Please view the full post to see the Unity content.

My friend Stefan and I organized the first Gameloft game jam in Vietnam. It was held two weeks ago, we had 8 teams competing, most of them using Unity for the first time. The results were fantastic. Stefan and I spent our time split between helping the teams to solve their bugs and working on our own game entitled Roll!.

Notes:

• After the game loads you’ll need to click on the web player once more to bring focus to it.
• Controls: left/right arrow keys to move, space key to jump

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0kZK_WEOTQ

Just a few days before moving to Vietnam I gave a presentation about Multi-Directional Top-Down Shooters at the San Francisco chapter of the IGDA in our first “Pecha Kucha” style event.

I was contacted by a student journalist from Scranton High School asking if I could answer some questions about working as a game designer:

1. How did you first became interested in video games?
I don’t know how I first became interested in video games, but if you mean working on video game or designing video games: I had ideas for video games from as early as 1st grade. I always assumed that I’d eventually make a game with my friends, though it never really occurred to me that it was something you could have a career in. It wasn’t until I attended my first GDC in 2003 that it became clear in my mind that I wanted to work in the video game industry. Before 2003 my background was in new media design and documentary film making.

2. What is it like working as game designer  from your experience?
There are different phases in game development and in that regard I think game design is an interesting profession. Also many people in game development work on a project basis; either contractually, or because they are laid off at the end of a production or they decide to move on to a project at another company. This can be a bad thing if you want stability but it is more interesting to experience many different projects and company cultures in my opinion.

3. How would you say game design has changed from when you first started out?
When I first started it was hard to imagine a small team affording the tools necessary for making commercially viable games. Now you can get started with a powerful tool like Unity for free. That’s the biggest  difference, the democratization of game development. The other change has been the industry landscape. I started in the PS2 era, then there was huge uncertainty as to what “next gen” would mean in terms of budgets and art pipelines. Now next gen has matured but it feels like all of the industry and venture capital focus is on mobile and web.

4. From your experience how was it like taking this major in college?
I did my undergraduate at a liberal arts university with a focus on film and television production. I later attended a graduate program with a focus on game art and design. The liberal arts education was vital for giving me a wide base of knowledge to draw from. The art school was helpful for developing domain specific knowledge. I wouldn’t recommend majoring in game design in university, unless the program involved lots of programming and you were trying to become what’s known as a technical game designer. Otherwise you’re better served in a program where you can learn a bit of math, a bit of literature, a bit of history, a bit of business, etc.

If you’re interested in becoming a game programmer a general CS degree is probably best but be sure to make games on the side, and if you want to be a game artist, learn to be a good artist but also learn some domain specific things like optimized texture maps and polycounts.

5. From my knowledge, I know being a game designer can be competitive, what would you have to say would be the most important part or detail to be aware of as a game designer?
Maybe the most useful attribute of a game designer is the ability to communicate clearly, using visual, spoken, and written communications, to all team members regardless of specialty. To do this, not only do you need to become a good communicator and a good designer, you also need to have some experience in or understanding of business, math, logic, art, animation, and scheduling.

6. When going into the gaming industry, what would be the be the best strategy in starting with a company even if you’ve just major in game design?
The best strategy is to have some finished games, playable prototypes, or visual prototypes on hand. That means you already need to be a game designer before you can find work as a game designer. Most companies don’t want to take the time to train you up — so it is up to you to prove that you already have what it takes. If you don’t have any of these prototypes then you’ll have to start as a QA tester unless you happen to luck out and find someone willing to take a chance on you. Programmers and artists are going to have an easier time getting work right out of school because 1) everyone seems to be in need of programmers all the time and 2) an artist has an easily assessed portfolio. Of course I’ve seen many bad artist portfolios and I’d never give them any work.

7. In your opinion , what would you have to say game designers today lack in when making games?
1) Knowledge of the process of making games — how to mitigate risk, find the fun, and tune/polish. The secret sauce to game development is in many cases handed down from master to disciple and it is hard to find masters to learn from.
2) Focus — too many people focus on the story without getting the basic gameplay loops done right.
3) Time — ten months is not enough time to develop an original movie tie in game that can match up to Call of Duty.

