4 ways to use Muse Chat in your workflow

On June 27, we announced the closed beta of Muse Chat, an essential capability in our Unity Muse platform that allows developers to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs)* to find information across all Unity documentation, manuals, and other resources.

With this powerful helper, creators are able to access relevant and well-structured answers for development questions from first-party Unity sources. While Muse Chat’s help can support you during any phase of development – beginner or advanced, we want to share some guidance and learnings from our current closed beta to help inspire ways you might use Muse Chat throughout future workflows.

Are you ready to start a new Unity project but unsure how to begin? With Muse Chat, you can instantly get a list of the best resources in order to jump-start your learning journey. Here’s an example:

Prompt – “Hi Muse, Give me detailed steps on how to build a 2D mobile game with Unity, including the tools I need and how to get started.”
Answer –

“To build a 2D mobile game with Unity, follow these steps:

1. Install Unity: Download and install the latest version of Unity. The 2022 LTS release is recommended for its stability and long-term support.
2. Set up Unity for 2D mobile game development: When creating a new Unity project, select the 2D template to set up the project for 2D game development [1].
3. Understand the Unity interface and workflow: Familiarize yourself with the Unity interface, menu items, using assets, creating scenes, and publishing builds [2].
4. Import and organize assets: Import your 2D assets, such as sprites and sounds, into the project’s Assets folder. Unity will automatically import and display them in the Project window [3].
5. Create and manipulate 2D game objects: Use Sprites to represent 2D graphics in your game. Sprites are standard textures that can be edited with the built-in Sprite Editor and rendered using a Sprite Renderer component [4].
6. Implement 2D physics and collision detection: Use Unity’s 2D physics system and components to create realistic and interactive 2D games [5].
7. Script game mechanics and behaviors: Write scripts to define gameplay mechanics and behaviors for your game. Unity supports scripting using C# [6].
8. Build and test your 2D mobile game: Regularly test your game on your target platform (iOS or Android) to ensure compatibility and performance [7].
9. Optimize your game for mobile devices: Optimize your game’s performance, resolution, and input handling for mobile devices.
10. Publish your game: After completing development and testing, publish your game to the desired app stores [8].

For additional learning resources, consider the following:

• Unity e-book on 2D game art, animation, and lighting for artists [7].
• Unity Learn course on Beginning 2D game development [7].

Remember to consult the Unity Documentation for more information on specific features and functionality. Good luck with your 2D mobile game development!”

Tip: Want further detail on one of the mentioned steps? Ask follow-up questions so Muse Chat can explain what to consider when, for example, creating a scene.

Building from scratch is hard. Muse Chat was designed to simplify this process. With Muse Chat, you can fast-track development by asking Muse to generate code. Beta users have shared that Muse Chat is helpful in establishing useful code snippets when writing tests.

You can generate code in Muse Chat from scratch, use it to alter existing code, or prompt it to help you find a new method – for example, to change a character’s ability to jump and then change from single jumping to double jumping.

Let’s explore how to converse with Muse Chat about jump methods.

Prompt – “Hi Muse, can you help me change the jump method to allow double jumps instead of single jumps?”
Answer – Muse’s response and code generated to allow double jumps:

To determine how best to apply the newly generated code, ask Muse Chat a follow-up question.

Prompt – “Great, thank you Muse. Now, can you tell me how to adjust the jumpForce value?”
Answer – Muse’s response, guiding jumpForce value adjustment:

Especially for solo devs, hitting a seemingly unfixable bug not only eats up development time, it is a major source of frustration.

By adding Muse Chat to your process, you’ll have a teammate for troubleshooting. One popular use case we’ve seen so far is developers sharing code with Muse Chat and asking why it is not working. If you’re not sure what the problem is, you can also describe an issue to Muse Chat and it will do the work of scanning our documentation and other resources to identify what your issue is.

Another way Muse Chat can help you in resolving an issue is by replicating buggy environments and setting up tests quickly. One beta participant shared, “I was writing a test for a bug that I know happens only after a domain reload of the Editor, so I asked ‘How can I force a domain reload through scripting?’” They were then able to find the function faster, making it easier to run tests and debug their project.

Some praise we’ve heard from more experienced Unity beta users is that Muse Chat helps them find their favorite resources faster, or even rediscover tools that they’ve forgotten about.

From one beta user: “I find it very useful for finding APIs that I know exist but don’t remember where… It saves me time that I’d otherwise spend looking in Google, Slack, or asking in other channels.”

No need to go hunting for resources when Muse Chat will find them for you faster.

As we also teased in June, Unity Muse will be adding more capabilities to our AI beta offering, including the ability to generate textures and sprites. Unlock more potential with Unity AI and sign up for the AI beta program today. You’ll find out first when new features become available and join the Muse community on how to create using AI.

*To create Unity Muse Chat, we licensed third-party LLMs and integrated them with first-party Unity technical documentation (including manuals, release notes, tutorials, scripting guides, etc.) so creators can get the most relevant and up-to-date information. Read our guiding principles for ethical AI for more on our approach.