Sending and Requesting Data from MongoDB in a Unity Game

Are you working on a game in Unity and finding yourself needing to make use of a database in the cloud? Storing your data locally works for a lot of games, but there are many gaming scenarios where you’d need to leverage an external database. Maybe you need to submit your high score for a leaderboard, or maybe you need to save your player stats and inventory so you can play on numerous devices. There are too many reasons to list as to why a remote database might make sense for your game.

If you’ve been keeping up with the content publishing on the MongoDB Developer Hub and our Twitch channel, you’ll know that I’m working on a game development series with Adrienne Tacke. This series is centered around creating a 2D multiplayer game with Unity that uses MongoDB as part of the online component. Up until now, we haven’t actually had the game communicate with MongoDB.

In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to make HTTP requests from a Unity game to a back end that communicates with MongoDB. The back end was already developed in a tutorial titled, Creating a User Profile Store for a Game With Node.js and MongoDB. We’re now going to leverage it in our game.

Designing and Developing 2D Game Levels with Unity and C#

If you’ve been keeping up with the game development series that me (Nic Raboy) and Adrienne Tacke have been creating, you’ve probably seen how to create a user profile store for a game and move a player around on the screen with Unity.

To continue with the series, which is also being streamed on Twitch, we’re at a point where we need to worry about designing a level for gameplay rather than just exploring a blank screen.

In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to create a level, which can also be referred to as a map or world, using simple C# and the Unity Tilemap Editor.

Animate Spritesheets in a Unity 2D Game

When it comes to developing a game, at some point in time you’re going to want to animate some component within the game. These animations could be character sprites or even elements that exist as part of the background.

A few months back, I wrote a tutorial titled, Animate Spritesheets in a Phaser Game, around creating a spritesheet and then animating it within a Phaser game. Phaser is an awesome framework, but it doesn’t compare to Unity on a professional level. So what if we wanted to animate a spritesheet in Unity?

In this tutorial we’re going to see how to animate a spritesheet, the same example from the previous tutorial, but this time with Unity, animation clips, animator states, and some basic C#.

Getting Started with Unity for Creating a 2D Game

If you’ve been keeping up with the content on the MongoDB Developer Portal, you’ll know that a few of us at MongoDB (Nic Raboy, Adrienne Tacke, Karen Huaulme) have been working on a game titled Plummeting People, a Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout tribute game. Up until now we’ve focused on game planning and part of our backend infrastructure with a user profile store.

As part of the natural progression in our development of the game and part of this tutorial series, it makes sense to get started with the actual gaming aspect, and that means diving into Unity, our game development framework.

In this tutorial, we’re going to get familiar with some of the basics behind Unity and get a sprite moving on the screen as well as handing collision. If you’re looking for how we plan to integrate the game into MongoDB, that’s going to be saved for another tutorial.

Creating a User Profile Store for a Game With Node.js and MongoDB

When it comes to game development, or at least game development that has an online component to it, you’re going to stumble into the territory of user profile stores. These are essentially records for each of your players and these records contain everything from account information to what they’ve accomplished in the game.

Take the game Plummeting People that some of us at MongoDB (Karen Huaulme, Adrienne Tacke, and Nic Raboy) are building, streaming, and writing about. The idea behind this game, as described in a previous article, is to create a Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout tribute game with our own spin on it.

Since this game will be an online multiplayer game, each player needs to retain game-play information such as how many times they’ve won, what costumes they’ve unlocked, etc. This information would exist inside a user profile document.

In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to design a user profile store and then build a backend component using Node.js and MongoDB Realm for interacting with it.

Designing a Strategy to Develop a Game with Unity and MongoDB

When it comes to game development, you should probably have some ideas written down before you start writing code or generating assets. The same could probably be said about any kind of development, unless of course you’re just messing around and learning something new.

So what should be planned before developing your next game?

Depending on the type of game, you’re probably going to want a playable frontend, otherwise known as the game itself, some kind of backend if you want an online component such as multiplayer, leaderboards, or similar, and then possibly a web-based dashboard to get information at a glance if you’re on the operational side of the game and not a player.

Adrienne Tacke, Karen Huaulme, and myself (Nic Raboy) are in the process of building a game. We think Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a very well-made game and thought it’d be interesting to create a tribute game that is a little more on the retro side, but with a lot of the same features. The game will be titled, Plummeting People. This article explores the planning, design, and development process!

EZ Analytics for Android Released

I am pleased to announce my first Unity3D plugin is now available for download. EZ Analytics for Android offers Unity3D developers a native solution for Google Analytics with as little as two lines of code.