A game jam is not the best time to think about fancy systems and clean solutions. But you can prepare in advance!

There are certain things almost every game needs. For example a UI system. Most likely than not you will have one in your game. But how to organize it? How to navigate through different panels quickly and cleanly? A while ago I wrote a blog about this, check it out over here: https://www.anton.website/ui-manager

This particular UI Manager solution requires you to wire up some game objects in the inspector window. But what if you forget to assign a field? Coloring unassigned field will make it much easier: https://www.anton.website/colored-inspector-fields

Well, that is great and all, but now you have a console full of debug messages. And if you like me, then that "Clear" always button seems too far away. No worries though, you can clear the console with a shortcut from your keyboard! Check this out: https://www.anton.website/unity-console-clear-shortcut/

Another useful pattern to keep in mind is the object pooling: https://www.anton.website/ui-manager. Keep in mind though, this particular implementation will load all referenced objects to memory as soon as the ResourceManager is referenced. So it is not suitable for huge objects (use addressables for that). But it should work great for an average jam game.

Do you need a generic pop-up window? Maybe you want to implement a tutorial, or show a quick tip? Check out the pop-up window tutorial: https://www.anton.website/pop-up-window. With some modifications, it can even function as a dialog system!

Speaking of dialogs, if you want to localize your game here is a simple localization system I wrote: https://github.com/antonsem/Localization. If you are curious about how I got there, here are the blogs I'm discussing it: https://www.anton.website/a-simple-localization-system/ https://www.anton.website/upgrading-the-localization-system/

Since it is a game jam, you will have plenty of magic numbers and constants. And most likely you will use them multiple times in the code. Hunting for such constants in case you need to change one can be a nightmare! So save yourself some time (and sanity points) by nicely organizing them: https://www.anton.website/quick-tip-for-constants

There are a couple more blogs, but I'm running out of space here! I hope you will find some of these tips useful! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!