When YARA + DAVINA became mothers within a month of each other, they didn't step back from their practice – they stepped forward together. The socially engaged artist duo began collaborating as a job share, determined to remain visible in an industry that too often sidelines mothers. Their work – which spans everything from poetry to bronze public sculptures – is rooted in play, accessibility and political intent, often exploring themes of care, identity, and who art is really for. In this candid Q&A, they reflect on making time (and peace) with imperfection, the pressures of doing it all, and why motherhood has only deepened their creative drive. How has motherhood influenced your creative process or career choices? Brian Sewel, the art critic, said in 2008 that "Female artists fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it's something to do with bearing children". Yes, motherhood has had a profound influence on our career choices. We became a duo after becoming mothers, and we had a deep wellspring of desire to nurture our babies and also nurture our art practice, not letting it fade away. Being a mum gave us a wider range of being and a deeper depth of what it means to be human. It filled us with more ideas, not less… we had more determination and more creative ideas than ever. In 2016, our hack on motherhood was to start collaborating as a duo as a 'job share'. We had been friends and admirers of each other's work for 11 years prior, and both of us became parents within a month of each other. We realised we both wanted to be present mothers but also visible artists. We literally started working together so we could work part-time but have a full-time practice between us. We are driven to make powerful, playful and fun contemporary art, alongside being mothers, to challenge ideas like Tracy Emin, who said, "There are good artists that have children. They are called men." We are good artists, and we are not only women; we are mothers! Photo credit: Alice Horsley What's been the biggest challenge in balancing creativity and caregiving? Time and some guilt! Quite literally, there is little time to parent and make art. But we were both determined to be part-time mums, part-time artists and full-time friends. This duo works because we both understand the limitations of our free time: we are always there to step up when the other needs a break, has sick children, or craves space for ourselves. It was almost like an intuitive dance, where we had become in tune with each other's outside demands and rhythm. As artists, we often have to travel extensively for work, which can put considerable pressure on our partners and be unsettling for our children. So guilt slips in every now and then. Luckily, we both support each other in those times and remind each other that to parent and care for others effectively, it is essential that we make time for our art practice and thus ourselves. With time, we hope our children will respect and understand the role art played in our lives and why we had to find a balance that worked for us as creative beings. We work together every weekday, and we always find ourselves talking and supporting each other with our parenting alongside making work. We both deeply feel that we were put on this planet to create great art, to push the boundaries of what art is and can be, and with whom it can be made and for whom it can be made. And we can do this while raising children. Photo credit: Alice Horsley Have you felt pressure to 'do it all,' and how do you navigate that? Yes, we feel it all the time, from ourselves as much as from society! One of our mottos that we tell ourselves is 'Good Enough'. We have talked about getting these as matching tattoos ( we love to wear matching outfits). Essentially, it is impossible to do everything really well. We need to prioritise what things need to be brilliant and what things can just be good enough. These priorities shift daily, creating an interplay between our personal and professional lives. Being a duo allows us to pick up each other's slack when needed. Photo credit: Nick Turpin What changes would you like to see in the creative industry to better support mothers? In 2016, we participated in a British Council residency at Portland State University titled 'Motherhood: A Social Practice'. We explored motherhood in the creative world, and our passion was to create more family-focused residencies and secure funding to support childcare. We wanted programmers to consider simple things, such as family-accessible residences, and work around term times. Things have dramatically changed since then, but we need to see more changes. People like Lizzie Humber and her daylight collective are doing amazing things, thinking about programming parent-accessible daytime culture. When we live in a time where Evening Standard art critic Brian Sewell says things like, "Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness.", women, in general, have a tough time, never mind mums! We are passionate not only about supporting artist mothers but also about working with and for mothers. Our public artwork, WOMAN - WHOLE, was created alongside, with, and for mothers on the Regents Park Estate, commissioned by ODAC, Camden. We subverted the idea of manholes, creating a series of bronze-cast covers embedded in the pavements of Camden. These permanent public artworks playfully remind us that, as women, we are whole. Photo credit: Hugo Glendinning

