Trust in Me

Source: Flickr

Since I am submitting Trust in Me, my game for the exhibition at the international animation film Fantoche for the Student's Contest at the IGF, I had a reason to collect a lot of material.

So, you may profit as well:

Not only does Trust in Me have its own page now, it also has a video!

You can read more about the concept of the game – and how it failed.

And of course, there are pictures.

How not to do it:

using System;
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
 
/// <summary>
/// Needs work.
/// </summary>
public class Inventory : MonoBehaviour {
 
    private Dictionary<string, int> backpack;
 
    private bool showInventory;
 
    void Awake () {
    }
 
    void Start () {
        DisplayInventory (true);
    }
 
    public void DisplayInventory (bool state) {
        showInventory = state;
    }
 
    public bool RemoveObject (string iObject, int number) {
        try {
            backpack[iObject] = backpack[iObject] - number;
            if (backpack[iObject] <= 0) {
                backpack.Remove (iObject);
            }
            return true;
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            print ("[" + this.GetType ().ToString () + "] The object " + iObject + " does not exist.");
            return false;
        }
 
    }
 
    public bool AddObject (string iObject, int number)
    {
        if (backpack.ContainsKey (iObject)) {
            backpack[iObject] += number;
        } else {
            backpack[iObject] = number;
        }
        return true;
    }
 
    void OnGUI () {
        if (showInventory) {
            int counter = 0;
            foreach (KeyValuePair<string, int> kv in backpack)
            {
                string displayString = kv.Key + ": " + kv.Value.ToString ();
                GUI.Label (new Rect (10, counter * 40, 200, 30), displayString);
                counter++;
            }
        }
    }
}

How to do it instead:

using System;
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
 
public class ChickenCounter : MonoBehaviour
{
    private int counter = 0;
    public GameObject particleEffect;
 
    void OnTriggerEnter (Collider hit)
    {
        if (hit.tag == "bonus") {
            counter++;
            Instantiate (particleEffect, hit.transform.position, hit.transform.rotation);
            Destroy (hit.gameObject);
        }
    }
 
    void OnGUI () {
        GUI.Label(new Rect(10,10,200,30), 

Just a few notes from the battlefield that is my game for Fantoche:

Build Order Matters

Whenever you get the error message «The type or namespace name <type/namespace> could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)» in Unity when trying to access a component on another GameObject, do not bother to rewrite your complete code.

Just check the folders your classes are in: If your referenced classes are somewhere in the top Assets folder while your referencing class is in the Standard Assets, you will have a problem, since scripts in Standard Assets are compiled first – and as such, compiled before the referenced classes even exist.

Reverse the placement or just put them all in one folder, and you are set.

Yield Instructions in C#

yield instructions in C# are a bit unwieldy. Most of all, they need a Coroutine that returns a IEnumerator. To get this type in MonoDevelop, add using System.Collections; to the top of your class.

Load Resources Dynamically

Assets residing in a folder called Resources (big surprise) can be loaded at runtime using Resources.Load(). To get the assets as the right type, use

AudioClip clipObj = Resources.Load("GoodAfternoon") as AudioClip;

On Other News

The XMLStringReader has been rewritten to support path strings for audio files (residing, as you might have guessed, in the Resources folder). Also: a trigger script with which those strings can be accessed and the audio played.

More of that in a later post, though. My hair is dry enough to go to bed now.

Since I already played around with XML in C#, this part of the project was easier to do than before.

What is it supposed to do?

Basically, I could simply hard-code most of my strings used in the game directly into the code – no one would notice the difference anyway. But obviously, this is not a very good idea, both because editing strings and later translating them becomes a pain.

Creating some data that would allow me to get strings out of an XML file would solve this problem – and, if the code is good enough, be reusable in later games.

It would allow me to edit text independently of the game code and add translations on a later date.

Since I want to make some basic statistics for my game at Fantoche, I needed some basic logging function of the player's position.

Of course, this could also be done using a simple CSV file, but the perfectionist in me insisted on an XML format. A preliminary test showed me, that I would be able to transform the XML to a CSV later on, so that my S.O. would be able to use it in his own programs.¹

Having set up my development environment in MonoDevelop, I started to work on the problem on how to get my data into a well-formed XML representation and onto the hard disk.

The first approach was to use serialisation. I created a Location class, with all the necessary attributes – until I realised that this would only allow me to get one dataset into a file. I wouldn't be able to add more data to the file.

Conclusion: Serialisation is only good when you have one clearly defined object you want to dump onto the drive as a well-formed XML file.

So I tried to work with the XMLWriter.