Unity Game Developer Contest 2016

Is there a chance NuGet was throwing that error in VS? (If that's what you were using?) I get a whole lot more errors, yet my project builds fine. I think it's doing that due to the package restore process doing something weird...

 

Update your visual studio. I got a lot errors with nuget, after I installed updates the errors was gone.

 

No it wasn't Visual Studio. It was a Unity Editor error that only surfaced while trying to build the VS files used to make a UWP build. Switching from .NET to IL2CPP fixed the issue for me. (Thanks again @AVOlight!)

 

It's actually a fairly good process. If you have a problem there are lots of forum posts and documentation by microsoft. You don't even need a windows device except for a pc with windows 10. If you have pro you can use phone emulators, but they're not necessary.
Sorry if this is too late...

 

It's 7:55AM, Jan 27th 2016 and I've just done submitting my game (http://www.citylines-game.com) to Windows Dev Cente.

I hope I can still make it in time??

 

For some people, it took a week, for others it took something like 3 days, so they're quite fast getting stuff published!

 

I got this mail ~1 hour after submission.

But the link doesn't work yet. How long is it typically to see the game live on store?

 

On my end the link works. Obviously, it's up now.

 

Woopsss... It's live now. Unfortunately it's the Submission 1 which was submitted yesterday's noon, and which is like a "draft" submission :'(
I hope Submission 2 will go live soon tonight >_<

 

My second submission is in review since yesterday, hope is on time u.u

 

An update?

 

I just got my submission in! I submitted it just to make sure it will work. But I already know I'm going to need to make an updated Submission 2, since I didn't have any of the (oddly specific) artwork required for the Store listing.

Art is not my strong point...

 

@phong.genix I see you have IAP in your entry. Others here would be interested in hearing how you accomplished that.

 

Except me. Not a fan of IAP much...

 

The game uses Unity IAP with .NET backend and it just works

 

The free contents of this game are pretty satisfying (1000+ levels) so I think you'll like it

Actually I want it to have Async Multiplayer which is a big and very competitive feature. Unfortunately I can't make it in time for the contest so no Multiplayer for now. This Multiplayer feature is almost done for Android version. I use Parse as a backend for that.

 

Speaking of late... I would say now though that although having a windows device isn't required (Heck, I don't have one to use! ) it is recommended to test certain things such as how well it would run on another device, and device-specific bugs that may crop up.

 

Async Multiplayer? Sounds interesting, since I've only ever heard the word "async" and "level load" in the same sentence.

Speaking of which, I ended up having to ditch multi-player for mine due to the deadline, I currently have a pop-up box as a placeholder instead.

 

Btw, one weird/interesting thing I notice about the store:

The store listing for my game is still showing metadata of Submission 1 (default Unity icon, only 1 screenshot,....)
while actually the binary is already the new one of Submission 2. So it's like the binary goes live sooner than the metadata (??!!)

 

Huh, the windows store sounds a bit sloppy as in... it updates things one at a time. A bit inconvenient... specifically why I'm holding off releasing for a couple more days while I get my starting content in.

 

Woohoo.... icon, screenshots,... are now updated! https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/city-lines-for-puzzle-lovers/9nblggh5fx1z

 

-> so much competition ->

 

Ok, last time; would it be allowed to make a WIP thread of a potential entry?

 

A lot of people's thoughts... But I don't care, I'm entering for the hell of it! (I guess I'm also entering to try and get something out as well!)

 

My game failed certification with the following error:

Any tips on how to fix this? Is this because I included full PDB symbols files during the package creation process?

 

I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed to make a WIP thread of pretty much anything you want. As long as it's related to Unity.

 

I submitted for certification about 14 hours ago, and my game is live on the store now. That's pretty quick!

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/nummels/9nblggh5gqrt

Good luck everyone!

 

WOW. That's fast!

 

I was more saying; "is the contest entry meant to be super-top-secret, or can I reveal stuff?"

Anyway, probably will post something in the coming days.

 

There's a lot of Windows Phone entries here, I wonder how many are targeted at Windows 10 PC only?

