Buy new:
$42.48$42.48
FREE delivery:
Monday, Feb 6
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Mapple Shops
Buy used: $36.99
Other Sellers on Amazon
& FREE Shipping
90% positive over last 12 months
100% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Unity Game Development Essentials Paperback – October 1, 2009
| Price | New from | Used from |
- Kindle
$19.14 Read with Our Free App - Paperback
$42.4827 Used from $2.34 7 New from $37.48
There is a newer edition of this item:
$302.97
(13)
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Enhance your purchase
If you have ambitions to be a game developer this guide is a must. Covering all the fundamentals of the Unity game engine, it will help you understand the different elements of 3D game creation through practical projects.
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 JavaScript and master the Unity development environment with easy to follow stepwise tasks. The printed version of the book is in black and white, but a full color version of the images is available for download here. The eBook version, available from Packt, is in full color. If you're a designer or animator who wishes to take their first steps into game development, 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.
- Print length316 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPackt Publishing
- Publication dateOctober 1, 2009
- Dimensions7.5 x 0.72 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-10184719818X
- ISBN-13978-1847198181
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Will Goldstone
Will Goldstone is an Interactive designer and tutor based in the south west of England. Spending much of his time online, he focuses on web design and game development, specializing in online tutoring of many interactive disciplines. Having discovered Unity in its first version, he has been working to promote its 'game development for everyone' ethic ever since. He spends his free time on graphic design, writing loud music and playing Frisbee on the beach.
Product details
- Publisher : Packt Publishing; 1st edition (October 1, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 316 pages
- ISBN-10 : 184719818X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1847198181
- Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.5 x 0.72 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,626,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,820 in Game Programming
- #11,601 in Computer Science (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Pros:
Very clean, focused, writing which walks the reader through all the steps necessary to make a basic game in unity. UI, scripting, and editor usage are all covered and when coupled with the unity documentation leaves very little ambiguity.
Cons:
There is nothing in this book that you could not get out of the official documentation.
It is a short book that leverages unity in the simplest way possible and avoids covering the guts to the point that many people may feel lost at how to apply the concept in a broader way.
This book shows you the bare essentials, as the title implies, but it is still the responsibility of the reader to play and learn the details of the unity engine in order to leverage it for their own purposes. Making a non-FPS, side scroller, fixed camera, puzzle game, etc - this book will show you how the scripting language works, how to put objects in a scene, how to use the UI system: but it won't do much more than that.
Conclusion:
If you've tried to learn unity but got lost in all the documentation, didn't know where to start, or were just overwhelmed (even a little bit) this book is a great idea. It will ground you back by giving you a little focus and direction, as well as an ordered approach to using the unity tools.
That being said, if you've already ran through the documentation and tutorials and feel like you've got a pretty reasonable handle on things, this book won't really offer you much.
Goldstone has written an excellent book for making a 1st person game in Unity. The downloadable resources worked without issue in Unity 3. If anything, it was actually fun to work through each chapter to see what would come next (at one point I had a field full of coconuts rolling around which I didn't expect - fun from chapter 6!).
The only issue I had with the book was the manner in which the code was presented. It's a personal preference due in part to how I skim pages, but I learn better when code examples are shown in their entirety, or the new code is shown in snippets of the existing code. I got lost a couple of times when the new code was listed - For example, a bullet list overview of variables was listed before listing the code. Afterward, the code was listed for defining the variables. I then had to jump up a couple of paragraphs to see where this code was going to live (within the paragraph there were directions for creating a new JavaScript file - this was one of those important parts I had skipped over).
The above isn't a reason to not buy the book, just be prepared that if you're a skimmer like I am that it will take a little longer to work through the book.
It is very clear, to me at least, how much consideration the author had for us newbies with both the depth and breadth of exposure to Unity 3D gained by building that one project. In several instances, multiple approaches to solving problems were discussed (as there is never just one solution to anything.) Trade-offs in choosing a given solution over another were clearly explained. I don't know if this same level of knowledge could have been presented with multiple, smaller projects. The presentation of the knowledge is very carefully executed. No confusion, just a building desire to get coding and fire up Photoshop and Maya!!!
I found this book very approachable, easy to read, and packed with goodies to push me up the learning curve quickly, which is why I bought this plus six other books on Unity 3D in the first place. I am REALLY glad I didn't succumb to the negative reviews and found out for myself. If I had, I would have missed something very helpful.
Much of the book is covered in the documentation available online, but in a sensible and orderly and readable fashion. The writer uses clear, understandable examples in most cases.
As a beginner book, it is stellar. What it begs is for another book to be written which covers intermediate and advanced topics. For professional development, there are quite a few topics that merit coverage (Asset pipeline, dynamic loading, professional code structure, advanced UI, advanced animation, render targets, build pipeline, advanced optimization and profiling, asset server, etc.) These are still untouched topics that could fill a second volume.
Top reviews from other countries
The author takes you through every step of the way and you'll never feel lost. He also explains very well the basics of JavaScript for Unity so if you're new to programming you'll still be able to follow and understand.
The book covers First Person movement, terrain editing, models and animations importing, collisions, instantiation of objects, audio, particle effects, GUI and menu editing and how to release the game...basically all the essential to get you started with any project. The game you end up building is basically a first person shooter so if you're looking to build something alike you'll find all the main techniques here.
It's aimed at beginners so it doesn't cover any specifically advanced technique. If a second, more advanced version is released, i'm buying it immediately.
Great work!
|