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More enterprises have moved to pay-for-performance salary and promotion models that measure progress toward goals -- but how do you measure goals for a maintenance programmer who barrels through a request backlog but delivers marginal value for the business, or for a business analyst whose success is predicated on forging intangibles like trust and cooperation with users so things can get done? It’s an age-old question facing companies, now that 77% of them use some type of pay-for-performance model. What are some popular pay-for-performance use cases? A factory doing piece work that pays employees based upon the number of items they assemble. A call center that pays agents based on how many calls they complete per day. A bank teller who gets rewarded for how many customers they sign up for credit cards. An IT project team that gets a bonus for completing a major project ahead of schedule. The IT example differs from the others, because it depends on team and not individual execution, but there nevertheless is something tangible to measure. The other use cases are more clearcut -- although they don’t account for pieces in the plant that were poorly assembled in haste to make quota and had to be reworked, or a call center agent who pushes calls off to someone else so they can end their calls in six minutes or less, or the teller who signs up X number of customers for credit cards, although two-thirds of them never use the credit card they signed up for. Related:In short, there are flaws in pay-for-performance models just as there are in other types of compensation models that organizations use. So, what’s the best path for IT for CIOs who want to implement pay for performance? One approach is to measure pay for performance based upon four key elements: hard results, effort, skill, and communications. The mix of these elements will vary, depending on the type of position each IT staff member performs. Here are two examples of pay per performance by position: 1. Computer maintenance programmers and help desk specialists Historically, IT departments have used hard numbers like how many open requests a computer maintenance programmer has closed, or how many calls a help desk employee has solved. There is merit in using hard results, and hard results should be factored into performance reviews for these individuals -- but hard numbers don’t tell the whole story.  For example, how many times has a help desk agent gone the extra mile with a difficult user or software bug, taking the time to see the entire process through until it is thoroughly solved? lf the issue was of a global nature, did the Help Desk agent follow up by letting others who use the application know that a bug was fixed? For the maintenance programmer who has completed the most open requests, which of these requests really solved a major business pain point? For both help desk and maintenance programming employees, were the changes and fixes properly documented and communicated to everyone with a need to know? And did these employees demonstrate the skills needed to solve their issues? Related:It’s difficult to capture hard results on elements like effort, communication and skills, but one way to go about it is to survey user departments on individual levels of service and effectiveness. From there, it’s up to IT managers to determinate the “mix” of hard results, effort, communication and skills on which the employee will be evaluated, and to communicate upfront to the employee what the pay for performance assessment will be based on. 2. Business analysts and trainers Business analysts and trainers are difficult to quantify in pay for performance models because so much of their success depends upon other people. A business analyst can know everything there is to know about a particular business area and its systems, but if the analyst is working with unresponsive users, or lacks the soft skills needed to communicate with users, the pay for performance can’t be based upon the technology skillset alone.  Related:IT trainers face a somewhat different dilemma when it  comes to performance evaluation: they can produce the training that new staff members need before staff is deployed on key projects,  but if a project gets delayed and this causes trainees to lose the knowledge that they learned, there is little the trainer can do aside from offering a refresher course. Can pay for performance be used for positions like these? It’s a mixed answer. Yes, pay per performance can be used for trainers, based upon how many individuals the trainer trains and how many new courses the trainer obtains or develops. These are the hard results. However, since so much of training’s execution depends upon other people downstream, like project managers who must start projects on time so new skills aren’t lost,  managers of training should also consider pay for performance elements such as effort (has the trainer consistently gone the extra mile to make things work?), skills and communication.  In sum, for both business analysts and trainers, there are hard results that can be factored into a pay for performance formula, but there is also a need to survey each position’s “customers” -- those individuals (and their managers) who utilized the business analyst’s or trainer’s skills and products to accomplish their respective objectives in projects and training. Were these user-customers satisfied?  Summary Remarks The value that IT employees contribute to overall IT and to the business at large is a combination of tangible and intangible results. Pay for performance models are well suited to gauge tangible outcomes, but they fall short when it comes to the intangibles that could be just as important. Many years ago, when Pat Riley was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, an interviewer asked what type of metrics he used when he measured the effectiveness of individual players on the basketball court. Was it the number of points, rebounds, or assists? Riley said he used an “effort" index. For example, how many times did a player go up to get a rebound, even if he didn’t end up with the ball? Riley said the effort individual players exhibited mattered, because even if they didn’t get the rebound, they were creating situations so someone else on the team could. IT is similar. It’s why OKR International, a performance consultancy, stated “Intangibles often create or destroy value quietly -- until their impact is too big to ignore. In the long run, they are the unseen levers that determine whether strategy thrives or withers.”  What CIOs and IT leadership can do when they use pay for performance is to assure that hard results, effort, communications and skills are appropriately blended for each IT staff position, and its responsibilities and realities -- because you can’t attach a numerical measurement to everything -- but you can observe visible changes that begin to manifest when a business analyst turns around what has been a hostile relationship with a user department and you begin to get things done. 

