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Will Goldstone

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials 2nd ed. Edition

by Will Goldstone (Author)

4.4 116 ratings

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This book follows an informal, demystifying approach to the world of game development with the Unity game engine. With no prior knowledge of game development or 3D required, you will learn from scratch, taking each concept at a time working up to a full 3D mini-game. You'll learn scripting with C# or JavaScript and master the Unity development environment with easy-to-follow stepwise tasks. If you're a designer or animator who wishes to take their first steps into game development or prototyping, or if you've simply spent many hours sitting in front of video games, with ideas bubbling away in the back of your mind, Unity and this book should be your starting point. No prior knowledge of game production is required, inviting you to simply bring with you a passion for making great games.

ISBN-10

1849691444
ISBN-13

978-1849691444
Edition

2nd ed.
Publisher

Packt Publishing
Publication date

December 20, 2011
Language

English
Dimensions

7.5 x 1.1 x 9.25 inches
Print length

488 pages
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About the Author

Will Goldstone

Will Goldstone is a longstanding member of the Unity community and works for Unity Technologies as a Technical Support Associate, handling educational content and developer support. With an MA in Creative Education, and many years experience as a lecturer in higher education, Will wrote the first ever Unity book, the original Unity Game Development Essentials, and also created the first ever video tutorials for the package. Through his sites unity3dstudent.com and learnunity3d.com Will helps to introduce new users to the growing community of developers discovering Unity every day.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Packt Publishing; 2nd ed. edition (December 20, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 488 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1849691444
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1849691444
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.83 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1.1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,511,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #797 in C# Programming (Books)
- #1,001 in Video Game Art (Books)
- #1,133 in JavaScript Programming (Books)

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4.4 116 ratings

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Will Goldstone

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Hi everyone! my name is Will and I work for Unity Technologies, the good people that bring you the Unity game engine. I wound up working here as I used to be a university tutor, and I was really interested in videogames and how best to teach young people to make them. Back in the days of Macromedia Director we were teaching how to make shockwave games, and soon realised how painful this was for our students, so switched to using Unity in version 1.5, and my fascination with it as a tool for people who want to become game developers began there.

Since being asked to speak at the company's conference, Unite 2010, I was then interviewed for a position, working on education, developer relations, and other marketing related initiatives. These days I run the Online Content Team, working on the Learn section of the official Unity site, producing demos and working with our engineering team to bring you a better Unity.

I have written two books on Unity to date - Unity Game Development Essentials (2009) and the new edition, a major rewrite, Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials. I hope you enjoy reading them and if you need support, you can get it at unitybook.net. If you have any problems with Unity, feel free to get in touch via will at unity3d dot com.

Outside of Unity related stuff I enjoying playing guitar, bass and drums, and making loud Refused-esque noises.

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cybereality

Great Intro to Unity 3. Nice Functional Demo Created by the End.

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2014

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I’ve been keeping tabs on Unity since back when it was a Mac only thing, and it sure has come a long way over the years. Even though I have downloaded and toyed with the program before, I hadn’t took the time to read a proper book on the engine. Now that I am having to work with Unity more for the job, I figured it was a good time to brush up on some knowledge. Although there are tons of Unity books out there, Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials seemed to have good reviews, and the price was right (only $16 for the Kindle e-book).

The book basically walks you through creating a dirt simple “game”, that you build up throughout the reading. Only the first chapter has a standalone demo to get your feet wet, the rest of the book is all one project. I found this format to work nicely, as you can concentrate on one aspect of the game design during each chapter but feel more accomplished as you built up the game. It covers creating a terrain, setting up a player controller, importing models, creating a GUI, collision detection, basic scripting to trigger events, and basically everything you would need for a simple demo. Although the game you build will not win any awards, it is functional and teaches some fundamental concepts.

What I will say is that the author did a bang-up job with the source code listings. There are tons of code snippets throughout the book and I found only one, yes one, mistake out of the whole thing. And, even then, it was a minor variable misnaming. Nothing major. This was a refreshing surprise, as many programming books are riddled with errors and non-compiling code. Bravo for that.

In general, though, I found this to be a very approachable book, even for a beginner. Of course, development experience doesn’t hurt, but it’s really not required for this text. The author clearly explains everything that is taught in the book and only at the end is some code glossed over (since it was already covered). I also liked how all the code is shown in both C# and Javascript, so the choice of language is up to the reader. Very nice.

