Quartet Android Launch

I've been working on the android version of Quartet for the past 3 months and it has been a helluva ride so far 😓.  This was the first time I worked on an Android project with Unity game engine so I expected it to a bumpy ride as I was a novice in building android games using Unity.

The first problem I had was installing Android for Unity, I surprisingly found out that the Unity version I developed the PC version of the game (Unity 2021.3.28) does not have Android support (I was so mad 😅, I mean 2021 is just 4 years ago 🙄, why is there not an Android module still available? 😑).

So, I had to install a new Unity version, I settled for Unity 2023.2.20 because they had just released Unity 6 when I started working on the game, so I opted for a more stable version. After installing the new Unity version, I first migrated the project to the new Unity version and then I encountered an unexpected issue, when I tried building the game, I ran into Gradle Build errors. I had never encountered this error before so it was novel to me but I knew Gradle had to do with something with Android SDK, so I started looking for answers online, I toiled for a long time 😄 (about 2-3 days) before I found a solution to the issue, apparently there were some missing files in the SDK folder, after copying the right files, I was able to build to Android successfully (yayy 🎉, P.S I thought my problems were over not knowing they just started 😑😣).

The second problem I encountered was figuring out how to implement touch input with Unity, I had already read previously that Unity UI works the same way across all devices so I expected it to be easy-peasy (oh, was I wrong 😅), I thought I'll just build the game for Android and all the UI from the PC build would work just fine without need to implement any other thing. When I built the game, I tested it on my Android phone, to my surprise there was no response to UI touch 😪. Now I had to find where the problem was, I had an idea of where the problem was which was the Input Manager of the game but I didn't know how to implement a fix. As always, I searched online for a solution 😆.

I recall watching a lot of YouTube videos on Input Manger, Input Actions in Unity and so on. Even after implementing all what I found in those videos, I could not find a solution until I heard a phrase, "UNITY'S NEW INPUT SYSTEM",  I suddenly discovered Unity has 2 input systems (The New Input System and The Old Input System), I checked my code and realized I've ben using the Old Input System all this while and I've been trying to implement a new input system solution to an old input system framework.

So, I had to refactor my entire codebase to Unity's new input system. Thereafter, I had to implement input actions for touch input in the Input Manager. After doing all this, I realized that there was a component in Unity called "On-Screen Button" that maps Keyboard keys automatically to game UI (which is a life-saver, btw), I implemented this and now my touch input was responding perfectly on Android.

Image of Final InputActions Asset:

Another crucial feature I implemented in the Android version of Quartet was a revamped game tutorial, from feedback from the earlier released version, players complained of not understanding the game. So, I had to find a way to teach players the game (btw, teaching players your game is extremely hard 😣). Initially, at the start of the first level, players are given all the controls of the game and they were expected to understand how to play the game so I had to fix that. 

After a lot of research online on how to make intuitive tutorials🥱😅,  I executed it so that players are progressively taught the game. I ensured that players are given the required instructions when they face a particular obstacle, for example the "Press Jump Button" shows when player are faced with a situation to actually Jump over an  obstacle, I also implemented a blinking text effect on the tutorial text so that it catches the attention of players when they play the game.

Execution of this project was quite tasking and I faced several hurdles while working on it but it was a quite rewarding task and I hope to build further android version of my projects in the future. 

If you've made it this far, you're the real MVP. 🙌

I remain, DynamO... till next time! 💙