More enterprises have moved to pay-for-performance salary and promotion models that measure progress toward goals -- but how do you measure goals for a maintenance programmer who barrels through a request backlog but delivers marginal value for the business, or for a business analyst whose success is predicated on forging intangibles like trust and cooperation with users so things can get done? It’s an age-old question facing companies, now that 77% of them use some type of pay-for-performance model. What are some popular pay-for-performance use cases? A factory doing piece work that pays employees based upon the number of items they assemble. A call center that pays agents based on how many calls they complete per day. A bank teller who gets rewarded for how many customers they sign up for credit cards. An IT project team that gets a bonus for completing a major project ahead of schedule. The IT example differs from the others, because it depends on team and not individual execution, but there nevertheless is something tangible to measure. The other use cases are more clearcut -- although they don’t account for pieces in the plant that were poorly assembled in haste to make quota and had to be reworked, or a call center agent who pushes calls off to someone else so they can end their calls in six minutes or less, or the teller who signs up X number of customers for credit cards, although two-thirds of them never use the credit card they signed up for. Related:In short, there are flaws in pay-for-performance models just as there are in other types of compensation models that organizations use. So, what’s the best path for IT for CIOs who want to implement pay for performance? One approach is to measure pay for performance based upon four key elements: hard results, effort, skill, and communications. The mix of these elements will vary, depending on the type of position each IT staff member performs. Here are two examples of pay per performance by position: 1. Computer maintenance programmers and help desk specialists Historically, IT departments have used hard numbers like how many open requests a computer maintenance programmer has closed, or how many calls a help desk employee has solved. There is merit in using hard results, and hard results should be factored into performance reviews for these individuals -- but hard numbers don’t tell the whole story.  For example, how many times has a help desk agent gone the extra mile with a difficult user or software bug, taking the time to see the entire process through until it is thoroughly solved? lf the issue was of a global nature, did the Help Desk agent follow up by letting others who use the application know that a bug was fixed? For the maintenance programmer who has completed the most open requests, which of these requests really solved a major business pain point? For both help desk and maintenance programming employees, were the changes and fixes properly documented and communicated to everyone with a need to know? And did these employees demonstrate the skills needed to solve their issues? Related:It’s difficult to capture hard results on elements like effort, communication and skills, but one way to go about it is to survey user departments on individual levels of service and effectiveness. From there, it’s up to IT managers to determinate the “mix” of hard results, effort, communication and skills on which the employee will be evaluated, and to communicate upfront to the employee what the pay for performance assessment will be based on. 2. Business analysts and trainers Business analysts and trainers are difficult to quantify in pay for performance models because so much of their success depends upon other people. A business analyst can know everything there is to know about a particular business area and its systems, but if the analyst is working with unresponsive users, or lacks the soft skills needed to communicate with users, the pay for performance can’t be based upon the technology skillset alone.  Related:IT trainers face a somewhat different dilemma when it  comes to performance evaluation: they can produce the training that new staff members need before staff is deployed on key projects,  but if a project gets delayed and this causes trainees to lose the knowledge that they learned, there is little the trainer can do aside from offering a refresher course. Can pay for performance be used for positions like these? It’s a mixed answer. Yes, pay per performance can be used for trainers, based upon how many individuals the trainer trains and how many new courses the trainer obtains or develops. These are the hard results. However, since so much of training’s execution depends upon other people downstream, like project managers who must start projects on time so new skills aren’t lost,  managers of training should also consider pay for performance elements such as effort (has the trainer consistently gone the extra mile to make things work?), skills and communication.  In sum, for both business analysts and trainers, there are hard results that can be factored into a pay for performance formula, but there is also a need to survey each position’s “customers” -- those individuals (and their managers) who utilized the business analyst’s or trainer’s skills and products to accomplish their respective objectives in projects and training. Were these user-customers satisfied?  Summary Remarks The value that IT employees contribute to overall IT and to the business at large is a combination of tangible and intangible results. Pay for performance models are well suited to gauge tangible outcomes, but they fall short when it comes to the intangibles that could be just as important. Many years ago, when Pat Riley was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, an interviewer asked what type of metrics he used when he measured the effectiveness of individual players on the basketball court. Was it the number of points, rebounds, or assists? Riley said he used an “effort" index. For example, how many times did a player go up to get a rebound, even if he didn’t end up with the ball? Riley said the effort individual players exhibited mattered, because even if they didn’t get the rebound, they were creating situations so someone else on the team could. IT is similar. It’s why OKR International, a performance consultancy, stated “Intangibles often create or destroy value quietly -- until their impact is too big to ignore. In the long run, they are the unseen levers that determine whether strategy thrives or withers.”  What CIOs and IT leadership can do when they use pay for performance is to assure that hard results, effort, communications and skills are appropriately blended for each IT staff position, and its responsibilities and realities -- because you can’t attach a numerical measurement to everything -- but you can observe visible changes that begin to manifest when a business analyst turns around what has been a hostile relationship with a user department and you begin to get things done. 

