Chapter 1, Downloading and Installing Unity, gives an overview of game engines, followed by a deep look at Unity's beginnings, where the game engine is today, and how it progressed to being one of the top game engines in use today. Unity's capabilities and features are highlighted, and instructions are provided for downloading and installing it.
Chapter 2, The Unity Interface, examines Unity's primary views, windows, layouts, and the toolbar. The interface components covered in this chapter are the ones used most often.
Chapter 3, Designing the Game, covers the design of the book's featured game—Cucumber Beetle. The game design includes gameplay, game mechanics, the player character, the non-player characters, game assets, animations, and more. Screen mock-ups and narratives are used to document the game's design.
Chapter 4, Creating Our Terrain, features the creation and customization of game terrain. Shaping tools are introduced, and water and vegetation features are added to the game environment.
Chapter 5, Lights, Cameras, and Shadows, explores cameras and lighting in Unity. The chapter starts with a look at cameras to include perspectives, frustums, and Skyboxes. The use of multiple cameras to include mini-maps is covered. Different types of lighting, reflection probes, and shadows are also explored.
Chapter 6, Creating and Importing 3D Objects for Our Game, focuses on making the game environment more robust, and trees and other objects are added to the game scene. This chapter also examines the steps necessary to create 3D objects using Unity's native modeling tools. Assets are added to the game from the Unity Asset Store and from 3D assets prepared specifically for the Cucumber Beetle game.
Chapter 7, Implementing Our Player Character, incorporates the game's player character—the Cucumber Man. The character is imported, and the controls and animations are reviewed. By the end of the chapter, the game will be ready for testing in the game mode.
Chapter 8, Implementing Our Non-Player Characters, explains the non-player characters—the Cucumber Beetles. The beetles' 11 animations are examined and changes are made to the non-player character's animation controller. In addition, scripts will be written to control the non-player characters. Also, in this chapter, cucumber patches, cucumbers, and cherries are added to the game world.
Chapter 9, Adding a Heads-Up Display, covers the design and development of, and how to incorporate, a Heads-Up Display (HUD) in the game. A canvas is used to create text and graphics that provide visual indicators of points, health, and additional information to help the player maintain situational awareness during game play. A mini-map is also implemented.
Chapter 10, Scripting Our Points System, looks at the design, scripting, and implementation of the game's point system. This includes providing frame-by-frame updates to key onscreen components of the game's HUD.
Chapter 11, Scripting Victory and Defeat, dives into the design and scripting of the game's victory and defeat conditions. Scripts will be updated to manage the Cucumber Man's health, provide frame-by-frame onscreen updates, and ensure that a player life is lost when the health runs out. Character lives and respawning are also covered.
Chapter 12, Adding Audio and Visual Effects to Our Game, demonstrates the plan and implementation of audio and visual effects in the game to help enhance overall game play. Specifically, audio is added to the key events in the combat system and several special effects, using Unity's particle system, are added to the game.
Chapter 13, Optimizing Our Game for Deployment, discusses optimization and deployment. The steps required to diagnose Unity games for performance problems are explored, in addition to how to optimize scripts and graphic rendering. The Unity build process is explained along with how to create a standalone player and how to deploy games for multiple platforms.
Chapter 14, Virtual Reality, examines Unity's capabilities with regard to virtual reality. An introduction to Virtual Reality is provided, including the hardware requirements. you will learn how to create a Virtual Reality game using the Unity game engine.
