Monday, June 24, 2013

Fun with Error Messages

I have a few projects on the plate this summer: (1) getting my tenure portfolio together, which needs to be submitted on 15 September; (2) creating more grammar videos for the Elon German Studies YouTube channel, which now how 304 subscribers and has been viewed over 15,000 times in about 5 months; (3) work with my Lumen Scholar and get her ready for site visits in Germany this fall; and (4) get back into 3D game development.

I just finished the tenure portfolio this last week, or at least I got all the materials assembled and the narrative written. I will write the letter of consideration and print out the latest CV as the submission date draws nearer. And since I met with my Lumen Scholar twice a week on campus, when I will also start producing and uploading videos to YouTube, that leaves me only with my 3D game development and finding a time to do it. I decided I could work on it a few hours every evening before going to bed.

The last game prototype I developed was a good step in the right direction, and even generated some scholarship for me. There was so much else that I felt I could have done with the game, and a major limitation in game development was not being familiar with the Unity development environment. This time around, I thought, I will spend more time getting to know the environment by first completing some of the online tutorials, such as the Stealth game tutorial.

I got a boatload of error messages last night, which community support on the Unity site states is apparently caused by problems with a dynamic-linked library (.dll) file and its interactions with my virus protection:



I updated my mono.dll file and, so far, the problem is fixed. The bug should also be fixed in the new Unity 4.2 release, which is coming up soon. I've been away so long that I have forgotten the joy of having error messages.

Finally, to get inspiration for the new game, I've decided to look at a few others. The game "Gone Home" looks particularly interesting to me in that its gameplay and topics could align very well with the gameplay that will most likely emerge in the new DigiBahn game. In any case, it will be interesting to see what the folks down at The Fullbright Company did with their game.