8. What would you say would be the most difficult part of being a game designer?
It is expected that you’ll have to fight hard to prove the validity of your ideas, that’s fine, but the most frustrating part of being a game designer is when you’re working at a studio that is too egalitarian; where an animator, artist, or programmer might not follow through on the direction because they personally disagree with it. Design by committee doesn’t normally work out too well. Game development should be more of a meritocracy to avoid mediocracy.

9. What would say makes a game good in such areas like the gameplay and the development?
A clear focus. My friend David Sirlin wrote an article about Subtractive Design which would be a good starting point. Furthermore, in action games, here are some things that make them good: responsive and intuitive controls, interesting yet somewhat predictable enemy behavior, and interesting setups (where the enemies are placed and events) in the level design.

10. What role do you think game design plays in society or the media?
Some think that games have the power to improve the ways in which we learn about complex systems, or on the job training, or elementary skills, and they can also be a vehicle for fostering communication. They’re probably right, but for me, I’m happy if I can help someone unwind after a hard day of work.

11. What would have to be your most memorable moment working as game designer?
There is no single moment but the project that was the most exciting to work on was an elaborate speculative pitch for Street Fighter IV.

12. From viewing your resume on your blog, I see you’ve worked with different companies throughout your career such as Sega Studio and Backbone Entertainment and work on  some major games like Iron Man 2 , Sega genesis collection and Super Puzzle Fighter II HD Remix; out of all of the games, what would you have to say would be the most hours you put in on ?
So far that would be The Spiderwick Chronicles — I put in a lot of extra time, not because I was forced to, but because I wanted to. The job was also a big step up for me in terms of responsibility and tasks and I needed to put in extra time to make up for my lack of experience.

13. What advice would you recommend for anyone majoring in game design in the future?
It doesn’t pay as well and it isn’t as fun as you assume. I keep trying to figure out different careers I could do that would pay better, like something in finance maybe, but I really enjoy making stuff and find it hard to imagine working in a non-design job outside of games. I would love to try my hand at other kinds of design though, transportation, architectural, fashion, etc.

I recently set up Unity Asset Server (a version control repository server with a client built into Unity Pro) on Amazon’s EC2 — ”a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud.” There were a few gotcha’s along the way so here’s a quick start guide for anyone else who wants to do the same. Most of what I cover here is also included in Amazon and Unity’s documentation but there are two “gotchas” that stumped me for a while which are solved in steps 7 and 9 below.

I decided to go with EC2 for a few reasons. First: you pay for your hourly usage (most other VPS will charge you a flat rate per month starting at around $20). Second: Amazon has pretty robust and flexible features that allow you to easily scale. Third: the first year is free for new customers, so there was no reason not to try it out.

The other services that I evaluated were:

• http://chunkhost.com
• http://www.dreamhost.com/vps-pricing.html
• http://www.slicehost.com/
• http://www.linode.com/
• http://mediatemple.net/

1. Getting started

First of all you’ll need to have an Asset Server client license, it is a $500 add-on license to Unity Pro.

Next you’ll need to sign up for an Amazon Web Services account. This will require a valid credit card. If you are already an Amazon.com customer you can use the same login credentials.

2. Creating your EC2 Server

Once your AWS account is set up, you need to create your EC2 instance. Start by selecting the EC2 tab. Choose a region for your instance to be hosted in (Singapore, US East Coast, US West Coast) and then select Launch Instance.

3. Choose an AMI

You’ll then be presented with a list of different machine images. Choose Basic 32-bit Amazon AMI. This is both compatible with the version of Unity Asset Server that you are going to install and it supports the free Micro Instance.

3. Instance Details

3.1. Instance Type

Select the Micro Instance Type. It is also a good idea to make sure Termination Protection is selected.

3.2. Advanced Instance Options

Leave the Kernel and RAM IDs set to Default. Make sure Monitoring is not selected since that service isn’t free.

3.3. Tags

Create a Key called “Name” and set it to a value of your choosing. I’ve chosen to name my instance “UnityAssetServer“.

4. Create Key Pair

Choose to Create a new Key Pair. I named mine “UnityAssetServerKeyPair”. Download this file to your harddrive. If you’re on OS X, and you want to make things easier for you later on, you can save this file to your user directory (the one with a little house icon in finder).

5. Configure Firewall

Just select default for now.

6. Instance Setup Review

The instance is almost ready to launch, just double check everything one last time.

