It has taken me a bit longer than expected, but I’ve finally got the screencast up!
That’s right folks, my angelic voice is now online for you all to experience. 8 minutes of Unity Build glory!
Get it here:
I made the screencast using the demo version of Camtasia (which I give a big thumbs up to!). It weighs in at around 19MB in total, but it’s well worth watching if you haven’t seen a Unity Build in action before. Remember to check out The Magic of Unity Builds if you want some more technical information on how these builds work.
The project and associated source code that I used for this screencast is available for download right here.
As a final note, please forgive me for sounding tired!
I look forward to hearing your feedback. Enjoy!
June 19, 2008
Sweet! Not bad for a first-timer. Also good choice of topic since the interest levels from the community are very high on this, and the delivery can be kept short! under 10 minutes - nice!
June 20, 2008
Cheers Rob. If I did it again I’d change a few things about it, but I am quite happy with it. I was feeling quite tired and I think I sounded a bit flat (babies will do that to you
). I think that on the whole it wasn’t too bad though!
Yup it does seem a bit of a hot topic at the mo, and I’m hoping that it’ll add a bit of value to those who have struggled to get things set up. It’s really quite amazing how fast Unity Builds are!
Screencasting is quite good fun, and I’m looking forward to doing the next one.
Cheers for the feedback mate.
June 20, 2008
not bad buddy good for a first one sound needs to be improved but u already know that and i know why , look forward to more of them buddy
, keep it up
June 20, 2008
Cheers mate. Yeah there’s room for improvement. I need to sound clearer, not so tired, and I need to work on the flow a bit too. At the start of the cast there’s nothing interesting on screen, and it takes too long for me to show something interesting which might bore people.
It was fun to create though! Practice makes perfect
Thanks for the comments!
June 21, 2008
Aye. I’d agree with the comments made so far. Interesting stuff and it’s nice and clear as to what the cast is about, how to do it and what the benefits are.
Your accent has become a bit more down under since you moved back to Oz, though I agree the delivery is a bit flat in places.
Only other thing to note is that the “Create folder” and “Add item” submenus go off the right hand side of the video.
It might be worth doing a futher screencast in which you highlight and repair some of the problems unity builds can cause with a large existing codebase. Things like you can get multiple copies of global/static data and functions being defined in the unity cpp file, headers being included in a different order causing problems, etc.
One company I used to work for had a plugin which would automatically produce a unity file for each project in the solution as a pre-puild step. Unfortunately it was proprietary. I don’t know if there’s a free or commercial plugin that offers the same benefits.
June 21, 2008
Thanks mate. Yeah the comments here are bang on. The issues that I had with it when I first put it up were:
That was basically my list at the point I published it. So I do have a few things to work on
On the plus side, most of the people watching the screencast will be looking to improve their build times, and so will probably look past those issues and still get what they need out of it. I’m definitely keen to do a follow up. I’ll make sure I do this one during the day when I’m awake as opposed to just before bed. I’ll also make an attempt to speak a little clearer - I was mumbling a bit in an attempt to keep my voice down (didn’t want to wake the boy).
My Aussie accent is here to stay though
Do you guys have any ideas as to what I could have going/running on screen when the screencast starts so that the viewer has something a bit more interesting to see than a blank IDE?
Thanks for the feedback
June 22, 2008
You don’t want anything too distracting. Having something to read or animating on screen will mean people don’t listen to what you’re saying or vice versa. You could simply have a camera pointed at yourself at the start while you introduce the topic, though you need to have good lighting for that and be OK about putting your face on t’interweb!
June 22, 2008
That’s a bloody good idea mate. Camtasia does have the option of showing a cam feed at the same time.. so maybe I can make that take up the screen and turn it off when ready to begin the demo. Even if I have to do a cut it’d be worth it.
I have no problems showing my ugly face on the web
October 21, 2008
Nice Idea but Do you have a way to avoid rebuild and relinking of all the project that way for example using incremental linking
Thanks
Guy
October 22, 2008
@Guy: You can definitely use incremental linking at the same time. The demonstration I gave was just to show how good the full rebuild times are.
Your mileage with incremental rebuilds may vary though. Best way to find out is to give it a go
Are you thinking of doing this with a large project? At work? At home?