Unity!

Anyway, this has turned into less of an introduction and more of a sales pitch for Unity, so I'll leave it there. If you want to see some of the games I've developed to date, the bulk of them are on my blog at samuelhindmarsh.wordpress.com. I look forward to meeting you all at the next meetup!



Sam.

[Robert Curry]

Hi Sam,

How did you go in Ludum Dare? My brother and I managed to get this out: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21881

See you at the next meetup!

Robert

[Samuel Hindmarsh]

Hey Robert,

Wow, that's a super-fun game! A perfect example of a game which is "easy to learn, difficult to master" - encapsulates the theme perfectly! I've seen a lot more Unity entries in this LD compared to previous LDs, and a surprising number of them have been 2D games - I didn't realize it was such a popular platform for 2D games also. I'd be interested in knowing how you went about developing a game in 2D with Unity?

I was pretty stoked with how much I was able to get done over the 72 hours, given that I am a Unity novice. I didn't end up with a lot of content, unfortunately, but I'm going to keep working on it and turn it into a more fully-fledged game. It's playable here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=9896.

[Peter Curry]

Hi Sam,

I'm Peter, Robert's brother (haven't introduced myself on the list yet ...). Thanks for the feedback! We used Futile for doing the 2D rendering, a free open-source Unity framework written by Matt Rix of Trainyard fame (https://github.com/MattRix/Futile). It's an odd way to use Unity as it completely skips the editor, so wouldn't be necessarily be appropriate for more complex games. I find it a great platform for whipping up prototypes though. There are other 2D plugins available that do have editor integration.

Similarly to you I've finally come around to using pre-built engines instead of endlessly writing my own. I still enjoy writing nuts and bolts code, so I have to constantly fight the urge to do anything other than game code. :)

I just played Morning, great aesthetic - it'll be interesting to see it finished!

[Samuel Hindmarsh]

Hi Peter!

I'll have to check Futile out - I'd love to be able to use a framework for quickly knocking out prototypes in 2D as well! I'm not sure how well suited Unity would be for complex 2D games regardless of which plugin is used, but if it does work well, then that would be great (did I mention I'm loving Unity at the moment?).

Thanks for checking out Morning - I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes myself!

Sam.

[Antony Blackett]

If I were to do a 2D game in Unity I'd probably try this first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE2Pmujbaw0

It looks pretty rapid and flexible.

Cheers,

Antony.

[Tim Knauf]

Interesting. It looks like Uni2D and Futile take pretty much opposite approaches. Do I understand it right that Futile is basically just treating Unity as a runtime environment, and ignoring the editor? (I used to see Matt Rix on the cocos2d forums a fair bit, and it sounds like he's trying to create that same, more traditional, 'start with a blank page' coding experience.)

[Peter Curry]

That's pretty much it - with Futile you do a tiny bit of work in the editor to set up a game object appropriately, and from that point on you're working entirely in C#. I gave it a go because I wanted to publish web builds for the Game Prototype Challenge and Ludum Dare.