Finding your own path is at the core of gameplay in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen – players can go anywhere, climb anything, forge new routes, and follow their curiosity to find adventure. It’s not that different from how its creators, Visionary Realms, approaches building this MMORPG – they’re doing it their own way.Transporting players to the fantasy world of Terminus, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen harkens back to classic MMOs, where accidental discovery wandering through an open world and social interactions with other players are at the heart of the game experience.Creating any multiplayer game is a challenge – but a highly social online game at this scale is an epic quest. We sat down with lead programmer Kyle Olsen about how the team is using Unity to connect players in this MMORPG fantasy world.So what makes Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen unique compared to other MMO games?It’s definitely the social aspect. You have to experience the world and move through it naturally. It can be a bit more of a grind in a way, but it I think connects you more to your character, to the game, and the world instead of just sort of teleporting everywhere and joining LFG systems or just being placed in a dungeon. You learn the land a bit better, you have to navigate and you use your eyes more than just bouncing around like a pinball from objective to objective, following quest markers and stuff. It’s more of a thought game.How are you managing synchronization between the player experience and specific world instances?We have our own network library we built for the socket transport layer called ViNL. That’s the bread and butter for all of the zone communications, between zones and player to zone. SQL server in the back end, kind of standard stuff there. But most of the transports are handled by our own network library.How do you approach asset loading for this giant world?We’ve got a step where we bake our continents out into these tiles, and we’ve got different backends that we can plug into that. We’ve got one that just outputs standard Prefabs, and we’ve got one that outputs subscenes that we were using before Unity 6, and then we’ve got actual full-on Unity scenes that you can load additively, so you can choose how you want to output your content. Before Unity 6, we had moved away from Prefabs and started loading the DOTS subscenes and using that, built on BRG.We also have an output that can render directly to our own custom batch render group as well, just using scriptable objects and managing our own data. So we’ve been able to experiment and test out the different ones, and see what yields the best client performance. Prior to Unity 6, we were outputting and rendering the entire continent with subscenes, but with Unity 6 we actually switched back to using Prefabs with Instantiate Async and Addressables to manage everything.We’re using the Resident Drawer and GPU occlusion culling, which ended up yielding even better performance than subscenes and our own batch render group – I’m assuming because GPU occlusion culling just isn’t supported by some of the other render paths at the moment. So we’ve bounced around quite a bit, and we landed on Addressables for managing all the memory and asset loading, and regular Instantiate Prefabs with the GPU Resident Drawer seems to be the best client-side performance at the moment.Did you upgrade to Unity 6 to take advantage of the GPU Resident Drawer, specifically?Actually, I really wanted it for the occlusion culling. I wasn’t aware that only certain render paths made use of the occlusion culling, so we were attempting to use it with the same subscene rendering that we were using prior to Unity 6 and realizing nothing’s actually being culled. So we opted to switch back to the Prefab output to see what that looked like with the Resident Drawer, and occlusion culling and FPS went up.We had some issues initially, because Instantiate Async wasn’t in before Unity 6, so we had some stalls when we would instantiate our tiles. There were quite a few things being instantiated, but switching that over to Instantiate Async after we fixed a couple of bugs we got rid of the stall on load and the overall frame rate was higher after load, so it was just a win-win.Were there any really remarkable productivity gains that came with the switch to Unity 6?Everything I've talked about so far was client-facing, so our players experienced those wins. For the developer side of things, the stability and performance of the Editor went up quite a bit. The Editor stability in Unity 6 has gone up pretty substantially – it’s very rare to actually crash now. That alone has been, at least for the coding side, a huge win. It feels more stable in its entirety for sure.How do you handle making changes and updates without breaking everything?We build with Addressables using the labels very heavily, and we do the Addressable packaging by labels. So if we edit a specific zone or an asset in a zone, or like a VFX that’s associated with a spell or something like that, only those bundles that touch that label get updated at all.And then, our own content delivery system, we have the game available on Steam and our own patcher, and those both handle the delta changes, where we’re just delivering small updates through those Addressable bundles. The netcode requires the same version to be connected in the first place, so the network library side of that is automatically handled in the handshake process.What guidance would you give someone who’s trying to tackle an MMO game or another ambitious multiplayer project?You kind of start small, I guess. It's a step-by-step process. If you’re a small team, you You start small. It's a step-by-step process. If you’re a small team, you can’t bite off too much. It’d be completely overwhelming – but that holds true with any larger-scale game, not just an MMO. Probably technology selection – making smart choices upfront and sticking to them. It’s going to be a lot of middleware and backend tech that you’re going to have to wrangle and get working well together, and swapping to the newest cool thing all the time is not going to bode well.What’s the most exciting technical achievement for your team with this game?I think that there aren’t many open world MMOs, period, that have been pulled off in Unity. We don’t have a huge team, and we're making a game that is genuinely massive, so we have to focus on little isolated areas, develop them as best we can, and then move on and get feedback.The whole package together is fairly new grounds – when there is an MMO, it needs to feel like an MMO in spirit, with lots of people all around, doing their own thing. And we’ve pulled that off – I think better than pretty much any Unity MMO ever has. I think we can pat ourselves on the back for that.Get more insights from developers on Unity’s Resources page and here on the blog. Check out Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen in Early Access on Steam.