The greatest part, I would say, is how far you can go with Unity itself in little time. I read this book in just one week and feel like I have covered more ground than I have with other engines spending *far* more time learning. So that just goes to show how solid the engine is. It’s not so much about the graphics of the engine, as it doesn’t really look any better than anything else out there. However the editor is very functional and very efficient. Especially nice is how you can create references to objects in the editor, greatly simplifying communication between different components. Overall I found it to be a great learning experience.

If you are just starting out with game development then this book is a great resource for learning the Unity engine. If you are already a developer but not familiar with Unity, this is also a great text. Granted, its not a very advanced book, so if you are already using Unity you can probably pass on it. That said, the book was very affordable and well worth the money in my opinion.

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Matthew W. Gudenius

THIS is the first book you should get for starting in Unity

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2013

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I'm not a programming noob, I've been doing it for 20 years and have a BS in Comp. Sci, as well as experience with various coding languages.

However, that experience has mostly not been in game design/development, and it always helps to have a guide for any new tool... just like I also definitely recommend books and tutorials for learning the various art tools you will also need for game development; I use 3DS Max and Blender. No way I could just "jump right in" and start using those, and I wouldn't recommend trying to just jump right in and start using Unity, either.

In that regard, this book is perfect. The language, the pacing, the examples, and the modular method of introducing the tools and workflow by gradually building the different parts of a game = perfect for a novice. Unfortunately, there are some chapters that try to introduce coding/scripting concepts in general; I cannot speak to whether those parts are easy enough to understand for someone who has no programming experience or training. I get the impression they would still be confusing for a complete rookie, whereas to me it just bogged things down; I didn't want to skip entire segments, because I still wanted to know specifically how the scripting workflow works... but being beat over the head with bare-basics in the process made it very slow-going, and I ended up trying to skim as much as possible to just grab the bits I needed (basically, I looked for the code boxes and ignored the analysis/explanation of it all)

That is my only complaint, but it's a small one -- might be very useful to someone who has never coded, but I have a feeling the basic concepts of scripting and programming in general will be quite a brain-teaser to someone who knows nothing about it... maybe not. I guess it depends on how well your brain grasps the logic and systematic nature of coding.

But if you really want to jump headfirst into Unity as quickly as possible, BUY THIS BOOK* Then you can supplement it with some others (I bought "3.x Game Development By Example" as well, and it's also good and very similar, but this one is better laid-out and more thorough in its ability to give you an underlying grasp of the workflow and functionality.)

* Unity 4.x is different than 3.x, and has some significant changes. However, most of the changes in the interface and workflow are pretty minor -- I was able to figure things out well enough, other than the fact that Particles are done pretty differently now...

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Heavy Nurgle

Good introduction to Unity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2012

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This book is clearly written and provides examples in both JavaScript and C# (particularly good if you want to work in C#, as many other resources are based on JavaScript). It provides an excellent introduction to Unity 3.x, and takes you through the process of creating a simple game using provided assets.

The cool thing about Will's book is that it introduces most of the essential features of Unity, so if you work through it all, you will have some idea about how scripts, components, particle effects, animations etc. work in Unity, and how it all fits together. The book tells you how to build a game and deploy it on the web, so from starting with no knowledge of scripting I was able to have the tutorial game up and running within a week or two. This is a big confidence boost and by the end you'll be itching to start your own projects.

It is also excellent the way Will has provided a supporting website and patches over things which have been changed since the publication of the book, such as the particle system: for this he provides a short video explaining how to follow that part of the book with the new system. He also addresses errata and readers can post a question if they get stuck with something. Brilliant.

My only criticism is this: Although the book covers enough scripting for a text aimed mainly at beginners, unfortunately I am finding it does not have much lasting value as a reference. The way the scripts are described piece by piece over several pages makes it hard to quickly go back and see how something was done. Perhaps an appendix with the full commented scripts would have been useful, but to be honest it is probably beyond the scope of the book.

Overall, I would not hesitate to recommend this book for anyone taking their first steps in Unity, though hopefully in the future we will see another book which is more of a scripting reference and covers some more advanced aspects of scripting.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Great start for new Unity Developers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2012

Verified Purchase

I purchased this book after reading over reviews, which I rarely do. Usually I just look at a book a think "yeah that looks OK". After just finishing a 3 year degree in Computer Games Development I am still eager to learn from the experts and make my way into the industry. This has to be one of the best books to start with.

The author allows the reader to choose a coding language from the start (Either C# or Javascript) but also gives the code in both languages so the reader can compare the two and decide for themselves. It is informative, easy to read and easy to implement the tutorials.

It's all you need from a book to get your games development career started!

My one drawback is that it would have been better for the reader to include the full Unity documentation (classes/methods etc) as a PDF/.doc file within the Book assets download rather than having to search it on the net.

