Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x - Second Edition

Overview of this book

Unity is a cross-platform game engine that is used to develop 2D and 3D video games. Unity 5 is the latest version, released in March 2015, and adds a real-time global illumination to the games, and its powerful new features help to improve a game’s efficiency. This book will get you started with programming behaviors in C# so you can create 2D games in Unity. You will begin by installing Unity and learning about its features, followed by creating a C# script. We will then deal with topics such as unity scripting for you to understand how codes work so you can create and use C# variables and methods. Moving forward, you will find out how to create, store, and retrieve data from collection of objects. You will also develop an understanding of loops and their use, and you’ll perform object-oriented programming. This will help you to turn your idea into a ready-to-code project and set up a Unity project for production. Finally, you will discover how to create the GameManager class to manage the game play loop, generate game levels, and develop a simple UI for the game. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the art of applying C# in Unity.

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x Second Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready

Prerequisite knowledge to use this book

Dealing with scriptphobia

Downloading Unity

Teaching behavior to GameObjects

C# documentation – where to find it? Do I need it at all?

Working with C# script files

Creating a C# script file

Introducing the MonoDevelop code editor

Instance? What is it?

Summary

Introducing the Building Blocks for Unity Scripts

Understanding what a variable is and what it does

What is a method?

Introducing the class

The Start(), Update(), and Awake() methods and the execution order

Components that communicate using dot syntax

Making decisions in code

Paper and pencil are powerful tools 

Summary

Getting into the Details of Variables

Writing C# statements properly

Understanding component properties in Unity's Inspector

Changing a property's value in the Inspector panel

Private variables

Naming your variables properly

Beginning variable names with lowercase

Using multiword variable names

Declaring a variable and its type

Assigning values while declaring a variable

Where you declare a variable is important

Variable scope – determining where a variable can be used

Summary

Getting into the Details of Methods

Using methods in a script

Naming methods properly

Defining a method the right way

Understanding parentheses – why are they there?

Specifying a method's parameters

Returning a value from a method

Summary

Lists, Arrays, and Dictionaries

What is an array?

Storing items in the List

List<T> versus arrays

Retrieving the data from the Array or List<T>

ArrayList

Dictionaries

Summary

Loops

Introduction to loops

The foreach loop

The for loop

The while loop

while versus for loops

Loops in statements

Modulo

Searching for data inside an array

Breaking the loop

Summary

Object, a Container with Variables and Methods

Working with objects is a class act

Instantiating an object

Bored yet?

Using methods with objects

Custom constructors

Overloading

Summary

Let's Make a Game! – From Idea to Development

Your first game – avoiding the trap of the never-ending concept

The idea

Breaking a complex idea into smaller parts

Jake on the mysterious planet – the feature list

Target platform and resolution

Target screen resolution

Summary

Starting Your First Game

Setting up a new Unity project for our game

Preparing the player prefab

PlayerController

User input

Animator

Code

Summary

Writing GameManager

Gameplay loops

Singleton class

Starting the game

Setting up input keys

Using triggers

Restarting the game

Setting up the player starting position

Code in this chapter

Summary

The Game Level

Generating levels versus designed levels

Creating a copy of the level piece

Instantiating

Vector3

Testing LevelGenerator

Extending the level

The code used in this chapter

Summary

The User Interface

Introducting the Unity UI

Views

Buttons

Hiding and showing the Canvas

Reference exceptions

GameView

The code in this chapter

Summary

Collectables — What Next?

Collectables

The coin prefab

High score and persisting data

The Update function and UI values

What next?

The code in this chapter

Summary

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Chapter 1. Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready

Computer programming is viewed by the average person as requiring long periods of training to learn skills that are totally foreign, and darn near impossible to understand. The word geek is often used to describe a person who can write computer code. The perception is that learning to write code takes great technical skills that are just so hard to learn. This perception is totally unwarranted. You already have the skills needed but don't realize it. Together, we will crush this false perception that you may have of yourself by refocusing, one step at a time, on the knowledge that you already possess to write code and develop an awesome game from scratch.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Deal with preconceived fears and concepts about scripts
Prepare the Unity environment for efficient coding
Introduce Unity's documentation for scripting
Explain how Unity and the MonoDevelop editor work together
Create our first C# script

Let's begin our journey by eliminating any anxiety about writing scripts for Unity and become familiar with our scripting environment.

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x - Second Edition

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x - Second Edition

Overview of this book

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Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x - Second Edition

Chapter 1. Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready