Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x - Second Edition

Table of Contents

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x Second Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready

Prerequisite knowledge to use this book

Dealing with scriptphobia

Downloading Unity

Obtaining a free license

Teaching behavior to GameObjects

Using Unity's documentation

Do I need to know all that?

C# documentation – where to find it? Do I need it at all?

The Unity community – asking others for help

Working with C# script files

Lots of files can create a mess

Why does my Project tab look different?

Creating a C# script file

Introducing the MonoDevelop code editor

Syncing C# files between MonoDevelop and Unity

Opening LearningScript in MonoDevelop

The namespace – highlighted in blue

The class definition – highlighted in green

Watching for possible gotchas while creating script files in Unity

Fixing synchronization if it isn't working properly

Adding our script to GameObject

Instance? What is it?

Summary

2. Introducing the Building Blocks for Unity Scripts

Understanding what a variable is and what it does

Naming a variable

A variable name is just a substitute for a value

Creating a variable and seeing how it works

Declaration

Assignment

Click on Play!

Changing variables

Watching for a possible gotcha when using public variables

What is a method?

Using the term method instead of function

Method names are substitutes, too

Introducing the class

Inheritance

The Start(), Update(), and Awake() methods and the execution order

Components that communicate using dot syntax

What's with the dots?

Making decisions in code

Using the NOT operator to change the condition

Checking many conditions in an if statement

Using else if to make complex decisions

Making decisions based on user input

Paper and pencil are powerful tools

Summary

3. Getting into the Details of Variables

Writing C# statements properly

Understanding component properties in Unity's Inspector

Variables become component properties

Unity changes script and variable names slightly

Changing a property's value in the Inspector panel

Displaying public variables in the Inspector panel

Private variables

Naming your variables properly

Beginning variable names with lowercase

Using multiword variable names

Declaring a variable and its type

The most common built-in variable types

Assigning values while declaring a variable

Where you declare a variable is important

Variable scope – determining where a variable can be used

Summary

4. Getting into the Details of Methods

Using methods in a script

Naming methods properly

Beginning method names with an uppercase letter

Using multiword names for a method

Parentheses are part of the method's name

Defining a method the right way

The minimum requirements for defining a method

Understanding parentheses – why are they there?

Specifying a method's parameters

How many parameters can a method have?

Returning a value from a method

Returning the value

Example

Summary

5. Lists, Arrays, and Dictionaries

What is an array?

Declaring an array

Storing items in the List

Common operations with Lists

List versus arrays

Retrieving the data from the Array or List

Checking the size

ArrayList

Dictionaries

Accessing values

How do I know what's inside my Hashtable?

Summary

6. Loops

Introduction to loops

The foreach loop

The for loop

An example

The while loop

while versus for loops

Loops in statements

Modulo

Searching for data inside an array

Breaking the loop

Summary

7. Object, a Container with Variables and Methods

Working with objects is a class act

Few facts

Example

Instantiating an object

Bored yet?

Using methods with objects

Custom constructors

Overloading

Summary

8. Let's Make a Game! – From Idea to Development

Your first game – avoiding the trap of the never-ending concept

The idea

Game mechanics and core components

Breaking a complex idea into smaller parts

Jake on the mysterious planet – the feature list

Procedural level generation

An animated 2D character

Physics

Mouse and touch controls

Collectables and obstacles

Scoring

UI – the user interface

Target platform and resolution

Target screen resolution

Summary

9. Starting Your First Game

Setting up a new Unity project for our game

Backup

Keeping your project clean

Preparing the player prefab

Rigidbody2D

CircleCollider2D

PlayerController

User input

Jump

Animator

Running

Code

PlayerController.cs

Summary

10. Writing GameManager

Gameplay loops

Singleton class

Starting the game

Setting up input keys

Using triggers

Restarting the game

Setting up the player starting position

Code in this chapter

Summary

11. The Game Level

Generating levels versus designed levels

Creating a level chunk

Planning the LevelGenerator class

Writing LevelGenerator

Commenting on your code

Creating a copy of the level piece

Instantiating

Vector3

Testing LevelGenerator

Extending the level

The code used in this chapter

Summary

12. The User Interface

Introducting the Unity UI

Views

Constructing the view UI – how to keep things clean

Target screen resolution

Recognizing events

Buttons

A simple button

Image

The Button component

Interaction

The Button action

Hiding and showing the Canvas

Reference exceptions

GameView

Game Over

The code in this chapter

Summary

13. Collectables — What Next?

Collectables

The coin prefab

The Collectable class

High score and persisting data

The Update function and UI values

What next?

