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VConsole: Customizeable In-game Console [RELEASED]

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by beck, Oct 3, 2013.

  1. beck

    beck

    Joined:
    Nov 23, 2010
    Posts:
    294

    Announcing VConsole, a customizeable console for your game.
    • Easy-to-use interface
    • Select objects and send them messages
    • Change Quality, Render, Physics, and Audio settings on the fly
    • Built-in Networking commands
    • Key-event and Command macros
    • View errors, logs, and warnings during runtime
    • Customizable GUI – Use your own gui skin
    • Just tag a function as a console command – it's that simple!
    • Load scripts to automate your in-game tests
    • Customizable start-up scripts for each platform
    • Automatically register help info for commands and parameters
    VConsole comes packaged with helper functions and methods to access the Unity API:
    Need to change the shadow distance on the fly? quality_shadowDistance 1000
    Need to connect to a remote server? net_connect 192.168.0.1 25000
    Need to disable audio? audio_enabled off
    Need to turn on fog? Or tweak the density? fog on; fog_density 0.5


    Games aren't just built from the Unity API, though, and VConsole provides an extremely easy integration method. Add any static function to VConsole by adding the [ConsoleCommand] attribute.
    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. [ConsoleCommand("spawn_player", "Spawns the player in the level.")]
    3. public static void SpawnPlayer ()
    4. {
    5.     GameObject.Instantiate(Resources.Load("Player", typeof(PlayerController)));
    6. }
    7.  
    Develop and test new features before you implement the interface. Add functions for your users to modify the game and change settings on their own. Write console scripts to aid in initialization on different platforms. A developer console is crucial to fast game development, and VConsole comes with all the features you'll need.

    VConsole works in Free and Pro versions and is supported in Unity 3.5 and 4.x.

    Manual.pdf

    Grab VConsole today for only $10!
     
  2. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2010
    Posts:
    29,723
    Bought, it seems very useful and saves me the time of integrating a runtime console. I particularly liked how simple it was to add commands. Will leave review later but fully expecting it to be a five star affair.

    Getting a "An object reference is required to access non-static member `VConsole.open'" error, so I guess VConsole isn't usable outside it's scope? I'm using VConsoleMessages;
     
    Last edited: Oct 15, 2013
  3. beck

    beck

    Joined:
    Nov 23, 2010
    Posts:
    294
    Thanks for the purchase hippocoder, I'm glad you like it. In fact, you're the first one! With that, there are bound to be a couple bumps - thanks for bringing up the one about VConsole.open. VConsole actually acts like a singleton, so you can use "VConsole.instance.open" instead. As you can probably tell from the manual, that variable was actually intended to be static and I must have missed it.

    You can use the instance option, but my actual recommendation is to change your VConsole so that when you update it you don't get compiler errors. It's a simple change, here's what to do:

    In VConsole/Core/VConsole.cs change line 176 from
    Code (csharp):
    1. [HideInInspector] public bool open = false;
    to
    Code (csharp):
    1. [HideInInspector] public static bool open = false;
    Then in VConsole/Core/VConsole_BuiltinCommands.cs change lines 34 and 28 from "VConsole.instance.open" to "VConsole.open".

    Hope that's a reasonable solution for you, let me know if you run into other problems!
     
  4. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2010
    Posts:
    29,723
    Great stuff. I don't see how this asset will remain so cheap for long, so if anyone is on the fence about this, they should simply purchase now. A robust console means you can spawn items with just 30 seconds of coding time, and indeed your artists, your testers and so forth can also do it.

    Nice touch wrapping all the useful unity features in the console including playerprefs. I suspect you are underselling this at the moment!

    Great asset. Will keep an eye out for your other assets too since you're clearly used to being in an actual production environment - that's the sense I get from how usable your stuff is.
     
  5. BuildABurgerBurg

    BuildABurgerBurg

    Joined:
    Nov 5, 2012
    Posts:
    566
    Purchased Just now !! why Koz it's it's needed and it's hippo approved .

    Nice work beck.. I agree your underselling it..
     
  6. beck

    beck

    Joined:
    Nov 23, 2010
    Posts:
    294
    Thanks for your kind words guys! I hope VConsole turns out to be as useful for you as it has been for me. Indeed, both assets that I have up now were created for our internal project out of necessity before realizing that it would be useful for the community as well. There are a couple other tools that I'll be polishing up for release at some point, so stay tuned.

    As for the price, I'm glad you both think the asset has that much value! I've thought about increasing the price at some point, but for now I'd rather get the word out and get it into as many hands as possible :)