Setting the editor to your preferences might sound superfluous to some. However, it could accelerate your development process and make Unity even more comfortable to use. In this recipe, we will learn how to adjust some of those settings to your taste.
To adjust Unity's preferences, follow these steps:
- Inside the Unity editor, navigate to Edit | Preferences... (or, if you are using Mac OS, Unity | Preferences…).
- As the Preferences window shows up, notice that it is divided into these sections: General, External Tools, Colors, Keys, and Cache Server.
- Select the General tab. If you're working with multiple projects, you might want to leave the Always Show Project Wizard option checked.
- Also, if you use OS X and are used to its native color picker, leave the OSX Color Picker option checked.
- Now select the External Tools tab. In case you want to use a different script editor than Unity's built-in MonoDevelop, you can use the drop-down menu in External Script Editor to browse to your favorite application.
- If Image Application is set as Open by File Extension, you might end up working with several image editors simultaneously. To avoid that, use the drop-down menu to browse to your favorite software.
- Also, if you happen to develop to Android, make sure to browse to the SDK in Android SDK Location.
- Let's move on to Colors tab. The default settings are fine, but feel free to change colors that make you most comfortable.
- Now select the Keys tab. You might select any action to change its shortcut. Again, the default settings are perfectly fine. Use this opportunity to learn more about them.
As you probably noticed, Unity's Preferences window has more options than was covered here. If you want a full explanation for each setting, please check the online documentation at http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Preferences.html.
Depending on your target platform, you might want to adjust the level of graphical quality of your game. This can be done through Quality Settings, which controls, for instance, the resolution of real-time shadows, or how much anti aliasing will be applied. Those options (and much more) are organized in levels that range from Fastest to Fantastic. If you want to experience a particular quality setting when running your game from the Editor, navigate to Edit | Project Settings | Quality and select it from the table in the Inspector view.