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Setting up Development and General Hints

These are some general hints on how to work on the game. However, most technical information is available in the technical report (see Releases page of this repository) and in the documentation of the code (docstrings).

However, you should at least install all required programs mentioned in How To Build and follow the instructions in the first, second and last hint on this page.

Table Of Contents

Setup Git LFS when cloning this project

You should use Git LFS on the repository server and in your git client. This makes it easier to deal with (large) binary files and keeps the repository size manageable.

On an Arch Linux system, you can setup Git LFS for the client like this:

sudo pacman -S git-lfs
git lfs install

Setup git to merge Unity Prefabs and Scenes

Unity Prefabs and Scenes are text files, but very complex and impossible to merge by hand. However, Unity comes with an automatic merging tool for them which can be integrated with git:

  1. Find out the path to the merge tool. On a linux system, it can possibly be found at /home/$USER/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.4.2f1/Editor/Data/Tools/UnityYAMLMerge when using Unity Hub.

    If its a system-wide installation, you might find it at /opt/Unity/Editor/Data/Tools/UnityYAMLMerge. If you are on windows, you can find it around here: C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Data\Tools\UnityYAMLMerge.exe

  2. Edit your ~/.gitconfig and add the following entries:

    [mergetool "unityyamlmerge"]
  binary = true
  trustExitCode = false
  cmd = '<path to UnityYamlMerge>' merge -p "$BASE" "$REMOTE" "$LOCAL" "$MERGED"
  keepTemporaries = true
  keepBackup = false
[merge "unityyamlmerge"]
  name = Unity SmartMerge (UnityYamlMerge)
  driver = '<path to UnityYamlMerge>' merge -h -p --force %O %B %A %A
  recursive = binary
  keepTemporaries = true
  keepBackup = false

    (I have not tested this on Windows! You might need to mask some parts of the cmd strings, for example replace \ in the path with \\.)

  3. Set the git attributes of .unity and .prefab files to merge=unityyamlmerge. This has already been configured in .gitattributes for this project, so you should not need to do anything here.

  4. Now, git merge should automatically merge Scene and Prefab files with the UnityYamlMerge tool. However, for a cleaner history, use of git rebase instead of git merge is recommended. For some reason, git does not respect the merge driver settings when using rebase automatically. However, when getting a conflict in a Scene/Prefab file you can still apply the Unity auto merge tool to the conflicted files like this:

    git mergetool --tool=unityyamlmerge path/to/scene.unity

    The configuration should make sure to leave the REMOTE, LOCAL and BASE versions of Scene and Prefab files in the file system. This is useful should the tool fail and you need to combine the different versions of a scene manually. Otherwise, you can just delete them.

For more information on the Unity merge tool, see https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SmartMerge.html.

How to deal with .meta files

It seems those files sometimes store important settings, e.g. links between Scenes and Prefabs, etc. So you should try to merge them manually if a conflict arises. If a .meta file seems not to contain any important information, you might get away with deleting the file and starting Unity instead of merging, since Unity will try to regenerate them.

.meta files should always be added to git.

How to keep Graphics Pixel Perfect

  • we do not want any filtering, anti-aliasing etc. to happen to our sprites since the game shall emphasize a pixel-look
  • Hence, always set the following settings for new sprites:
    • Filter Mode: Point (no filter)
    • Compression: None
    • Sprite Editor -> Pivot Unit Mode: Pixels
  • All sorts of anti-aliasing should be disabled in the render pipeline
  • Furthermore, if you get tiny gaps when rendering a tilemap, make sure, "Pixel Snap" is enabled for the material of the tilemap. You can also use the TileMap Material in the Materials folder
  • See also https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/2d-pixelperfect.html
  • All imported tileset textures should be added to the Tilesets Sprite Atlas to prevent gaps in tilemaps

The Debug Settings

Always connecting to the game with a real phone or browser as game controller is tedious. Instead you can spawn debug player instances which are controlled by the keyboard in any scene with a spawner.

This and some other useful settings can be set in the DebugSettings of the game. Just open SynergyQuest/Assets/Resources/DebugSettings.asset in the Unity Editor. All settings are explained in the C# script implementing them (SynergyQuest/Assets/Scripts/Settings/DebugSettings.cs).

Also check out the other settings files in the same folder.

Scene Checklist

When adding a new scene, make sure the following criteria are met, since these are frequent errors. (For the future, it would be nice to implement an automatic validator for this.)

  • There is MainCamera, CameraTargetGroup and MultiTargetCamera from Prefabs/Camera
    • CameraTargetGroup is assigned to MultiTargetCamera.Follow
  • Grid Object:
    • Scale: (1, 1, 1)
    • Cell-Size: (1, 1, 1)
  • Tilemap
    • Layer: LevelStatic
    • Material: TileMapMaterial
    • Tile Anchor: y=0
    • Position z=-2
    • Tilemap Renderer.Mode = Individual
    • Composite Collider 2D - Geometry Type: Polygon
    • Ground should be drawn with z=0
    • Walls should be drawn with z=2
    • Use prefab brushes whenever possible!
  • There should be at least a RoomDefaultPlayerSpawner
  • If it is a Dungeon level:
    • there must be a correctly configured DungeonLoader object
    • make sure the doors match the neighboring rooms. E.g. if your room has a gate one one side, the next room should also have a gate, not a door
    • (To learn more about how scenes are connected into a dungeon, read the documentation of SynergyQuest/Assets/Scripts/Dungeon/DungeonLayout.cs)
  • If Sokoban boxes are present:
    • There should usually be a Prefabs/Sokoban/SokobanPositionSaver instance, so that sokoban positions are saved when a riddle is solved

Water Effects

SynergyQuests implements decorative reflective puddles.

  1. Make sure your tilemap uses the TileMapMaterial
  2. Make sure, your tilemap has the PuddleShaderController component
  3. Draw puddle tiles (they have a cyan key color in the palette)
  4. Add the WaterReflectable component to all game objects which should have a reflection

Working on the Controller Web App

See Controller/README.md.