Why VR Makes Players Sick, And How To Build Locomotion That Won't (Part 5)

Welcome back to the VR series! Last time we got a cube spinning in a headset. If you have missed any of the previous articles, click here. Alright, this is part 5, and today we make the player move, and in VR that's where things get a tad risky!

Unfortunately, here's an uncomfortable truth: in flat games, bad movement design makes a game feel clunky. In VR, bad movement design makes your player want to lie down on the floor. Same code, very different consequences.

This is the VR locomotion in Unity article, and it's probably one of the most important ones in the whole series. Get this right, and people play your game for an hour. Get it wrong, and they quit after two minutes and leave a review that starts with "I felt sick." 

Let's try to avoid that.

Saving and Loading In Unity (PlayerPrefs vs JSON vs Binary vs The ECS System, And Which One I Use)

I thought it was a good idea to write something about saving and loading in Unity. I get a lot of interest on the socials about what the best way is to save and load in Unity and how I implement it in my own games. There are actually several ways to do this, and it may sound scary at first, but it's actually really easy if you know what you're doing. Let's start with the basics and then gradually move on to a better way to do it. I'll also show you which method I use to save and load data in my projects. It really depends on what you want to save and what kind of game you're building. You can imagine that a simple game that only needs to store data like volume or resolution settings implements a different structure than a supermarket simulator that needs to store thousands of game objects and their locations.

Let's dive in!

Why Your Unity Physics Aren't Working: Rigidbody, Colliders, And Triggers Explained

Welcome to another blog post about one of my favorite systems in Unity. Physics! I love experimenting with it, and sometimes I just have an open test scene where I play around and see how many things I can demolish, or shoot as far into the sky as possible (particularly fun with a sphere that has a camera attached to it 🤪 But it can be quite frustrating if it doesn't behave the way you want it to. Well, there are three pieces of the puzzle: the Rigidbody in Unity, colliders, and triggers. 

Let me explain how they all work.

Hello, VR World! How To Get Your First Unity Cube Running On Meta Quest (Part 4)

Welcome back to part 4 of the VR series! Four articles in, and we have yet to put a single object in front of anyone's eyeballs. I had some issues setting this up myself, but eventually I was able to figure it out. If you've missed any of the previous parts, click here.

Alright, this is the Unity Meta Quest Hello World article. We're going to get one cube, spinning slowly, into your headset. That's it. No gameplay, no hands, no fancy shaders (yet).

Your Unity Game Stutters Because You Keep Destroying Bullets: Object Pooling Explained

Welcome to another blog post about the trick that stops your game from stuttering every time the player holds down the fire button: object pooling in Unity. If you've ever built a shooter, a bullet hell, or anything that spawns lots of short-lived objects, you've probably felt it. Everything runs smoothly, and then the action heats up and the frame rate starts hiccuping.

Let's see what it is and how we can implement it to improve your frame rate!

The Meta XR SDK Alphabet Soup Explained: Which Packages Do You Actually Need? (Part 3)

Welcome back to part 3 of the VR series! If you've missed the other articles click here. This one took me a little while due to its complexity (and boringness - but it's all stuff we need to know in order to make our first game in Meta Quest VR!). 

Alright, so your environment should be all set up, your headset is in Developer Mode, and ADB can finally see your Quest. Time for the fun part, right? Well...

Why Your Unity Object Moves The Wrong Way: Transform, Rotation, And Scale Decoded

Welcome to Munnica, where I'm doing a series for beginner Unity developers! If you have missed my previous posts, check them here. 

This blog post is about the one component EVERY GameObject has, and the one you'll touch more than any other: the Transform in Unity. If you've ever told an object to move forward and watched it sail off sideways, or tried to set just the X position and been yelled at by the compiler, this one's for you. Understanding exactly what the transform is and how it behaves can really help you in the beginning of your Unity career.

Let's dive in!

Change It Once, Fix It Everywhere: The Unity Prefab (And Variant) Trick Every Beginner Needs.

Welcome everyone! This time we're going to talk about the Unity feature that saves you from the worst kind of busywork: prefabs in Unity. Understanding how they work can save you a lot of time! There are some rules to prefabs though (what they can and can't do). For instance, prefabs can't reference scene objects. And there's more. That's what we're going to elaborate on.

Let's dive in!

Your Code Comments Are More Important Than You Think: When To Write Them And When To Delete Them

Welcome everyone to another blog post about the only part of your code the computer completely ignores: comments in C#. They're free, they're easy, and believe it or not, they're still one of the most misused tools in a beginner's toolbox. Some devs comment every single line, others never write one at all, and both groups end up equally confused six months later. I was not even going to write an article about it until I realized the importance of comments, and I wish I knew about it when I started out coding.

Let's untangle this!

Naming Conventions Decoded: How To Name Things (And Why)

Welcome to another blog post about most likely the least exciting topic in programming that will quietly save you the most time: naming conventions in C#. You'll notice that over time, you'll adhere to your own naming convention; however, there is a general guideline for naming variables, etc. Also, naming is how past you leaves notes for future you, so let's make those notes readable!! 

Let's dive in!