Accelerating Unity Through Automation: Power Up Your Unity Workflow by Offloading Intensive Tasks

Building games with Unity is hard enough without having to stand up and go and make a coffee each time you want to just build your project or find out days/weeks down the line that some change you made while building your dream has incurred a debt that means your project cannot be built for one of your target platforms without a lot of rework. Through automation, many of these hardships can be detected early and free up time and stress by monitoring your project as it is being created, identify risks and issues as you write the code, and free up your machine while lengthy build processes are running. The change might be hard, but once setup, it will give you peace of mind that everything you create will run, updates will be automatically managed, and your players are less likely to be drafting one-star reviews on your next publication. What You Will Learn • Build the automation of your dreams to accelerate your project • Get detailed examples for generating workflows tailored to your needs • Learn to save time and money by having a backend work for you Who Is This Book For Developers having experience with Unity and interested in learning about (with no foreknowledge in) automation will greatly benefit from this book. Table of Contents About the Author About the Technical Reviewer Chapter 1: What Is Automation? What Does Automation Mean for a Unity Developer? What to Expect from This Title? Looking Ahead Chapter 2: What Is Gained Through Automation, the Highlights! Example Workflows 1. Checkout 2. Running Scripts – Bash/PowerShell/Python 3. NPM Build and Test 4. MSBuild Build and Test 5. Chat/Mail Integration (Slack/Email) 6. Schedule/Remove Backups 7. Upload Artifacts, Build, and Publish 8. Create Releases on GitHub 9. Update Project Management Solutions and Workflows 10. Generate Release Documentation 11. Publish Documentation 12. Varying Flows Based on the Submitter 13. Call External APIs for Analytics, Reporting, or PowerBI 14. Generate/Search for Gifs to Add to a Post/Issue When Craziness Is Detected or a “lmgtfy” Tag Is Used by an Admin 15. Convert Source Files (yaml/xml/json) to Other Formats or Perform Bespoke Actions 16. Integrate with Docker/Kubernetes 17. Manage Versioning 18. Run Unit Tests and Perform Actions Based on Results References Summary Chapter 3: Services Covered by This Title Cost Use Cases The Reality Collective The Unity UI Extensions Project Several Business Clients Open Source On to the Services Unity Gaming Services – DevOps Costs Involved Comparison Personal Comments Azure Pipelines Costs Involved Comparison Personal Comments GitHub Actions Costs Involved Comparison Personal Comments Summary Chapter 4: The Structure of Automation The Speech of Automation Actions Agent/Runner Approvals Artifact/Package Azure Pipelines Branch Comment Conditions Container Continuous Delivery Continuous Integration Deployment Deployment Group Environment Event GitHub Actions Job/Jobs Library Mac Host Parameters/Variables Pipeline/Workflow Pull Request Push/Pull Run Runner/Host Stage Step/Steps/Task Trigger Ubuntu (Linux) Host Windows Host Workflow/Pipeline Yaml/yml The First Look at Automation Configuration 1. The Name of the Automation 2. The Primary Trigger for the Automation 3. The “Jobs” Section 4. Individual Job Definitions 5. The “Steps” Section 6. Individual Step Definitions 7. Step Parameters Formatting Secrets and Environment Variables Conditionals Job Output Summary Chapter 5: Automation Hosting Hosted Runners Considerations Self-Hosted Runners Considerations Third-Party Hosting Considerations Deciding Factors and Summary Chapter 6: Validation, Checking Your Code Before We Start Welcome Greetings Setting Labels Ensuring Assignment Formatting PR Titles Code Scanning Documentation Static Documentation Dynamic Documentation Generation Summary Chapter 7: Testing, Making Sure It Runs Doing Builds Per Commit/PR Testing Nightly Builds Solutions Unit Testing An Example Running Unit Tests Summary Chapter 8: Building and Publishing Build Concurrency Workflow Concurrency Parallel Builds Unity Build Scripting Further Extending the Build Script Addressables Building UPM Packages What Are Unity UPM Packages Building and Testing UPM Packages Publishing UPM Packages UPM Summary Two-Pass Building for Strict Platforms Secrets and Other Files Certificate Storage Building for Windows Building for Mac/iOS/iPad The Xcode Build Command The Xcode Archive Command Additional Resources Two-Pass Building Summary Distribution Azure Distribution GitHub Actions Distribution Summary Chapter 9: Setting Up Unity Gaming Services Automation Prerequisites 1. Source Control 2. You Need a Unity Project Know the Costs Supported Platforms Getting Started – Make a Project Registering for Unity Cloud Build Connecting to Your Repository A Note About Caching Preparing for Builds Running Your Build Advanced Build Options Build Output OS Dependency Script Hooks Environment Variables Tests Scenes Addressables Asset Bundles Summary Chapter 10: Setting Up Azure DevOps Prerequisites 1. Microsoft Account 2. Source Control 3. You Need a Unity Project Know the Costs Supported Platforms Getting Started – Make a Project Creating a Pipeline Connection Selection Configure Review Executing a Pipeline Automating Building Unity Projects Azure Marketplace Unity Tools for DevOps Extension Putting It Together – Building a Unity Pipeline Get Project Version Task Unity Setup Task Unity Build Task Additional Tasks Self-Hosting Self-Hosting Requirements with Azure Pipelines Configuring an Azure Pipelines Agent Configuring the Automation User Personal Access Token (PAT) for the Automation User Mac Users and Build Hosts Configuring the Host Windows Mac/Linux Agent Completion Returning to Your Agent Configuration Summary Chapter 11: Setting Up GitHub Actions Prerequisites 1. GitHub Account 2. Source Control 3. You Need a Unity Project Know the Costs Supported Platforms Getting Started – Make a Project GitHub Actions Permissions and Configuration 1. Actions Permissions/Policies 2. Artifact and Log Retention 3. Fork or Pull Request from Outside Collaborators 4. Workflow Permissions 5. Required Workflows (Organization Only) Personal Access Token (PAT) for the Automation User GitHub Actions Marketplace Using the GameCI Actions to Automate Unity Tasks Setting Up a GameCI Actions Workflow License Activation with GameCI Creating Secrets on GitHub for the Project Running the Workflow Troubleshooting Self-Hosting Requirements with GitHub Actions Configuring a GitHub Self-Hosting Agent Mac Users and Build Hosts Configuring the Host Windows Mac/Linux Agent Completion Using Custom Scripts to Build Unity Example Multibuild Script GameCI Self-Hosted on Windows Summary Chapter 12: Final Notes Index