GameDev Universe

Code Quality on the rise: How to create better applications in Unity 3

With the days of small games and applications generating enough revenue to make a living from them being gone, even in the mobile space, its unavoidable that our projects grow in size and often also in code complexity. But unfavorably for us, Unity is not exactly helpful when it comes to maintaining code quality and ensuring that regression is prevented. This is caused by different aspects, but the largest ones are that the debugger tends to have some more or less ugly problems, by Unity Technologies refusal to finally provide mdb files to include their own closed source in proper debugging and by the lack of proper unit testing support.

While the first two problems are completely out of our control, at least unless we license the source version of Unity, the unit testing problem can finally be approached, thanks to Test Star, a Unity extension available at a fee of $50 on the Unity Asset Store.

Test Star combines the benefits of the nunit testing framework, in a modified version to run, with Unitys editor focused approach, building upon this to even allow you to unit test your scenes and runtime behavior, not only code with 'in and out' parameters. Instead of wasting time with a long text on how it works and why its great to use it, I would like to point you to a little video on YouTube that shows it in action:

 

What I personally love about it is that its error reporting is much more sophisticated than Unitys own integrated one which pretty commonly lacks proper information on what went wrong, replacing it with a generic and basically useless error.

I've decided to write this blog after using and experiencing it myself for quite some time now and I can only recommend to EXPERIENCE IT yourself if you are looking for a way to rise your application or games quality.

I've never been disappointed by it, but the biggest gain so far from it was on a project where I had to port a whole host of DB functions and a DB management class from MySQL to SQLite which without Test Star would have taken multiple times as long as it did in the end due to Unity eating away proper errors, hidding them or simply crashing when Test Star was not handling it, while Test Star gave me precise informations on what went wrong.

Visual Scripting - Holy grail or apocalypse for game development

Visual Scripting has gained a lot of attention the last years, by various indie designers that don’t want to learn coding its considered to be kind of a holy grail to enabled them to do things they would otherwise never have been able to do.

The likely widest known usage in the game development is Unreals Kismet which is powerfull and well integrated and especially makes cinematics creation very easy. But its also Kismet that shows the limits compared to going with UnrealScript, there are just things it can not do or things that look that clumsy that you really don’t want to do it there. So lets talk about the pro and con in detail.

 

The raw potential

The main benefit of visual scripting is a simple yet important one: Its not text! All the limited functionality they normally provide are easy approachable, making it possible for people without knowledge in one or more coding languages to create interactive functionality. But it requires that simple yet powerfull nodes for the specific tasks in question are available.

Through Nested nodes (sub graphs) its additional possible to raise the readability of a graph and make parts of it easy reusable.

 

The problems 

The largest problem that anyone will unavoidably hit within hours at maximum is the ubiquity of the information. A functionality written in code taking 5 lines of code can easily lead to a graph spanning dozens of nodes and more to be represented in visual code. As an example of this problem of readability and „just beeing“ please see the following simple graph (done with uScript Retail Beta3) that does nothing but bounce a game object by a given Vector3 over time and back again. The screenshot shows just the small part of it handling the position forward backward handling

 

Enumerating collections is another thing in visual scripting that basically is a pure nightmare. Even if there were any visual scripting technology that would be able to represent this process in a LINQ alike form, it would still be very hard to grasp for designers.

As mentioned under the raw potential, one of the benefits of graphs is also a drawback and thats nested nodes (subgraphs), which if used right offer an easy way to reusability and making a graph more readable. But unhappily when not used right they can make it near impossible to maintain a graph at all. Especially if the designer uses nested nodes within nested nodes and even deeper hierarchies it becomes impossible to handle them any longer.

 

The options in Unity

 

PlayMaker

Not a visual scripting technology per se as it does not allow to create free form code, its an editor to design Finite State Machines, and important and very easy to grasp concept as we use it all day long without knowing about it.

Out of my view the best solution for pure designers with no coding knowledge because it is not only easy to approach and backed by piles of tutorials etc, but first and formost its not „just code“ that the developer will create but a clean and solid interaction broken down into states. Other solutions as well as pure code in the hands of non coders often lead to messy code and spaghetti code, while PlayMaker does not allow that, it requires that the designer thinks about the interaction and how it „plays out“ to create corresponding states and transitions.

The result will be code that he can maintain much easier and which is much more readable as only the states end on the ‚graph‘, which will enable him to get more done and especially done in a working form.

A usefull feature to make this even easier is the capability to visually debug the FSM, so you see in which state it is and where it transitions etc.

 

uScript

  uScript is the youngest of the 3 solutions, approaching its release version (Retail Beta 3 at the time of writing). It follows the design principles that are applied in other technologies too, especially Kismet from the Unreal Engine / UDK.

It has well done and polished visual appearance that not only helps being productive but especially being able to grasp the meaning of a graph with a glimpse or two.

One unique feature it advertises to have is that the graphs actually generate C# code, which makes it platform independent. But to be fair, out of my view that generated code has relatively little meaning cause its impossible to work with it beyond „looking at it“ and being granted to work on any platform as its not designed and written for usage in a pure code form. Also when the corresponding graph is resaved, it will be overwritten!

Its major drawback compared to the competition at the time is the lack of visual debugging, which brings back one of the main problem for designers on normal coding to uScript too and thats that you need to know what you do and where an error comes from to fix it basing on educated guessing.

 

Antares Universe

Like uScript its a full visual scripting solution, which unlike uScript does not base on the Kismet style of working but a more „programmer style“ approach without the temporal variables for transfer or the coroutine yielding directly on the connectors (the + buttons along the lines)

It clearly loses on the front of visual appeal and easy graspability due to the graphics and the layout of nodes and connectors, but it compensates for that through two major benefits over uScript, which are the visual debugging (like PlayMaker) and the possibility to create GUIs in realtime within the editor basically.