7. Configure Security Groups

This one is important — if you don’t do this step you will not be able to SSH into your shell to install Unity Asset Server, nor will you be able to connect to the asset server.

7.1. Unity Asset Server TCP Ports

• In the yellow box, select “other” in the Connection Method dropdown.
• For Protocol select tcp.
• If you want to use the default port for Unity Asset Server (doesn’t require you to specify the port within Unity) enter 10733 for both the From Port and To Port.
• Source (IP or group) should be set to 0.0.0.0/0
• Save

7.2. SSH TCP Ports

• In the yellow box, select “SSH” in the Connection Method dropdown.
• For Protocol select tcp.
• Enter 22 for both the From Port and To Port.
• Source (IP or group) should be set to 0.0.0.0/0
• Save

8. Elastic IPs

Now you want to Allocate and Associate an Elastic IP to your instance, this will allow you to enter just the IP address in Unity and not the long cumbersome AWS URL. It is important to note that this is a free service as long as the IP is associated with an instance. They don’t want you grabbing a lot of IP addresses and not using them.

9. SSH into Your EC2 Instance

If you go to Instance, and select your instance and then select Instance Actions, Connect you will see some instructions about how to ssh into you server.

Note, the command line text that they issue you is wrong.

ssh -i UnityAssetServerKeyPair.pem root@ec2-50-18-63-144.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

should read

ssh -i UnityAssetServerKeyPair.pem ec2-user@ec2-50-18-63-144.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Of course your string will be different, the important thing to note is that root should actually read ec2-user. This one stumped me for some time!

So, if you’re running OS X, simply open up Terminal and type your corrected line in and hit enter. If you are running windows, you’ll need to download an SSH client such as Putty. If you set up an Elastic IP you should be able to use that instead of the full AWS url as well (everything after the @ mark). Also, if you didn’t save your key pair to your user directory, or if you are on windows, you’ll need to specify the filepath for your .pem key pair file.

10. Installing Unity Asset Server on Your Server

Now that you are logged into your EC2 instance via SSH you are ready to follow along with the Unity Asset Server installation instructions. Specifically we’ll be installing the Linux i386 rpm package. Here are the instructions as of today but note that if a new version of Asset Server is released you would want to reference the installation instructions for the file path of the latest release.

Run the following command on the server:

sudo rpm -Uvh http://download.unity3d.com/asset_server/unity_asset_server-2.0.1.i386.rpm

If this is a new installation, you will also have to supply an initial password for the admin user:

sudo /opt/unity_asset_server/bin/reset_admin_password

When prompted, please supply a new password for the admin user.

You should now be able to fire up Unity and use it to create projects and users on the newly installed Asset Server.

11. Configuring Unity Asset Server in Unity

From here on out you can read the Unity Asset Server Guide to figure out how to set up new projects, users, etc. It is pretty self explanatory and most people should be able to figure out it without even looking at the manual.

11.1 Quick Launch Cheat Sheet

• Launch Unity
• Open Unity Asset Server (Window/Asset Server)
• Select Connection
• For Server,
  • If you used the default port when setting up the security you can just type in your Elastic IP address. Ex: 50.18.63.144
  • If you specified a port other than the default 10733, lets say 10700, you’d need to enter the server like this: 50.18.63.144:10700
• Initially log in with admin and the same password you set in the installation process with the “sudo” command.
• Create a new User Name and Password for you and also create User Names and Passwords for your collaborators.

I have the hankering to prototype some game ideas in Unity. Rather than just use cubes I want to have the ability to create some proxy art that is a bit more representative. My historic 3D app of choice is 3D Studio Max, but since I only run OS X at home these days, that’s not an option. So I decided to spend a couple of evenings investigating a bunch of options for creating 3D art on OS X. The base level of proficiency I wanted to get to in each was the ability to navigate the UI and 3D view, create a primitive object like a cylinder, adjust the number of segments, select and manipulate faces, edges, and vertices, perform edge loop selections, ring selections, convert a face selection to vertices, perform extrude, lathe, subdivision, split, and slide operations – all the essential tasks that are done again and again when modeling. In some cases I also explored the UV layout, texture painting, and animation views.

