A seat-of-your-pants manual for building fun, groovy little games quickly with Unity 3.x
- Build fun games using the free Unity game engine even if you've never coded before
- Learn how to "skin" projects to make totally different games from the same file - more games, less effort
- Deploy your games to the Internet so that your friends and family can play them
- Packed with ideas, inspiration, and advice for your own game design and development
- Stay engaged with fresh, fun writing that keeps you awake as you learn
- Updated for the latest 3.x release
In Detail
Beginner game developers are wonderfully optimistic, passionate, and ambitious. But that ambition is often dangerous! Too often, budding indie developers and hobbyists bite off more than they can chew. Some of the most popular games in recent memory - Doodle Jump, Paper Toss, and Canabalt, to name a few - have been 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.
This book starts you off on the right foot, emphasizing small, simple game ideas and playable projects that you can actually finish. The complexity of the games increases gradually as we progress through the chapters. The chosen examples help you learn a wide variety of game development techniques. With this understanding of Unity and bite-sized bits of programming, you can make your own mark in the game industry by finishing fun, simple games.
Unity 3.x Game Development by Example shows you how to build crucial game elements that you can reuse and re-skin in many different games, using the phenomenal (and free!) Unity 3D game engine. It initiates you into indie game culture by teaching you how to make your own small, simple games using Unity3D and some gentle, easy-to-understand code. It will help you turn a rudimentary keep-up game into a madcap race through hospital hallways to rush a still-beating heart to the transplant ward, program a complete 2D game using Unity's User Interface controls, put a dramatic love story spin on a simple catch game, and turn that around into a classic space shooter with spectacular explosions and "pew" sounds! By the time you're finished, you'll have learned to develop a number of important pieces to create your own games that focus in on that small, singular piece of joy that makes games fun.
What you will learn from this book
- Find out how people are using the amazing new Unity game engine
- Develop and customize four fun game projects, including a frantic race through hospital hallways with a still-beating human heart and a catch game with a jilted lover that morphs into a space shooter!
- Create both 2D and 3D games using free software and supplied artwork
- Add motion, gravity, collisions, and animation to your game objects using Unity's built-in systems
- Learn how to use code to control your game objects
- Create particle systems like shattering glass, sparks, and explosions
- Add sound effects to make your games more exciting
- Create static and animated backdrops using multiple cameras
- Build crucial elements you'll use again and again, like timers, status bars, title screens, win/lose conditions, and buttons to link game screens together
- Deploy your games to the Web to share them with friends, family, and adoring fans
- Discover the difference between game skins and mechanics, to earn more money from your games
Approach
The book takes a clear, step-by-step approach to building small, simple game projects. It focuses on short, attainable goals so that the reader can finish something, instead of trying to create a complex RPG or open-world game that never sees the light of day. This book encourages readers hungry for knowledge. It does not go into gory detail about how every little knob and dial functions - that's what the software manual is for! Rather, this book is the fastest path from zero to finished game using the Unity game engine.
Who this book is written for
If you've ever wanted to develop games, but have never felt "smart" enough to deal with complex programming, this book is for you. It's also a great kick-start for developers coming from other tools like Flash, Unreal Engine, and Game Maker Pro.
Ryan Henson Creighton
Ryan is the founder of Untold Entertainment Inc., a boutique game development studio in the heart of downtown Toronto. Ryan got his start at a Canadian television broadcaster creating small, simple games for kids and preschoolers. By the time he was through, he had built over fifty games for a wide range of clients including McDonalds, Hasbro, Lego, Proctor and Gamble, Nickelodeon, and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. These games ran the gamut from simple slider puzzles, memory games, and contest entry mechanics to tile-based graphic adventure games and massively multiplayer virtual worlds. Ryan often leveraged his theatre background to perform on-camera in promotional spots for Microsoft and Nintendo. He spent a number of years moonlighting as a video game journalist under the cartoonish moniker "MrSock".
Ryan founded Untold Entertainment Inc. in 2007 and has continued to develop great kids' content with broadcasters and independent television producers to help extend their on-air brands online. He packs the company's popular blog with tutorials, designer diaries, and insights into the world of independent game development, employing his signature biting wit and ludicrous photo captions.
Through Untold Entertainment, Ryan is developing a number of original properties, which include: Interrupting Cow Trivia, an online multiplayer trivia game; Spellirium, a word puzzle/adventure game hybrid; UGAGS, the Untold Graphic Adventure Game System; and Kahoots, a fun crime-themed puzzle game modeled entirely in clay.
Ryan lives and bikes around downtown Toronto with his wife Cheryl, and his two tiny daughters Cassandra and Isabel.
