Cod­ing

Coding Department Jan-Luca Skrobol, Kevin Scharke, Mathis Jesper Jagersma, Mathis Wierdeier, Max Twardy und Sebastian Krois
Group photo of the Orga Coding Department in summer 2024 Jan-Luca Skrobol, Kevin Scharke, Mathis Jesper Jagersma, Mathis Wierdeier, Max Twardy and Sebastian Krois

In the coding area, the main mechanics of a game and the assets of the other departments are implemented in the game engine Unity. For this purpose, Unity's game components are used and linked to your own C# scripts. The workshops teach the basics of programming in Unity. It is helpful if you already have a little experience in programming, but it is also possible to take part without any prior knowledge.

Skills in the Cod­ing De­part­ments

Con­­­cep­tu­al work

We divide the game into different objects and game scenes in order to effectively develop it independently as a team. We want to clarify the following questions: Which objects do we need? What do they need to be able to do? How many scenes do we need? We decide in which cases we need to programme new scripts.

Me­­dia pro­­duc­­tion

We create objects and give them properties and behaviour through components. To do this, we write our own scripts, for example for player movement, collectable objects or buttons. We insert the objects into the game scenes and link them together.

In­­ter­­dis­­­cip­lin­ar­ity

We have to work closely with the game design department. That's where we get all the information about how exactly the game mechanics need to be implemented and what other features need to be added. At the same time, we add the audio and art assets. Here we pay attention to when a sound plays and when an animation plays.

Our role and re­­spon­s­ib­ilites

In the final GameJam in the first semester, you and a few other coders have to plan the realisation and composition of the game in a short space of time. Depending on your strengths and desire, you divide up the areas, e.g: One person programmes the player; the other person programmes the main menu. An important responsibility is to correctly integrate all assets from the other departments into the game.

If you take part in the summer semester, you will spend the whole semester working in a team of coders to create a more complex game. Here, the organising role of the coding lead is added, which is responsible for the long-term distribution of tasks and coordination with the other departments.

Vocab­u­lary of the Cod­ing De­part­ment

A scene is a file in which a level or a composition of GameObjects is saved. The scene is displayed in the centre of the Scene View in Unity. The name of the currently open scene can be seen in Unity at the top left after the name of the project. When a project is created for the first time, the ‘SampleScene’ scene is created and opened.

All objects in Unity are referred to as GameObjects. Components are attached to these, which determine the properties of the object. The objects are then inserted into scenes to interact with each other.

Components are attached to GameObjects in order to assign properties or functionalities to them. Each GameObject must have a Transform Component, which specifies the position, rotation and scaling of the object in the scene. A script is also a component.

Prefabs are composites of GameObjects that are saved as files. These prefab files can be instantiated in any scene and behave like GameObjects. The advantage of a prefab is that you do not have to change each instance separately when changing a property, but can change the prefab centrally and the changes are automatically transferred to all instances. Example: A prefab called ‘Player’ may contain a ‘3D model’ GameObject and a ‘Camera’ GameObject.