Book Image

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 3D Beginner's Guide

By : Terry Norton
Book Image

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 3D Beginner's Guide

By: Terry Norton

Overview of this book

For the absolute beginner to any concept of programming, writing a script can appear to be an impossible hurdle to overcome. The truth is, there are only three simple concepts to understand: 1) having some type of information; 2) using the information; and 3) communicating the information. Each of these concepts is very simple and extremely important. These three concepts are combined to access the feature set provided by Unity. "Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 3D Beginner's Guide" assumes that you know nothing about programming concepts. First you will learn the absolute basics of programming using everyday examples that you already know. As you progress through the book, you will find that C# is not a foreign language after all, because you already know the words. With a few keywords and using substitution, before you know it, you'll be thinking in code. The book starts by explaining in simple terms the three concepts you need for writing C# code and scripts: 1) variables to hold information; 2) methods (functions) to use the information; and 3) Dot Syntax to communicate the information where it's needed. The book builds on these concepts to open up the world of C# coding and Unity scripting. You will use this new power to access the features provided in Unity's Scripting Reference. The first half of this book is devoted to the code writing beginner. The concepts of variables, methods, Dot Syntax, and decision processing are fully explained. Since C# is an actual programming language, we take advantage of this to develop a State Machine to help control and organize each phase of a Unity project. Once the basic programming concepts are established and we have some State Machine organization, the features and power of Unity are accessed using the Scripting Reference. If you're looking to learn C# for Unity then this is the book that offers everything you need and more - so discover what C# offers today and see your work come to life as complete games!
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 3D Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Time for action – creating a variable and seeing how it works


Let's see how this actually works in our script. Don't be concerned about the details of how to write this, just make sure your script is the same as the script shown in the next screenshot.

  1. In the Unity Project panel, double-click on LearningScript.

  2. In MonoDevelop, write the lines 6, 11, and 13 from the next screenshot.

  3. Save the file.

To make this script work, it has to be attached to a GameObject. Currently, in our State Machine project we only have one GameObject, the Main Camera. This will do nicely since this script doesn't affect the Main Camera in any way. The script simply runs by virtue of it being attached to a GameObject.

  1. Drag LearningScript onto the Main Camera.

  2. Select Main Camera so that it appears in the Inspector panel.

  3. Verify whether LearningScript is attached.

  4. Open the Unity Console panel to view the output of the script.

  5. Click on Play.

The preceding steps are shown in the following screenshot:

What just happened?

In the...