Well, it’s been too long since my last post. Now that I’ve some time off from my part-time teaching job, I’ve decided to increase my skill set by learning some new technologies.
After some head scratching, Unity 3 and JavaEE have come out on top. Like many 1st generation game developers, I’m almost entirely self-taught, and the process of learning new skills is enjoyable. It also doesn’t hurt my employment prospects, in case the teaching job fall through!
Unity 3 is a middleware package, which incorporates an editor to construct and alter your game worlds, and also some binary client files to allow people to play your games on the PC, IPhone, mobiles etc. Rendering, audio, game content, all these aspects are managed through the Unity editor, and you can preview your game as you develop. Using a combination of C#, JavaScript and Boo (Python), game scripts and behaviours are built up and attached to game objects. This particular middleware is becoming quite popular for mobile development, and I’m looking forward to playing with it.
JavaEE, on the other hand, comes more from the business-side of software development. Used to implement servers, JavaEE allows complex client/server behaviours to be implemented, allowing multiple clients to view and change server-based worlds and data. Built on standard Java, JavaEE extends the language with multiple frameworks organized around the client/server model. I’m using a ‘virtual’ linux machine (Fedora) to develop and play with the code – unix is pretty well much the universal choice of OS for servers, and it extends my knowledge into areas not previously visited.
Ideally, combining the two technologies would be fantastic – I’ve some half-formed notion of a Unity game running, while a server maintains and updates the game world in real-time. Probably a bit much too manage in just a couple of months, but it gives me a target to aim for. Fingers crossed, hopefully I can manage to learn something from this experiment!
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Just out of curiosity. How are these half baked ideas coming along, as I am pondering the same solution?
Unfortunately, I never managed to progress this too far. Too much time spent playing with Unix, virtual machines and JavaEE, and not enough spent with Unity itself meant I never managed to marry the two. There’s always hope, though!