Book Image

Unity 5.x Cookbook

Book Image

Unity 5.x Cookbook

Overview of this book

Unity 5 is a flexible and intuitive multiplatform game engine that is becoming the industry's de facto standard. Learn to craft your own 2D and 3D computer games by working through core concepts such as animation, audio, shaders, GUI, lights, cameras, and scripting to create your own games with one of the most important and popular engines in the industry. Completely re-written to cover the new features of Unity 5, this book is a great resource for all Unity game developers, from those who have recently started using Unity right up to game development experts. The first half of the book focuses on core concepts of 2D game design while the second half focuses on developing 3D game development skills. In the first half, you will discover the new GUI system, the new Audio Mixer, external files, and animating 2D characters in 2D game development. As you progress further, you will familiarize yourself with the new Standard Shaders, the Mecanim system, Cameras, and the new Lighting features to hone your skills towards building 3D games to perfection. Finally, you will learn non-player character control and explore Unity 5's extra features to enhance your 3D game development skills.

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Unity 5.x Cookbook
Oct, 2015 | 570 pages
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Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Unity 5.x Cookbook
Unity 5.x Cookbook
Credits
Credits
Foreword
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Core UI – Messages, Menus, Scores, and Timers
Core UI – Messages, Menus, Scores, and Timers
Introduction
Displaying a "Hello World" UI text message
Displaying a digital clock
Displaying a digital countdown timer
Creating a message that fades away
Displaying a perspective 3D text message
Displaying an image
Creating UI Buttons to move between scenes
Organizing images inside panels and changing panel depths via buttons
Displaying the value of an interactive UI Slider
Displaying a countdown timer graphically with a UI Slider
Displaying a radar to indicate the relative locations of objects
Creating UIs with the Fungus open-source dialog system
Setting custom mouse cursor images
Input Fields component for text entry
Toggles and radio buttons via Toggle Groups
Conclusion
2
Inventory GUIs
Inventory GUIs
Introduction
Creating a simple 2D mini-game – SpaceGirl
Displaying single object pickups with carrying and not-carrying text
Displaying single object pickups with carrying and not-carrying icons
Displaying multiple pickups of the same object with text totals
Displaying multiple pickups of the same object with multiple status icons
Revealing icons for multiple object pickups by changing the size of a tiled image
Displaying multiple pickups of different objects as a list of text via a dynamic List<> of PickUp objects
Displaying multiple pickups of different objects as text totals via a dynamic Dictionary<> of PickUp objects and "enum" pickup types
Generalizing multiple icon displays using UI Grid Layout Groups (with scrollbars!)
Conclusion
3
2D Animation
2D Animation
Introduction
Flipping a sprite horizontally
Animating body parts for character movement events
Creating a 3-frame animation clip to make a platform continually animate
Making a platform start falling once stepped-on using a Trigger to move animation from one state to another
Creating animation clips from sprite sheet sequences
Conclusion
4
Creating Maps and Materials
Creating Maps and Materials
Introduction
Creating a basic material with Standard Shader (Specular setup)
Adapting a basic material from Specular setup to Metallic
Applying Normal maps to a material
Adding Transparency and Emission maps to a material
Highlighting materials at mouse over
Adding Detail maps to a material
Fading the transparency of a material
Playing videos inside a scene
Conclusion
5
Using Cameras
Using Cameras
Introduction
Creating a picture-in-picture effect
Switching between multiple cameras
Making textures from screen content
Zooming a telescopic camera
Displaying a mini-map
Creating an in-game surveillance camera
6
Lights and Effects
Lights and Effects
Introduction
Using lights and cookie textures to simulate a cloudy day
Adding a custom Reflection map to a scene
Creating a laser aim with Projector and Line Renderer
Reflecting surrounding objects with Reflection Probes
Setting up an environment with Procedural Skybox and Directional Light
Lighting a simple scene with Lightmaps and Light Probes
Conclusion
7
Controlling 3D Animations
Controlling 3D Animations
Introduction
Configuring a character's Avatar and idle animation
