This talk will cover technical design choices, tips & tricks for creating an endless runner platformer for Android & iOS in Unity, with real examples from our own game Evliya Celebi: Olumsuzluk Suyu, which include: character controls, animations & state machine, level design & generation, performance optimisations, gui elements, cross-platform design, level editor.

1. 2D Endless Runner in
Unity for Mobile
Murat Gürel
@muratgurel
GDG Devfest Istanbul, Dec 2014

2. About Me
• Software Engineer, iOS - Peak Games
• Native iOS development for 3 years - 2 years
professionally.
• 4 games with Unity

3. Why am I here?
• Evliya Çelebi experiences
• Insufficient resources on the internet
• Project management from scratch
• Tips, tricks & time-savers

4. Evliya Çelebi
VIDEO

5. Evliya Çelebi
• Started in June 2014
• 1 month research prior
• 4 sceneries with 5 different sprite sets (20 total)
• More than 40 levels with various difficulties

6. Agenda
• Components
• Colliders & Layers
• Tags & Camera
• State Machine
• Animations
• Level Editor & Level Design
• Performance
• Development Environment

7. Components

8. Components
• Unity is a component based system. Don’t try to do
everything with inheritance

9. Components
• Try to separate
functionality into
components

11. Colliders & Layers

12. Colliders & Layers
• Use compound colliders. Don’t use 1 collider for
everything

13. Colliders & Layers
• Instead of hard-coded values, use triggers

14. Colliders & Layers
• Use layers & collision matrix to disable collision
between layers

15. Tags & Camera

16. Tags
• Try to be type safe. Don’t rely on tags too much
• GetComponent is fast & safe

17. Tags
• Use tags for higher level stuff
• Enemy, Player, Obstacle etc. (Not LongObstacle)
Player
Collectible
Obstacle Collectible

18. Camera
• Use layers to disable rendering for certain
cameras

19. State Machine

20. State Machine
• We have a state machine for our main character
• Listen for events & let state decide what to
transition into
• Character listens to state changes
• Other scripts can also hook into changes

21. State Machine

22. State Machine
Run Slide

23. Animations

24. Animations
• Use mecanim

25. Animations
• Know about animation triggers

26. Animations
• For smaller animations, we use the legacy
system

27. Level Design

28. Level Design
• Random enough to be fun
• Predictable enough to control economy
• Fully random is extremely hard & not good for game
• We have separate level slices
• We append them together
• Random enough
• Easier on development & design

29. Level Design

30. Level Design
VIDEO

31. Level Editor

32. Unity Editor
• Do not use editor to set variables excessively
• Only expose variables a level designer should
use
• Validate if needed
• Do it inside scripts for other stuff

33. Level Editor
• If you can, separate level design from coding
• Unity editor is highly extendible
• Can make a level editor inside Unity

34. Level Editor
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
• Sharing workload
• Faster level design
• Fewer bugs if done correctly
• Shorter overall project time
• Editor itself can have bugs
• Teaching designers
• Cannot prevent default unity
actions

35. Level Editor
• Designers place placeholders
• Have convenience methods
• Can validate & test level individually
• Send us the final level

36. Cross-Platform

37. Cross-Platform
• 1 image set with resolution 1280x800
• Show more game area
• Use percentage for resolution dependant stuff
• Preprocessor macros or conditionals
• uGUI for UI

38. Performance

39. Performance
• Try to use simple shaped colliders (circle,
rectangle)

40. Performance
• Use texture atlases
• Unity sprite packer is not good, we used
TexturePacker
• Better packing algorithm
• Exports for Unity
• 54 MB to 37 Mb memory gain

41. Performance
• Do not load every asset at once
• Async load when needed
VIDEO

42. Performance
• Test on device, not
just simulator
• Have a FPS gauge

43. Performance
• Use profiler

44. Performance
• Try to use static fonts

45. Thank You!
Twitter: @muratgurel
E-mail: mrtgurel@gmail.com