Unity 3D

[Disclaimer: I have been asked by Packt Publishing to review this book. I received a free e-book copy of the book as compensation.]

Unity 3D has always, despite its name, been used for 2D game development. Unity Technologies have realised that and have recently released an update to their game engine with better support for 2D game development. Obviously, it couldn’t take long until the first books on the topic were released.

Keeping track of different builds of (Unity) games can occasionally be convoluted, especially if you’re in a workflow where you also have to provide installers with your builds. With different testers potentially testing different versions, it’s easy to lose track what bug is fixed in what version or build.

Luckily, Unity3D is based on Mono (.NET), and therefore the problem can be solved by simply dropping in a new MonoBehaviour. Read on for how it works.

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.

Just a hint on how pictures generated by Processing could be integrated into Unity (at least in an exhibition – the technique requires an instance of Processing running, which won’t be available on an ordinary setup).

Since I want to dive into C# and code most of my game in that language, I was searching for a tool to make my life a bit easier – I just love stuff that writes for me …

Since C# is, once again, a rather Microsoft-centric thingy, there aren’t that many editors out there – except for MonoDevelop, which works like a charm on many systems.