Holistic Game Development with Unity

Holistic Game Development with Unity

by Penny de Byl
Released November 2012
Publisher(s): Focal Press
ISBN: 9781136147173

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

The independent developer has ascended, and the new business model demands agility. You have to be able to work on all aspects of game creation, and your team's game will publish directly to platforms like Android, iPhone, and Facebook. You'll use Unity, the hottest game engine out there, to do it. In order to earn your place on the elite development team, you must master both sides of the development coin: art and programming.

Holistic Game Development with Unity is an authoritative guide to creating games in Unity. Taking you through game design, programming, and art, Penny de Byl uses a holistic approach to equip you with the multidisciplinary skills you need for the independent games industry. With this book, you will master essential digital art and design principles while learning the programming skills necessary to build interactivity into your games. The tutorials will put these skills into action. The companion website offers: source code for completed projects from the book, art assets, instructional videos, a forum, author blog and lesson plans and challenge questions for professors.


   Examines art and programming in unison-the only one-stop shop for individual developers and small teams looking to tackle both tasks.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Preface
  6. Chapter 1 The Art of Programming Mechanics
    1. 1.1 Introduction
    2. 1.2 Programming on the Right Side of the Brain
    3. 1.3 Creating Art from the Left Side of the Brain
      1. 1.3.1 Point
      2. 1.3.2 Line
      3. 1.3.3 Shape
      4. 1.3.4 Direction
      5. 1.3.5 Size
      6. 1.3.6 Texture
      7. 1.3.7 Color
    4. 1.4 How Game Engines Work
      1. 1.4.1 A Generic Game Engine
      2. 1.4.2 The Main Loop
    5. 1.5 A Scripting Primer
      1. 1.5.1 Logic
      2. 1.5.2 Comments
      3. 1.5.3 Functions
      4. 1.5.4 Variables
      5. 1.5.5 Operators
      6. 1.5.6 Conditional Statements
      7. 1.5.7 Arrays
      8. 1.5.8 Objects
    6. 1.6 A Game Art Asset Primer
      1. 1.6.1 The Power of Two Rule
      2. 1.6.2 Using Other People's Art Assets
    7. 1.7 Summary
  7. Chapter 2 Real-World Mechanics
    1. 2.1 Introduction
    2. 2.2 Principles of Vectors
    3. 2.3 Defining 2D and 3D Space
      1. 2.3.1 Cameras
      2. 2.3.2 Local and World Coordinate Systems
      3. 2.3.3 Translation, Rotation, and Scaling
      4. 2.3.4 Polygons and Normals
    4. 2.4 Two-Dimensional Games in a 3D Game Engine
      1. 2.4.1 Quaternions
    5. 2.5 The Laws of Physics
      1. 2.5.1 The Law of Gravity
      2. 2.5.2 The First Law of Motion
      3. 2.5.3 The Second Law of Motion
      4. 2.5.4 The Third Law of Motion
    6. 2.6 Physics and the Principles of Animation
      1. 2.6.1 Squash and Stretch
    7. 2.7 Two-Dimensional and 3D Tricks for Optimizing Game Space
      1. 2.7.1 Reducing Polygons
      2. 2.7.2 Camera Viewing Volume
      3. 2.7.3 Fog
      4. 2.7.4 Textures
      5. 2.7.5 Billboards
    8. 2.8 Summary
  8. Chapter 3 Animation Mechanics
    1. 3.1 Introduction
    2. 3.2 Sprites
    3. 3.3 Texture Atlas
    4. 3.4 Animated Sprites
    5. 3.5 Baked 3D Animations
    6. 3.6 Biomechanics
    7. 3.7 Animation Management
      1. 3.7.1 Single 2D Sprite Actions
      2. 3.7.2 Single-Filed 3D Animations
      3. 3.7.3 Blending
    8. 3.8 Secondary Animation
    9. 3.9 Summary