The shoehorning of AI into everything has programmers at Amazon feeling less like the tedious parts of their jobs are being smoothly automated, and more like their work is beginning to resemble the drudgery of toiling away in one of the e-commerce giant's vast warehouses.That's the bleak picture painted in new reporting from the New York Times, in which Amazon leadership — as is the case at so many other companies — is convinced that AI will marvelously jack up productivity. Tasked with conjuring the tech's mystic properties, of course, are our beleaguered keyboard-clackers.Today, there's no shortage of coding AI assistants to choose from. Google and Meta are making heavy use of them, as is Microsoft. Satya Nadella, CEO of the Redmond giant, estimates that as much as 30 percent of the company's code is now written with AI. If Amazon's to keep up with the competition, it needs to follow suit. CEO Andy Jassy echoed this in a recent letter to shareholders, cited by the NYT, emphasizing the need to give customers what they want as "quickly as possible," before upholding programming as a field in which AI would "change the norms."And that it has — though this is less due to the merits of AI and more the result of the over-eager opportunism of the company's management. Three Amazon engineers told the NYT that their bosses have increasingly pushed them to use AI in their work over the past year. And with that came increased output goals and even tighter deadlines. One engineer said that his team was reduced to roughly half the size it was last year — but it was still expected to produce the same amount of code by using AI.In short, new automating technology is being used to justify placing increased demands at their jobs."Things look like a speed-up for knowledge workers," Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University, told the NYT, citing ongoing research. "There is a sense that the employer can pile on more stuff."Adopting AI was ostensibly optional for the Amazon programmers, but the choice was all but made for them. One engineer told the newspaper that they're now expected to finish building new website features in just a few days, whereas before they had several weeks. This ludicrous ramp up is only made possible by using AI to automate some of the coding, and comes at the expense of quality: there's less time for consulting with colleagues to get feedback and bounce ideas around.Above all, AI is sapping all the joy out of their profession. AI-amalgamated code requires extensive double checking — a prominent critique that can't be ignored here and is one of the main reasons skeptics question whether these programming assistants actually produce gains in efficiency. And when you're reduced to proofreading a machine, there's little room for creativity, and an even more diminished sense of control."It's more fun to write code than to read code," Simon Willison, a programmer and blogger who's both an enthusiast of AI and a frequent critic of the tech, told the NYT, playing devil's advocate. "If you're told you have to do a code review, it's never a fun part of the job. When you're working with these tools, it's most of the job."Amazon, for its part, maintains that it conducts regular reviews to ensure that its teams are adequately staffed. "We'll continue to adapt how we incorporate Gen AI into our processes," an Amazon spokesman told the NYT.More on AI: AI Is Replacing Women's Jobs SpecificallyShare This Article

Game Designer (gn) - Combat & ControlsKeen GamesFrankfurt am Main 60594 DE1 hour agoApplyJoin a team of super dedicated and driven people!Keen Games is an independent developer and publisher with a long history of developing games for PC, consoles, and handhelds. Working at Keen Games means working with super experienced, passionate, and humble people.In 2024, we successfully released Enshrouded in Early Access and are now preparing for our 1.0 launch. We're looking for a Game Designer who’s passionate about responsive combat, fluid controls, and engaging class gameplay. You actively seek out player and team feedback and use it to improve the moment-to-moment experience. From fine-tuning combat feel to refining enemy encounters, you’ll help us deliver a polished and satisfying game for 1.0 and beyond.Your Job Opportunity as a Game Designer!Are you ready to shape thrilling combat experiences and make every battle feel unforgettable? Join our experienced design team at Keen Games and take on the challenge of shaping the future of gaming!What you’ll do:You help shape and refine core combat experiences - including player controls, enemy AI, class gameplay, and encounter setups in the world editorYou collaborate with our 3Cs programmers and other designers to improve responsiveness, snappiness, and overall combat feelYou develop innovative gameplay systems and evolve existing ones while aligning with genre conventions for frictionless and engaging long-term playYou grow and learn together alongside our dynamic projects to create the best possible experience for playersWhat you bring to the adventure:Know how to make a game shine!You’re experienced working on both moment-to-moment gameplay (like player controls polishing and combat tuning)Keep Players coming back for more! You are experienced in combat balancing and understand how to make combat feel exciting, responsive, and varied through iteration and attention to detailEmpower players! You have the ability to design meaningful, engaging player choices in a sandbox environment.Work within our team! You have strong collaboration and communication skills to work seamlessly with diverse teams and ensure your design visions and new systems are clearly understood and realizedCollaborate effectively! You have the adaptability to iterate based on community feedback and internal playtests.What we have to offer:Be part of a dynamic and highly creative team that inspires innovationEnjoy a competitive salary that recognizes your talentGrow your skills and career with exciting development opportunitiesRecharge with paid vacation days - balance matters!Stay healthy and covered with comprehensive health care and benefitsCelebrate success with epic events and unforgettable partiesWe value your personality and passion!We prioritize personality and passion over formal education. You'll be part of a supportive, diverse team where creativity and independence are celebrated. Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings. Apply

