In June, we gave four developers the keys to our Digital Twins Twitter account so they could share their favorite tips and tricks they have learned while working in Unity. In case you missed it, here is a recap of what each of these talented individuals covered.
Having a firm grasp on the resources, currencies, sources, and sinks in your game is a great start to building a healthy economy, but understanding what behaviors exist within your player base will allow you to tailor your reward and progression design choices. In this guide, we’ll dive into how you can design your economy around different types of players through the following topics: Payer vs. non-payers Different levels of engagement Player motivations Planning your player journey Using A/B testing to improve your in-game economy Learn about our suggestions for each player type and the variables you should test in Designing a balanced in-game economy. By developing a strong understanding of sources and sinks, currency and resource management, as well as the various types of players of your game, you’ll be fully equipped to create a healthy in-game economy that can drive player engagement. Start learning today in the first of our introduction to economy series: What is an in-game economy, or skip to Building an in-game economy and Designing a balanced in-game economy. If you want to get started building your own game economy, Economy from Unity Gaming Services has everything you need to design and manage it. If you feel you’re ready for A/B testing, Remote Config lets you run different tests that target specific player segments without code changes or app updates.
Organizations are looking for web applications that provide users with many unique functionalities. For anything they provide, the User Interface is the most important part of a web application. UI helps capture the users’ attention and keeps the user engaged with the application. UI components play a major role in making web application development faster and easier. This article discusses why UI components are important for web based development. How can you develop UIs faster and easier in your web based development? Building a UI that meets all your design, functional, and performance requirements takes considerable time and effort. However, you need to consider the project timeline and the available resources to deliver the project on time. UI components help developers to build UIs faster because they are reusable across the application. Once you build a new component, you can use it wherever you want. Also, if you want to extend the functionalities, you can build on the existing components. All these things minimize code duplication and reduce the coding time and effort eventually saving money for you. Therefore, UI components are the best solutions if you want to build web applications faster. Does consistency of UI designs matter in your web based development? Consistency is of utmost importance for a UI because it provides a professional look and feels and promotes usability. If the UI is not consistent across all the applications or web pages, then it might confuse the user. A consistent user experience helps customers understand your application’s functionalities and makes navigation across the UI much easier. You can use the same UI component for all the related UI parts without doing significant code changes. Thus, UI components help to bring that consistency to the UI. You can easily establish a standard set of components for some important parts like the company logo, headers, footers, etc. Thus UIs of all the applications across the organization can be standardized. Do you want to do UI customizations for your web based development? Not every UI components stay the same across the applications. You may require to do some modifications to the existing components. Customizations are important if you want to change the behaviors of application components but do not want to impact and mess up the code of existing components. With the UI components, it is easy to do customizations. For example, you can add different styling for the same component without changing its internal functionalities and minimal code. Also, if you want to extend the UI parts to provide more functionalities, you can do so with UI components. This flexibility is important when building larger applications because you can easily do it with lesser time and effort. Are efficiency and scalability the top-most priorities for your UI? When implementing the UI, one of the most important things to consider is the efficiency of your application. For UIs, there are specific efficiency-related metrics usually UI developers need to be aware of, but generally, the component load time is an important factor to consider. Are your web components loading according to your defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs)? If the UI takes a significant time to load, it may impact the user experience. But, most UI components provided by component libraries are designed to achieve better performance. Also, scalability is another […]
