Steve's Blog

September 30, 2020 Unity 2D Movement Title: 2D Movement in Unity (Tutorial) By: Brackeys Youtube - Tutorial #1 Description: Tutorial for using a simple Unity player controller. Title: MELEE COMBAT in Unity By: Brackeys Youtube - Tutorial #2 Description: Tutorial for setting up basic melee combat with a 2D player controller. Overview I started with the Melee combat tutorial but it referenced the movement tutorial for how they setup the starting movement and animation so I wanted to move back to them just to make sure I was starting in a similar spot. The player controller made in the 2D movement tutorial is actually pretty bad unfortunately, but I still wanted to use this melee combat tutorial as a base point for something that is workable but not amazing just to get an idea of how to approach combat. 2D Player Movement - Tutorial #1 While overall not a great tutorial, it did support some concepts I have come across. They separated the pl...

September 29, 2020 Unity Keybinding Manager Title: How to Create a Custom Keybinding Handler for your Unity Game - *Improved* By: Dapper Dino Youtube - Tutorial Description: Tutorial for setting up an input manager scriptable object in Unity. Overview I was looking for a nicer way to control inputs and controls when setting up a Unity project other than the very basic way of listing out all the specific key codes in the user scripts themselves or using fragile string references when tying it to Unity's natural input manager. Initially I came across this creator's first attempt at setting up a keybinding handler (hence the *Improved* tag on the title of this tutorial) but was not as interested in it since they still used strings and I thought an enum implementation would be better, but lo and behold, the same creator had actually improved their system a year later with an enum system like I was imagining. While maybe not perfect, I do still like th...

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September 25, 2020 Unity Fixed Update Title: GameDev Stream — What is FixedUpdate For? By: Infallible Code Youtube - Information Description: Quick rundown of the main purpose of using fixed update in Unity. Overview This video quickly covers the main purpose of using FixedUpdate in Unity. As most Unity users know this is commonly used for containing physics calculations, but they better describe why that is here. They explain that FixedUpdate is much more consistent as it is inherently time based, whereas Update is tied directly to frame rate, which can vary drastically from computer to computer or user to user. This consistency however is what also makes FixedUpdate bad for uses such as user input because they could basically be entering inputs between the FixedUpdates and they will not be picked up at all, which is obviously extremely bad.

September 24, 2020 Unity Scriptable Objects Title: Better Data with Scriptable Objects in Unity! (Tutorial) By: Unity Youtube - Tutorial Description: Quick updated rundown by Unity themselves on using Scriptable Objects. Title: Scriptable Object Unity Documentation By: Unity Unity - Documentation Description: One of the suggested links to follow from the tutorial video that is just the official documentation on scriptable objects. Title: Making cool stuff with ScriptableObjects By: Matt Schell Unity - Blog Description: Another suggested link to follow from the tutorial video showing some more examples of using scriptable objects. Overview I wanted to make a quick reference to this new video as it was just released yesterday (Sep 23, 2020) and I have wanted to explore scriptable objects in Unity and getting recently updated information is always useful. Scriptable Objects as Data Containers Scriptable Objects can be useful...

September 23, 2020 State Machines Unity and Character Controller Focus Title: The State Pattern (C# and Unity) - Finite State Machine By: One Wheel Studio Youtube - Tutorial #1 Title: How to Code a Simple State Machine (Unity Tutorial) By: Infallible Code Youtube - Tutorial #2 Title: Complex Enemy Behavior using Finite State Machines - 2D Platformer - Part 13 [unity] By: Bardent Youtube - Tutorial #3 Title: State Machine Setup - 2D Platformer Player Controller - Part 21 By: Bardent Youtube - Tutorial #4 Title: Movement State Machine - Free download By: Epitome Youtube - Tutorial #5 Title: Unite 2015 - Applied Mecanim : Character Animation and Combat State Machines By: Unity - Aaron Horne Youtube - Tutorial #6 Overview I have dealt with using state machines before, but mostly for creating AI systems. I wanted to investigate using a state machine specifically for a player controller, focused on 2D player c...

