Book Image

Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide

By : Thomas James Finnegan
Book Image

Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide

By: Thomas James Finnegan

Overview of this book

Powerful and continuing to grow, the mobile market has never been bigger and more demanding of great games. Android continues to prove itself as a strong contender in this challenging market. With Unity 3D, great games can be made for Android quickly and easily. With its great deployment system, the Android platform is now only one click away. Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide dives straight into making real, fully-functional games, with hands-on examples and step-by-step instructions to give you a firm grounding in Unity 3D and Android. Everything necessary for creating a complete gaming experience is covered and detailed throughout the course of this book. Using clear and practical examples that progressively build upon each other, this book guides you through the process of creating games in Unity for Android. Start by learning about all the great features that Unity and Android have to offer. Next, create a Tic-Tac-Toe game while learning all about interfaces. After that, learn about meshes, materials, and animations with the creation of a tank battle game. You will then learn how to expand your game's environment with the addition of shadows and a skybox. Adding on this, you will also learn how to expand the tank battle by creating enemies and using path finding to chase the player. Next, explore touch and tilt controls with the creation of a space fighter game. Then, learn about physics while recreating the most popular mobile game on the market. You will then expand the space fighter game with the addition of all the special effects that make a game great. Finally, complete your experience by learning the optimization techniques required to keep your games running smoothly. While Unity is available for both Mac and Windows, the book is presented working from a Windows environment. Programming in Unity is possible in C#, JavaScript, and Boo. This book will be working in C# and the final projects will be provided in C# and JavaScript. From nothing to a fully-featured mobile game, Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide takes you through everything it takes to create your next game for the Android platform.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

About the Reviewers

Mootez Billeh Chaabani is a software engineer. Currently he is working as a software engineer (Research and Development) in a French company named SpacEyes. He recently completed his graduation. He studied graphical programming and virtual and augmented reality. He also published two apps: Quizz game in the Windows Marketplace and an Android app in the local appshop, and now he is working on Android/C++ projects based on 3D in SpacEyes. Before this, he was an intern at Microsoft Tunisia in 2011. He also worked as an Android developer in Orange Tunisia in 2012. He also worked on the book Android NDk Game Development Cookbook.

Valera Kogut is a passionate software developer with different areas of expertise. Before diving into the game industry five years ago, Valera was creating for Web with PHP and Yii frameworks. Having a mathematical background, he finally realized gamedev was his mission. Reusable designs, optimized algorithms, clean code, and elaborated workflows—these things make him happy. He is a co-founder and principal architect at applicat.io, software development agency offering a wide range of services (http://applicat.io). However, architectural and management tasks can't stop Valera from digging deeply into code.

Currently, Valera executes one contract as Unity3D C# developer for Kaufcom GmbH, a known games and apps producer from Switzerland http://www.kauf.com (Android games https://play.google.com/store/search?q=kaufcom).

Marc Schaerer is an interactive media software engineer who is creating cutting edge interactive media experiences for training, education, and entertainment purposes on mobile, desktop, and web platforms for customers through his company Gayasoft (http://www.gayasoft.net) located in Switzerland.

His technology of choice is Unity, which he has been using since its early days in 2007.

He has a strong background in 3D graphics, network technology, software engineering, and the interactive media field. Originally, he started programming at the age of 11 and built upon it later while studying Computer Science and Computational Science and Engineering at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, thereby growing into it. This knowledge found, among other projects, usage in Popper (http://www.popper.org), an interactive 3D behavioral research platform by Harvard developed by Gayasoft and powered by Unity, Mathlab, and the ExitGames Photon.

With the rise of serious games, he focused on researching options and technologies for the next generation of interactive and immersive experiences, applying state of the art AR and VR technologies (Vuforia, Metaio, and Oculus Rift) and new innovative input technologies (Razer Hydra, STEM, Leap Motion, and Emotive Insight). He predicts that this will become the base of future experiences in many fields of our daily life.

Aris Tsevrenis is a game developer and director at Terahard Ltd, a game development studio dedicated to creating addictive games that will be remembered for their quality in every aspect. The company's motto, "Terabytes of Quality for Hardcore Gaming", explains a few things about Aris' ambitions. Aris was introduced to games from a very early age in the 90s. Showing great skill, and evolving from chess to modern computer and console games, Aris became famous among the people who knew his numerous feats in the gaming world. He received his BSc in Computer Science with a Computer Vision and Computer Graphics degree in 2009 from Cardiff University in Wales, followed by an MSc in Computer Games and Entertainment degree from Goldsmith's University in London. He entered the games development world and worked in a few different games companies until he set up Terahard Ltd. He currently lives in London, where his games studio is located, and can be contacted at .