Unity Apprentice

Learn How to Create Great Games With Unity!

Unity is the most popular game engine to date and is loved by beginners and experts alike. It’s the easiest way to create cross-platform games with an intuitive — but very powerful — editor that brings your game ideas to life while allowing you to focus on the gameplay.

This book will guide you through how to use Unity. While building three playable games, you’ll learn all about GameObjects and Prefabs, how to handle input, build user interfaces, light your scenes, use pathfinding and AI, control cameras, animate your characters and scenes and write C# scripts to control the action. Along the way, the book will also introduce you to some neat techniques to ensure your games perform in the most efficient way.

Who this book is for

This book is for complete beginners to Unity. No prior programming experience with C# is required.

Topics covered in Unity Apprentice

• Installing and Using Unity: Learn about the Unity Hub and Editor.
• Creating GameObjects and Prefabs: The building blocks for any Unity game.
• Controlling Your Game with Scripts: Unity uses the C# programming language. This book will teach you the basics of how to add logic to your characters and scenes.
• User Input and Collisions: Learn how to let players control your game. And, find out how to detect collisions to trigger events.
• User Interfaces: Every game needs a user interface to communicate your game’s state. Learn how to create and organize these for your games.
• Basic AI and Navigation: Learn how you can make your characters react to events and exhibit their own behaviors and movement.
• Cinemachine: Control your camera angles to add professional views and to make sure your players don’t miss important events.
• Object Pooling: Make the most of the resources available to you by organizing your GameObjects effectively.
• Advanced Animation: Move your GameObjects using the most appropriate animation technique for the job.

After reading this book and completing your Unity apprenticeship by working through the included exercises and challenges, you’ll be able to create your own cross-platform games with Unity.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Chapter 2: Installing & Using the Unity Editor

Chapter 3: GameObjects & Prefabs

Chapter 4: Creating & Using Scripts With C#

Chapter 5: Setting Up a Scene

Chapter 6: Input & Collisions

Chapter 7: User Interfaces

Chapter 8: Scriptable Objects

Chapter 9: Basic Al & Navigation

Chapter 10: Advanced Camera Controls With Cine machine

Chapter 11: Asynchronous Functions, Coroutines & Object Pooling

Chapter 12: Basic Animation Principles

Chapter 13: Advanced Animation Principles

Chapter 14: Advanced Scriptable Objects

Chapter 15: Conclusion

About the Authors

Eric Van de Kerckhove is a hobbyist game developer and 3D printing enthusiast from Belgium. Most days, you can find him at his desk while tinkering on scripts to automate tasks and creating 3D models to use in games or to print.

Matt Larson is a software developer for the life sciences and scientific visualization. He was an author on Unity AR & VR by Tutorials and is a believer in new technologies for engaging with 3D content. When he is not working on software, you’ll find him fixing up old synthesizers, kayaking and spending time with his wife and kids.

Ben MacKinnon has been a Unity Developer for as long as he has been a father, with both playing a huge part in his life. He spent a large part of his career Augmenting Architecture, but more recently has focussed on VR in development of the virtual communications platform ENGAGE