Lately I’ve been filling my Twitter feed with complaints and questions about Unity3D. It’s a very different beast than any other coding environment I’ve been in, and a bunch of things really bug me about it.  I’ve been poking away at it every few days, as a break – just trying to get a quick jam-style-game out.

Here’s some sample complaints I’ve made:

• The documentation mentions “Levels” but the IDE mentions “Scenes” and only experience will tell you they are the same thing
• The documentation for plane-snapping is flat out wrong (at least vertex snapping works…)
• There is no code editor; you must use an external application
• Their default on install is to give you a copy of Mono, whose autocomplete is atrocious to the point where I think I’m doing things wrong
• All the decent tutorials are videos and it’s hard to find a good written one
• My Unity license cost me US$4,500.

I’ve probably complained about a hundred or so of such little “gotchas” in the last week, but each time you learn to overcome them Unity becomes even more usable. I’m sure half my complaints are wrong, unfounded, or based in some “old school” thinking, but that’s what I have to work with and my experience is my own.

One of the most interesting things for me, though, is how quickly you can prototype a 3D game in Unity. Slapping together some primitive shapes, adding physics, putting a bit of keyboard control code in them… whammo, you have your very own racing game, first person shooter, 3rd person runner, or even an isometric RPG. In fact, with my week’s-worth-of-knowledge right now, I could prototype any one of those up faster than I was able to initially get “Hello World” on the screen.

And that’s where Unity really shines – is with the broad strokes and the silhouettes. The borders of your game you can sketch out incredibly quickly, and be playing something that feels really solid, rewarding, and fun really fast.

Where Unity falls short compared to my regular platform (the 2D world) is probably the details; when it comes time to ship a game and you have to put on all the polish. Beyond-game-jam stuff.  Making everything gleam.

Texturing things properly might take you years just to learn the proper skills. Making your 3D models look right. Animating run cycles now is better suited to mocap than spritesheets. 3D just makes everything way harder.

But also smaller things, like making Unity’s physics engine do what you want instead of glitching.  Making your car controls not sluggish. Getting the AI opponents in your FPS working decently. Making shadows work properly. Making the particle projector actually emit a prefab particle. Installing custom editor scripts so the game executes the correct initialization scene instead of your currently open scene. Tweaking a few variables in a late-game-mechanic. All that stuff is much more difficult in Unity; getting that fine-grained, low-level control is a stumbling block and doesn’t come naturally to Unity.

That’s not to say any of that can’t be done; it’s just abnormally, surprisingly more difficult than the other languages I am used to.

I swear that I can, however, make a greyboxed FPS in under an hour (probably 10 minutes?), and that is phenomenal. That is something to be proud of, and being a visual creature seeing 3D cubes flying around the screen with that kind of speed is very rewarding. There’s a reason why I’m sticking with Unity through all this pain, but damn they could really do with a complete tutorial re-write.

I just wonder if I’ll ever ship anything in this.

I made the best pizza I ever made yesterday:

• Gluten Free Crust
• Base sauce was Nutella
• Add thinly sliced Grapple ™
• Thinly sliced Asian Pear
• Chopped Banana
• Lightly sprinkled with Skor chips
• Even more lightly sprinkled with Butterscotch Chips
• Layered with Marshmallows
• Topped with fresh Raspberries

Put in the oven @ 450F for about 10-15 minutes. The marshmallows roast as if they were over an open flame, and the raspberries get nice and soft (along with all the other fruit). Orgasmic. This was all that was left (with sound effects by Brian Provinciano)

Last night I saw a bunch of tweets going out about the Canadian Video Game Awards, and I noticed that Far Cry 3 was really sweeping things up.  I was a big fan of Far Cry 1, at least the open world beach bits before they forced combat down your throat, and I decided to purchase it on Steam (half price!).  I’ve been on a bit of a non-violent kick recently (combat in games is so yawn-inducing), and maybe it’ll satisfy me.

As I waited for it to download, I noticed Dishonored was also on the Steam Storefront. Because it was missing a “u” (any good Canadian knows it should be Dishonoured), I decided to pick it up too. You know, to even out the US/Canadian purchasing decisions for the night.

I fired it up today.  Here’s a major-spoiler-free review; but it’s moreso intended for people that have already played the game.

Dishonored is a game that comes in three distinct chunks, and can be played through in the course of about an hour. There is a prologue section that sets the stage (more of a tutorial), there is a brief jailbreak sequence you can murder (yawn) or stealth (yay!) your way through (a bit boring and tropey though), and then you reach the glorious finale of the game.   And this is where the game really shines.

Living out the rest of your days in a post-apocalyptic shanty town beside the river, you are given a few awesome godlike abilities (you can warp up to rooftops or over some fences), you can explore about, chat with the various other citizens that are in similar situations as yourself.  There’s no combat, no stealthing, no murder — just straight up, enjoyable, fun exploration of this little pub you call home.

There are areas that seem inaccessible at first but soon you find yourself climbing a chain and finding whole new rooms.  Books lay scattered about. You can open up tomes and read the wonderful writing that populates the backstory of this world; you can learn about whaling, or read a script to a stage-play, or clippings from newspapers. Skyrim did something similar, but this feels more connected somehow. The text is more concise and it connects more relevantly to the world around you. I really enjoyed trying to “read it all” as I soaked in the ambience.

