Category: Deuta

Quick Tip: Notes in Code

Going along with my last post, just a quick tip: sometimes it makes sense to use comments to show how a loop will progress. For me, at least, this is another way to get a grasp on how values are changing and ensure that calculations account for the situations you may need.

In this case, following the logic flow, I realized that the initial value for v2 was where things were breaking down. I was also able to capture the final segment without using an additional for-loop which makes things a bit cleaner. I’m actually going to evaluate some of my other triangle logic to see if I can do the same thing using the vx -= vertices.Length method to take care of the last parent loop.

Troubleshooting via UI in Unity – Deuta

As a visual learner, I’ve found that sometimes seeing something working is a better debugging tool for me than seeing an array of int values. With the array, I can still usually see where a pattern breaks down or unexpected values might be (at least when the use merits it), but it’s more difficult for me to wrap my brain around what needs to be changed.

I’ve continued work on Deuta, my project for parametric primitives in Unity. One of the things I’ve spent some time in is custom editor/inspector UIs for shape generation. I highlighted the vertex-index (vertidx) in a previous post, but I have a great example of how it helps me.

In the above video, I’m working on a parametric torus option. I have the vertices down how I want them, but as I was writing code for the tris, I clearly missed a step. I looked at the int[] of triangles I got. I could see where there was an issue. But being able to visualize it helped me understand precisely what I needed to change and how. I know how the triangles need to be ordered, but this also allowed me to see at what index it breaks down, if there’s a pattern to it or it’s just a single issue, and to see how numeric patterns played out.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more Deuta stuff over the next several weeks. I’ll likely show off some more of my troubleshooting/visual debugging steps as I work on some more complex shapes.