Betty Boo

Unity für Anfänger

Reviewed in Germany on December 16, 2012

Verified Purchase

Vorweg einige Worte zu Unity. Es handelt sich um eine Spielengine, die heute bereits in zahlreichen kommerziellen Spielen zum Einsatz kommt und daher als Standard gelten darf. Man kann damit relativ einfach Spiele programmieren, auch ohne tiefergehende Informatikkenntnisse zu haben. Außerdem kann man Objekte importieren, die mit speziellen 3D-Anwendungen wie z.B. „Maya“ oder „Blender“ erstellt wurden, um so Zugang zu besseren Animationen zu bekommen. Unity erhält man entweder als kostenpflichtige Version oder als - funktional eingeschränkte, für Anfänger jedoch ausreichende - Freeware, die jeweils von der Webseite von Unity 3D heruntergeladen werden können.
Das Programm an sich ist relativ einfach, bietet aber viele und verschiedene Möglichkeiten und Werkzeuge, die Einsteiger leicht überfordern können. An dieser Stelle kommt das Buch ins Spiel, zu dem es im Markt auch nur wenige Alternativen gibt.
In leicht verständlichem Englisch geschrieben, basiert das Buch auf der Version 3.x von Unity (seit kurzem gibt es Unity in der Version 4. Ich habe aber keine großen Unterschiede feststellen können, von daher kann das Buch weiterhin genutzt werden). Es untergliedert sich in mehrere Teile, wobei anfangs die Grundlagen – jeweils mit praktischen Übungen verbunden - vorgestellt werden und anschließend gemeinsam mit dem Leser ein Spiel in allen seinen Einzelschritten erstellt wird. Das Buch versucht dabei, sowohl die Unity-Tools als auch die Programmierseite in C# und Java zu erklären.
Die Einführung und die erste Übung haben mir sehr gefallen. Man lernt schnell die grundlegende Logik von Unity, was mich sehr motiviert hat.
Was mir dagegen nicht gefällt ist, dass sich das Buch dann vor Allem auf das Spiel konzentriert, verbunden mit jeweils zu langen Erklärungen mehrerer Varianten desselben Inhalts. Dem ständigen Wechsel zwischen C# und Java konnte ich bald nur noch schwer folgen - deswegen habe ich das Buch irgendwann zur Seite gelegt und begonnen, andere Spiele im Selbststudium zu programmieren.
Das vorletzte Kapitel finde ich dagegen wieder sehr hilfreich, da allgemeine Tipps gegeben werden, wie man Unity-Spiele für verschiedene Plattformen (Web-basiert, standalone auf Mac oder PC oder auch als OSX-App) erstellt.

Einerseits hat mir das Buch also geholfen, das Programm und seine Begriffe zu verstehen. Andererseits hätte ich nicht viel gelernt, wenn ich nur das vorgestellte Spiel nachprogrammiert hätte. Ich bereue es daher nicht, dass das Buch gekauft zu haben. Uneingeschränkt empfehlen kann ich es aber nicht.

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O. Hancox

An excellent intro for unity, c# and Js

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2012

Verified Purchase

This is a perfect starting point for anyone looking to learn not only Unity, but also C#, JavaScript, or both! It is very detailed and the game you build throughout the book puts the covered topics into practice. It is very much a 'learn by doing' book. Not a drab, theory heavy book at all. The dual coverage of c# and Js is an extremely useful feature for comparison of the two languages and expanding the books user base. There is an active errata page and the author/publisher does reply to contact. Unfortunately this book just missed Unity 4's release, so is based on an earlier 3.x version(s), but that's not really an issue as the topics remain relavent! I couldn't recommend this more. (I should also probably clarify on my earlier comment about this book being for someone looking to learn c# or Js for Unity before somebody moans. This is definitely true, I myself learned all my initial c# here as the basics like variables etc. are explained, so breathe a sigh of relief beginners! It isn't a dedicated programming book however, nothing advanced to be found here). For more detailed c# I recommend head first c#, or the 900 odd page Beginning visual c# 2012 programming.

Janet Gibbs

What a great introduction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2012

Verified Purchase

After days of floundering around the Unity website trying to find the really basic getting started stuff that would allow me to follow their tutorials, someone pointed me to this great book. Working through a project from absolutely nowhere (which is where I was starting from), it gives you just as much as you need at each step, till before you know it you've got the beginnings of a game. It incorporates lots of prefab stuff, so you can get an interesting looking environment without having to know all the more complicated stuff of designing assets and textures. I'm not yet half-way through, but I'm really enjoying this book, and the project it walks you through. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to get started with Unity.

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