In the previous chapters, you worked toward building a 2D RPG game. We've covered lots of tips and tricks with a lot of scripts and a couple of assets to boot. The Unity community, however, is very helpful, and there are a lot more resources available, not just the ones on the asset store.
In this appendix, I'll highlight a lot of exciting places to go to and get more assets for your title, scripts, and other noteworthy tutorials that will help you grow on your journey through Unity.
We will cover the following topics:
Scripting resources
Useful assets
Sources of art and SFX
Highlights of the Web
Scripting resources
Scripting in Unity is a large part of what goes into making a game. As this title has shown, there are some good ways to script and some not so good ones. In this section, you will find several resources that extend what has already been shown and offer you more places to look and learn from.
Extending the editor
The editor is by far the most underutilized feature of Unity, partly because while building your game, you focus on what goes into it, and partly because the documents surrounding the editor are quite sparse.
However, many a brave soul has ventured into this domain and extracted the secret sauce. I've shown you the basics, so continue on to more advance uses of this hidden tool by going through the following links:
A good friend of mine, Jamie Hales (of Pixelballon), gave a talk in the UK on extending the editor, and he was kind enough to share it. He provided a lot of information to the audience about interesting tricks to extend the editor (even adding context menus). You can view the deck for the presentation and the associated code at the following links:
Catlike Coding has an awesome array of Unity articles with very interesting results. I checked out the rest of the articles, but there was one in particular that highlighted some great use of editor features for asset editing in the scene. Visit http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/editor/star/ to read more about this article.
Even more AI
AI is a tricky subject at best; the following are a few extra tips and tricks for Unity on how to build on the AI elements in this title:
AI Gamedev is one of the biggest sites for AI in game development. Its resources reach far and wide. Some content is free, but for most, there is a subscription fee. You can visit http://aigamedev.com/ for more information.
Procedural generation
Procedural generation is a passion of mine; I wished there had been enough pages to do justice to it in this title. If you are looking to get into this fascinating subject, the following are some really handy and practical places to look:
First and foremost is the Procedural Content Generation Wiki, not really about wiki but procedural generation's techniques and guidance. It is a great place to refer to when you're curious or stuck. Visit http://pcg.wikidot.com/ for more information.
We discussed messaging and other systems in this title, so it's worth checking out SignalChain, which is a much improved messaging engine for Unity. You can visit https://github.com/sebas77/SignalChain for more information.
In Chapter 4, The Game World, we briefly discussed IOC and dependency injection. If you feel so inclined, you can check out the full free implementation written specifically for Unity at https://github.com/strangeioc/strangeioc.
The following sites simply have large collections of scripts that you can freely use and learn from. Some have already been mentioned in this title, but it is worth calling them out here specifically:
One of the best collections of scripts in one powerful library is maintained by a former XNA developer, Nick Gravelyn. UnityToolbag is chock-full of tried and tested scripts that are essential for any Unity developer. You can visit https://github.com/nickgravelyn/UnityToolbag for more scripts.
I've mentioned Unity wiki on several occasions in this title—always keep its location close at hand. The script also has a wealth of information on other aspects of Unity. It's community-driven, so keep that in mind. The scripts wiki is available at http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Scripts.