Using Unity Instantiate to create child objects

I'm building a tetris like board and was using Instantiate to create a group of tiles that were a move piece and when I moved the parent object, non of them moved.  It wasn't hard to fix, simply set the parent of the instantiated object.

            Transform ttmp = (Transform)Instantiate(goal_tile, goal_tile.position, goal_tile.rotation);
            tile.transform.position = new Vector2(
                (cellToCol(i) * tile_plain.rect.width) / tile_plain.pixelsPerUnit,
                (cellToRow(i) * tile_plain.rect.width) / tile_plain.pixelsPerUnit);
            ttmp.parent = transform;

Then in the update method, I can move the entire group of tiles like this

       Transform t2 = GetComponent();
       t2.position = new Vector3(t2.position.x + 0.005f, t2.position.y, t2.position.z);

In this case I'm getting the Transform associated with myself and adding a small amount to the x position. It doesn't do much because it just moves of the screen, but the game is getting closer bit by bit.

Unity2D script to programatcally add a sprite

I'm create a grid of tiles. The tiles are sprites and I'm laying them out programmatically. Here is the code to generate one of the tiles.

public Sprite tile_plain;  // assign this in unity by dragging a sprite to it

void Start()
{
  GameObject tile = new GameObject();
  tile.AddComponent();
  tile.GetComponent().sprite = tile_plain;
  tile.transform.position = new Vector2((i * tile_plain.rect.width)/tile_plain.pixelsPerUnit, 5f);
}

Unity touch debugging

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but thought I would go into more detail. I think this is  a great solution for testing touch input with Unity.

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Input.GetTouch.html

I'm using Visual Studio Pro 2013 to do this and I don't see a way to do it with Mono.  The only other way I've found is to use an actual device and connect a debugger to the device. This way I've found allows me to simply run a Visual Studio project directly on my touch device/development environment and test my touch code.

The first thing is to Build the project using File/Build and Run

 



 Select Windows Store app and then click Build or Build and Run.

 

The default location is to use the winout directory in the current Unity project. This worked well for me so I just used the default.

 

 

This creates a .sln file in that winout directory with all the necessary Visual Studio project files. Simply double click on the .sln file to launch Visual Studio Pro 2013.

 

 

 

I tested the project and one really nice thing is that the .cs files associated with behaviors in my project are actually linked back to the same files in my Unity project. So after making changes, they are already in my Unity project and I don't have to copy them back.

 

 

 

One thing to note is that this is only for script debugging. If I want to make changes to my layout or the models I've laid out in my Scene I will have to close Visual Studio, return to Unity to make the changes, then rebuild the winout project to work on my scripts again.  It's a small thing and this is still a much easier way to debug touch input than anything I've had to do before.

 

 

 

Surface Pro 3 and Unity for Windows Store

Recently received a Surface Pro 3 as a gift and really love it.  Was using a 5 year old Toshiba that was limping along even with the 128GB SSD. The SSD made it viable for quite a while, but it was really getting behind. Enjoying the new Surface. First loaded Unity and Visual Studio Express 2013.  It seems like I can finally develop on an airplane even if the seat in front of me is reclined and I'm next to a 300 pounded.  The laptop was just too bulky to use when someone was sitting next to me.

So far I spent a lot of time getting Unity and Visual Studio connected together using UnityVS. Not that I don't think Mono Develop isn't good enough, I do like that, but for some reason I'm drawn to Windows Store app development and need to use VS to build Unity apps for Windows Store.

It isn't well documented, but don't try to use Visual Studio Express with UnityVS.  It won't give you an error, but will only have a message that it can't find Visual Studio.   You have to install Visual Studio Pro to work with UnityVS.  I'm now running a 90 day trial and everything is working, but will have to write quick and decide if I want to upgrade my older version of Visual Studio Pro.  I spent a lot of time uninstalling and reinstalling UnityVS to get this to work. Many messages from Visual Studio that the project type wasn't recognized.  Once I installed Visual Studio Pro it still had the same message and I reinstalled UnityVS and everything worked well.

Another thing that led me in this direcetion was trying to figure out how to debug the touch screen interface in my Unity game. This seems like it will work well.  In Unity, you have to Build the solution for the Windows Store application which will create a new folder with a Visual Studio Windows Store project.  This has the C# scripts linked in it so you can debug and change those directly and debug your Windows Store application directly.  I could have done something similar and connected my Android tablet directly to Unity and ADB debugged on hardware, but this seems like a better way and I will be using that.

Unity Ray debugging

Oh, this is a cool one I just noticed that again shows me the developer of Unity knows what they were doing.

function Update () {


    var ray : Ray = camera.ScreenPointToRay (Vector3(200,200,0));
    Debug.DrawRay (ray.origin, ray.direction * 10, Color.yellow);
}

How many times have I struggled to see where a ray or vector is doing in my game and written a ton of debug code (yes I did this with XNA) to draw a line where a ray was.  Unity gives me this as a simple Debug call.    Thank you thank you thank you.

Learning Unity

Yeah, just what I need is another technology to learn. After a few years of teaching XNA (before that Torque, before that Java, before that J2ME and somewhere in there a quick detour for Second Life/LSL)  it seems like the world is shifting around me again. I did some quick Android apps last year, but still wanted another layer above me to allow me to release on multiple platforms. Unity keeps coming up in conversation and after a few quick tutorials and calls with a good friend who already climbed the learning curve I seem to be picking it up quickly. I had to drop it again for a few months as I got busy, but found some time recently to dig in again. So far pure joy. I've found a tool that was programmed by someone who understands.

A couple of really small things have made me really appreciate the person who created Unity. Meaning it's really well designed.

This guy gets it.
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Mathf.Deg2Rad.html
This guy was an intern (as was most of the DirectX/XNA code base in my opinion).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.xna.framework.mathhelper.toradians.aspx

This will cause some arguments, but why create a function/method (XNA),

float deg = MathHelper.ToRadians((float) 1.0);

and I don't know for sure that C# does create a stack frame or not for this call, but why even chance it.  I know it's only a few extra instructions and one extra push onto the stack (if that's what it does), but if I run that a lot it's bound to do a little extra processing that I might not want to have on a slower/older device. I grew up with limited memory and CPU so I still know that every instruction is still a percentage of your maximum throughput. The less you use, the more you can do. For short, every single instruction still counts.

When this most definitely doesn't have any extra over head. (there might be an offset instruction for the Mathf. part, but not a (possibly) full stack frame creation).

float deg = 1.0 * Mathf.DegToRad;

This and a couple of other small things, like the ability to create/change a model in Blender (free) and have it automatically be updated in my game is a huge bonus. I love Blender and have struggled to use it with every game engine and with unity it's automatic. That's huge.  I can use 3ds max fairly well, but that expensive license every year for the simple stuff I build just isn't affordable.

Anyway, loving Unity after a few weeks of working with it.  Have a fun little game mechanic coming along.