Also it offers many very high level and high usage nodes out of the box (LoD node for example) and at least from a subjective point of view a clearly higher execution performance than uScript.

 

Conclussion

Its neither a holy grail nor the apocalypse. It surely has its good points and when used correctly, for example to expose high level logic in a designer friendly form to allow them to create that code on their own while the programmers focus on the low level and core systems, then it surely can turn into a diamond for a project.  

But on the other hand if a designers with no programming knowledge has the hope to create whole games purely on it, I personally consider this completely unrealistic and a major source of frustration for the designer more sooner than later, because there will be limits which he will just not be able to solve without a programmer.

None the less visual scripting can enable a talented designer to create a simple game or a prototype to grasp the interest of others or an investor, so its not per se bad or deal breaking at all

Summary of this years ZHDK Game Design Bachelor projects

Today I want to invite you to join me on my summary on the some of the most interesting Unity projects I've seen in a long time, some being commercially very interesting, others being very special in their artistic and game mechanics nature.

These projects were all presented as part of the Bachelor project presentations of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK), more specifically in their game design course which originally used Torque for its project but moved on to Unity some years ago.

 

Mangrove

Mangrove was one of the games that at first seemed totally trivial on what they do, reminded me of a game I played some years ago. You collect creatures with specific abilities that attach themself to you in form of chains. You are able to change the order in changes and position and even detach them  to act along you. There is a creature allowing you to fly, different once or multiple time attackers as well as one that for example allows you to steal enemy creatures and more. Your target is to control the 6 Volcanos which are protected by other being like you with their own chains of creatures.

After the third or so try when I finally got the hang of it, I realized that the game and its mechanic are extremely addictive due to its flexibility and tactical depth with the positioning and resorting of the creatures you can collect and their abilities.
The only sad thing that the game has no downloadable version at the time so all can experience it but I've good faith that its creator finishes the game and releases it in some form!

This game likely my favorite game of all.

 

The Lost Books of Calon

The easiest and fastest way to describe this project would be to call it as a brother in spirit to the good old Creatures games with the norns, but on a whole new graphical level with very lovely graphics and nice new concepts.

The game definitely had to suffer from the short amount of time available for the bachelor projects as it shows a lot of potential for a really great and successful indie game with the needed and development time and I'm pretty sure they will continue on it.

 

Attrack!

As a total Tower Defense addict, this game naturally struck my interest right away and this game has a lot in common with tower defense concepts as you build towers that attack, towers that collect energy to build and support further towers and defense as well as powerlines basically. Its very simple to grasp but a real nut to master it :)

Normally likely this game would have become my favorite, but it has some serious problems on balance and visualizing the relevant informations which lead to too many frustrating loses. But if those things get worked out and it gets more content, I'm really looking forward to buy and play it!

 

ID: Ich, Du (und alle anderen)

 

Umami Relish

Umami Relish was a game in the "normal definition" of a game with you as player playing a tofu block, which defends itself with all required measures against Piratecooks and other things that try to get you as meal and that in a very colorful world. A very funny idea and could definitely be brought up to a sellable product.

 

TapKick

TapKick was the only mobile title in the round, more specifically an iPad title.
Its a 2 player oriented simplified table kicker with lines of 1, 2 and 3 players on each side and the target is the common one: Score goals!! :)

TapKick is a lot of fun to play if you have a friend at hand that does not want to lose either!!

Definitely a title that after some small anomalies on the input get fixed is qualified as a nice iOS appstore title 

 

Semiramis

Semiramis is not that much of a game in the "game sense" as we know it today, its more a piece of art and up to a given degree a denunciation of our style of living today out of my view as it tries to bring a very special, colorful interactivity into our "gray world of city living" with its guerilla gardening.

 

Kinect Games

Kinect naturally is not only for MoCap and indie games very interesting, its also interesting for art forms of games and I loved the prospects these two projects have shown and the non-game topics they picked up and brought closer to us as audience!

Listen

We all think to know that it is not easy to life without eye sight. But Listen is a title that really makes you understand that fact! Instead of having a visual game, the game totally bases on kinect input for movement as well as a headset to listen to your environment. The game featured a story where you were kidnapped and tried to flee.

Due to the large number of attendies for the vernisage on the first evening, kinect suffered seriously, but this is a very interesting concept. Unsure if its usable as a game of any form, but I'm 100% sure, that it is very usefull as a way to allow people to experience the world out of the view of people that lost their eye light and understand each other better . I'm sure similar things could be done for other forms of losing one of our relevant senses.

 

Catatonic

Catatonic was one of the visually more interesting title with a rather simple mechanic which though has a lot of potential for thriller - horror titles.

The game used the left hand to let you move and the right hand to move and target with a flashlight, while you tried to navigate out of a relatively dark valley with a great looking night sky and other things. The title in its current form didn't have a real target aside of reaching the end, but with such an intuitive control and a similar atmosphere, a resident evil alike title or also a title to therapy the fear of darkness or being followed would be very well thinkable as usages!

 

 

There was also a master student project that was presented but that wasn't an interactive application to experience, it was a theoretical thesis on feedback systems towards the player in different sandbox alike titles. Its exact content is hard to explain here, but should I find the thesis online I will add it as it was a very interesting read.

Conclusion

I've been stunned by the large variety of projects I found there and I really enjoyed being there, talking with some of the devs and others that experienced the titles and gain some insight on the matters.

I will definitely attend next years bachelor and master project presentations!