Moving your character with root motion and Blend Trees
Mixing animations with Layers and Masks
Organizing States into Sub-state Machines
Transforming the Character Controller via script
Adding rigid props to animated characters
Using Animation Events to throw an object
Applying Ragdoll physics to a character
Rotating the character's torso to aim a weapon
8
Positions, Movement and Navigation for Character GameObjects
Positions, Movement and Navigation for Character GameObjects
Introduction
Player control of a 2D GameObject (and limiting the movement within a rectangle)
Player control of a 3D GameObject (and limiting the movement within a rectangle)
Choosing destinations – find the nearest (or a random) spawn point
Choosing destinations – respawn to the most recently passed checkpoint
NPC NavMeshAgent to seek or flee destination while avoiding obstacles
NPC NavMeshAgent to follow the waypoints in a sequence
Controlling the object group movement through flocking
Conclusion
9
Playing and Manipulating Sounds
Playing and Manipulating Sounds
Introduction
Matching the audio pitch to the animation speed
Simulating acoustic environments with Reverb Zones
Preventing an Audio Clip from restarting if it is already playing
Waiting for audio to finish playing before auto-destructing an object
Adding volume control with Audio Mixers
Making a dynamic soundtrack with Snapshots
Balancing in-game audio with Ducking
10
Working with External Resource Files and Devices
Working with External Resource Files and Devices
Introduction
Loading external resource files – using Unity Default Resources
Loading external resource files – by downloading files from the Internet
Loading external resource files – by manually storing files in the Unity Resources folder
Saving and loading player data – using static properties
Saving and loading player data – using PlayerPrefs
Saving screenshots from the game
Setting up a leaderboard using PHP/MySQL
Loading game data from a text file map
Managing Unity project code using Git version control and GitHub hosting
Publishing for multiple devices via Unity Cloud
11
Improving Games with Extra Features and Optimization
Improving Games with Extra Features and Optimization
Introduction
Pausing the game
Implementing slow motion
Preventing your game from running on unknown servers
State-driven behavior Do-It-Yourself states
State-driven behavior using the State Design pattern
Reducing the number of objects by destroying objects at death a time
Reducing the number of enabled objects by disabling objects whenever possible
Reducing the number of active objects by making objects inactive whenever possible
Improving efficiency with delegates and events and avoiding SendMessage!
Executing methods regularly but independent of frame rate with coroutines
Spreading long computations over several frames with coroutines
Evaluating performance by measuring max and min frame rates (FPS)
Identifying performance bottlenecks with the Unity performance Profiler
Identifying performance "bottlenecks" with Do-It-Yourself performance profiling
Cache GameObject and component references to avoid expensive lookups
Improving performance with LOD groups
Improving performance through reduced draw calls by designing for draw call batching
Conclusion
12
Editor Extensions
Editor Extensions
Introduction
An editor extension to allow pickup type (and parameters) to be changed at design time via a custom Inspector UI
An editor extension to add 100 randomly located copies of a prefab with one menu click
A progress bar to display proportion completed of Editor extension processing
An editor extension to have an object-creator GameObject, with buttons to instantiate different pickups at cross-hair object location in scene
Conclusion
Index
Index

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have introduced recipes demonstrating a range of Unity 5 UI components, and illustrated how the same components can be used in different ways (such as an interactive slider being used to display the status of a countdown timer). One set of UI components in many games are those that communicate to the user what they are carrying (or yet to pick up). We have dedicated another chapter in this book to inventories in Chapter 2, Inventory GUIs, which provides many inventory recipes and additional UI controls, such as adding interactive scroll bars.

Here are some suggestions for further reading, tutorials, and resources to help you continue your learning of UI development in Unity:

Games need fonts in a style to match the gameplay and theme. Here are some of the sources of free personal/commercial fonts suitable for many games:

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