Day in the Life: Unity Developer

Developing video games was once compared to assembling The Avengers. It’s a collection of talent, across an array of specialities, each serving a unique purpose to create and deliver one final product. You need the best artists, developers, and animators to come together. And once you have these specialists, it is years of work to deliver something of quality.

And that doesn’t even begin to consider the individual effort of each person involved. We recently discussed what a day in the life is like for an Unreal Engine Developer. In game development, the Unreal Engine and Unity Engine are two of the most prolific and popular game engines on the market. You can read up on the specialties of an Unreal Engine developer at the link above but today we’re focusing on the Unity side of development. And helping us understand what the day to day is like for a Unity developer, we talked to one of Magic Media’s and Starloop Studios’ Senior Unity Developers, Abdallah Elshabrawy.

What is a Unity Developer?

A Unity Developer is a specialised developer with significant expertise and understanding of the Unity Engine. While it is a free to use, accessible, and approachable game development engine, a lot can be said for experience. A Unity Developer is a dedicated specialist with enough experience to quickly and easily navigate the engine and find the best solution for the project’s needs.

This can involve programming, code architecture, and implementation of features. And a Unity Developer is capable of doing this for any platform. This is important, especially for teams like Magic Media who offer game porting services to any platform.

Abdallah’s responsibility is to ensure all the behind-the-scenes code that players never see works as planned. In addition, as a senior staff member, he does stand in an supervisory role at times to assist his colleagues and help the project move on swiftly.

A Typical Day

Day to day, Abdallah attends a team meeting where everyone syncs their work. This is also where anyone with any issues or project blockers can report them. As a team, they can approach any challenges and work through them.

He also does a “Dev Daily” where the team will approach any technical difficulties together. This is a detail-oriented process where the team can assist one another on a very specific and technical level. A Senior Unity Developer will also go about reviewing and testing any issues brought to light, ensuring there are no bugs in place but also to confirm that all processes and guidelines are being followed.

On average, he will spend most of his day coding features for projects and handling any other technical tasks. And again, as a Senior, the rest of his time is spent on management work and organisation.

Tools and Trade

Abdallah himself has experience on multiple platforms. These include PC, WebGL, AR, VR, and mobile. He mentions that currently, his projects are focused on mobile and PC games.

When it comes to this coding work, aside from Unity itself of course, developers in this speciality may also use VS Code and Sourcetree. And for communication and keeping in touch, Slack is always a necessity.

Keeping in touch is integral for the smooth and continued running of a game development project. There are daily development meetings for each project where the teams will brainstorm new and existing features, discuss technical issues, and discuss any technical issues. Sharing experiences across the gaming pipeline is so important which is why communication is always on a daily basis. That communication is the key in overcoming any challenges, creative or technical.

Challenges and Overcoming

It is the process of communication and overcoming challenges that Abdallah enjoys most about his work. The technical challenges are each puzzles to be embraced, navigated, and figured out. And for him, that is a rewarding experience in approaching and overcoming each challenge.

And with each new exciting project comes new challenges, opportunities, chances to get involved in more industry-leading game services.

Unity Engine developers are a highly valued asset in every outsourcing studio due to the widespread use of Unity in gaming and entertainment projects. Get in touch with us today to benefit from Magic Media’s stellar game development services.

 

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