Book Image

Unity 4.x Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Third Edition

By : Ryan Henson Creighton
Book Image

Unity 4.x Game Development by Example: Beginner's Guide - Third Edition

By: Ryan Henson Creighton

Overview of this book

Unity is one of the biggest game engines in the world, providing the user with a range of important tools that they need to bring their ideas into reality. Beginner game developers are optimistic, passionate, and ambitious, but that ambition can be dangerous! Too often, budding indie developers and hobbyists bite off more than they can chew. Games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Fruit Ninja are fun, simple games that have delighted players and delivered big profits to their creators. This is the perfect climate for new game developers to succeed by creating simple games with Unity, starting today. This book teaches you the ins and outs of the unique Unity game engine interface. Clear and concise code examples written in both Unity Javascript and C# take you through the step-by-step process of building five small, functional games. With this understanding you can start making your own mark on the game industry! With absolutely no programming or game development experience, you will learn how to build five simple games in Unity by following step-by-step instructions, peppered with amusing analogies and anecdotes from an experienced indie developer. Following a primer on simplifying your game ideas to that single “something” that keeps players coming back for more, dive into the Unity game engine by creating a simple bat-and-ball game. From there, you'll build a complete memory game using only the Unity GUI system. After building a 2.5D mouse avoider game, you'll learn how to re-skin the project to completely change the game's theme. Incorporating everything you've learned, you'll return to complete the bat-and-ball game by adding scoring, replay flow, sound effects, and animations. Finally, in the new bonus chapter, you'll program some simple AI (Artificial Intelligence) for a tic tac toe game. "Unity 4.x Game Development by Example" is a fun and light-hearted exploration of one of the most powerful game engines on the market today. Find out what all the fuss is about by getting up to speed using this book!
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Why choose Unity?


There are a great many game authoring tools, engines, and frameworks that you may have explored or read about before investigating Unity 3D. What makes Unity an attractive option? Here are a few selling points:

  • Large community: You want to avoid going with a tool that only you and some middle-schooler in Siberia know how to operate. Unity has a very large user base, which makes it much quicker and easier to find answers to your questions, and to find online videos, tutorials and books like this one that explain new concepts. A large community also implies that development on the software will continue. Nothing's worse than training on a tool that is later abandoned.

  • Social proof: The fact that large companies have bought into or partnered with Unity Technologies bodes very well. Electronic Arts has purchased a site-wide license, and (at the time of this writing) two out of three major console manufacturers have struck licensing deals with Unity to spur development on their systems.

  • Bang for the buck: If you ever "go pro", you'll want to invest some pennies against a full version of Unity. While it's not chicken scratch, the amount of power and the number of options you get from Unity vastly outweigh the cost outlay.

  • Market success: On any given day, a survey of the chart-topping iOS games turns up a proportionately large number of Unity-developed titles. Unity is being used by a great many developers to create games that survive in the market, and thrive once they're there.

  • Customizability: The entire Unity authoring tool can, itself, be authored. Developers can create their own windows, buttons, and panels to add to the Unity authoring tool, which has led to a very active secondary market called the Unity Asset Store, where you can download toolmakers' creations to make your development experience even better.

  • Multiplatform: It mystifies me why people pour so much energy into tools like XCode, which can target exactly one platform (or maybe two? I honestly don't care enough to check). When faced with such a diverse marketplace, it's a savvy developer who chooses a technology that targets multiple platforms.