Maximize the potential of Unity 4 with this wide-ranging book. Your games will look better, play more realistically, and communicate with more devices through applying these fully explanatory recipes.
Overview
- A wide range of topics are covered, ranging in complexity, offering something for every Unity 4 game developer.
- Every recipe provides step-by-step instructions, followed by an explanation of how it all works, and alternative approaches or refinements.
- Book developed with the latest version of Unity (4.x).
In Detail
Covering the latest version (Unity 4) of this established game engine, the Unity 4.x Cookbook explores a wide range of 3D, animation, multimedia, and scripting game features.
The power of Unity 4 is demonstrated through the 10 chapters covering many of this game engine’s features.
"Unity 4.x Cookbook" helps you learn how to make the most of the powerful but easy-to-use Unity 4 game engine.
Every Unity game developer is different. Some come from a multimedia background, some are new to game development, and some are transferring from other engines. Whatever your background, with the breadth and depth of topics covered you should find new features and techniques to enhance your next game.
This book offers detailed, easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes helping you master a wide range of Unity game features.
Chapters are provided focusing on the basics; audio, cameras, images, materials and animations, GUIs, external resources and devices, directional and artificial intelligence character control, and performance optimization.
"Unity 4.x Cookbook" provides a collection of ideas and resources that should offer new and useful techniques for every Unity game developer to enhance their next game.
What you will learn from this book
- Enhance your character`s animation in real time using Unity`s new Mecanim system
- Measure and control time, including pausing the game, displaying clocks and countdown timers, and even implementing “bullet time” effects.
- Work with cameras, images, and the Shuriken practical system, to create mini-maps, control zooming, and depth of field, and switch between cameras.
- Define materials for reflections, transparency, specular and self-illumination of materials, and cloudy outdoor effects.
- Use artificial intelligence techniques to make non-player character objects seek, follow, flee each other, or follow a waypoint sequence, and even flock together like a herd of animals.
- Make your game communicate with Microsoft Kinect cameras, for control of game characters, and even to record your own motion capture.
- Improve GUIS with real-time radars, custom mouse cursors, analogue and digital clocks, color section dialogs, mouse over material highlighting, graphical power-bars, and a flexible inventory class.
- Save and load text, XML, or media assets from local or remote sources, and communicate with websites and their databases to create online scoreboards
Approach
Cookbook.
Who this book is written for
From beginners to advanced users, from artists to coders, this book is for you and everyone in your team!
This book is for anyone who wants to explore a wide range of Unity scripting and multimedia features and to find ready to use solutions to many game features. Programmers can explore multimedia features, and multimedia developers can try their hand at scripting..
Matt Smith
Matt Smith is senior lecturer in computing at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Dublin, Ireland (www.itb.ie). In 1980 (you do the math) Matt started computer programming (on a ZX80) and has been programming ever since. In 1985, Matt wrote the lyrics, and was a member of the band that played (and sang, sorry about that by the way) the music on the B-side of the audio cassette carrying the computer game Confuzion (wikipedia.org/wiki/Confuzion).
Matt holds a bachelor's degree in Business Computing (Huddersfield University, UK), and as that was a bit boring, he went on to get a masters in Artificial Intelligence (Aberdeen University, Scotland), and a PhD in Computational Musicology (Open University, UK). Having run out of money after 10 years as a full-time student, he began his career as a lecturer and academic. He has been lecturing and researching on programming, artificial intelligence, web development, and interactive multimedia for almost 20 years, holding full-time positions at Winchester University and London's Middlesex University, before moving to his present post in Ireland in 2002. In recent years, Matt has replaced Flash-based 2D multimedia with Unity-based 3D game development and interactive virtual environments subjects for his computing and digital media undergraduates.
To keep himself fit, Matt took up the Korean martial art of Taekwon-Do (he developed and runs his club's website at www.maynoothtkd.com), and a group of his BSc students are now developing a Unity-based Taekwon-Do interactive "tutor" with Microsoft Kinect cameras. Some of his previous Irish-French student team games can be found and played at www.saintgermes.com (thanks for continuing to host these, Guillem!). Matt was one of the two technical experts for a recent multimedia European project for language and cultural student work mobility (vocalproject.eu).
Matt is currently struggling to learn Korean (for his Taekwon-Do), and Irish (since his daughter Charlotte attends an Irish-speaking school and he doesn't believe her translations of her teacher's report cards ...). In 2012, he started taking classical piano lessons again (after a 20-year gap), with a view to sitting exams starting May, 2013.
Matt's previous authoring includes contributions to Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, Springer (2011), Musical Imagery, Routledge (2001). He was also lead editor for Music Education: An Artificial Intelligence Approach, Springer (1994), and a technical reviewer for Internet and World Wide Web: How to Program (3rd Edition) by Deitel, Deitel & Goldberg, Prentice Hall (2003).