The tools I evaluated were:

	Wings 3D 1.2 Price: Free, Open Source Pros: A bare bones sub division poly modeler Cons: no bones/skinning, no automatic Unity import of native files
	Silo 2.2 Price: $100, $150 Pros: Elegant, full featured modeler Cons: No bones/skinning, no FBX export (though OBJ seems to work fine), no automatic Unity import of native files
	Modo 401 Price: $1000 Pros: Great modeling workflow, direct painting Cons: No bones/skinning yet, no automatic Unity import of native files
	Cheetah3D 5.5 Price: $100 Pros: almost full featured, automatic Unity import of native files Cons: some features like direct model painting are pretty bare bones
	Cinema 4D R12 Price: $1000, $3700 Pros: Full featured, relatively simple Interface, automatic Unity import of native files Cons: Full version is expensive
	Blender 2.54 Price: Free, Open Source Pros:  Full featured, automatic Unity import of native files Cons: non-standard UI
	Maya 2011 Price: $3500 Pros: Industry Standard, full featured, automatic Unity import of native files Cons: Expensive, Worst UI

Conclusion:

Guess what? They’re all pretty good!

Wings 3D relies on a context sensitive right mouse click menu and hotkeys. Very efficient; there’s no visual clutter — not even a gimbal — in this minimal application. Unfortunately it is too bare bones to be useful for most people and the development of the tool doesn’t seem to have progressed much in the past five years.

Silo and Modo seem to have the most modern and productive modeling tools. I was super impressed with both of them but with no support for rigging or animation, and no automatic Unity import of native files, you will need to include a more full featured application in your pipeline. I think it is pretty likely that bones will be added to Modo very soon, and native Unity asset import doesn’t seem too far fetched for Modo either (there is already a script that lets you quickly export to FBX). I’d like to revisit Modo after the next version. As for Silo, I’m tempted to buy a copy in the near term.

I’ve had Blender installed on my hard drive for years. I kept opening it, getting really confused, and running away. This is pretty much everyone’s experience with Blender. You see, Blender has a non-standard UI. When I say non-standard, I don’t even mean that it doesn’t look like Max or Maya, I mean, the menu bars are at the bottom of the windows and split amongst a few of them at that. It doesn’t help that blender workflow relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, many of which are bound to the numpad which is not something that laptop nomads tend to have. Despite this, there are people who swear by Blender, so I decided to finally roll up my sleeves and dig in. I found one of the few tutorial that talks about the new UI in 2.5x and finally had an “ah ha” breakthrough when I figured out that everything is upside down.

All in all, I think that Blender is incredibly powerful and complete, especially for the price. I’m really tempted to invest more time in Blender, but I’ll have to wait until Blender 2.5x is out of Beta as automatic Unity asset importing is currently broken.

Despite the craziness of Blender, Maya actually has the worst UI of all. It is insanely cluttered. It is, however, an industry standard and heavily taught in animation and game development schools, so people are used to it and will probably think my comments about its UI are unfounded. Being an industry standard, especially among animators, is not insignificant and makes Maya a tempting choice, but not for a hobbyist at its price point.

Cinema 4D had the nicest UI of all the full featured tools. The base version is probably worth the $1000 price tag, but it’s overkill for what I need right now and there is also an asset  import incompatibility between the latest version of C4D and the latest version of Unity. A patch already exists which fixes this however.

Cheetah has the most approachable UI for novices, very standard UI both in terms of applications in general and 3D tools specifically. It almost feels like a well executed parody of standard 3D apps from the 90′s. This is the only tool that I evaluated that is OS X only. I ended up buying a copy and think that I’ll be using this program for the time being.

* UPDATE – 2-22-2011: With the release of Unity 3.2, the Blender and Cinema 4D’s native file import pipelines have been fixed and native file support has been extended to Modo.

Over the past year I wrote a monthly column for Develop, a game industry rag out of the UK. The column was entitled Unity Focus and it took a different format each month, depending on what I though was interesting at the time. I present the collection here in PDF format for your viewing pleasure:

Develop 099 Unity Focus — Inside the Unity Web Player

Develop 100 Unity Focus — Unity Free-For-All

Develop 101 Unity Focus — 2009: The Year of Unity

Develop 102 Unity Focus — Finding Success on the iPhone

Develop 103 Unity Focus — Author Once, Deploy Anywhere

Develop 104 Unity Focus — A Preview of Unity 3

Develop 105 Unity Focus — Getting There First: Unity’s Zero-Day iPad Support

Develop 106 Unity Focus — Unity Content Helps Launch SteamPlay

Develop 107 Unity Focus — Making the Switch to the Web

Develop 108 Unity Focus — Unity 3: What are Its Developers Most Proud Of?

