Eyvind Earle Post Mortem

My first tip toe into Unity 3D land is complete!

You can view it in your browser by clicking this link*:
OllieClarke_EyvindAndGetz.html
*ok it does require running the Unity plugin however it is very easy to install.

Or download it from here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1151317/OClarke_EarleAndGetz.zip

Or watch it on YouTube here:




Development

So, how did my first Unity project go?
To create the almost 2D world I took the image originally created by Eyvind Earle and began to model it in a 3D application. Below is an in progress image of the scene being built.



It really didn't take long to model the pieces. With the buildings modelled I seperately modelled the moving parts such as the vehicles and boats.
Initially I wanted to use vertex shading to save on using textures that would increase the download size however I found that Unity doesn't support vertex shading out of the box. I ended up using textures, this was a blessing as it meant I could add a subtle texture to each of the pieces. It hasn't affected the download size too badly as it comes at 10mb for the browser version which means it loads in less than 16 seconds on a broadband connection.


Animation

With these complete I used a simple bone rig to animate them. The animations were set up so that they could loop from start to end seamlessly. Although importantly, each vehicle animation had a different length.

Once the animations were imported into Unity they were all set to loop. Because each animation had a different length, over time, they would go out of sync creating an illusion of randomness and therefore a sense that they had lives of their own independent from each other.


Sound

I searched around for a while to find the right piece of music. My inspiration was Bladerunner. Specifically the scene in which the Vangelis blues track is playing as Deckard leans out of his window. I liked the way the music and vehicle sounds juxtaposed and yet complemented each other, creating a sombre and grimy atmosphere.

I watched a couple of episodes of the American drama Mad Men to get some inspiration. I felt that jazz would be a good place to find the music and after a bit of searching I found an old recording by the Saxophonist Stan Getz. Once I had the music I put together a rough ambient sound track made of cars, foghorns and plane fly overs to create the feeling of being by the docks.

Combined with the music it feels like a lazy evening sitting by a harbour, perhaps with a solitary drink or two.


What went right

Thanks to my familiarity with art programs and the ease of use that Unity offers, it looks and sounds pretty much how I wanted it to.
Thanks to the help of my girlfriend (a coder) the code does pretty much what I wanted it to.





What went wrong

Debugging in Unity is a little tricky, you certainly can't break and see what's happening in the script for example.
Asset management is also a little tricky. I used drop box to store and maintain assets however there's nothing like having a database to check assets in and out of.
I also found that my scene and project hierarchy was pretty messy due to my unfamiliarity with the program.
As usual the project took longer than I would have liked. This was mainly down to a significant workload to get through in my day job that rolled into the evening. Time which I would have used to develop and publish this project and more.





Conclusions

Unity is an extremely powerful game making tool, especially as it comes for free. Its well worth looking into if you're looking to create fun and simple projects that don't require much maintenance.
I'm looking forward to becoming much more familiar with it as I try out new ideas and experiments.

Hopefully as I do become more proficient with it I will develop a finesse with Unity that will enable me to focus on the ideas more than the tools.




What's next?

My next project will be a mad little something small involving this: