The world of AI is moving faster than most can keep up, by the time you have mastered one pattern, several others have cropped up. If you do not keep a check on yourself, you could be left behind. If you thought it was tough in the 80/90's (I am old, I get it) with how fast things were evolving, then buckle up, we are now reaching lightspeed.
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TL; DR -> Whether or not you are for or against AI, if you do not at least read up on the landscape and the capabilities out there you WILL fall behind. These tools can be used in many different ways and provide support where you least expect it.
It is not about taking away the fun tasks, if you do not want it to code for you, then stop, want to create your own artwork, fine do that. But do not discount the capabilities of the tools because of preconceptions.
You do not need to use it, but understanding what you CAN use it for better arms you in the road ahead to know what you are up against.
The evolution of AI tools is ever increasing, as is any technology or area that is adopting these tools. It was already an almost impossible task to "keep up" with advances, causing developers and engineers to keep narrowing their specialties, reducing the mental load to be able to take in the latest and greatest.
TL; DR -> In short, NO, lol. AI is a tool that can assist you in solving common problems and mixing many different AI tools and features you can help to accelerate your development and the creation of content (at least place holders for your artists to draw from). But, it is also a great source of pain, frustration and injection of complex issues, which you end up using AI to solve only making the complexity worse and harder to understand if you are not familiar with it.
Essentially, the AI CANNOT do it alone and still needs a human at the helm to guide it, correct it and use other tools to generate assets.
It is however fantastic for DOCUMENTING your project and identifying potential issues!
As ever progress marches on whether we want it to or not and with the ever increasing power that AI brings, everyone gets split into one of three groups:
TL; DR -> Unity has its ways, and not all are obvious or easy to overcome, one such issue is with 3D model animations. In short, although animations will play automatically, other times they just do not and it is very unclear why. In this solution, we FORCE animations to run, trusting not our fate to the Unity gods whims.
Full disclosure, for once, this post was written supported by AI (Claude Sonnet 4 in this case), as it was the AI's intensified work that ended up finding the final solution, so it deserves some credit too. Although as a rule, I generally only write myself, with the occasional help of a spell/grammar checker :D
In the Unity AR application I am building with work, I encountered a puzzling issue where 3D models with embedded animations behaved differently depending on how they were loaded:
TL; DR -> I am immensely proud of my achievements evolving the MS HoloToolkit into the cross-platform framework that became the MS Mixed Reality Toolkit, and the journey onwards to crafting framework components for the XRTK and finally the Reality Collective.
It seems almost a lifetime ago before I was invited into the Microsoft HoloToolkit team following a strong suggestion by Stephen Hodgson who was already working closely with Microsoft. I had already been working in the XR space for some time and my experiences and skillz seemed a good fit to take things forward. I did not know at the time just how far forward we would go!
TL;DR -> XR is an interesting space with lots to offer, but it is not for the faint of heart as there are many challenges ahead. Checkout my solutions that are live in the market, not fake demos.
In a showcase of my recent efforts, I thought I would share some of the experiences I have been working on. Each has brought its own challenges, from dealing with engines and software, tackling complex integrations between vendor SDK's and achieving the desired implementation, to the often confusing requirements set down by customers or sales.
TL;DR -> Ethar is an XR powerhouse, using the latest technologies from leading partners and delivering award winning solutions, while also investing in XR research to make new experiences possible, quick and easy to deliver.
As an avid content creator and educator, these past few years have been tough since I joined Ethar (the premier XR Experience platform). I've loved being here since I joined the team and worked hard to accelerate their vision of creating the worlds first truly cross platform and cross-vendor spatial aware platform, however due to my focus I've not had as much time as I have had in the past to share what I've been up to and demonstrate to others what they can achieve.
TL;DR -> .NET 8 language support is now available for MonoGame and opening up a whole new world of goodness and speed for games.
*Note, the information contained below is for those developers who want access to the cutting edge, as it requires access to the development source. (with the exception of upgrading your game to .NET 8)
The full release of the .NET 8 MonoGame support will be included with the 3.9 release, coming soon.
MonoGame may have seemed stagnant or unmoving in the past, mainly because of the rigors of a group of developers working unpaid on the development of an OpenSource framework, meaning the focus had to be on what enabled the developers to make money in their own projects based on MonoGame. But thanks to recent investments by ReLogic and our awesome MonoGame community, the MonoGame Foundation was born and more significant investments could be made.
TL;DR -> With a little effort, publishing MonoGame projects to the Web is possible, so long as you remember it is the Web and you cannot do EVERYTHING!
When it comes to GameJams, like the one mentioned in this post, pushing out the finished project as an EXE or Appx usually results in your project either getting downvoted or ignored, because who wants to infect their machine with an unknown just to test out a Jam project. This applies to most Game Engines out there that are not web-based, including MonoGame, but thankfully due to the hard work of Nikos Kastellanos (NKast) there is an option available to us.
TL;DR -> Getting started with MonoGame is easy, mastering it takes time. So, throw all that out the window and get hacking instead!
The 5th annual MonoGameJam is kicking off soon on the 30th November 2023, which is by far one of the best ways to throw yourself into MonoGame and learn something new:
TL;DR -> It is as simple as Initialize, LoadContent, Update, Draw, UnloadContent and finish, with a little sauce in between.
Every Game, Program or process runs on a specific loop, it might go through just once, or as is in the case with Games, the loop continues until the game is over, finished, kaput, crashed or simply closed (but who really wants a Game to ever end :D). Put simply, this is known as the Game loop, and whether it is Unity, Unreal or MonoGame, they all have their own specific order of things.