The big one has landed: mesh-based rendering. This is the main reason for the major version bump and it is fully working now. Mesh-based rendering means that instead of drawing lines using the low-level GL class a mesh is generated which Unity can then render the same way it renders any other mesh. This means that grid lines can now be rendered below sprites instead of always on top of them.
I have finished the rendering backend for Vectrosity and updated the included examples to use it. Previous releases already came with an extension method that let you get the list of points to construct a vector line, but the actual construction of the vector line was up to the user.
When I released version 1 and version 2 of Grid Framework there was no real way of separating libraries. You had to dump everything into your project in one assembly. Using namespaces prevented name collisions, but you still had things like examples or documentation bloating up your project and there was no way of expressing dependencies. Since then Unity has introduced its own package system, which will solve many of the problems I have had in the past.
I have completely transitioned Grid Framework to a Unity3D package now and moved Vectrosity support to a separate package. The Vectrosity package will be made available as a public Git repository under the MIT license, that should make it as simple as possible for users to add it to their project. While transitioning to packages has had many advantages there have also been some challenges to overcome and I would like to go over them in this post.
In my previous post I wrote about how I maintain the optional extra packages to Grid Framework. Since this point is useful for working with Unity in general I think it’s worth elaborating upon the topic in a separate post.
Let’s have a mental exercise: image something shameful you have done, it doesn’t have to be the most shameful thing, just something that you really are not proud of should do. Now imagine putting it in a sealed box where it will be rotting and festering for years. Now imagine having to open that box, slowly lifting the lid as the rancid smell starts creeping out of the box. That is how it felt when I opened up the old Playmaker support.
The new overhauled Playmaker bindinds will be shipped as a separate package, so this lets me finally implement a great jumping-off point for new users: included samples. The following samples are now included and can be individually added to or removed from your project:
I have decided to move the grid align panel into a separate package as well. There are a number of reasons for removing it from the core package:
It has taken more time than I had hoped, but Grid Framework version 3.0 is finally almost done. All the code has been written and tested, the logistics have been figured out, and the documentation has been updated. This has been quite and exciting year and it is good to see the goal ahead.
I have been very excited to be able to make use of the Unity3D package format for the major version 3 release because it solves a number of problems I had with the previous releases. Unfortunately I have to dial back somewhat because the Asset Store only accepts contents stored inside the Assets directory of a project.