How to Submit

Important Notes

⚠️ DO NOT SHOW THE UNITY EDITOR IN YOUR VISUAL DOCUMENTATION.

⚠️ BUILD EARLY AND PLAY TEST YOUR BUILDS. Some bugs will only reveal themselves in a build, so make sure to catch those in advance of the deadline. A broken game will affect your project grade.


Submission Checklist

Before class on the day of the project deadline

Create an itch.io page for your project. You will submit a link to this project page via the project submission form.

The following items should be available on your itch.io project page and ready to be presented before class starts:

Project Title

Text Description that would be useful for introducing your project to someone for the first time:

  1. The basic premise of the project: What is your project about?
  2. How to play: How do you interact with the project?

Project build for WINDOWS

Exported Unity package


By 11:59PM on the day of the project deadline:

Submit your project documentation through the same submission form.

This should include all the project information listed above (ie. whatever you've uploaded onto your itch.io project page), as well as the following visual documentation of your project:

⚠️ DO NOT SHOW THE UNITY EDITOR IN YOUR VISUAL DOCUMENTATION.

at least ONE animated GIF of your project in motion, roughly 600 pixels wide, ideally under 5MB in size.

at least TWO stills from your project (1920x1080).

(Optional) Recording of gameplay. Roughly 60 seconds, long enough to demonstrate how your game is played (1920x1080, mp4/h.264)


Tools for Visual Documentation

Animated GIFs

Animated GIFs are durable and easy to view (though not always small in size). In this course we will use animated GIFs as a quasi-archival format for animated visual material. Preferably, they should be 600 pixels wide and under 5MB in file size.

I personally use and recommend ScreenToGif, which is a good tool for quickly making a gif. Photoshop, Premiere, AfterEffects, or other video editors can also export gifs. You may also find the following free tools helpful:

  • EzGif.com is an online GIF maker, editor, and compressor. Great for reducing the file size of GIFs.
  • LICEcap is a badly-named free OSX app which can capture an area of your screen and save it directly to an animated GIF.
  • Online-convert.com offers a browser tool for converting videos into GIFs.


Screenshots and Screen Recordings

Make a build first and run it full screen to capture images and video of your project.

For screen recordings, OBS works very well.

You may also use the Unity Recorder to capture single frames and videos from within the Unity Editor.


Built-in OS screenshot shortcuts:

Windows

To take a screenshot and automatically save the file, press the Windows key + PrtScn. Your screen will go dim and a screenshot of your entire screen will save to the Pictures > Screenshots folder.

Also consider the snipping tool, which is a convenient way to capture a portion of your screen.


Mac
  1. To take a screenshot, press Shift + Command + 3.
  2. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of your screen, click it to edit the screenshot. Or wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.

By default, screenshots save to your desktop with the name ”Screen Shot [date] at [time].png.”


How to export projects from Unity

Before we export anything...

Project / Player Settings for Unity Build

Go to Edit > Project Settings > Select the Player tab.


Here's some settings you may customise:

  • Product Name - Set this to your project title. This will be the name of the executable file (.exe).
  • Default Icon and Cursor - Set the executable file icon and in-game cursor.
  • Resolution and Presentation - You may calibrate whether your game application runs in the background, and whether it opens in fullscreen or windowed view.


Building your project

Unity version 2023 and earlier

Start by opening the build settings under File > Build Settings.


Add all the scenes you want to include in your project by clicking and dragging them from your assets folder to “Scenes in Build” (also remove any scenes you don’t want to include). The topmost scene in this list will be the first to play when starting the game.


Create a Windows build by changing Target Platform to “Windows” and clicking build.


After the build has finished, locate the folder containing all the files and folders that Unity created. The build needs all these folders, exes, and dlls to run properly.


Rename this folder as "YourName_Project123_Build", then compress it into a zipped folder. You will upload this .zip folder on itch.io and submit it for documentation.


Unity version 6

Start by opening the build settings under File > Build Profiles.


Select Windows build profile in the left column, and click Switch Platform if it's not already active. Once you've done this, the "Build and Run" option should be available. You may need to click another profile and click back to Windows for it to update.

Under Windows settings, set architecture to Intel 64-bit.


In the Scene List tab, add all the scenes you want to include in your project by clicking and dragging them from your assets folder to “Scene List” (also remove any scenes you don’t want to include). The topmost scene in this list will be the first to play when starting the game.


After the build has finished, locate the folder containing all the files and folders that Unity created. The build needs all these folders, exes, and dlls to run properly.


Rename this folder as "YourName_Project123_Build", then compress it into a zipped folder. You will upload this .zip folder on itch.io and submit it for documentation.

Unity Packages

Read the official documentation for exporting and importing Unity packages.

Rather than creating a zip file of your entire Unity project folder, you can save a lot of time (and space) by exporting only the assets for the scenes, materials, prefabs, etc. that you want to share. This is called exporting an asset package.


Exporting Unity Packages

You have two options:

  • Find your scene file in the Project tab, right click the scene, and click “Export Package…”


  • OR Click Assets > Export Package…


In the window that opens, de-select any assets that you don’t want to include. Be careful that you don’t exclude anything required to run your scene. If you only had your scene selected when clicking Export Package…, the window will only display the assets directly used in that scene. You can select entire folders, or even the top level Assets folder to bring up more assets to include in the export.

Select None, then click Include dependencies box to include all assets used inside your scene. Finally, click Export… to save your unitypackage file.

Name this Unity Package "YourName_Project123.unitypackage"


Importing Unity Packages

To import a package into another project, double click the “.unitypackage” file with a project open and an import window will appear.


You can also click Assets > Import Package > Custom Package… to select the unitypackage file via explorer/finder.

Select the assets you want to import and click Import.