The project setup

At this point, I assume you have a fresh installation of Unity and have started it. You can perform the following steps:

1. With Unity started, navigate to File | New Project.
2. Select a project location of your choice somewhere on your hard drive and ensure that you have Setup defaults for set to 3D.
3. Once completed, click on Create. Here, if you see the Welcome to Unity pop up, feel free to close it as we won't be using it.

Level design 101 – planning

Now just because we are going to be diving straight into Unity, I feel it's important to talk a little more about how level design is done in the gaming industry. While you may think a level designer will just jump into the editor and start playing, the truth is you normally would need to do a ton of planning ahead of time before you even open up your tool.

Generally, a level design begins with an idea. This can come from anything; maybe you saw a really cool building, or a photo on the Internet gave you a certain...