Book Image

Unity Game Development Essentials

By : Will Goldstone
Book Image

Unity Game Development Essentials

By: Will Goldstone

Overview of this book

Game engines are central to the video games we know and love. From the artwork to the mathematics that underpin the frames onscreen, the engine calls the shots. Aside from offering one of the leading 3D game engines, Unity also provides a superlative development tool ñ a tool that can produce professional standard games for Mac, PC, and the Unity Web Player. This book is a complete exercise in game development covering environments, physics, sound, particles, and much more, to get you up and working with Unity quickly. Taking a practical approach, this book will introduce you to the concepts of developing 3D games before getting to grips with development in Unity itself. From creating 3D worlds to scripting and creating simple game elements you will learn everything you'll need to get started with game development for the PC, Mac, and Web. This book is designed to cover a set of easy to follow examples, which culminate in the production of a First Person 3D game, complete with an interactive island environment. By introducing common concepts of game and 3D production, you'll explore Unity to make a character interact with the game world, and build puzzles for the player to solve, in order to complete the game. At the end of the book, you will have a fully working 3D game and all the skills required to extend the game further, giving your end-user, the player, the best experience possible. Soon you will be creating your own 3D games with ease!
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Unity Game Development Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

What is a particle system?


A particle system is referred to in Unity as a system — rather than a component — as it requires a number of components working together in order to function properly. Before we begin to work with the systems themselves, we need to understand the component parts and their role in the system.

Particle emitter

Within any particle system, the emitter component is in charge of instantiating individual particles. In Unity, there is an Ellipsoid Particle Emitter and a Mesh Particle Emitter available.

The ellipsoid is most commonly used for effects such as smoke, dust, and other such environmental elements that can be created in a defined space. It is referred to as the ellipsoid because it creates particles within a sphere that can be stretched to accommodate the system.

The mesh emitter creates particles which are tied directly to a 3D mesh and can either be animated along vertices of a mesh or simply emitted upon the points of the mesh. This is more commonly used when...