Book Image

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 2021 - Sixth Edition

By : Harrison Ferrone
Book Image

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 2021 - Sixth Edition

By: Harrison Ferrone

Overview of this book

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 with a wide array of applications in various domains. This bestselling franchise presents a clear path for learning C# programming from the ground up through the world of Unity game development. This sixth edition has been updated to introduce modern C# features with Unity 2021. A new chapter has also been added that covers reading and writing binary data from files, which will help you become proficient in handling errors and asynchronous operations. The book acquaints you with the core concepts of programming in C#, including variables, classes, and object-oriented programming. You will explore the fundamentals of Unity game development, including game design, lighting basics, player movement, camera controls, and collisions. You will write C# scripts for simple game mechanics, perform procedural programming, and add complexity to your games by introducing smart enemies and damage-causing projectiles. By the end of the book, you will have developed the skills to become proficient in C# programming and built a playable game prototype with the Unity game engine.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
15
Pop Quiz Answers
16
Other Books You May Enjoy
17
Index

Defining methods

In the previous chapter, we briefly touched on the role methods play in our programs; namely, that they store and execute instructions, just like variables store values. Now, we need to understand the syntax of method declarations and how they drive action and behavior in our classes.

As with variables, method declarations have their basic requirements, which are as follows:

  • The type of data that will be returned by the method
  • A unique name, starting with a capital letter
  • A pair of parentheses following the method name
  • A pair of curly brackets marking the method body (where instructions are stored)

Putting all of these rules together, we get a simple method blueprint:

returnType UniqueName() 
{ 
    method body 
}

Let's break down the default Start() method in LearningCurve as a practical example:

void Start() 
{
}

In the preceding output, we can see the following:

  • The method starts with the...