September 22, 2020 Game Development 2D Melee Combat How To Make 2D MELEE COMBAT (Unity Tutorial + Free Game Kit!) Youtube - Link By: Thomas Brush Referenced Previous Tutorial How To Make 2D Platformers (Unity Fundamentals Tutorial) Youtube - Link By: Thomas Brush First Portion Camera They start by using a VirtualCamera game object from the Cinemachine package within Unity. This camera object gives a lot of useful camera controls without having to build another from scratch. They mention another tutorial to help with paralaxing, so this may not be included in the virtual camera. Character Animation Spine This seems to be the major animator they used, so this may be something worth looking into as I have come across it a lot now. For animation tips, they suggest strong bouncing effects on the vertical axis (squashing and stretching majorly in the y-axis generally, with some distortion in the other axis). Spine also gives you the option of different skins to provide t...

September 18, 2020 Game Development Fighting Games UFGTX: How to Make Fighting Games Youtube - Link By: Mike Zaimont Overview Mike Zaimont covers a lot about how he believes fighting games should be built and developed for the user experience. He covers topics such as using rollback netcode (GGPO specifically), providing hitbox data to players, as well as frame data. I liked this talk as an example of providing information you as a developer have to your players if they so wish to use it.

September 18, 2020 Unity Fighting Games Create A 3D Fight Game In Unity In One Video | 3D Beat Em Up Unity Tutorial | Fight Game Unity3D Youtube - Link By: Awesome Tuts Hitboxes (Fighter Melee Attack) - Game Mechanics - Unity 3D Youtube - Link By: N3K EN Overview There is some significant overlap with fighting games and beat 'em ups when it comes to general combat in any 2D platforming game, so it made sense to look to these sources for more inspiration and options for designing a combat system within such a game. Using a fighting game frame system with start up, active, and recovery frames can also be tailored to work with general combat systems, so when looking to be flexible it makes sense to use a system like this that is applicable to many cases. Neither of these examples specifically get into a specifically frame driven system, but they at least show the basics of tying animations into actions and hitboxes more, as well as exploring combos and possibly inpu...

September 14, 2020 Unity Learn Gameplay Programming Fundamentals Unity Gameplay Programming Fundamentals Unity Learn - Link By: Joshua Kinney Overview This is just a more advanced Unity programming fundamentals class, which sounds like exactly what I am looking to shore up currently, especially going into another personal project. This even has a focus on player movement scripts and interactive objects, which will fit very nicely with the next project I am looking to work on.

September 7, 2020 Unity Events and Unity Events Events or UnityEvents????????? Youtube - Link By: Jason Weimann Overview Events are something I want to utilize more consistently and more effectively in my code setups, so this seemed like a good supporting block to look into to understand their usage better. It also covers the usage and differences between Unity Events and the standard C# Events, so this gives me more options to explore and utilize as well more so than some other sources.

September 4, 2020 Unity 2D Melee Combat Easy 2D Melee Combo System in Unity: Tutorial Youtube - Source #1 By: ChosenPlay 2D Game Dev Tutorial - Melee Attacking in Unity (Sprites included) Youtube - Source #2 By: Lost Relic Games Basic Combat - 2D Platformer Player Controller - Part 9 [Unity 2019.2.0f1] Youtube - Source #3 By: Bardent Overview After finding a decent basic starting point for 2D melee combat in Unity, I wanted to find a few more sources and options to support and develop that further. These sources I found look more into the animation options a lot, as well as some minimal input buffering as well as chaining/comboing, hitbox activation, and state machine implementation. Source #1 Source #1 uses some transition animations to provide an example how to nicely transfer between various action animations when allowing characters to combo. This option also shows some minimal state machine usage (which seems like a strong candidate as a foundation for these...

September 3, 2020 Unity 2019 Melee Combat MELEE COMBAT in Unity Youtube - Link By: Brackeys Summary I want to explore making 2D character controllers, so looking to add melee combat as an option is a very common addition that I want to understand better. Being a Brackeys tutorial this is a rather basic approach with very Unity specific options, but it at least provides a good starting point to get something up and running. I would like to look into other options to add to this so I know a few ways to add hitbox generation nicely to characters and agents alike.