Displaying a "Hello World" UI text message

The first traditional problem to be solved with a new computing technology is to display the Hello World message. In this recipe, you'll learn to create a simple UI Text object with this message, in large white text with a selected font, in the center of the screen:

Getting ready

For this recipe, we have prepared the font that you need in a folder named Fonts in the 01_01 folder.

How to do it...

To display a Hello World text message, follow these steps:

1. Create a new Unity 2D project.
2. Import the provided Fonts folder.
3. In the Hierarchy panel, add a UI | Text GameObject to the scene—choose menu: GameObject | UI | Text. Name this GameObject Text-hello.

Using the Create menu : Alternatively, use the Create menu immediately below the Hierarchy tab, choosing menu: Create | UI | Text.

4. Ensure that your new Text-hello GameObject is selected in the Hierarchy panel.
   Now, in the Inspector, ensure the following properties are set:
   • Text set to read Hello World
   • Font set to Xolonium-Bold
   • Font size as per your requirements (large—this depends on your screen—try 50 or 100)
   • Alignment set to horizontal and vertical center
   • Horizontal and Vertical Overflow set to Overflow
   • Color set to white

The following screenshot shows the Inspector panel with these settings:

5. In the Rect Transform, click on the Anchor Presets square icon, which should result in several rows and columns of preset position squares appearing. Hold down Shift+Alt and click on the center one (middlerow and center column).

The screenshot of the Rect Transform in the Introduction highlights the middle-center preset needed for this recipe.

6. Your Hello World text will now appear, centered nicely in the Game panel.

How it works...

You have added a new Text-hello GameObject to a scene. A parent Canvas and UI EventSystem will also have been automatically created.

You set the text content and presentation properties and used the Rect Transform anchor presets to ensure that whatever way the screen is resized, the text will stay horizontally and vertically centered.

There's more...

Here are some more details you don't want to miss.

Styling substrings with Rich Text

Each separate UI Text component can have its own color, size, boldness styling, and so on. However, if you wish to quickly add some highlighting style to part of a string to be displayed to the user, the following are examples of some of the HTML-style markups that are available without the need to create separate UI Text objects:

• Embolden text with the "b" markup: I am <b>bold</b>
• Italicize text with the "i" markup: I am <i>italic</i>
• Set the text color with hex values or a color name: I am <color=green>green text </color>, but I am <color=#FF0000>red</color>

Learn more from the Unity online manual's Rich Text page at http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/StyledText.html.