When we began creating Unity, we were just three programmers working on a beautiful little game. There weren't any good game engines that one could license without putting down wads of cash, so we created our own. We eventually decided that we enjoyed the challenge of making great tools even more than making games, and after some soul searching we realized that the tools we had been creating—combined with a simple licensing structure and an open community—had the potential to change the way that developers create, distribute, and play games.

It wasn't always an easy road to where we are today. Ridiculously long days and late nights, gigs serving sandwiches and making websites for law firms, and general hardship. Once, we were told by a potential investor (he passed on the deal) that our dream of 'democratizing game development' had a 1 in 1000 chance of working out. We could think of nothing better to do than take on the odds!

Stuffing insanely complex technology into a polished package, and making it as simple as humanly possible was job one, and so we were thrilled to see the first book about our software, Unity Game Development Essentials released in 2009. The book helped many people get off the ground with Unity, and so when Will told me he was due to release an updated edition I was only too happy to be asked to write its foreword. A long standing member of the Unity community, we first met Will back in 2007 when he was teaching game development with Unity at UK based Bournemouth University. He went on to produce some of the first Unity video tutorials for his students and shared these on our forums, helping a generation of early adopters pick up Unity version 1.5 and upwards.

Now working with us at Unity Technologies, Will has retained much of his former career in teaching—helping us to grow adoption by new users through creating training materials, giving talks and keeping active in our community. The new Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials you hold in your hand (or read on your mobile or desktop!) is rewritten from the ground up—but holds on to everything that was so nice about the first edition: each part of the original has been expanded, improved or elaborated upon, and it also includes some of the many features we added to Unity since then. You will not only learn about new features however; Will thoroughly walks through the basics, through scripting, learning scripting, and even addresses that perpetual Unity conundrum: Should I learn C# or Javascript?—by covering both programming languages in parallel, his book lets you decide what makes the most sense for you.

Whether you are an artist, level designer, or simply a young person choosing game creation as a potential career, this book represents a fantastic start for learning Unity. Starting out by covering the essential elements of 3D, you'll learn everything from scratch—no prior knowledge is assumed, but the book moves at a pace that will keep you turning pages and writing code!

I'd like to personally welcome you to the Unity community, and hope you have as much fun reading this book as we do working on Unity.

David Helgason

CEO & Co-founder, Unity Technologies