Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
between panels can be conducive to heightened focus and concentration, and
its ability to enhance our workflow shouldn't be underestimated.
DM-Coding.
This layout again achieves a functional separation between UI
panels, as with the DM-Editing layout. But this time, the separation is between
the Unity Editor Interface proper (in the left monitor) and the MonoDevelop IDE
(in the right monitor)—or vice versa depending on your preference. With this
layout, the left monitor is identical to the single-monitor layout for the Unity
Editor (as shown in Figure
1-14
), but here we also get separate and full-screen
access to a coding window in the right-hand monitor. This makes debugging,
visualization, and code reading somewhat easier because we get to read our
code alongside Unity, especially when our game is running in Play mode.
Tip #3: Be Organized
Game development in Unity (and more widely) involves working with lots of related resources,
including assets (such as meshes and textures) and code (such as C# source files). By “lots” of
resources, I mean hundreds and thousands, and sometimes even more! For the sake of simplicity
and sanity, therefore, it's important to be organized from the outset and
to remain
so throughout
development. It's important to make organization a habit. However, saying that is one thing and
achieving it is another. So to stay organized while project managing and coding, keep the following
principles in mind:
Name and group assets.
Every Unity project relies on assets. These include
meshes, textures, audio files, animations, materials, scripts, scenes, and
more. From the very beginning of your project, think seriously about how you'll
organize and arrange these assets in terms of file names and the folders in
which you'll put them. Don't just import assets of every kind into your project
and then just leave them sitting together in the same folder. Doing that will
lead to confusion in the long term. You'll grow weary of even looking at the
Project panel. Instead, you'll need to group like items together, such as meshes
inside a
Meshes
folder, and textures inside a
Textures
folder (see the Project
panel in Figure
1-17
for asset organization in CMOD). For larger projects, you
may even need to take organization further by creating
nested
folders (folders
within folders), such as
Meshes/Enemies
and
Meshes/Props
. In addition, keep
a constant watch on your assets over your project's lifetime to protect against
“stragglers.” Namely, assets that somehow wind up in the wrong folders, either
by accident or because you put them somewhere temporarily and then forgot to
put them back where they should be (it can easily happen!).