As a methodology for software development, cross platform applications development has been rapidly gaining traction – and for good reasons too. Putting it simply, cross-platform development means developing software that will work across multiple platforms and types of devices. Unlike traditional frameworks that limit your application to a specific type of device or operating system, cross-platform applications can function almost anywhere, certainly on the most popular and recent equipment. However, we’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg regarding cross-platform app development. So, what are the options? When it comes to cross-platform development frameworks, there are a few options available – yet not all of them are created equal. Some are better suited for certain types of applications than others. In this article, we will take a look at some of the most popular cross-platform development frameworks and see which ones might be the best fit for your project. Single Platform vs. Cross platform applications development – how do they differ? In the world of applications and software development, there are two main types of development frameworks: those that allow you to develop native, vertical, single target applications and those that will enable you to create cross-platform apps which will target multiple devices and operating systems from the same code base. As mentioned above, native vertical single target applications are specific to a particular individual operating system. Namely, they are written in the language and framework “native” to that operating system. Cross-platform applications, on the other hand, are not tied to any one operating system. They can be run on multiple platforms with little or no modification. The code for cross-platform applications is usually written in a language that can be compiled into bytecode or interpreted by a virtual machine. As long as the code can be correctly interpreted and translated into bytecode, any device that has a processor can work with it. This additional layer of interpreter can add a significant overhead in terms of memory and processing speed. Also, the byte code runtime often doesn’t give full access to the device’s sensors and hardware since it is a ‘one size fits all’ approach which compromises on low level accessibility in exchange for ease of development and deployment. However, some cross-platform frameworks are available which do not use this additional interpretative layer but instead compile down into native binaries. One such system is RAD Studio Delphi which allows you to have all the benefits of writing a single set of source code yet produce fully native applications which embrace the full power and range of capabilities of the operating system and hardware of the device on which the apps are running. RAD Studio offers two main development frameworks – VCL, which is aimed at Windows, and FireMonkey FMX. So, which type of development frameworks should you use? Well, there is no 100% correct answer, as it really depends on your needs. If you need to develop an application with RAD Studio that will run on multiple platforms, then a cross-platform framework is definitely the way to go and FireMonkey FMX makes a lot of sense. However, if you definitely only need to build an application for a single platform the VCL Windows native framework might be a good choice as it brings with it some specific benefits for Windows […]
With our Tabulator miniseries out of the way, we’re back to check out other interesting and useful JavaScript libraries that we can use in our TMS WEB Core projects. This time out, we’re going to have a look at image sliders, sometimes referred to as image carousels. There’s a TWebImageSlider included directly in TMS WEB Core that’s ready to go, based on the very capable Swiper. But we’ll also have a look at the popular Bootstrap Carousel, the venerable Slick Carousel, and the ultra-modern Glide. Each has its own default look, but they can all be customized in various ways. Some have dependencies to be mindful of. But they’re all well-tested and reliable, and any of them would make a solid addition to your project. Motivation. Whether you need some kind of image slider in your project is usually self-evident. But sliders don’t have to be used just for image content. A slider could be used instead of a combo box, displaying a set of cards to select from, where the user can cycle through different options. Or as an alternative to traditional menus. Or even to display notifications. Plenty of non-image possibilities. But no matter the type of content being displayed, a slider can have a big overall impact on a project. So finding a slider with the right mix of presentation and interaction options is important. If your project is already using Bootstrap or jQuery, then perhaps Bootstrap Carousel or Slick Carousel would be a natural fit, respectively. Or perhaps there’s a key feature in one of these sliders that with catch your attention and be important enough to your project to warrant including a dependency that wasn’t previously needed. As always, nothing but choices here, so let’s have a look. The Setup. For our examples, we’re going to use a set of 10 images of different sizes, just to make it easier to see what is going on. Generally, things work more smoothly and look considerably nicer when the images are all the same size, but that’s often not an option. The intent though is to find a slider that can be added to our Actorious project to display sets of photos of People, Movies, or TV Shows. Which will typically be all the same size, conveniently. All the sliders we’ll be looking at today have no problems displaying content of different sizes, even if we have to lean on them a little to get them to cooperate. The sample