Video games are a cultural phenomenon that has captivated, entertained, and moved billions of people worldwide over the past 50 years. As an industry and movement, video games are an exciting place to be, both for the developer and the artist. In these roles, your vision, ideas, and work can influence wide audiences, shaping and changing generation after generation in an unprecedented way. In more recent times, there's been a general movement toward democratizing game development, making the development process simpler, smoother, and more accessible to a wider audience, including developers perhaps working from home on a very limited budget. Instrumental in this movement is the Unity engine, which forms the main subject of this book. The Unity engine is a computer program that works with your existing asset pipeline (such as 3D modeling software) and is intended for compiling video games that work seamlessly across multiple platforms and devices, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Using Unity, developers import ready-made assets (such as music, textures, and 3D models), and assemble them into a coherent whole, forming a game world that works by a unified logic. Unity is an amazing program. The latest version is free for most people to download and use, and it works well with many other programs, including free software such as GIMP and Blender. This book focuses on the Unity engine and how it can be used in a practical context for making playable and fun games. No prior knowledge of Unity is expected, although some knowledge of programming and scripting (such as JavaScript, ActionScript, C, C++, Java, or C#) would be beneficial. Let's now take a look at what this book covers, on a chapter-by-chapter basis.
You don't need to have any previous experience with Unity to enjoy Unity 2018 by Example, although you need to have basic knowledge of C#.
This book explores how to use the Unity engine in a hands-on, practical way by looking at concrete examples that result in real-world playable games. Specifically, it focuses on the implementation of 5 distinct projects divided across 10 chapters, 2 chapters per project. Let's take a look at what these projects are:
Chapter 1, Unity Fundamentals, begins our journey into Unity by creating a first-person collection game. This is a great starting point if you're totally new to Unity and are ready to create your first game.
Chapter 2, Creating a Collection Game, continues from the previous chapter and completes the first project. It assumes that you have completed the first chapter and brings a closure to our project, leading neatly to the next chapter.
Chapter 3, Creating A Space Shooter, marks the beginning of our second project, focusing on the creation of a space shooter game. Here, we'll create a project in which the player must shoot the oncoming enemies.
Chapter 4, Continuing the Space Shooter, completes the space shooter project, taking the project from its state in the previous chapter and adding final touches to it.
Chapter 5, Creating a 2D Adventure Game, enters the world of 2D and UI functionality. Here, we'll explore Unity's wide range of 2D features in making a side-view platformer game that relies on 2D physics.
Chapter 6, Continuing the 2D Adventure, completes the 2D adventure game project that was started in the previous chapter, adding the final touches and linking it together with the overarching game logic. This is a great place to see how multiple parts and facets of a game come together to form a whole.
Chapter 7, Creating Artificial Intelligence, focuses on artificial intelligence and creating enemies that can patrol, chase, and attack the player's character at relevant times, while cleverly navigating their way around the level.
Chapter 8, Continuing with Intelligent Enemies, brings closure to the AI project started in the previous chapter. Here, we'll see how to use finite-state machines to achieve powerful intelligence functionality that'll help us in a variety of scenarios.
Chapter 9, Entering Virtual Reality, explores how to create a first-person shooter in VR where the player must tackle waves on oncoming enemies. In this chapter, we'll lay the foundations for creating a VR game.
Chapter 10, Completing the VR Game, completes the VR project by adding gameplay elements, core functionality, and by creating a build.
Appendix, Test Your Knowledge Answers, the answers to the Test Your Knowledge section of each chapter.
This book contains almost everything you need to follow along. Each chapter considers practical, real-world projects for learning Unity and includes companion files that can be downloaded and used. The only thing you need, apart from this book and your concentration, is a copy of the latest version of Unity. At the time of writing, this is Unity 5.3.1. This software is available for free as a personal edition, and it can be downloaded from the Unity website at https://unity3d.com/. In addition to Unity, if you want to create props, character models, and other 3D assets, you'll also need 3D modeling and animation software, such as 3DS Max, Maya, or Blender; you'll also need image editing software, such as Photoshop or GIMP. Blender can be downloaded and used for free from http://www.blender.org/. Also, GIMP can be downloaded and used for free from https://www.gimp.org/.
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