Book Image

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 2020 - Fifth Edition

By : Harrison Ferrone
Book Image

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 2020 - Fifth Edition

By: Harrison Ferrone

Overview of this book

Over the years, the Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity series has established itself as a popular choice for getting up to speed with C#, a powerful and versatile programming language that can be applied in a wide array of application areas. This book presents a clear path for learning C# programming from the ground up without complex jargon or unclear programming logic, all while building a simple game with Unity. This fifth edition has been updated to introduce modern C# features with the latest version of the Unity game engine, and a new chapter has been added on intermediate collection types. Starting with the basics of software programming and the C# language, you’ll learn the core concepts of programming in C#, including variables, classes, and object-oriented programming. Once you’ve got to grips with C# programming, you’ll enter the world of Unity game development and discover how you can create C# scripts for simple game mechanics. Throughout the book, you’ll gain hands-on experience with programming best practices to help you take your Unity and C# skills to the next level. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to leverage the C# language to build your own real-world Unity game development projects.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Constant and read-only properties

There will be times when you need to create variables that store constant, unchanging values. Adding the const keyword after a variable's access modifier will do just that, but only for built-in C# types. A good candidate for a constant value is our maxItems in the GameBehavior class:

public const int maxItems = 4; 

The problem you'll run into with constant variables is that they can only be assigned a value in their declaration, meaning we can't leave maxItems without an initial value:

public readonly int maxItems; 

Using the readonly keyword to declare a variable will give us the same unmodifiable value as a constant, while still letting us assign its initial value at any time.