Get to know the Unity IDE:

This is the environment you will work mostly in. Spend some time getting to know it better.

Here, you can see the Scene view, Game view, Hierarchy, Project, Inspector and other toolbars. You can change the current layout of these multiple windows by choosing from the Layout dropdown at the top right. Unity has given a good short description of each of these in their official video. Head over here. Remember, everything in Unity will be built in multiple scenes. A Scene file is akin to a unique level in your game. Head over here to learn more. Here I have 2 scenes – 001 and 002.

Some terminology in Unity:

Learn these terms to get started – GameObjects and Components, Prefabs, Textures , Sprites, Layers.

Adding Physics to objects is easy:

Unity has 3D and 2D physics and animation systems built into it - which means adding physics and animations to objects is easy. Usually, you will use 2 Physics components on your character/environment:
(i) something which gives mass and allows objects to be under influence of gravity (RigidBody/RigidBody2D) – and if you’re giving a body mass, you would want it to interact with the environment, or want it to walk on the surface – hence, you need the body and the environment to interact with each other through a collision (even if you just want a character to walk on a floor, you need to ensure that the character and the floor are colliding with each other). This collider is the 2^nd part
(ii) A collider which tells Unity the region to detect collisions (for example, a Box collider 2D)

For collisions that shouldn’t use physics engine, like picking up a coin – you can use something called isTrigger in the Unity IDE to mark it that way.

Changes made to a game view do NOT persist:

This is something that new game developers on Unity need to remember very well. Usually, we make changes when the game is in Play mode (when you click the Play sign). However, any change made to the Scene view in Play mode will not persist once you stop the game – hence, all the changes will be lost. Stop the game, make the changes to the scene and you’re good to go. I’ve seen some developers who change the color of the Unity editor background to a complete contrast when the game is in play mode, just so that they know that they are NOT supposed to make the changes to the Scene at that time.

Build for multiple platforms using Unity:

This is the utility of using Unity – you can target multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Windows 10 devices, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality platforms like Microsoft Hololens and Oculus VR, Console gaming platforms like Xbox One and PS4, Smart TV and WebGL.

Use the Asset store:

It’s a store consisting of a lot of free and commercial assets that you can use in your Unity project, which have been built by the Unity team and the community around Unity. You can find and download textures, animations, project examples, etc on the store. You can access the Asset store from within Unity by going to Windows -> Asset Store. It will ask you to create a free user account on your first visit.

Use these resources to learn on Unity:

If you’re starting with Unity, it may seem to be a lot to digest on your first visit. However, there are excellent resources to learn more, supported by an active community, which can help you in building your first game:

o Unity official documentation is an excellent source to learn features of Unity. They have short videos to explain particular concepts of Unity. Head over here: https://unity3d.com/learn

o Free course on Unity: https://mva.microsoft.com/training-courses/developing-2d-3d-games-with-unity-for-windows-jump-start (Especially Module 2 - where you can build your first 2D game. Scripts and assets for this module are here: https://github.com/TobiahZ/10th-Planet)

o https://aka.ms/codelabs

o https://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Learning-Unity-3D

o https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Build-A-Unity-Game-Part-1

o Courses on Pluralsight like this: https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/introduction-game-development-unity (requires Pluralsight subscription)

Have fun building games!

Until next time,

Saurabh Kirtani

@saurabhkirtani]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/saurabhkirtani/microsoft-bot-framework-welcoming-the-bots Tue, 03 May 2016 14:40:16 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/saurabhkirtani/?p=135 guide, and some are complex – like the Pizza bot which was shown on the main Build stage. We launched a new platform – the Bot Framework at Build 2016. It’s our first step towards building and connecting Bots across popular messaging services and mainstreaming ‘Conversations as a Platform’. At its core, the Bot Framework has 3 components:

1. Bot Connector
2. Bot Builder SDKs
3. Bot Directory

• Follow the steps on https://docs.botframework.com/connector/getstarted/
• Publish the bot to Telegram – configuration steps are given when you sign in to the Bot Framework portal, register your bot and add the channel as Telegram.

1. Generate an authentication URL and send it to your user via the bot. Ask him to login to the service using the URL.
2. Once the user logs in, set up the server so that it would receive the result of that authentication (your API for the bot is now aware of the result) and if successful, you can show the relevant data to the user through the bot.

With so many developers building ‘what’s next’, Microsoft showcased to the developers what it’s been doing behind its office doors at its annual conference – Build 2016.

This conference was spread across 3 days from 30 March – 1 April in San Francisco. The keynote on the first day focused on personal computing driven by Windows. The second day’s keynote focused on how we are building the intelligent cloud with Azure and how customers are using it in production. In addition, we talked about how Office 365 is helping improve productivity all the time. In this blog, I’ll cover some announcements made on the first day.

Windows 10 is being actively used by over 270 million people – think it over, that’s huge! And still we have time to achieve our 1 Billion goal. We announced about a major update coming to Windows 10 – the Anniversary Update coming this summer for free. There was a special callout, deservedly so, to all the Windows Insiders, who have been instrumental in giving us feedback and shaping our roadmap for Windows 10. These are the folks who’ve opted in to receive preview builds and give us feedback to shape the future of Windows. If you’re interested to join this program and help us build for the future, head over to https://insider.windows.com/.

Coming to the Anniversary Update, here are a few important updates:

• Windows Hello (our biometric authentication to log-on to devices) will be available to be used as an authentication mechanism for Windows apps and all the supporting websites running on Microsoft Edge. So you can log in to such websites using your face, or fingerprint!
• Introduction of Windows Ink – an all-new experience which attempts to make writing on a device just as writing on a paper, maybe better. This is already integrated into apps like Maps, Office and Microsoft Edge. So, with Windows Ink, you can use the virtual ruler:

... or, simply use your pen to delete sentences from Word. Just cross them using Ink and the sentences will be gone.

