Developer Blog Day 25/59: Cut Scenes, Problem Solving, and Potential!
Day 25 and we are nearly halfway through our ambitious program. It’s been just 25 days since I first opened Unity, and began working with the C# programming language, and I am constantly left speechless by how much this powerful platform can do!
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how about a video?
Not too shabby huh?
I’m incredibly proud of the scene I was able to block and animate using a storyboard to guide the development the introduction clip above!
Not to say there weren’t any challenges though. Through troubleshooting, I found out there were a few things that changed between the versions used in the course, and the version of Unity that is being used today. This has caused more than a few issues regarding the recording of animations, ambiguous terms, and a ghost null object reference.
Normally, I would recommend any other intern to contact a tech lead to resolve these issues right away, as these issues are quite technical, and aren’t easy to figure out on your own.
But I realized that a lot of my fellow interns haven’t done this course quite yet, and my tech leads won’t be there to guide me through these types of issues in a real world setting. I needed to be able to problem solve this on my own.
So began my process of figuring out exactly how to troubleshoot a problem I didn’t quite understand. And the process came down to how this Software Engineering program has been teaching us about learning to code, and that’s to use the tools you DO have available to you to find a solution — think like an Engineer. So what amazing resource do we always have available to us?
THE INTERNET!
After breaking down the error a bit and figuring out some supplemental terms in order to narrow down my search, I found some solutions to these problems online. And while the one for the above error about the NullReference wasn’t a permanent fix, I was able to work around the issue and have Unity perform in a way that did not hinder my process at all, as a simple layout swap back to default seemed to kick the null reference in the hiney.
It was honestly a great lesson. Adapting things that change into the future, isn’t that the core principle for evolution? And in an ever advancing, dynamic, innovative field like software engineering and development?
It’s essential.
Although today seemed to be a bit on the slower side for advancement and development of the game, at the end of the day, I accomplished an amazing cut scene, utilized problem solving skills that drive our industry, and uploaded my first YouTube video in over 9 years.
What am I excited for in Week 4?
Everything.
If I can accomplish that cut scene in 3 weeks? Imagine what I can do in 6 weeks , 9 months, a year. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to find out.
