Project 3 - Unity Tool Developement
Product Description
Name: Vincent Whyte
Timeframe: 07/01/2019 to 25/02/2019
Project Detail:
Designed and implemented a set of tools for the unity editor. The purpose of these tools is to improve workflow, and avoid duplicating work when starting new projects.
These tools were made using Unity Editor scripts:
Make Material: Creates a material from the selected texture and places it in the Materials folder. Multiple textures can be selected. If a texture with the same name already exists, the user is warned with a dialog box to avoid overwriting.
Make Prefab: Creates a prefab from the selected game object(s) in the hierarchy. If a prefab with the same name already exists, the user is warned with a dialog box to avoid overwriting.
Make Folders: Creates this folder structure in the assets folder:
- Audio
- Fonts
- Materials
- Meshes
- Physics
- Prefabs
- Resources
- Scripts
- Shaders
- Textures
Make Script: Creates a new C# script in the scripts folder. Utilises the StreamWriter class from System.IO. The idea is to make it quicker to make a script using the hotkey, instead of going through the create menu.
Return to Zero: Moves the selected GameObject to the coordinates 0,0,0. I found myself doing this a lot in the other projects when editing and comparing objects. I was doing this by manually entering 0 three times in the inspector and can now do it with one hotkey.
These tools were implemented as classes to be used in other scripts:
Unity 2D Sprite Sheet Component: Created a class called AniSprite. Used to manipulate a sprite sheet to select which frames to show, and how many frames per second etc.
Time Component: Created a class called TimeClass, which also includes a version of the AniSprite class as a function.
The demonstration above was created using a script that uses the time class. Notes on my implementation:
- The key presses for the options call the functions from the TimeClass
- The numbers displayed for days, hours, etc. are taken from the TimeClass using get methods, like GetPlayTime(), GetHours() etc.
- The countdown and add time functions take floats as arguments. For the demonstration, countdown has been set to 15, and the added time set to 1000 for both the single and multi functions.
Software Used: Unity and Visual Studio.
Final Thoughts: I can see how being able to create tools for repetitive tasks will be very useful for future projects. Building up a collection of reusable classes will also make projects quicker and easier.
Time Breakdown:
| Time Estimates: | Actual Time Taken: | |
| Following the videos | 10hrs | 13.5hrs |
| Time Class | 4hrs | 7.5hrs |
| Editor Scripts | 4hrs | 4.5hrs |
