My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Benefits of Prototyping without Assets

Objective: Quick description into why prototyping a game is very beneficial in game development.

Prototyping allows us to add new game mechanics or features to our game quickly and easily. Prototyping is highly recommended before starting any real project for the simple purpose of having a quick, cheaply done version of the project with the sole purpose of testing ideas.

Prototyping allows us to use primitive shapes to model a level. We can quickly test out game mechanics, or the level’s design structure to see if our ideas are good enough to start working on converting it into a final version. This process is known as gray-boxing since the level will be primarily gray from the primitive objects used to build a level. It’s recommended to use a primitive Cube object to start out with as it’s a versatile shape that can represent lots of different objects. Unity has 2 other tools that are great for gray-boxing a level which are Terrain tool for the landscape of a game, and ProBuilder to create a 3D mesh of a level with greater detail than using Cube objects.

Prototyping goes through an iterative process in game development using a life cycle model. The 4 phases life cycle game prototypes go through are analysis, design, implementation, and testing. Analyzing the elements or structure in the game. Design is a plan or drawing used to show the look and functions of the objects in the game. Implementation is used to put a decision or agreement from the developers into effect in the game. Last is test where we get feedback from players and developers detecting bugs or errors, and things they feel should be added or taken out of the game.

Prototypes can help us find missing functionality easier than finished games. This means we can add new requirements from our feedback to the game providing easy convenience. Finally, prototypes can be reused by developers or us for that matter in complicated projects in the future.