Professional Game Development with

How to Get There?

• Most common problem is game architecture is wrong

• Further complicated by poor organization

• Building in Unity is fast, can become messy fast too

• So is there a better way?

Starting Off Right

• Building anything of substance requires some planning

• But doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time

• Identify requirements and key features of your game

• Prototype and test specific things on target platform(s)

• Document findings

• Team agreement on constraints

• Capture core design using data-centric approach

Platform Prototype

• Not a gameplay prototype!

• Complexity test on target hardware

• Graphics capability and performance

• Memory usage and performance

• Use simple, but representative, assets

• Correct polygon count, pixel size, shaders, etc.

• Use profiler to assess feasibility

• Repeat until you have a clear idea of how the game will be put together

Example: iOS 2D Action Game

• Large static background

• Player is “Defender”

• “Raiders” attempt to raid “Treasure”

• Both Defender(s) and Raiders use “Weapons”

• Will a large background image cause problems on iOS?

• Will a large number of separate alpha-sorted Raider and Weapon sprites cause framerate hiccups?

• Do we need to pack sprites into atlases?

Data Prototype

• Approach development as a data problem

• Identify the data, structure and relationships

• Consider how designers will modify properties

• Designer scenes, exposed properties, XML, etc.

• Create test sets of data with team, design outward from there

• Consider how art, design and code will come together to implement the requirements and features

• Data helps define scope of what you’re building

Define the XML

Develop the Content

2D/3D Art

Audio

Design

Scope

Schedule

Implement the Game

Workflow Tips

• Get organized, stay organized

• Use sensible folder structures

• Use meaningful names

• Unity is GUID, not path, based

• Can move things around freely

• Don’t nest Resources folder, keep at root

• Stage incoming assets outside assets folder

• Use design-time only scenes, don’t mix

Technical Tips

• Learn, understand and use Unity’s awesome component architecture

• Create project and global script templates

• Use lazy initialization

• Use static public methods instead of instance methods

• Enable objects from pools rather than Instantiate/Destroy

• Consider separate cameras for scene and GUI

• Write custom editor scripts

• Refactor often

Questions?

• Or...

• brettb@unity3d.com

• Skype: bibbinator

• Mobile: +60-12-296-9663

• LinkedIn okay

• No Facebook friend requests please