While there’s more than one way to format Unity C# code, agreeing on a consistent code style for your project enables your team to develop a clean, readable, and scalable codebase. In this blog, we provide some guidelines and examples you can use to develop and maintain your own code style guide.Please note that these are only recommendations based on those provided by Microsoft. This is your chance to get inspired and decide what works best for your team.Ideally, a Unity project should feel like it’s been developed by a single author, no matter how many developers actually work on it. A style guide can help unify your approach for creating a more cohesive codebase.It’s a good idea to follow industry standards wherever possible and browse through existing style guides as a starting point for creating your own. In partnership with internal and external Unity experts, we released a new e-book, Create a C# style guide: Write cleaner code that scales for inspiration, based on Microsoft’s comprehensive C# style.The Google C# style guide is another great resource for defining guidelines around naming, formatting, and commenting conventions. Again, there is no right or wrong method, but we chose to follow Microsoft standards for our own guide.Our e-book, along with an example C# file, are available for free. Both resources focus on the most common coding conventions you’ll encounter while developing in Unity. These are all, essentially, a subset of the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines, which include an extensive number of best practices beyond what we cover in this post.We recommend customizing the guidelines provided in our style guide to suit your team’s preferences. These preferences should be prioritized over our suggestions and the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines if they’re in conflict.The development of a style guide requires an upfront investment but will pay dividends later. For example, managing a single set of standards can reduce the time developers spend on ramping up if they move onto another project.Of course, consistency is key. If you follow these suggestions and need to modify your style guide in the future, a few find-and-replace operations can quickly migrate your codebase.Concentrate on creating a pragmatic style guide that fits your needs by covering the majority of day-to-day use cases. Don’t overengineer it by attempting to account for every single edge case from the start. The guide will evolve organically over time as your team iterates on it from project to project.Most style guides include basic formatting rules. Meanwhile, specific naming conventions, policy on use of namespaces, and strategies for classes are somewhat abstract areas that can be refined over time.Let’s look at some common formatting and naming conventions you might consider for your style guide.The two common indentation styles in C# are the Allman style, which places the opening curly braces on a new line (also known as the BSD style from BSD Unix), and the K&R style, or “one true brace style,” which keeps the opening brace on the same line as the previous header.In an effort to improve readability, we picked the Allman style for our guide, based on the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines: Whatever style you choose, ensure that every programmer on your team follows it.A guide should also indicate whether braces from nested multiline statements should be included. While removing braces in the following example won’t throw an error, it can be confusing to read. That’s why our guide recommends applying braces for clarity, even if they are optional.Something as simple as horizontal spacing can enhance your code’s appearance onscreen. While your personal formatting preferences can vary, here are a few recommendations from our style guide to improve overall readability:Add spaces to decrease code density:The extra whitespace can give a sense of visual separation between parts of a lineUse a single space after a comma, between function arguments.Don’t add a space after the parenthesis and function arguments.Don’t use spaces between a function name and parenthesis.Avoid spaces inside brackets.Use a single space before flow control conditions: Add a space between the flow comparison operator and the parentheses.Use a single space before and after comparison operators.Variables typically represent a state, so try to attribute clear and descriptive nouns to their names. You can then prefix booleans with a verbfor variables that must indicate a true or false value. Often they are the answer to a question such as, is the player running? Is the game over? Prefix them with a verb to clarify their meaning. This is often paired with a description or condition, e.g., isPlayerDead, isWalking, hasDamageMultiplier, etc.Since methods perform actions, a good rule of thumb is to start their names with a verb and add context as needed, e.g., GetDirection, FindTarget, and so on, based on the return type. If the method has a bool return type, it can also be framed as a question.Much like boolean variables themselves, prefix methods with a verb if they return a true-false condition. This phrases them in the form of a question, e.g., IsGameOver, HasStartedTurn.Several conventions exist for naming events and event handles. In our style guide, we name the event with a verb phrase,similar to a method. Choose a name that communicates the state change accurately.Use the present or past participle to indicate events “before” or “after.” For instance, specify OpeningDoor for an event before opening a door and DoorOpened for an event afterward.We also recommend that you don’t abbreviate names. While saving a few characters can feel like a productivity gain in the short term, what is obvious to you now might not be in a year’s time to another teammate. Your variable names should reveal their intent and be easy to pronounce. Single letter variables are fine for loops and math expressions, but otherwise, you should avoid abbreviations. Clarity is more important than any time saved from omitting a few vowels.At the same time, use one variable declaration per line; it’s less compact, but also less error prone and enhances readability. Avoid redundant names. If your class is called Player, you don’t need to create member variables called PlayerScore or PlayerTarget. Trim