My Unity Development Environment
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 7:01AM Since I'm a little too early on in the Game Dev process to show people any product, I thought I'd write a little about the tools I'm using.
I'm just going to talk about the windows side at the moment because I've only just bought my first Mac (sweet 21.5" iMac) and, as ashamed as I am to say it, I don't really know my way around it well enough yet. But I just bought Unity iPhone so the cost of that will push me to dive in no doubt.
My main focus ever since I saw a demo of it is Unity. God damn, the first time you see an impressive game running in the browser. I think my first taste was the ever awesome Off-Road Raptor Safari by Blurst (although now they only let you play on facebook which is a bit shit). Then when I found out it allowed programming in C# I was hooked.
So I sold the cat and bought Unity Pro.
For the code I use Visual C# Express because it's a great IDE. I used to use the SyncVisualStudioSolution.cs add in but (I just realised) Unity 2.6 actually has Visual Studio integration so perhaps I don't need that script anymore.
I've been developing in C# with Visual studio since about 2002 and you really can't get a better editor. I can't wait to try out the release candidate of Visual Studio 2010, but not sure if that one will work out of the box with Unity.
So, you've got Unity and VS, what else do you need? Well, probably a horribly expensive 3d tool. But, since I know nothing about 3D modelling I've left this alone a bit. I have played around with the open source package Blender but that only taught me that I need to hire a 3D artist.
For source control I use Git with Tortoise Git for better windows explorer integration. Although I haven't got too complex with them I must say they are pretty easy to use and very functional. At my boring, non-gaming programming half-day job we use Rational Clearcase and that thing looks like they stopped development in 2001. Which they probably did when they realised that huge defence companies would blindly pay $XXXX a seat for life rather than investigate potentially better open source alternatives.
Anyways...
So after source control you need backup, and I'm a sucker for that silver tongued Leo Laporte so I gave Carbonite a try after his suggestion (ad) on TWIT. But it was pretty good so now I've signed up to that for a year. It's a pretty set up and forget type product so I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Oh and then there's hosting.
I already had a Linux Virtual Server with GoDaddy but then (again thanks to Leo) I tried Squarespace and realised that all I really wanted at the moment was a simple webpage with a blog and they do that well. When things get going I will need more control though and probably have to move away from here. With the super-duper premium package here they do let you have users that can sign themselves up and stuff, but they don't (I think) give you actual access to the database, plus you can't run any server side code of course.
So for the short term I'm going to go with two solutions. Use Squarespace for the shiny webpage and just use javascript to talk back to the database I have on GoDaddy to fetch simple results like scores and stuff. Hopefully I get to the point where I need more than that soon.
That's it for today's nerd out.
Reader Comments (5)
So how about that local sporting team?
For web site / hosting stuff you might want to consider a virtual machine at somewhere like rackspacecloud. It's dirt cheap (1.5 cents an hour), you choose what OS, ram etc and its built in about 30 seconds. Then you can install whatever you want on it (databases etc). Of course, then you are in the dirty world of systems administration...
Yeah Hamo, I reckon all I'll need for that side of things is a database and the server side scripts that will be in between the game and the DB. Simple really. Like I said I'm using a GoDaddy virtual linux server at the moment, but you're not kidding about the dirty world of sys admins.
My GoDaddy account is finishing soon so I'm going to have a shop around. As much as I wanted to learn more about Linux when I got it, it will be good to get back into Windows land and .Net goodness.
Thanks for mentioning my app :)
I wrote a blog on picking a 3D tool on infiniteunity3d.com that you might find helpful. You can get into a 3D package for about the same cost as Unity Pro and it's a great skill to learn. If nothing else it allows you to modify and tweak the assets that your modeler gives you and better explain what's needed. I've found that when there is some overlap in skills and knowledge, the development process is that much easier.