Game Development Archives

Leaderboard Manager (2.1.0)

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Jonathanin Asset Store, Update

Leaderboard Manager (2.1.0)

While it is a little delayed, the new rather long awaited Leaderboard Manager update is here. So what’s new?

Summary of changes

Mechanically the asset is pretty much the same as the earlier 2.0.x versions of the asset but with some updated backend logic for future updates. A full rundown of the behind the scenes changes:

New saving system similar to the Save Manager’s setup with a JSON save setup instead of the legacy binary save file setup.
Updated the structure of leaderboards to allow each entry to have its own unique identifier so you can reference an entry easier.

There is a porting tool to update old saves to the new structure. More on this in a moment.

New settings structure to match the rest of the assets released recently with per user settings and a settings provider flow.
Offline documentation is now complete instead of a simpler version. The online docs are also updated to match the rest of the assets using Notion as a host (easier to maintain in a pinch and has search built in).

There are also a new editor to allow to viewing of existing leaderboards as well as a setup to port older saves to this new version, both in the editor and at runtime.

Editor

With the editor tab you can view all leaderboards currently in the save file. You can’t make new ones here as the API isn’t designed to have boards made in the editor, instead having them made at runtime. You can however delete board should you need to test the setup and view the entries to make sure they appear as expected which should help with debugging.

Porting data to 2.1.x from 2.0.x

As mentioned the new structure means any old data from the previous version will need updating. A full rundown is in the documentation for the asset. But basically if you used the old setup to save the score as time by saving the score in seconds etc. As you can now save score as into a time class instead. There isn’t any major work you need to do to achieve this, just define the board ids and the type to convert them to and the asset should take care of the rest.

Note: you will need to convert boards even if they were just a score field.

An example below of a board called “Arcade” being converted to a score board in the new version.

What’s next?

With this update done, I’m mainly focusing on support and getting back into my main side project for the year as I’ve had to take some time off of it to get this out. I do have a few game idea’s that I may prototype at some point or at-least write out some ideas for next year to work on proper. More on these when I have something to share.

Audio Manager 3.x Release!

December 16, 2023December 16, 2023 by Jonathanin Asset Store, Game Development, News, Tools, UpdateLeave a Comment

Audio Manager 3.x Release!

December 16, 2023

Asset Store, Game Development, News, Tools, Update

A post annoucing the release of Audio Manager 3.x & an update to the Save Manager as well.

Audio Manager 3.x

Its been a long time coming, but today the new Audio Manager version is released. Unlike previous releases I’m going to stagger this one to release on the Unity Asset Store next year. This is mostly due to the asset’s stability not being great and the high likelyness of bugs from the total re-write. The new version has a lot of new features that have been teased before, but a quick rundown of some of the features:

Automatic scanning of audio clips in the project without any user input needed.
Dynamic start time for each clip to start where it starts playing audable audio, cutting out deadspace on clips and saves editing out of Unity.
Flexiable API for playing audio clips or groups of clips. The setup is more modular than before for easy debugging and fixing.
Editor to manage the library, assign groups of clips together and music track lists. Saves workarounds that were needed in the 2.x version of the asset.
No setup needed, just import and go. Before you needed to setup the inspector the use it.
Entirely static API, no scene references needed. As the static instance was the more common setup, this change makes it way easier to access the API without needing lots of scene references.
Music playing setup. Still a simple setup, but plans to make it better with further updates.
Inspector players for quick prototyping without needing to write any code. Like the old audio player class, but allowing for edits to be applied in the editor at will instead of needing a messy inspector with all options avalible.

So as of this post the asset is avalible from its Github repository and the Itch page. With the asset store coming early next year, partly for stabilty fixes, partly due to the review process which will likely take longer around this time of year as is. Links before:

Github: https://github.com/CarterGames/AudioManager

Itch: https://carter-games.itch.io/audio-manager

Save Manager 2.0.15

Along with the Audio Manager release, there is a small update to the Save Manager also coming out at the same time, more or less. This update will go live to all stores and mostly fixes some editor stuff that I worked out in Audio Manager 3.x this week as well as some issues with the save editor not refreshing to the latest data.