They never really tie up some major plot-points; I was hoping for a happier ending (or an ending at all!), and they probably could have fleshed out the shadowy dream dude a bit more. But it still works; the protagonist accepts his fate, and not all stories have happy endings. The city is doomed by the plague anyway; might as well enjoy a nice pint before going out with the rest of them, eh?

There are a few characters that try to bug you with irrelevant side-quests (someone’s uncle is in trouble, blah blah), but thankfully they are not forced upon you.  One of the main characters in this village tries to convince you to murder a public official, but one of the gleaming bits about this game is that it allows you the freedom of choice.  You don’t need to murder anyone; you can just knock them out (or just sneak around them in the shadows). Likewise, you can choose to not go on these side-missions at all; you can just live out your life, like a regular person for a change.

But the absolute best feature of the game is this mechanical heart you hold in your hand. While holding this heart, when you look at something you can press a button to make it whisper secrets to you about that object. I know this sounds crazy but, honest-to-god, this is an actual thing in the game. I stare at my feet and right-click. “There are hounds, down there somewhere. People place bets,” a pleasant voice whispers in my earphones.  I spot a women sitting woefully across the courtyard. “She’s the last of her family,” it starts.  Every person in the world seems to have several “secrets” to them. You start learning about everyone’s lives, their hopes, their dreams.

This feature makes the game incredibly deep. You can hear about your surroundings, about all the details of the people that inhabit the world. It’s as if you hold in your hands an on-demand narrator.

This person over here wants to be a whaler and Captain their own ship… But cannot, for she is a woman.  I walk up next to her and see a deep sadness in her eyes; a longing for travelling abroad, for adventure. She notices me and looks up; you can see her hopes fade and she puts on an earnest face. “Can you help me sir,” she starts.

“I’m sorry, I cannot,” I interrupt. I am a broken man; betrayed by my friends. The city itself seems to want to kill me with booby-traps; and between hostile guards and rat-infested plagues it is simply terrifying to go out into the world. I look down and see I am still holding a sword soaked with crimson regret; a reminder of the deeds I convinced myself I had to do to escape prison. Though the value of this weapon is immense, I hand it over to the woman without thinking twice. “Solve your problems with this, and may god forgive us both.” (The game doesn’t actually allow me to hand over my sword, but the narrative leaves gaps so that you may fill it with your own imagination.)

I haven’t yet fully explored the world (there is a climbable chain leading to the basement, but it looks too spooky down there for me to venture forth – maybe those hounds I heard about are down there?), but I have to say that this game is one of the most fulfilling and exciting raw experiences of exploration I’ve ever had. It’s refreshing to see a game start out as filled with combat sequences, and raise itself up into a nice pacifistic sunset experience so quickly. I’m very happy with my purchase, and I was happy to shut the game down at this point and smile to myself.

I only have one major complaint about the game: The standard RPG-style “loot everything” mentality. I was breaking into everyone’s rooms and stealing their silver trays and little bundles of copper wire. I was happy that all of this loot was instantly converted to cash and there was no encumbrance system, but I’d really like people standing right there to complain about me stealing their most valuable items for a change. I also want to know why people leave coins just laying around everywhere.

I’m pretty excited to fire up Far Cry 3 next. I hope it also has similar exploration and involvement with characters. I can’t wait!

Monster Loves You! was entirely written in Haxe/NME, and primarily targets .SWF (Flash) output for the greatest flexibility in reaching all platforms within a single code-base.  This works out well, and PC/Linux/Mac/iOS/Android/Flash builds are all running well from a single compilation. Not having to maintain several branches makes me very happy.

(I recompile the .SWF with Adobe AIR to turn the game into a native EXE for the current Steam release)

To use Steam Achievements (or, in iOS land, GameCenter or various other platform features), you need to create what are called Adobe Native Extensions. These are .ANE files you include in your project, and Adobe AIR compiles them in when it’s time for distribution.

Thankfully, someone already created the .ANE for SteamWorks, and there are a bunch of other native extensions available online ready-to-go. I use several from Milkman Games (in IceBurgers), they work fantastically, and it opens up a lot more meta-stuff that you can do with your games.

But here’s the trick.  The .ANE files are written for AS3, and all the library header files needed for compilation aren’t compatible with Haxe. When I found this out, I panicked!  Would I have to write my own native extensions for everything?

Turns out… No! I whined and complained enough on Twitter that Grapefrukt came to my rescue and figured out.

Step 1

The first thing you have to do is realize that .ANE files are just .ZIP files in disguise. Rename your .ANE and unzip it!

Step 2

Inside the zip file is a file probably called Library.swf. This is the bit we need. Extract that out and put it somewhere.

Step 3

Open up the command-line prompt. You should already have Haxe installed if you are reading this, so this magical command should work for you:

haxe -swf nothing.swf --no-output -swf-lib library.swf --gen-hx-classes

This command beautifully creates empty classes (like header reference files) for all the stuff in the library you want to use.

Step 4

The above command will have generated a directory full of .HX source files.  You can ignore most of the base system stuff (it’ll generate classes for basic things like array.hx and Sprite.hx) and instead pick out the bits you need – for me, that was the /com/company/extensionName/ directory. Copy this directory to your project’s source folder.

And that’s it!

I use FlashDevelop and this negates the need for me to “include as library” any SWC files or “add to library” the .ANE files. Let Adobe AIR compile in the .ANE files as per usual and you are good to go!