 

Unless cross-platform input is pure Magic, I will probably be using windows 10 only. This is kind of funny b/c until this contest it was an Android game bound for the Play store; where it's been stagnating in private Beta for over a year now b/c I'm trigger shy and prone to feature creep.

 

Have you got it up on the Store? I haven't targeted multiple platforms, little concerned I haven't now ha

 

Not yet. For some reason my builds totally nuke my spotlights and point lights, I'm considering just turning them off and submitting to make sure I don't have any red tape problems getting approved and submitting an update the moment it goes live.

 

I found the spotlights with realtime illumination look very different in Windows Store versus Windows Standalone. I had to make my spotlights static in the Windows Store version.

 

I strongly recommend doing that!

I'm on my third attempt at passing certification, hoping everything goes through this time.

 

Well, you don't have to, but doing so contributes to your technical excellence rating, from what I have heard.

 

I'm having a trouble building my game on unity for Windows 10 universal, it says "error building player compiler script error" and it leads me to my saving script. Apparently, windows uses different library than android and iOS to save the game and i have no idea how to solve it. Anyone can help?

 

Screenshots (or even another thread) could help here...

 

This is whats written in the console: "Assets\Scripts\Managers\save.cs(4,36): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Formatters' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Runtime.Serialization' (are you missing an assembly reference?)"

 

I think that's in .NET 4.6 or something like that, which isn't being used in the VS Windows App Store Builds, I think, I can't remember now.

I was using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary; to save and encrypt my game data. In the end I just commented this code out

 

I have you tried setting them to "Baked"? I think that calculates the lighting before hand, may have less of an impact on your game loop? Not sure, my lights need optimizing. I've been looking into the magic of shader code but there's no chance i'll have something working before the end of this competition.

 

I wonder how much of this sentence contributes to the overall 20%? ~Is your game so fast, fluid and optimized that others will appreciate your craftsmanship skills? I'm only going to receive 0% i reckon. All of my code can be done so much better, I just didn't want to go down the path of premature optimization, as the game isn't finished.

 

The issue is I'm using them as headlights on a "toy" car, which is my player! It's confusing b/c it works great on Mac and in editor but looks absolutely horrible in my Windows build, with a solid shape following me around .

 

Yeah I see what you mean, that's weird. It looks like the intensity has been turned right up! Or maybe it's not culling. I have no idea tbh I've had a few weird things happen when building to win app,non of them lighting though sorry wish I could help!

 

Switch to IL2CPP if you can. That's what I did, because I also use Formatters to save my data.

 

My submission's in a similar boat... in the Graphics department.
At the very least, I optimized my shader framework to compensate!

On top of that, the standalone build runs at full frame-rate at all times, whereas WSA has a habit of suddenly dropping frames then coming back; is this a unity bug, or does the WSA app container limit the GPU thread?

 

...

VERTEX LIGHTING. that's your problem. That's the type of horrible lighting you get when shining a spotlight onto a low-poly surface. (and the light's set to per-vertex)

If your light settings are correct... go to the player settings, UNCHECK automatic graphics API, and make sure ONLY D3D11 backend is in there. (i.e. atm, Direct3D12's real buggy, and I wouldn't be surprised if using D3D12 gives you that as a spotlight!)

 

It looks like her app's somehow overriding the pixel lighting and using only per-vertex...

 

Another question/heads-up; I was experiencing lag in my game. I was initially thinking it was my graphics framework, but to no avail, no level of tweaking could fix it...

...and that was when I found out that Unity 5.2.4 seemed to have some performance regressions in WSA... or so I thought; running the build in "release" instead of master revealed the best performance I'd seen my game run at in a looooong time!

That was when I decided to try something; because the ONLY difference between all the configs was the fact that the master config was using the Net native toolchain, I unticked this in master config, just to see what it would do...

The result: A FULL 60fps. So for those on 5.2.4 still, try this if you're encountering some performance issues. A note as well that I started the download of 5.3.x as it apparently fixed some WSA-specific bugs, right before I found this out... (DARN IT!)

EDIT: Ignore the above part; it fixes the problem, but apparently, windows app certs fail if it doesn't use it. (Good one Microsoft...)