Technical requirements to get the most out of this book

To complete the recipes in this book, there are some things that you will need.

For all chapters, you will need Unity 2023.1 or later, plus one of the following computer systems:

• Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)/GPU: DX10, DX11, and DX12-capable
• macOS GPU Metal-capable Intel or AMD
  • Mojave 10.14+ / Intel x64 with SSE2 instruction set support
  • Big Sur 11.0 / Apple Silicon M1 or later
• Linux Ubuntu 20.04 or Ubuntu 18.04 / Gnome desktop running on X11 / GPU: OpenGL 3.2+ or Vulkan-capable Nvidia or AMD

For each chapter, there is a folder in the book’s GitHub repository that contains the asset files you will need; you can find these at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Unity-2023-Cookbook-Fifth-Edition.

For recipes in some chapters, additional hardware/software will be helpful:

• Chapter 4, Playing and Manipulating Sounds

To edit and create audio files yourself, you can download and install the free Audacity application for your computer system (Windows/Mac/Linux). You can find it at https://www.audacityteam.org/download/.

• Chapter 5, Textures, Materials, and 3D Objects

To work with 3D objects in the Blender editor, you can download it for free at www.blender.org.

• Chapter 10, Saving and Loading Data
  • Since some of the recipes in this chapter make use of web servers and a database, for those recipes, you will require either the PHP 8 language (which comes with its own web server and SQLite database features) or an AMP package.
  • If you are installing the PHP language, refer to the installation guide and download links:
    • https://www.php.net/manual/en/install.php
    • https://www.php.net/downloads
  • If you do want to install a web server and database server application, a great choice is XAMPP. It is a free, cross-platform collection of everything you need to set up a database and web server on your local computer. The download page also contains FAQs and installation instructions for Windows, Mac, and Linux: https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html.
• Chapter 15, Particle Systems and Other Visual Effects

If you wish to create your own image files, you will also need an image editor, such as Adobe Photoshop, which can be found at www.adobe.com, or GIMP, which is a free alternative and can be found at www.gimp.org/.

• Chapter 16, Mobile Games and Apps
  • If developing for Android, you’ll need an Android mobile device.
  • If developing for Apple iOS, you’ll need:
    • An Apple iOS mobile device.
    • A free Apple ID, which you can create on an Apple device or at https://appleid.apple.com/.
    • A Mac computer with the free Xcode program editor installed.
    • Note: If you don’t have access to a Mac computer and Xcode, another way to develop for Apple iOS is to use Unity’s Cloud Build services. Learn more about Cloud Build for iOS at https://docs.unity3d.com/2020.1/Documentation/Manual/UnityCloudBuildiOS.html.
• Chapter 17, Augmented Reality (AR)

To get the most from this chapter’s recipes, you will need an AR device. For this, you can use a dedicated device such as an AR headset, or you can use smartphone apps to begin experiencing AR.

• Chapter 18, Virtual Reality (VR)

You will need a device to view VR apps. For this, you can use a dedicated device, such as a VR headset like the Meta Quest 1/2/3, Samsung Gear VR, or Apple Vision Pro. If you wish to use a smartphone for VR projects, there are many low-cost devices to choose from, such as Google Cardboard: https://developers.google.com/cardboard.

Download the example code files

You’ll find the chapter figures, recipe assets, and completed Unity projects for each chapter at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Unity-2023-Cookbook-Fifth-Edition.

You can either download these files as ZIP archives or use free Git software to download (clone) these files. These GitHub repositories will be updated with any improvements.

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://packt.link/gbp/9781805123026.

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. Here is an example: “The playerInventoryDisplay variable is a reference to an instance object of the PlayerInventoryDisplay class.”

A block of code is set as follows:

public class PlayerInventoryDisplay : MonoBehaviour {
   public Text starText;
   public void OnChangeStarTotal(int numStars) {
         string starMessage = "total stars = " + numStars;
         starText.text = starMessage;
   }
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold, like this:

public class PlayerInventoryDisplay : MonoBehaviour {
   public Text starText;
   public void OnChangeStarTotal(int numStars) {
         string starMessage = "total stars = " + numStars;
         starText.text = starMessage;
   }
}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this: “In the Inspector panel, set the font of Text-carrying-star to Xolonium-Bold, and set its color to yellow.”

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.