them down to Score or Target.In addition, avoid too many prefixes or special encoding.A practice highlighted in our guide is to prefix private member variables with an underscore (_) to differentiate them from local variables. Some style guides use prefixes for private member variables (m_), constants (k_), or static variables (s_), so the name reveals more about the variable.However, it’s good practice to prefix interface names with a capital “I” and follow this with an adjective that describes the functionality. You can even prefix the event raising method (in the subject) with “On”: The subject that invokes the event usually does so from a method prefixed with “On,” e.g., OnOpeningDoor or OnDoorOpened.Camel case and Pascal case are common standards in use, compared to Snake or Kebab case, or Hungarian notations. Our guide recommends Pascal case for public fields, enums, classes, and methods, and Camel case for private variables, as this is common practice in Unity.There are many additional rules to consider outside of what’s covered here. The example guide and our new e-book, Create a C# style guide: Write cleaner code that scales, provide many more tips for better organization.The concept of clean code aims to make development more scalable by conforming to a set of production standards. A style guide should remove most of the guesswork developers would otherwise have regarding the conventions they should follow. Ultimately, this guide should help your team establish a consensus around your codebase to grow your project into a commercial-scale production.Just how comprehensive your style guide should be depends on your situation. It’s up to your team to decide if they want their guide to set rules for more abstract, intangible concepts. This could include rules for using namespaces, breaking down classes, or implementing directives like the #region directive (or not). While #region can help you collapse and hide sections of code in C# files, making large files more manageable, it’s also an example of something that many developers consider to be code smells or anti-patterns. Therefore, you might want to avoid setting strict standards for these aspects of code styling. Not everything needs to be outlined in the guide – sometimes it’s enough to simply discuss and make decisions as a team.When we talked to the experts who helped create our guide, their main piece of advice was code readability above all else. Here are some pointers on how to achieve that:Use fewer arguments: Arguments can increase the complexity of your method. By reducing their number, you make methods easier to read and test.Avoid excessive overloading: You can generate an endless permutation of method overloads. Select the few that reflect how you’ll call the method, and then implement those. If you do overload a method, prevent confusion by making sure that each method signature has a distinct number of arguments.Avoid side effects: A method only needs to do what its name advertises. Avoid modifying anything outside of its scope. Pass in arguments by value instead of reference when possible. So when sending back results via the out or ref keyword, verify that’s the one thing you intend the method to accomplish. Though side effects are useful for certain tasks, they can lead to unintended consequences. Write a method without side effects to cut down on unexpected behavior.We hope that this blog helps you kick off the development of your own style guide. Learn more from our example C# file and brand new e-book where you can review our suggested rules and customize them to your team’s preferences.The specifics of individual rules are less important than having everyone agree to follow them consistently. When in doubt, rely on your team’s own evolving guide to settle any style disagreements. After all, this is a group effort.

In Unity 2021 LTS, UI Toolkit offers a collection of features, resources, and tools to help you build and debug adaptive runtime UIs on a wide range of game applications and Editor extensions. Its intuitive workflow enables Unity creators in different roles – artists, programmers, and designers alike – to get started with UI development as quickly as possible.See our earlier blog post for an explanation of UI Toolkit’s main benefits, such as enhanced scalability and performance, already being leveraged by studios like Mechanistry for their game, Timberborn.While Unity UI remains the go-to solution for positioning and lighting UI in a 3D world or integrating with other Unity systems, UI Toolkit for runtime UI can already benefit game productions seeking performance and scalability as of Unity 2021 LTS. It’s particularly effective for Screen Space – Overlay UI, and scales well on a variety of screen resolutions.That’s why we’re excited to announce two new learning resources to better support UI development with UI Toolkit:UI Toolkit sample – Dragon Crashers: The demo is now available to download for free from the Asset Store.User interface design and implementation in Unity: This free e-book can be download from hereRead on to learn about some key features part of the UI Toolkit sample project.The UI Toolkit sample demonstrates how you can leverage UI Toolkit for your own applications. This demo involves a full-featured interface over a slice of the 2D project Dragon Crashers, a mini RPG, using the Unity 2021 LTS UI Toolkit workflow at runtime.Some of the actions illustrated in the sample project show you how to:Style with selectors in Unity style sheet (USS) files and use UXML templatesCreate custom controls, such as a circular meter or tabbed viewsCustomize the appearance of elements like sliders and toggle buttonsUse Render Texture for UI overlay effects, USS animations, seasonal themes, and moreTo try out the project after adding it to your assets, enter Play mode. Please note that UI Toolkit interfaces do not appear in the Scene view. Instead, you can view them in the Game view or UI Builder.The menu on the left helps you navigate the modal main menu screens. This vertical column of buttons provides access to the five modal screens that comprise the main menu (they stay active while switching between screens).While some interactivity is possible, such as healing the characters by dragging available potions in the scene, gameplay has been kept to a minimum to ensure continued focus on the UI examples.Let’s take a closer look at the UIs in the