Tools – Matthew Conto

…the easy-ish way

I wrote this as I realized a few teammates haven’t had to wrangle with Unity and GitHub before so here’s a step-by-step for how to set up a relatively easy to use environment and how to share your work with others.

1. Download Unity Hub (it’s a manager for different versions of Unity)
  1. Start downloading whichever version your group has agreed upon under the Installs tab
  2. If it asks for “Build Platforms”, you shouldn’t need to select any extras unless you want to experiment building out a mobile or web version
  3. You probably want Visual Studio
    - Personally I use Visual Studio Code (different than Visual Studio), but everyone has their preferences. Visual Studio will work out of the box.
  4. You don’t need the Documentation or Standard Assets, they’re both avaliable online
2. Download Github Desktop (it’s probably the easiest git client you’ll find)
  1. Sign in and “Clone” your team’s repo (you can use the github.com website to launch GitHub Desktop as well)
  2. If you want to make your own changes, you’ll need to create your own branch off of the master branch
    - Name it either after a feature you’re working on or just use your name
3. Once Unity is downloaded, you’ll load up the project
  1. In Unity Hub, click Open and open the project folder you just cloned
    - You want to select the root folder that contains folders like Assets and ProjectSettings
  2. Make sure to make yourself your own scene so that you don’t overwrite someone else’s
    - File > New Scene
4. To share what you made, open back up GitHub Desktop (or GitHub for Unity [Window > GitHub]
  1. Select all the Changed Files you want to “commit”
  2. Write a quick summary (doesn’t have to be big)
  3. Hit commit (and maybe also “Publish this Branch”)
  4. You might also need to “Push” the commit to the cloud afterwards so we can all see it
5. Last, you can add your changes back to the master branch
  - You can ask other team members to create a Pull Request for you or you can do it yourself

I recently made a GeekTool Geeklet for viewing my Trello boards.
It’s really rudimentary, but it’s pretty useful for me.I’ve used Trello on and off for nearly three years now, but only recently did I start using it to manage all of my homework assignments at NYU. I use a single board with lists for each class and one for ‘In Progress’. It’s really convent to see what’s going on, but it requires me tabbing over to Trello boards.
I’ve also been using GeekTool for some time just as a way to decorate my desktop. As dated as GeekTool has become, it’s still incredibly useful from simple stuff like date and time to displaying what Spotify song is on to weather. When I saw that someone had had made an Applescript that interfaced with Trello, I got a great idea.

I’ve never used and some of its scripting language is really strange for anyone who’s grown up using stricter, C styled languages. I wouldn’t recommend it for anything substantial, but for a simple shell script, it works well enough.

Anyways, the script I made lets me see all of my cards in a clean way. Later, I’ll probably add in better sorting and more metadata for the cards, but this works well enough for me now.

Category: Tools

Unity & Github for your GameJam team

A Trello GeekTool Geeklet