Unity Game Development
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Go from Zero to Full-Featured Local Multiplayer Game
Join expert Jon Manning for a hands-on, in-depth exploration of the Unity game engine. In this course, you’ll get a deep dive into the world of building exciting, fast-paced gameplay using one of the most accessible and powerful tools for building interactive content.
There’s never been a better time to get into game development, with the rise of fantastic, freely-available game engines and platforms to distribute them all. In this course, we’ll go from zero to a full-featured local multiplayer game, and we’ll explain everything that goes into making the experience.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
- How to get around in the Unity editor
- How to architect a game for maximum ease of development
- What rigidbodies, colliders and constraints are, and how they can be used to construct gameplay
- How to build a game’s levels using prefabs
- How to receive, process and work with input to control your game
- The mechanics of building shooter gameplay
- Building custom materials and shaders
- Tuning your game for fun
This live event is for you because...
- You’re a programmer who’s always wanted to get into game development, and could use a discussion of how a complete game is put together
- You’re an artist, and want to learn what the code that runs using your assets looks like
- You’re just starting out using Unity, and want a start-to-finish game to refer to while developing your skills
Prerequisites
- Basic programming knowledge is assumed; C# is useful, as it’s the language we’re using, but isn’t absolutely necessary.
- A basic understanding of what a 3D model is, how textures are used, and how a top-down shooter video game would be expected to be played.
Materials or Downloads needed in Advance:
- Unity 2017.2 from https://store.unity.com
- Sample code downloaded from https://github.com/thesecretlab/Blasto
- In addition to the above, a Unity Project file is also provided, containing the same content as above, for your convenience when importing: http://lab.to/blasto-resources-v1-1
Recommended Preparation:
“Mobile Game Development with Unity” by Jon Manning and Paris Buttfield-Addison (book)
“Designing Games That People Want to Play” by Jon Manning (video)
Continued Learning:
“Creating Better Game Assets in Blender” by Jon Manning (video)
“Unity In Action: Multiplatform Game Development in C# with Unity 5”, by Joseph Hocking (book)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Day 1:
- Setting Up Unity
- The Unity interface
- Working with assets
- Manipulating game objects
- Constructing a scene
- Working with lighting and cameras
- Working with prefabs
- Storing data in scriptable objects
- How scripts work in Unity
- Getting input from the player
- Physics: rigidbodies, colliders, and constraints
- Creating movement
- Architecting for shooter gameplay
- Creating and presenting sprites
Day 1 assignment:
- Taking what you’ve built so far, modify the weapons system on the player so that the weapons bounce off surfaces once before exploding.
Day 2:
- Creating and managing gameplay
- Allowing your players to respawn
- Creating gameplay UI
- Making players explode on death
- Polishing the appearance of sprites
- Creating particle effects for dust and smoke
- Creating custom shaders
- Customising player appearance
- Creating more complex gameplay elements
- Adding sound to your game
- Building and releasing your game
Day 2 assignment:
- Take your game, play it with a friend, and ask them for one change they think the game should have. If you think it’d work, implement it!
Your Instructor
Jon Manning
Jon Manning is the cofounder of independent game development studio Secret Lab. He's currently working on top-down puzzler Button Squid and the critically acclaimed adventure game Night in the Woods, which includes his interactive dialogue system Yarn Spinner. Jon has written a whole bunch of books for O'Reilly Media about iOS development and game development. He holds a doctorate about jerks on the internet. Jon can be found as @desplesda on Twitter.