A scene is one of the several types of files (also known as assets) in our project. A “scene” can be used for different things according to the type of project, but the most common use case is to separate your game into whole sections, the most common ones being the following:

• Main menu
• Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, etc.
• Victory screen and lose screen
• Splash screen and loading screen

In this section, we will cover the following concepts related to scenes:

• The purpose of a scene
• The Scene View
• Adding our first GameObject to the scene
• Navigating the Scene View
• Manipulating GameObjects

So, let’s take a look at each of these concepts.

The purpose of a scene

The idea of separating your game into scenes is so that Unity can process and load just the data needed for the scene. Let’s say you are in the main menu; in such a case, you will have only the textures...

We talked about our project being composed of assets (the project’s files), and that a scene (which is a specific type of asset) is composed of GameObjects; so, how can we create an object? Through a composition of components.

In this section, we will cover the following concepts related to components:

• Understanding components
• Manipulating components

Let’s start by discussing what a component is.

Understanding components

A component is one of several pieces that make up a GameObject; each one is in charge of different features of the object. There are several components that Unity already includes that solve different tasks, such as playing a sound, rendering a mesh, applying physics, and so on; however, even though Unity has a large number of components, we will eventually need to create custom components sooner or later.

In the next image you can see what Unity shows us when we select a GameObject...

Some complex objects may need to be separated into sub-objects, each one with its own components. Those sub-objects need to be somehow attached to the main object and work together to create the necessary object behavior.

In this section, we will cover the following concepts related to objects:

• Parenting of objects
• Possible uses

Let’s start by discovering how to create a parent-child relationship between objects.

Parenting of objects

Parenting consists of making an object the child of another, meaning that those objects will be related to each other. One type of relationship that happens is a Transform relationship, meaning that a child object will be affected by the parent’s Transform. In simple terms, the child object will follow the parent, as if it is attached to it. For example, imagine a player with a hat on their head. The hat can be a child of the player’s head, making the hat follow the head while...

In the previous example, we created lots of copies of our enemy around the scene, but in doing so, we have created a new problem. Let’s imagine we need to change our enemy and add a Rigidbody component to it, but because we have several copies of the same object, we need to take them one by one and add the same component to all of them. Maybe later, we will need to change the mass of each enemy, so again, we need to go over each one of the enemies and make the change, and here we can start to see a pattern. One solution could be to select all the enemies using the Ctrl key (Command on a Mac) and modify all of them at once, but that solution won’t be of any use if we have enemy copies in other scenes. So, here is where Prefabs come in.

In this section, we will cover the following concepts related to Prefabs:

• Creating Prefabs
• Prefab-instance relationship
• Prefab variants

Let’s start by discussing how to create and use Prefabs...

As in any other program, we need to save our progress. The difference here is that we don’t have just one giant file with all the project assets, but several files for each asset.

Let’s start saving our progress by saving the scene, which is pretty straightforward. We can simply go to File | Save or press Ctrl + S (Command + S on a Mac). The first time we save our scene, a window will ask us where we want to save our file, and you can save it wherever you want inside the Assets folder of our project, but never outside that folder; otherwise, Unity will not be capable of finding it as an asset in the project. That will generate a new asset in the project window: a scene file. In the following screenshot you can see how I saved the scene, naming it test, and now it shows up in the Project panel:

Figure 2.37: Scene files

We can create a folder to save our scene in the save dialog, or, if you already saved the scene, you can create...

In this chapter, we saw a quick introduction to essential Unity concepts. We reviewed the basic Unity windows and how we can use all of them to edit a full scene, from navigating it, then creating premade objects (Prefabs), to manipulating them to create our own types of objects using GameObjects and components. We also discussed how to use the Hierarchy window to parent GameObjects to create complex object Hierarchies, as well as creating Prefabs to reutilize and manipulate large amounts of the same type of objects. Finally, we discussed how we can save our progress.

In the next chapter, we will learn different tools like the Terrain system and ProBuilder to create the first prototype of our game’s level. This prototype will serve as a preview of where our scene will be headed, testing some ideas before going into full production.