Unity Game Development Essentials – Review

When a new and groundbreaking technology like Unity comes out, it can be hard to get a good grip on it. After spending some time reading Unity Game Development Essentials, it gave me a good insight on the user interface of the program, and how to build a game right from step 1, whether it be creating the terrain, scripting it, creating GUIs or using Unity’s particle systems. All the aspects of modern game development and the vast majority of Unity’s features are covered in this book making it pretty much essential to get of the ground with the software.

The book starts of by explaining what Unity offers in the way of built-in terrain tools, along with an explanation of how to use them. It then puts your new skills to the test by creating a small mini-game based on an island that is created entirely in Unity, which involves creating a terrain using the Terrain (Script) tools, then apply materials provided with Unity which allow you to add an extra degree of realism to your project. Then the book goes on to show how to add models skyboxes and finally sound to your game for a really complete project. The author does this all very slowly and explained step by step which is what I find you need when your learning something completely new like Unity.

After the first mini project is completed players are introduced by first giving an explanation of what players are and how they work. Then things like parent-child relationships are explained and also the basics of scripting Unity projects in JavaScript and how to add in movement. Once players have been covered important aspects of modern game development, Ray Casting and Collision Detection, are brought in which are vital to any games success. The math behind these two topics is the first thing to be explained to the reader showing them how rays are calculated and what is needed to see if a player has been shot or not. Clear diagrams were included to allow those visual learners amongst us to get a good grip on the theory. Then these techniques are show how to be implemented in JavaScript once the prior configuration has been done in the Unity IDE.

One essential aspect of any game is a HUD (Head-up Display) and is show along with how to use colliders as Triggers. This enables developers to restrict certain actions like the opening of a door until the player has a certain object. Learning techniques like this allow beginners to take the interactivity of their games to the next level. Also adding in-game hints is show as this can be really helpful when you introduce challenges that have to be completed before progress can be made. If helps are available then this stops the player getting bored if they cannot figure the puzzle/challenge out on their own.

Next you learn how to create instances of objects in the 3D world and also rigid body physics which is when a physics engine, like Nvidia PhysX which is the one used by Unity, is applied to an object in the game which tells the game engine to apply physics to this object. All these concepts are then out into practice by creating various mini-games which allows readers to know how the link together in a complete game.

Particle systems are key to all special effects and are one of the more complicated aspects of game development and this is what is explained next. They are explained in general then how to add them to your projects by creating a fire with wood, rocks and matches. With a lot of the key parts of the modern game being covered all ready the book then shows how to introduce a menu to a game. Textures are added and adding interactivity to the menu is show and explained, the how to animate and make your menu more interesting.

Lastly seeing as Unity supports a multitude of publishing platforms (Windows, Mac, iPhone*, Web, Wii, Mac OSX Dashboard Widget) it is important to understand how to publish your projects for these platforms. Clear instructions are given for how to publish to these platforms and an overview of each platform is also given for those who are unsure what one is or what they are appropriate for. There is also advice on how to share your complete game and a few noticeable differences between Unity Free and Pro. The last chapter tops it all of by giving advice on how to thoroughly test your game and boost its performance.

Overall I think this book is great for people who have no idea about the Unity IDE but have a basic understanding of game development and also having a background in JavaScript would be useful. I am extremely excited about building more with Unity once I find the time and I can’t wait to see what comes out in the future.

You can find a sample chapter here: http://www.packtpub.com/files/8181-unity-game-development-essentials-sample-chapter-4-interactions.pdf

Get the book here: http://www.packtpub.com/unity-game-development-essentials?utm_source=harrynorthover.com&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_001397

*You must be an approved Apple Developer for the iPhone and install the iPhone SDK (requires Intel-based Mac running OSX 10.5.4 or later)