How to identify a Unity project folder and open it

How to identify a Unity project folder and open it in the Unity Editor

If you’ve been following one of our many game-making tutorials, such as the Farming RPG series, you will see that at the end of some of the tutorials, we will leave links that you can use to download the zipped source files of the project (here’s an example).

After unzipping the files, you will see these folders (give or take some of them):

A Unity project folder
So… what do we do with these files?
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Can't find Plastic SCM remote project in Unity Hub

Can’t find Plastic SCM remote project in Unity Hub

When working in Unity, or any other game engine for that matter, it is natural to use version control. After all, not only can it boost team collaboration, but it is also common practice within the industry.

Through optimized workflows for artists and programmers and superior speed with large files and binaries, Unity Plastic SCM is a great built in version control and source code management tool built to improve team collaboration and scalability with any engine.

For more details regarding other Plastic SCM troubleshooting techniques, as well as how to set-up Plastic SCM for your team in your Unity project, please check our guide on Plastic SCM for Unity.

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Create a Farming RPG in Unity - Part 16

Creating a Farming RPG (like Harvest Moon) in Unity — Part 16: NPC Gifts and Displaying Relationship Information

This article is a part of the series:
Creating a Farming RPG (like Harvest Moon) in Unity

Ever wanted to create a game like Harvest Moon in Unity? Check out Part 16 of our guide here, where we go through how to give NPC Gifts and how to display relationship information. You can also find Part 15 of our guide here, where we went through how to set up scene transitions.

A link to a package containing the project files up to Part 16 of this tutorial series can also be found at the end of this article, exclusive to Patreon subscribers only.

To view this content, you must be a member of Terresqualls Patreon at $5 or more
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
How to set up a Plastic SCM repository in Unity

How to set-up a Plastic SCM repository in Unity and add team members to your project

When working with projects, it is common practice to use source control repositories to house our code, so that we can synchronize project files across multiple team members, and perform version control. Game development projects are no different.

If you have been using Unity for some time now, you may remember Unity Collaborate — a source control repository service built into the Unity Editor. In November of 2021, they replaced the Unity Collaborate service with Plastic SCM, and Unity users across the world went through a collective struggle trying to re-learn (or learn, if you are a first-time user — Plastic SCM is harder to use than Unity Collaborate) how to use the new service.

If you are one of these people, then this guide is for you.

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XAMPP cannot start on macOS - Cannot calculate MAC address

XAMPP can’t start on macOS — cannot calculate MAC address

If you are running XAMPP on macOS, you may run into a variety of problems that may prevent you from starting the program. One of these problems is an error that says “cannot calculate MAC address” when you try to start the program.

Error starting XAMPP stack
The error message is not very helpful.

If your error message says something else, you may want to check out the other articles on XAMPP for macOS:

  1. XAMPP Apache not starting on macOS
  2. XAMPP MySQL not starting on macOS
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How to set up a local web domain on WampServer

How to set up a local web domain (i.e. VirtualHost) on WampServer

When working on a website, it is not uncommon for developers to locally host websites on their own computers first, as it is often a good idea to run and test your website before you publish it online, so that you avoid having your live website run into errors and bugs.

If you are a Windows user, one of the several local web hosting softwares you have available to you is WampServer, which normally runs on the localhost URL when it is started up.

Fun fact: Wamp stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP. It is a play on the term LAMP (where L stands for Linux, and the rest of the letters mean the same as those in Wamp), as almost all web servers in the early days of the web ran on such a set-up. Today, LAMP stacks are still widely used to host many websites.

While running on localhost gives us the benefit of using root-relative URL paths, it still has a distinct drawback — it is a hassle to run multiple websites off the localhost URL, as it will still cause the aforementioned root-relative URL paths to break.

Fortunately for us, it is possible to set up what I call “local domains” on WampServer, so that you can use URLs outside of localhost to access your websites on WampServer.

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CodeLobster IDE, a free PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript / TypeScript editor

CodeLobster IDE — A free PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript / TypeScript editor for web developers

If you’re just starting your foray into the world of web development, you’re probably wondering what kind of code editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to use. In most other branches of coding, like application or games development, you’re probably only going to deal with 1 or 2 programming languages concurrently. In web development, however, you’re almost always going to be dealing with at least 3 languages concurrently, so it’s going to feel very different from almost any other branch of coding.

Especially if you’re new to web development, having to deal with so many languages in one go (and having to be familiar with the native libraries of each of the languages) can be rather overwhelming, and the developers of CodeLobster IDE seem to understand this very well.

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Create a Farming RPG in Unity - Part 15

Creating a Farming RPG (like Harvest Moon) in Unity — Part 15: NPC Interaction

This article is a part of the series:
Creating a Farming RPG (like Harvest Moon) in Unity

Ever wanted to create a game like Harvest Moon in Unity? Check out Part 15 of our guide here, where we go through how to create a dialogue system and create the relationships with other characters aspect of the game. You can also find Part 14 of our guide here, where we went through how to set up scene transitions.

A link to a package containing the project files up to Part 15 of this tutorial series can also be found at the end of this article, exclusive to Patreon subscribers only.

To view this content, you must be a member of Terresqualls Patreon at $5 or more
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.

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Enumerations in Java explained (using Pokémon as an example)

Enumerations explained (using Pokémon as an example)

What are enums anyway, and what are they used for? Well, just think of it as yet another tool in your handy Java toolbox of things you can consider using to improve your efficiency and organisation of your program.

In this article, we are going to explore what enums are, and how they can be used in Java, by considering a piece of Java code that uses enums to recreate the type effectiveness system found in Pokémon.

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Why doesn't vertical-align: middle work?

Why doesn’t vertical-align: middle work? How to vertically-centre elements in HTML and CSS

If you are new to working with CSS, you may find that the language comes with its fair share of quirks that can be frustrating, such as the text-align attribute not always working at horizontally-aligning your content.

In a similar way to text-align, the vertical-align attribute doesn’t always work at aligning your content vertically. Take the following HTML code for example:

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