Links can be found here: https://carter.games/savemanager/

That’s all for now xD

~ J,

Audio Manager Progress Update

November 14, 2023November 14, 2023 by Jonathanin Asset Store, Game Development

Audio Manager Progress Update

November 14, 2023

Asset Store, Game Development

Hi all. Been a little while so I thought I’d just update y’all on where Audio Manager 3 is at and when to expect it at this point.

Is it nearly done? yes. The code is like 90-95% done. As normal the last 5% takes most of the time xD. I found a few bugs which took me a week or so to work out in the spare time I had recently. I think I’ve got them at this point. I also had to add in a new system for an inspector player for audio. Something I couldn’t really leave out of the initial release. A little sneak peak above (right). Its more flexible than the 2.x solution with the option to use mode edit modules from the inspector and choose as few or as many as you’d like to use.

I’ve got one more script to write for a music player inspector, but after that is done it is just a matter of sorting a few small demo projects, testing & finishing the documentation. The docs I have already started writing. I’m hoping it’ll be ready before 2024, but I’m annoyingly busy at the moment on the weekends where I can get the most done. So we’ll see if that happens….

Also new logo! All the assets have a new logo design as of this weekend. I’m slowly updating them everywhere as I get the time to do so and I’m not in a coding mood…. Audio Manager’s logo below:

That’s all for now xD

~ J,

An Update

September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 by Jonathanin Game Development, News, Update

An Update

September 26, 2023

Game Development, News, Update

An update on the whole Unity situation for Carter Games.

Just a quick post to update y’all on the whole Unity thingy. So as you’ll have likely seen by now they have announced they were reverting pretty much every change with the runtime fee thingy. The news is pretty good actually. Had they announced that to start with everyone would’ve liked it for the most part. Sadly they didn’t and the damage in trust is done. The fact that the original plan was what they though was good, despite their insiders from the community & staff supposedly warning them it wasn’t, just shows what matters to Unity as a company. Money & greed.

I’ve never been a fan of public companies & shareholders etc. Being a shareholder should mean taking the risk of paying out when a company is doing bad as well as getting some extra money when its doing well. Not just free money which it seems to be treated as today. I could rant about that for ages, but you get the idea.

As for Carter Games and its future developments. I’ll still be working in Unity for now with the assets I’ve made. Sadly other engines don’t quite have the things I like about Unity in them in quite as nicer setup. I’ve given both Unreal & Godot a go over the last few weeks. Godot certainly has promise, but its missing some key things for me currently. Those being a more in-depth inspector for exposing data classes, world space UI & some 3D bits that are early days. I do like the whole node setup though, that is nice. As for Unreal, looks good, but like 0 docs for C++ code which is a bit annoying. Blueprint is good and all, but I’d prefer to do the C++ a little if I went that route.

So future plans. I do plan to keep with Unity development stuff for now. So Audio Manager 3.x is still on the books to be released this year with an update to Leaderboard Manager sometime early next year. Next year is still in the air for what I’m doing, I do have some active side projects I want to finish as well as a game idea or two to flesh out and maybe prototype. But more specifics will be posted in the year in review post for this year. As for porting asset and stuff to other engines, some of them may be portable in a slightly different setup to Godot. But I’d need to do a lot more research. I’m also not sure I’d be able to make the same quality of asset automation in other engines, but we’ll see, it’s not totally off the table in the future. Audio Manager 3.x will likely be a bit delayed again…..I know, its a pain, but I want to get it right. That and it just takes time to develop, just like how games take a long time to make. I’ll keep y’all up to date on how that’s going.

That’s all for now xD

~ J,

Quick Tools Update

July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 by Jonathanin UpdateLeave a Comment

Quick Tools Update

July 30, 2023

Update

Hi all,

Just a quick update to let you all know that it is likely that the Audio Manager release will be delayed a tad. Currently its got a few major development hoops to get through and I’ve not had a massive amount of free time to work on the asset. I will try to avoid any massive delay, but I cannot grantee that it will be ready by the end of August at this time. At-least, not without cutting major features that were in the old 2.x version. I’ll update you all on any updates to a release window as and when, but its now likely to be in September instead of August.

Today I’ve been back-porting a fix to the asset indexing system, used in Save Manager & Build Versions currently. There was a bug with its initialization causing overriding assets to be generated when you already had them in the project. So you’d lose settings & data. This should now be resolved in 2.0.9 & 1.1.6 respectively which are both out on Git & Itch with the asset store early next week.