The code in this chapter

Summary

Index

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x Second Edition

Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x Second Edition

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: September 2013

Second edition: March 2016

Production reference: 1220316

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78528-759-6

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Credits

Author

Greg Lukosek

Terry Norton

Reviewer

Karl Henkel

Commissioning Editor

Ashwin Nair

Acquisition Editor

Vinay Argekar

Content Development Editor

Deepti Thore

Technical Editor

Mohita Vyas

Copy Editor

Vikrant Phadke

Project Coordinator

Shweta H Birwatkar

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Mariammal Chettiyar

Graphics

Disha Haria

Production Coordinator

Nilesh Mohite

Cover Work

Nilesh Mohite

About the Author

Greg Lukosek was born and raised in the Upper Silesia region of Poland. When he was about 8 years old, his amazing parents bought him and his brother a Commodore C64. That was when his love of programming started. He would spend hours writing simple basic code, and when he couldn't write it on the computer directly, he used a notepad.

Greg completed his mechanical engineering diploma at ZSTiO Meritum—Siemianowice Slaskie, Poland. He has learned all his programming skills through determination and hard work at home.

Greg met the love of his life, Kasia, in 2003, which changed his life forever. They both moved to London in search of adventure and decided to stay there.

He started work as a 3D artist and drifted away from programming for some years. Deep inside, he still felt the urge to come back to game programming. During his career as a 3D artist, he discovered Unity and adopted it for an interactive visualizations project. At that very moment, he started programming again.

His love for programming overcomes his love for 3D graphics. Greg ditched his 3D artist career and came back to writing code professionally. He is now doing what he really wanted to do since he was 8 years old—developing games.

These days, Greg lives in a little town called Sandy in the UK with Kasia and their son, Adam.

I want to thank my loving wife, Kasia, for all her love and support. Without her, writing this book would be simply impossible. I also want to thank my loving parents, Ela and Marek, and brother, Artur, for always believing in me and giving me exceptional support when I needed it.

Then, I want to thank our son, Adam, for being an awesome child. I hope you will also do what you love in your life.

About the Reviewer

Karl Henkel is a software developer with a strong background in Unity3d. He is the author of several popular editor extensions in the Unity Asset Store. In addition to game development, he has also worked extensively on visual programming software for musicians and VJs.

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Preface

Hello, future game developers! If you are reading this book, you are probably a curious person trying to learn more about a great game engine—Unity—and specifically, programming in C#. This book will take you on a learning journey. We will go through it together, beginning with the fundamentals of programming and finishing with a functional 2D platform game.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready, puts you at ease with writing scripts for Unity.

Chapter 2, Introducing the Building Blocks for Unity Scripts, helps you develop the skill of writing your first executable code.

Chapter 3, Getting into the Details of Variables, teaches you about creating and using C# variables, followed editing them in Unity Inspector.

Chapter 4, Getting into the Details of Methods, helps you learn more in detail about methods and how to use them to understand the importance of code blocks and the variables used in them.

Chapter 5, Lists, Arrays, and Dictionaries, introduces slightly more complex ideas of handling, lists, arrays, and dictionaries, which allow you to store many values at once.

Chapter 6, Conditions and Looping, helps you learn how to ask Unity to loop through a section of code and do something useful.

Chapter 7, Objects, a Containers with Variables and Methods, dives into the subjects of organizing your code and object-oriented programming.

Chapter 8, Let's Make a Game! – From Idea to Development, shows you how to turn an idea into a ready-to-code project and how to break down complex mechanics into pieces.

Chapter 9, Starting Your First Game, helps us transform an idea into a real Unity project.

Chapter 10, Writing GameManager, gets you acquainted with the basics of the singleton approach and also helps you work through the gameplay loop.

Chapter 11, The Game Level, helps you learn how to create reusable pieces of a level and also how to populate them to create the illusion of an endlessly running game.

Chapter 12, The User Interface, explains how to construct and implement the user interface in our game.

Chapter 13, Collectables — What Next?, focuses on collectables and storing some data between Unity sessions.

What you need for this book

You will definitely need a computer—PC, Mac, or any machine that supports Unity editor installation.

The complete Unity system requirements can be found at this link:

https://unity3d.com/unity/system-requirements

Who this book is for

The book is targeted at beginner-level Unity developers with no prior programming experience. If you are a Unity developer and wish to create games by learning how to write C# scripts or code, then this book is for you.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: Add the Collectable script to your coin prefab.

A block of code is set as follows:

using UnityEngine;

using System.Collections;

public class LeaveTrigger : MonoBehaviour {

  void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other) {

    LevelGenerator.instance.AddPiece();

    LevelGenerator.instance.RemoveOldestPiece();

  }

}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: When you are ready, click on Play in Unity.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <feedback@packtpub.com>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

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Downloading the example code

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