Version 1.1.2 released

It's up, version 1.1.2 brings Vectrosity support, better documentation and integrates Grid Framework into the menu bar. From now on you will never again have to drag scripts manually from the Plugins folder onto objects when using Grid Framework.

If you want to try the Vectrosity examples please uncomment the scripts. I had them commented so they wouldn't give errors to customers who don't have Vectrosity installed.

Vectrosity progress

Well, it's pretty much done, you can now get a set of Vector3 points for use with Vectrosity from just one line of code. I played a bit with Vectrosity to make an example scene and this is what it looks like:

(yes, I am a sucker for laser lines)

The green grid just hangs there and rotates, the red grid bounces around (using Unity's physics engine), the yellow grid resizes itself all the time and the colourful grid changes the colours of its lines randomly. The "missing" lines in the last grid lines are not a bug, they are sill there but coloured black.

I expect version 1.1.2 to be the last feature update before adding Hex Grids, so I want to wrap up all the loose ends I might still have left. In particular I want to integrate the components into Unity's main interface, no more dragging scripts onto GameObjects.

line width for rendering

I just submitted version 1.1.1 (update: has been approved) which lets you set the width of the rendered line in the inspector. Here is an example, obviously it's over the top, but you can set the width to anything you like.

Now I just need to provide a nice function to pass rendering points to Vectrosity. I'm sure those of you who own a Vectrosity license would like to be able to combine the best of both. I promise when I'm done it will be the last time you'll see me talk about rendering for a while.

Version 1.1.0 out now - rendering included

Unity just approved version 1.1.0, which includes the new inspector panel and the rendering setup. Now you can see your grid in the finished game, no pro license or any other addon needed.

a new inspector

Well, I wanted to do this sooner or later anyway, so I made a custom editor for the rectangluar grid. Before this I was using the default inspector panel:

So, why am I doing GUI stuff if I'm supposed to work on the rendering? Well, as I said I need to clean up the code, which involves looping through two custom classes of mine, ColorVector3 and BoolVector3. If you used Vector3 you know you can access values using something like myVector.x, but you can also use an index instead: myVector[0]
I wanted to have both in my two classes so I could loop through them in one go rather than write a special case for each entry and provide an intuitive syntax for users. The solution was using an indexer, setters and getters. They all work fine in code, but I cannot get getters and setter to display in the inspector and manipulating the entries directly could break things. The solution was writing my own inspector from scratch.
Aside from now being able to provide a safe and clean way to set colors and toggle axes the new inspector looks cleaner and the attributes are sorted in a way that makes more sense, rather than the way the class is built. I'm still not satisfied with some parts, the axis colours don't have labels and the the hide axis flags should be on the same line, like the Vector3 field. However, if I force them on one line or add labels to the coulour flieds the space for the labels is so large that the controls start overlapping, so it looks even worse than before.

Anyway, it does look better now and gives me the code improvements I need for clean rendering, so all in all it's a success.

grid rendering progress

Take a look at this:

What's so special? Look at the upper right corner, gizmos are turned off. This is a grid rendered at runtime that would be visible in a released game. There are still some things to care take of first: For one, the grid needs to get rendered every frame, which is not a big deal when using the GL class, but a Vectrosity-like approach where a mesh is built only once and then drawn once until it updates would be pretty neat. Also, the GL class doesn't let you set the width of lines, I could draw quads instead, but those are only thick if you look directly at them, otherwise they get thinner until they become invisble (in other words, they are flat). Lines are always the same, no matter the angle or distance, which could be exactly what you want or not. Maybe I could include some way for users to use Vectrosity easily if they have a license? In any case, I need to finish this first. The code is still very messy, being in large parts copy-pasted from the drawing code (which was kind of messy itself) and copy-pasting code is a sure way to have your project explode right in your face. I'll need to write a method to return a nice list of points that both drawing and rendering can use.

version 1.0.1

If you tried debugging the functions FindNearestFace() or FindNearestBox() you might have noticed that the cubes drawn didn't have the same rotation as the grid. While it didn't change anything about the returned value (only the centre of the cube mattered), it looked ugly. I've submitted a small update that fixes the rotation:

The update should get approved soon.