Alter Ego

Quick Links

• Communication via Discord
• Documentation (GDD, surveys, notes, etc.) on Google Drive
• Project board for tracking issues and progress

Tools Required

• Latest version of git. Make sure LFS option is checked when installing.
• Unity Hub, and through that Unity. Ensure to select version 2021.3.8f1, and enable WebGL deployment.
• A merge tool for resolving conflicts. VS Code is a great option, or you can download your own.

Environment Setup (Immediately after cloning)

Step 1: Basic git configuration

# Configure line endings to use LF across all platforms,
# to avoid unnecessary conflicts
git config --local core.autocrlf input

# Reset your cloned repository to fix the line-endings
git rm --cached -r .
git reset --hard

# Setup git LFS
git lfs install

Step 2: Configure Unity Smart Merge

If you are using SourceTree, you may want to check this YouTube tutorial.

Locate your Unity installation, hence denoted as UNITY_TOOLS_FOLDER.

• For example, on Windows it is C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2021.3.8f1/Editor/Data/Tools/
• This folder has two files of interest:
  • UnityYAMLMerge.exe: The program that performs smart merge
  • mergespecfile.txt: Configuration of "fallback" merge tool for remaining conflicts

Open your local git config using: git config --local --edit and paste the following:

[merge]
    tool = unityyamlmerge
[mergetool "unityyamlmerge"]
    keepBackup = false
    trustExitCode = false
    cmd = \"<UNITY_TOOLS_FOLDER>/UnityYAMLMerge.exe\" merge -p "$BASE" "$REMOTE" "$LOCAL" "$MERGED"

Replace the contents of mergespecfile.txt, to setup your "fallback" merge tool. The below shows an example for VS Code:

#
# UnityYAMLMerge fallback file
#
# %l is replaced with the path of you local version
# %r is replaced with the path of the incoming remote version
# %b is replaced with the common base version
# %d is replaced with a path where the result should be written to
# On Windows %programs% is replaced with "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Program Files (x86)" there by resulting in two entries to try out
# On OSX %programs% is replaced with "/Applications" and "$HOME/Applications" thereby resulting in two entries to try out

* use "%programs%/Microsoft VS Code/bin/code" --wait --merge %r %l %b %d

Step 3: Test if Smart Merge works

Please see this sample repository created with a deliberate conflict, to help verify if your config works.

Developer Guidelines

We will work in an Agile-like approach, using the tools integrated within GitHub for easy tracking. Please find the guidelines below, and do share your thoughts on the same!

• We will try to divide work in a non-overlapping way.
• Everything that can be a prefab, should be a prefab.
  • Once we have these "building blocks", we can create levels rapidly and indpendently.
• TEST YOUR CHANGES before committing.
  • Create a "test" scene by making a copy of Assets/Scenes/BlankScene.unity for your feature.

Asset Creation

Reference: How to size assets for 2D games?

In summary, for crisp rendering, we should maintain resolution_height = 2 * camera_size * PPU:

• We are targetting 1080p max resolution.
• By experimenting and comparing with similar games, the camera zoom will be set to 11.25.
• This gives us a PPU of 48px.
  • This means, e.g., if the player is 2 units tall and 1 unit wide, the sprite should have size 48 * 96 px.

Level design

• Follow overall steps as described in recorded tutorial
• You can increase the camera size slightly if you need more space
• Don't override prefab settings for the wrong reasons - e.g. to improve "aesthetics" or fix level design issue. This causes lot of pain in future.