Develop 109 Unity Focus — Using Unity to Create Premium Social Games

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. First, Yuki and I flew to Vienna, Austria where we visited our friends Lev, Christoph, Claudia, and Babsi. While there we attended the Game City event and visited the swank offices of Avaloop. While sleeping in Vienna we took advantage of its location to make day trips to Salzburg, Budapest, and Bratislava. We’re in agreement that Budapest was an awesome surprise.

Next we went to Copenhagen to attend the Unite 2008 conference. I covered the event for Gamasutra; here are some stories that I submitted:

• http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20773
• http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20779
• http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20813

While there I had the chance to participate in a round table interview with Unity execs, Atari President Phil Harrison, and former Criterion CEO David Lau-kee. If Gamasutra doesn’t post the entire interview I’ll eventually post it here on my site.

Other highlights from Copenhagen included the Danish Design Center (a museum of product design) and a brand new restaurant in the trendy Norrebro neighborhood. It was very reasonable, the service was friendly, the latte was outstanding, and the atmosphere was cozy. It is called Café N, except there is an Arabic-like tilde above the N. You can find it here.

And finally, I’ll be leaving Copenhagen tomorrow morning and heading to Toronto to represent Core Talent Games at GameON: Finance 2.0. Core Talent Games was announced earlier this week and is a new venture that I’ve been working on with the other co-founders since April. I love it when a plan comes together.

Yesterday was pretty eventful. First of all, the Game Career Guide was released, you can get it here for free as a web viewable magazine, or as a downloadable PDF. It includes a top ten list for aspiring producers, written by my good pal Michael Boccieri (page 58). It also includes a quiz written by me (page 103), with a few questions by my friend Brandon Sheffield. Some of my more sarcastic questions which didn’t make the cut are viewable in this post’s comments.

Next up, Kongai, Kongregate’s Online Collectible Card Game was finally released. My friend Sirlin lead the design on this project and has really done a great job with it! Early in the project I helped Sirlin with some of the usability and mechanics design. I got my first chance to play it today and was really happy to see that many of my contributions made it into the final game.

And Finally, my friends Charlie and Max at Unknown Worlds announced that they are rolling their own engine for their forthcoming game Natural Selection 2.

No wait! This just in, my friends Dan and Zach at The Retronyms released their first iPhone app. Yestesterday was truely a day of releases! The app is called, simply, Recorder. You can see a video of it in action by following that link, or a funier one here. Both videos were made in another Retronym application called InOneTake.

Dancing is a series of videos on wherethehellismatt.com. I found out about this on my friend Dan’s blog. These videos, which have gotten progressively better, are really amazing. If you have time I suggest watching them in this order: Dancing 2005, Dancing 2006, Dancing 2008; if you’re short on time then you can just watch Dancing 2008. I was very moved by these videos and have watched each of them at least three times! Matt, who is dancing, used to be a game designer!

The Passage is an Art Game that has gotten the attention of many designers. You can download it here. Play through it a few times (5 minutes per session) and then read the Creator’s Statement. I think this is a game that Matt would appreciate!

I wish that there was a greater amount of moving media. I’m really happy when short form, somewhat avant guard stuff—like the above—ends up being genuinely moving. When you compare this to the amount of stuff that tends to be just a distraction, or art for art sake, it becomes an unexpected treasure!

The minimal website for Studio Interrupt, my new venture, went up earlier this week. Studio Interrupt shares the name of a previous entity through which I used to collaborated with friends during university; a name I continued to use as a documentary film maker before entering into the video game industry. Now, with much more experience under my belt, but the same collaborative spirit, I am devoting my full-time efforts to getting Studio Interrupt and our various productions off the ground. So far it has been an, at times intimidating, bag of fun, stress, limitless possibilities, learning, and a test of self-discipline. I’ve been getting tons of advice from entrepreneurial friends (thank you!), and a lot of buy in to our model and ideas from other developers.

Our focus is co-producing game projects, but we are very interested in collaborating with specialists from other fields as well. I can’t say too much more for now but I’ll definitely continue to update the world through this blog and the one on StudioInterrupt.com!