images are stored in an img folder in the example project, and a link to that can be found at the end of this post. All the sliders use URLs to reference the images, via tags, naturally, so not hard to include these. With the contents of the img folder added to our project, the images are automatically copied to either the Debug or Release folders as needed, and can just be referenced via an img/filename.png link or URL. TWebImageSlider and Swiper. The obvious first choice for a TMS WEB Core project is to use the readily available TWebImageSlider component. Let’s add this component to a new project and set the size to be 900×300, just as a set size for our examples. Then, add the sample images via the ImageURLs property in the Delphi property inspector. Without doing anything else, we get the following slider, fully […]
It’s not a secret that the browser API supports ever more machine hardware related features, making it slowly but surely a cross-platform operating system on its own. As it is also always a goal of TMS WEB Core to make it Object Pascal developers ultra easy to take advantage of everything the browser offers, we added in TMS WEB Core v2.0 classes and a new component to take advantage of 2 new interesting browser APIs. The multi-screen API and the speech recognition API. Multi-screen API The multi-screen API allows the developer to detect from a web application, how many screens are connected to a device, retrieve the characteristics of the screens and control the placement of browser windows on these multiple screens connected to the machine.You can find the w3 spec for the multi-screen API here and a more informative article about its use https://web.dev/multi-screen-window-placement/. As we added Object Pascal classes to retrieve information from and manage these multi-screen configurations, we also created a demo that you can find in the TMS WEB Core demos folder under DemoBasicsMultiscreen and wrote a blog article about it. Now today, our chief evangelist Dr. Holger Flick also discusses it in his new video. Speech recognition API Create voice command driven web applications or write a dictaphone application that now automatically captures your spoken information as text, … it now all belongs to commonly available functionality when you use web technology. The browser speech recognition API is now available in Chrome, Edge and Safari. In TMS WEB Core v2.0, this is exposed as a non-visual component with events triggered returning spoken words as text or with a command collection the component can listen to and trigger events when the commands are spoken. In this video, Holger also explains the speech recognition API and the demo in more detail so you can get started using it in your applications easily. Miletus Note that these new web technologies are also available when you create a Miletus based native cross platform application with TMS WEB Core. Miletus applications are web technology based applications that run as native cross platform applications for Windows, macOS and Linux and also have direct access to even more operating system resources such as the file system, local databases, operating system dialogs and more. Learn more about the amazing Miletus technology in this blog article with video.
The JavaScript testing framework enables you to significantly boost your development workflow. It increases your team’s speed and efficiency. Also, it improves test accuracy. Besides, the JS test framework reduces test maintenance costs. It can be a live saver for projects with a low budget range. There are plenty of frameworks available online. But which is the best option? Can it help you efficiently test applications? Do you really need a JS test framework? In this post, you will find all the details. What is a JS test framework? The JS test framework is a tool for examining the functionality of JavaScript web applications. It helps you to ensure whether all the components are working properly or not. It enables you to easily identify bugs. Therefore, you can quickly take take the necessary steps to fix the issues. Why do I need a JS test framework? Greater efficiency: Manually testing large web applications can take a huge amount of time. You don’t want to get involved in such a tiresome process. By using a JS test framework, you can quickly get the job done by automating the process. It enables you to continuously test and validate newly developed features. It reduces the feedback and testing cycle. As a result, you can deliver the application in significantly less time. Improve Accuracy: It’s quite usual for testers to make mistakes during monotonous manual testing. Therefore, you will not get accurate results. However, you can solve the issue by utilizing a JS test framework. It produces the same result every time you run it. Therefore, it can execute tests with 100-percent accuracy. Reduce Cost: JS test framework helps you to get the job done with fewer resources. Therefore, you don’t have to spend extra money. It enables you to significantly reduce the costs. If you have a tight budget, it can be very helpful for you. Read: Rapidly Build Testing Automation To Supercharge JavaScript App Quality What is the best JS test framework? The best JavaScript test framework is Sencha Test. It offers the most comprehensive solution for examining Ext JS apps. It allows you to create robust unit and end-to-end tests. As a result, you can deliver quality apps. Apart