  9. Chapter 4 Game Rules and Mechanics
    1. 4.1 Introduction
    2. 4.2 Game Mechanics
    3. 4.3 Primary Mechanics
      1. 4.3.1 Searching
      2. 4.3.2 Matching
      3. 4.3.3 Sorting
      4. 4.3.4 Chancing
      5. 4.3.5 Mixing
      6. 4.3.6 Timing
      7. 4.3.7 Progressing
      8. 4.3.8 Capturing
      9. 4.3.9 Conquering
      10. 4.3.10 Avoidance
      11. 4.3.11 Collecting
    4. 4.4 Developing with Some Simple Game Mechanics
      1. 4.4.1 Matching and Sorting
      2. 4.4.2 Shooting, Hitting, Bouncing, and Stacking
      3. 4.4.3 Racing
      4. 4.4.4 Avoidance and Collecting
      5. 4.4.5 Searching
    5. 4.5 Rewards and Penalties
    6. 4.6 Summary
  10. Chapter 5 Character Mechanics
    1. 5.1 Introduction
    2. 5.2 Line of Sight
    3. 5.3 Graph Theory
    4. 5.4 Waypoints
      1. 5.4.1 Searching Through Waypoints
    5. 5.5 Finite State Machines
    6. 5.6 Flocking
    7. 5.7 Decision Trees
    8. 5.8 Fuzzy Logic
    9. 5.9 Genetic Algorithms
    10. 5.10 Cellular Automata
    11. 5.11 Summary
  11. Chapter 6 Player Mechanics
    1. 6.1 Introduction
    2. 6.2 Game Structure
    3. 6.3 Principles of Game Interface Design
      1. 6.3.1 User Profiling
      2. 6.3.2 Metaphor
      3. 6.3.3 Feature Exposure
      4. 6.3.4 Coherence
      5. 6.3.5 State Visualization
      6. 6.3.6 Shortcuts
      7. 6.3.7 Layout
      8. 6.3.8 Focus
      9. 6.3.9 Help
    4. 6.4 Inventories
    5. 6.5 Teleportation
      1. 6.5.1 Implicit Teleports
      2. 6.5.2 Explicit Teleports
    6. 6.6 Summary
  12. Chapter 7 Environmental Mechanics
    1. 7.1 Introduction
    2. 7.2 Map Design Fundamentals
      1. 7.2.1 Provide a Focal Point
      2. 7.2.2 Guide and Restrict the Player's Movement
      3. 7.2.3 Scaling
      4. 7.2.4 Detail
      5. 7.2.5 Map Layout
      6. 7.2.6 Other Considerations
    3. 7.3 Terrain
      1. 7.3.1 Drawing a Terrain
      2. 7.3.2 Procedural Terrain
      3. 7.3.3 Procedural Cities
      4. 7.3.4 Infinite Terrain
    4. 7.4 Camera Tricks
      1. 7.4.1 Depth of Field
      2. 7.4.2 Blur
      3. 7.4.3 Grayscale
      4. 7.4.4 Motion Blur
      5. 7.4.5 Sepia Tone
      6. 7.4.6 Twirl
      7. 7.4.7 Bloom
      8. 7.4.8 Flares
      9. 7.4.9 Color Correction
      10. 7.4.10 Edge Detection
      11. 7.4.11 Crease
      12. 7.4.12 Fish Eye
      13. 7.4.13 Sun Shafts
      14. 7.4.14 Vignette
      15. 7.4.15 Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
    5. 7.5 Skies
      1. 7.5.1 Skyboxes
      2. 7.5.2 Sky Domes
      3. 7.5.3 Clouds
    6. 7.6 Weather
      1. 7.6.1 Wind
      2. 7.6.2 Precipitation
    7. 7.7 Particles
    8. 7.8 Summary
  13. Chapter 8 Mechanics for External Forces
    1. 8.1 Introduction
    2. 8.2 Up and Running on a Mobile Device
    3. 8.3 Integrating Haptics and External Motion into Games
    4. 8.4 Accessing Mobile Hardware Features
      1. 8.4.1 Accelerometer
      2. 8.4.2 Orientation
      3. 8.4.3 Web Services
      4. 8.4.4 Global Positioning System (GPS)
      5. 8.4.5 Augmented Reality (AR)
    5. 8.5 The Social Mechanic
      1. 8.5.1 Twitter
      2. 8.5.2 Facebook
      3. 8.5.3 OpenFeint
    6. 8.6 Platform Deployment: App Store, Android Market, and Consoles
      1. 8.6.1 Publishing for the App Store and Android Market
      2. 8.6.2 Console Publishing
      3. 8.6.3 Download Direct to Player
    7. 8.7 Summary
  14. Index

Product information

  • Title: Holistic Game Development with Unity
  • Author(s): Penny de Byl
  • Release date: November 2012
  • Publisher(s): Focal Press
  • ISBN: 9781136147173