Preface

This book is a thorough run through the design and development of a 3D environment puzzle game made in Unity. We go through the design, creation, and implementation of characters, environment, UI, sound, and game mechanics.

Who is this book for?

This book is especially good for anyone who has an interest in making 3D games but hasn’t started their journey yet. We cover the fundamentals all the way up to some advanced topics.

Secondarily, this book would help anyone who has already started their journey and wants to learn other parts of game development as we cover a broad range of skills and knowledge throughout the book.

What this book covers

Part 1 – Plan and Design

Chapter 1, A Primer to the Third Dimension, takes a ride through 3D terminology and the initial jargon of what the book will go through.

Chapter 2, Design and Prototype, starts the user down the design rabbit hole and ends with installing Unity to create your first project.

Chapter 3, Programming, lays down the foundation of programming. This chapter leans in on the power of C# (C Sharp) by explaining the basics of logic and the initial use of Visual Studio.

Part 2 – Build

Chapter 4, Characters, goes over designing 3D characters while thinking about how they will be used for rigging and animations.

Chapter 5, Environment, walks you through thinking about the environment for your game as well as what we did to design and build our environment.

Chapter 6, Interactions and Mechanics, takes the time to break down how mechanics need to be thought about and what interaction is for the user, while also covering the programming needed for the interactions in our project.

Chapter 7, Rigid Bodies and Physics Interactions, adds complexity to the interaction with physics and more advanced programming concepts.

Chapter 8, User Interface and Menus, goes over Unity’s canvas component and how the overall game interface is developed on any project.

Part 3 – Polish and Refine

Chapter 9, Visual Effects, dives into how the visual effects systems can be worked with to add a further emotional connection to your world. This is done by explaining the foundation of rendering and the systems surrounding it.

Chapter 10, Sound Effects, blasts in with explaining the sound systems within Unity as well as setting a solid foundation of sound design.

Chapter 11, Build and Test, teaches you how Unity builds a final executable game and explains testing methods to root out bugs that you can squash to make a better product.

Chapter 12, Finishing Touches, looks to be a toolbox of utility for making your game as polished as it can be. We go over what we used to polish our project. This is including specific particle systems, lighting, art defining, and advanced sound polish.

Bonus Chapter, Other Unity Tools!, is a chapter going over some of the services Unity has to offer just in case this book inspires you to work on a project that we haven’t been able to cover, such as multiplayer or mixed-reality requirements.

To get the most out of this book

• Pay attention to this book not as a tutorial but as many tools being used to develop a 3D game. We’re only going over a few simple examples. Take the logic out as something to apply to your projects as much as possible.
• Be prepared to take your own notes on the topics that are being covered. We ramp up the difficulty in programming quite a bit during the physics portion.
• Ask questions in the Discord, which is attached to the book through a QR code.

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Unity-3D-Game-Development. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801076142_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: “Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system.”

A block of code is set as follows:

void OnStartGameButtonPressed()
    {
        SetPlayerEnabled(true);
        Cursor.lockState = CursorLockMode.Locked;
        Cursor.visible = false;
        this.gameObject.SetActive(false);
    }

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes, also appear in the text like this. For example: “Select System info from the Administration panel.”

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: Email [email protected] and mention the book’s title in the subject of your message. If you have questions about any aspect of this book, please email us at [email protected].

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