Chapter 1, Game Design – Introduction, starts by going through several game and level design topics. Basic 2D and 3D game rules, gameplay, levels, player psychology, challenging levels and enemies, and appropriate visual aesthetics, among other things, will be the main focus of this chapter. On top of this, we want to encourage your creativity so that once you finish the entire book, you have sufficient knowledge to create your own game.
Chapter 2, User Interface – Layouts and Shortcuts, focuses on building a bridge between the user and the engine. We will go through the main windows of Unity and learn the functionalities of each one of them. In addition to this, we will make the initial configurations in order to start crafting our video game. Last, but not least, we will give you some tips and shortcuts for the better and faster use of the program.
Chapter 3, Basic Concepts – Variables and Components, shows us that the game kit gives us many possibilities, but this can be a little overwhelming. Before we can begin with the creation of our game, we need to learn some basics in order to understand behaviors, as well as the gameplay flow and information shown. This is why this chapter focuses on data types and their visualization, which ends in a basic flow of information throughout many components in our game.
Chapter 4, Getting Started – Object Placement, is the first step into the digital world that we are about to create. You will learn how to create your initial project, select the desired template (2D or 3D), and play around with the quality and resolution settings. After that, we will create the base for our levels, and whether in 2D or 3D, you will learn how to place different objects along the virtual space and change the space's visuals.
Chapter 5, Object Behaviors – Adding Logic to Objects, aims to differentiate between object behaviors that we can add to our game objects around the level. Once finished, we will be able to create moving objects and detect collisions, among being able to program other behaviors that we can use within our game. We will execute it for the first time and start testing everything we will have learned.
Chapter 6, Player Character – Components and Behaviors, helps us to enhance our knowledge of object creation and component behaviors by inspecting the player. Once this chapter concludes, you will have either a 2D or 3D object that will be used to interact with the player and enhance the gameplay.
Chapter 7, Interactable Objects – Enhancing Interaction, involves giving life to the world around the player. This means that our player will be able to collide in their world with new objects that we will create. Both 2D and 3D items will be explored and created, which will conclude our initial creations in the game.
Chapter 8, Playing with Visual and Sound Effects, will teach us how to integrate feedback and interaction between the player object and the environment. We will learn how to collide with an object and respond to that collision, from both sides (player and the environment).
Chapter 9, Enemy Logic – Basic AI, shows us how to understand the logic behind enemy behaviors. Why do they patrol, or chase, or run? How can we make them get to other states? Everything behind the concept of AI is covered.
Chapter 10, Enemy Components and Behaviors, dives deeper into our enemy AI and introduces everything there is to know about the enemies. It is well known that in order to achieve fun gameplay, we need to have a challenge.
Chapter 11, A Bigger Challenge – The Boss, helps us to go step by step to learn about the boss in our game, their behaviors, and their components. Once this chapter concludes, your level will have different enemies and will conclude with the boss.
Chapter 12, UI Interaction – Menu and Button Feedback, demonstrates the logic behind buttons and a basic UI, as well as how to create menus. Now that we have our gameplay, it is time to work on our UI system so that the user can have access to some of the relevant information.
Chapter 13, Gameplay HUD – Player UI and Dialog Box, helps us to understand the gameplay HUD, which will show the most elemental information for the gameplay. The health bar, inventory, and transition screens will be shown to make the scene more user friendly.
Chapter 14, Project End – Platform Selection and Building, covers the entire building process for Windows PC and Android devices. At this point, the game will be finished, but there will still be some more work to be done until we can enjoy playing it: building, testing, and finally sharing! That's what this chapter covers.