from Ext JS, it supports end-to-end testing of React apps. Overall, it is a versatile JavaScript testing framework. Why Sencha Test is the best solution for testing JavaScript apps? Enables you to auto-grab events while interacting with the app under test Provides comprehensive test results from automated and manual test runs Supports Istanbul integration for fixing code coverage gaps Allows you to execute code in any browser, local machine, or browser farm Enables you to use external Node modules to expand the scope of testing Does it support automated test runs? Sencha Test comes with a Command Line Interface (CLI). It helps you achieve the full power of automated test runs. Once tests are authored and checked into the source control repository, you can launch them from your Continuous Integration (CI) system. The CI system can automatically invoke the CLI once it detects a change to the application code or the test files. Does it allow me to schedule automated test runs? Sencha Test features Test Runner. You can use it to run selected unit and functional tests on any browser on […]
With ironSource, Unity will take the linear process of making games and RT3D content and experiences and make it an interconnected and interactive one – creating the opportunity to innovate and improve at every step of the cycle. What if that process was no longer “first create; then monetize?” What if creators had an engine for live games that by default enabled them to gain early indicators of success for their games through user acquisition of their prototype, and gave them a feedback loop to improve their games based on real player interactions as early in the process as possible? Unity and ironSource’s combined offerings will uniquely position the combined company as the only game creation and growth platform for creators. This tighter integration between Unity’s Create and Operate means a more powerful flywheel and data feedback loop that further supports creators’ success and understanding of what’s working between gameplay, design and their monetization efforts. With the addition of SuperSonic, ironSource’s publishing solution, the combined company will also break down the barriers to publishing directly through the engine. Unity provides the engine that takes ideas from inception to being viable businesses. This is an engine that negates the need for developers and the industry at large to reinvent the wheel each time a game is created. The gears of this include the tools to create, publish, run, monetize, and grow. It is this integration with ironSource, and the resulting interactivity and interoperability across the game lifecycle, that makes Unity + ironSource unique. It is our combined knowledge and passion for game developers that keeps us innovating to meet their needs today and in the future. We succeed only if creators succeed and with ironSource joining the Unity family, we will make it easier for them to do so in one centralized, integrated platform. Join the discussion on the Unity Forums. — Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This communication includes forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “foresees,” “forecasts,” “estimates” or other words or phrases of similar import. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the industry and markets in which Unity Software Inc. (“Unity”) and ironSource Ltd. (“ironSource”) operate and management’s beliefs and assumptions as to the timing and outcome of future events, including the transactions described in this communication. While Unity’s and ironSource’s management believe the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements are reasonable, such information is necessarily subject to uncertainties and may involve certain risks, many of which are difficult to predict and are beyond management’s control. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to the expected timing and likelihood of completion of the proposed transaction, including the timing, receipt and terms and conditions of any required governmental and regulatory approvals of the proposed transaction; the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the merger agreement; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against the parties and others following announcement of the merger agreement; the inability to consummate the transaction due to the failure to obtain the requisite stockholder approvals or the failure to satisfy other conditions to completion of the transaction; risks that the proposed transaction disrupts current plans and operations […]
In this fast-paced tech world, no business would like to miss the chance to have their own mobile app in the market of Google play store or App store. To make the most of it, it is essential to create an app that runs on as many operating systems as possible. Building a cross platform app can play a key role in this. In this article we’ll explain what we mean by that statement. Why choose to develop cross platform apps at all? If you choose to go down the route of developing separate apps for each of the platforms you want to target, for example Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, this separate app philosophy can attract a number of significant disadvantages which can outweigh any potential benefits. Apart from the version problems of having several different code bases and deployable packages, there are other intangible things like budgeting