menu bar:The home screen serves as a landing pad when launching the application. You can use this screen to play the game or receive simulated chat messages.The character screen involves a mix of GameObjects and UI elements. This is where you can explore each of the four Dragon Crashers characters. Use the stats, skills, and bio tabs to read the specific character details, and click on the inventory slots to add or remove items. The preview area shows a 2D lit and rigged character over a tiled background.The resources screen links to documentation, the forum, and other resources for making the most of UI Toolkit.The shop screen simulates an in-game store where you can purchase hard and soft currency, such as gold or gems, as well as virtual goods like healing potions. Each item in the shop screen is a separate VisualTreeAsset. UI Toolkit instantiates these assets at runtime; one for each ScriptableObject in the Resources/GameData.The mail screen is a front-end reader of fictitious messages that uses a tabbed menu to separate the inbox and deleted messages.The game screen is a mini version of the Dragon Crashers project that starts playing automatically. In this project, you’ll notice a few revised elements with UI Toolkit, such as a pause button, health bars, and the capacity to drag a healing potion element to your characters when they take damage.UI Toolkit enables you to build stable and consistent UIs for your entire project. At the same time, it provides flexible tools for adding your own design flourishes and details to further flesh out the game’s theme and style.Let’s go over some of the features used to refine the UI designs in the sample:Render Textures:UI Toolkit interfaces are rendered last in the render queue, meaning you can’t overlay other game graphics on top of a UI Toolkit UI. Render Textures provide a workaround to this limitation, making it possible to integrate in-game effects into UI Toolkit UIs. While these effects based on Render Textures should be used sparingly, you’ll still be able to afford sharp effects within the context of a fullscreen UI, without running gameplay. The following images show a number of Render Textures from the demo.Themes with Theme style sheets (TSS): TSS files are Asset files that are similar to regular USS files. They serve as a starting point for defining your own custom theme via USS selectors as well as property and variable settings. In the demo, we duplicated the default theme files and modified the copies to offer seasonal variations.Custom UI elements: Since designers are trained to think outside the box, UI Toolkit gives you plenty of room to customize or extend the standard library. The demo project highlights a few custom-built elements in the tabbed menus, slide toggles, and drop-down lists, plus a radial counter to demonstrate what UI artists are capable of alongside developers.USS transitions for animated UI state changes: Adding transitions to the menu screens can polish and smooth out your visuals. UI Toolkit makes this more straightforward with the Transition Animations property, part of the UI Builder’s Inspector. Adjust the Property, Duration, Easing, and Delay properties to set up the animation. Then simply change styles for UI Toolkit to apply the animated transition at runtime.Post-processing volume for a background blur: A popular effect in games is to blur a crowded gameplay scene to draw the player’s attention to a particular pop-up message or dialog window. You can achieve this effect by enabling Depth of Field in the Volume framework (available in the Universal Render Pipeline).We made sure that efficient workflows were used to fortify the UI. Here are a few recommendations for keeping the project well-organized:Consistent naming conventions: It’s important to adopt naming conventions that align with your visual elements and style sheets. Clear naming conventions not only maintain the hierarchy’s organization in UI Builder, they make it more accessible to your teammates, and keep the code clean and readable. More specifically, we suggest the Block Element Modifier (BEM) naming convention for visual elements and style sheets. Just at a glance, an element’s BEM naming can tell you what it does, how it appears, and how it relates to the other elements around it. See the following BEM naming examples:Responsive UI layout: Similar to web technologies, UI Toolkit offers the possibility of creating layouts where “child” visual elements adapt to the current available size inside their “parent” visual elements, and others where each element has an absolute position anchored to a reference point, akin to the Unity UI system. The sample uses both options as needed through the visual elements of the UI.PSD Importer: One of the most effective tools for creating the demo, PSD Importer allows artists to work in a master document without having to manually export every sprite separately. When changes are needed, they can be done in the original PSD file and updated automatically in Unity.ScriptableObjects: In order to focus on UI design and implementation, the sample project simulates backend data, such as in-app purchases and mail messages, using ScriptableObjects. You can conveniently customize this stand-in data from the Resources/GameData folder and use the example to create similar data assets, like inventory items and character or dialog data in UI Toolkit.Remember that with UI Toolkit, UI layouts and styles are decoupled from code. This means that rewriting the backend data can occur independently from the UI design. If your development team replaces those systems, the interface should continue to work.Additional tools used in the demo include particle systems created with the Built-in Particle System for special effects, and the 2D toolset, among others. Feel free to review the project via the Inspector to see how these different elements come into play.You can find reference art made by the UI artists under UI/Reference, as replicated in UI Builder. The whole process, from mockups to wireframes, is also documented in the e-book. Finally, all of the content in the sample can be added to your own Unity project.You can download the UI Toolkit sample – Dragon Crashers from the Asset Store. Once you’ve explored its different UI designs, please provide your feedback on the forum.Then be sure to check out our e-book, User interface design and implementation in Unity. Download