Head over here to learn more.

- We released Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 and the Anniversary SDK preview. This includes some exciting new features like Action Center in the cloud (so, as an example, you can now dismiss notifications on one device and they will be dismissed on all your synced devices), App Extensions (Microsoft Edge uses this technology for its own extensions – that’s a news too), improved background execution of apps, etc. Head over here to learn more.

- We wanted to make Windows as a home for your development. To make this one step closer, the Bash shell is coming to Windows! This was among the biggest announcements we made. Native Ubuntu Linux binaries running on Windows through a new Windows subsystem. This was made possible because of our partnership with Canonical. The developers will be able to download the Bash shell from the Windows Store. So, all the developers who wanted more support for relevant command line tools, you’ve got this on Windows with Bash! And all of this is made possible because of ‘your’ feedback on uservoice. Check out this Build session here to learn more.

- There’s good news for all the Win32 and .NET developers who are looking to convert their desktop app to a UWP app (using Project Centennial). We shipped a desktop app converter which will help in the process. The code continues to run with minimal changes. This is our way of making it easy to bring 16+ million Win32/.NET apps to the Universal Windows Platform. Head over here to see how you can use it.

- With Windows 10 Anniversary update, background music and Cortana is coming to Xbox One. So, Cortana can now become your gaming assistant! Support for multiple GPUs is also arriving! We launched Xbox Dev Mode, where you can convert your retail Xbox One to be a developer kit. Head over here for all details.

- We already have nearly 1000 apps using voice commands with Cortana. Now, you can integrate actions within your apps to drive more engagement. Head over here to request access to beta.

- Microsoft Hololens Development Edition is now shipping to developers! We showed off another cool demo of Hololens on stage.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM1P41qeVGs[/embed]

So folks, this was a short recap of some of the announcements made on Build Day 1 with relevant links to get started. Next up will be a discussion on ‘Conversations as a Platform’ – where we will talk about the possibilities that can exist with bots. Stay tuned.

Until next time,

Saurabh Kirtani

@saurabhkirtani

In this connected world where people have a variety of devices, ensuring your website works seamlessly across all of them is a need, not an option. Your website views won’t come from a single resolution device, or a single form-factor. To cater to all of them, your website needs to be responsive.

If you’re familiar with responsive web design (RWD), you probably know the intricacies that come with a responsive design (and how Bootstrap solves a lot of them!). An important part … read more

The article was published on CodeProject and SitePoint. Feel free to read through it, including some self-made stick figures towards the end ;).

Also, reach out to me on Twitter @saurabhkirtani to discuss more on the topic.

Until next time,
Saurabh Kirtani

Until next time,
Saurabh Kirtani

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @saurabhkirtani to discuss anything about this blog.

The first line displays the session ID, which is randomly generated by ASP.NET.

I’ve edited my web.config to tell my application to use Azure Redis cache to store session variables. These are the few lines of code to be added:

<sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="MySessionStateStore" timeout="10">
 <providers>
 <add name="MySessionStateStore" type="Microsoft.Web.Redis.RedisSessionStateProvider" host="<Enter your Azure Redis Cache endpoint here>.redis.cache.windows.net" accessKey="<Enter your access key here>" />
 </providers>
 </sessionState>

(Timeout has been set to 10 min for this demo)

The code behind for the first page (which I have simply named hello.aspx) is:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
 {
 Label1.Text= Session.SessionID; // Displays the session ID.
 string name = Session["name"] as string;
 if (name != null)
 Response.Redirect("welcome.aspx");
 }
 
 protected void nameText_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) //Method to be called when we enter the name in the textbox
 {
 Session["name"] = TextBox1.Text; //We store the name in the session variable Session[“name”]
 }
 
 protected void enterButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) //Method to be called when we click the Enter button
 {
 string name = Session["name"] as string;
 if (name != null)
 { 
 Label2.Text = "Welcome " + name;
 Response.Redirect("welcome.aspx");
 }
 else
 Label2.Text = "Nothing entered";
 }
 

This is a straightforward piece of code. As the web page loads, I initiate my connection to Azure Redis cache through Azure client. This is achieved by using azure-cli.exe in admin mode. Have a look at this and this to know how it’s done.
Once this setup is done, we set two keys – key1 and key2 and view them. So, currently, there are 2 key-value pairs in the cache. (all the commands used here are very well documented on redis.io)

Now, as soon as I enter my name and press Enter, the welcome page loads up.

The cache is now populated with a new key-value pair:

Let’s see what this new entry is made of. To find out the type of key, I just enter a simple Redis command – type <key name>

And this comes out as a hash type! A hash holds field-value pairs.

Let’s play around with some hash commands now.

• hkeys: This displays all the field names in the hash stored at the key we mention.
  
  

  As it shows, we only have one field right now, which is the “name”. If you go back to the code behind (hello.aspx), we had initiated Session[“name”] – this is where the field comes from.

• hget: Let’s try to get the value associated with this field. The command used for that is hget.
  
  And something familiar comes up – the name we entered is stored in the value of this field.

Once 10 minutes are over, the session is completed (we had set the timeout as 10) and now if we try to refresh the Welcome page, it redirects to the home page.

This pretty much sums up the small application of Redis cache.

So, to summarize,

• Session variables are stored in a hash type.
• The key is of type string. The value of that key is of type hash which has field-value pairs.
• The field holds the parameters we had passed during programming (say we stored the name in session[“name”] - the field holds the string “name”). The value of that field holds the name we had passed through the website in the textbox for name.

Hope you guys had fun reading this!

Until next time,
Saurabh Kirtani
@saurabhkirtani