for potentially different development environments and suppliers. Using a single environment and IDE such as Embarcadero’s RAD Studio which can produce cross platform apps to target all your desired platforms in one place and yet create native apps focuses your development efforts, simplifies your resource requirements and budgeting into one quantifiable number. This is why cross platform app development has become the undisputed option for businesses seeking a presence on both Android and iOS platforms. Cross platform apps are popular because they reduce – in fact completely mitigates – the need to create a separate codebase to make an app for all the different platforms. A cross-platform app can run on a variety of devices and platforms. In this article, I’ll give you a run down on native vs cross platforms, the benefits of building a cross platform app, how to build a cross platform app and we’ll discuss the best cross platform app builder. Let’s start! What is the difference between single platform and cross platform apps for mobile? The debate on choosing between individual, vertical, single platform – where there is a different app for each target – and cross platform development – where there is one code base which can be compiled to produce apps and packages for all the desired targets – has been significant, often dividing opinion in the tech world. Some believe that creating separate apps for each individual platform is superior to a cross platform apps approach. Companies like Uber, on the other hand, are rewriting their driver app using a cross platform app framework. Cross platform development has become increasingly common in recent years. To be clear; cross platform app development is the process of designing mobile (and in some cases desktop) apps that can run on a variety of systems. Developers choose this type of development because it requires only one programming effort and the app can run on Android, iOS, or Windows. In the case of RAD Studio, cross platform apps written using its FireMonkey FMX framework can run Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and, with FMXLinux, Linux computers too. Compare this to single target vertical mobile apps. These kinds of apps are usually only able to operate on one vendor’s platform and, in the case of Apple, for example, also require you to use their own IDE which only works on their hardware. The work done for on such a vertical or narrow […]
In part one of our series, I showed you how to migrate from Atlassian’s Bamboo Server to GitLab CI/CD. In this blog post we’re going to take a deep dive into how it works from a user’s perspective. Get started You’ve deployed the demo so it’s time to play with it to understand how it works. Let’s imagine that one of the members of our project is John Doe. He is a software engineer responsible for developing some components (app1, app2, and app3) of the entire product, and he and his team would like to test those components in several combinations in myriad preview environments. So, what does that look like? First of all, let’s make some commits to the app1, app2, and app3 source code and get successful builds upon those commits. After that, we should create releases for those apps to be able to deploy them (as the deployment part of the apps CI config only shows when being triggered by a Git tag, i.e., a GitLab release). A release can be created by launching the last step (manual-create-release) in a commit pipeline. That would give us a new release with the ugly name containing the date and commit SHA in the patch part (in accord to semver scheme): On the Tags tab for the same app you now can see a deployment part of the pipeline has been triggered by the just created GitLab release but no actual environments to deploy are displayed (the _ item in the Deploy-nonprod stage is not an env): Create an environment But before that we have to briefly switch to another team who is responsible for preparing infrastructure IaC templates. Navigate to the infra/environment-blueprints project and pretend you are a member of that team doing their job. Namely, imagine you have just created some initial set of IaC files (they are already kindly prepared by me and present in the repository). You’ve tested them and now you feel that they are ready to be used by the other members of the project. You indicate such a readiness of a particular version of the IaC files by giving it a GitTag. Let’s put a tag like v1.0.0 onto the HEAD version. You will see how the tags are going to be used immediately. But first let’s make some changes to the IaC files (e.g., add a new resource for some of the apps) and create a second Git tag, let’s say v1.1.0. So, at this moment we have two versions of IaC templates (or blueprints) for our infrastructure – v1.0.0 and v1.1.0. Deploy an app into the environment Now we can return back to John and his team. We assume John is somehow informed that the version of the IaC templates he should use is v1.0.0. He wants to create a new preview environment out of the IaC templates of that version and put app1 and app2 into that env. (Here starts a description of how a user interoperates with the infrastructure-set Git repo. Notice that though the eventual idea is that it should be a Merge Request workflow – where you first get a Terraform plan within a Merge Request and can apply such a plan by merging the MR – which is widely advocated by GitLab but for the sake […]
