Unity 5.x Cookbook (Paperback)

Over 100 recipes exploring the new and exciting features of Unity 5 to spice up your Unity skillset

About This Book

• Built on the solid foundation of the popular Unity 4.x Cookbook, the recipes in this edition have been completely updated for Unity 5
• Features recipes for both 2D and 3D games
• Provides you with techniques for the new features of Unity 5, including the new UI system, 2D game development, new Standard Shaders, and the new Audio Mixer

Who This Book Is For

From beginners to advanced users, from artists to coders, this book is for you and everyone in your team!

Programmers can explore multimedia features, and multimedia developers can try their hand at scripting. Basic knowledge and understanding of the Unity platform, game design principles, and programming knowledge in C# is essential.

What You Will Learn

• Immerse players with great audio, utilizing Unity 5's audio features including the new Audio Mixer, ambient sound with Reverb Zones, dynamic soundtracks with Snapshots, and balanced audio via Ducking
• Create better materials with Unity's new, physically-based, Standard Shader
• Measure and control time, including pausing the game, displaying clocks and countdown timers, and even implementing “bullet time” effects
• Improve ambiance through the use of lights and effects such as reflection and light probes
• Create stylish user interfaces with the new UI system, including power-bars, clock displays, and an extensible inventory system
• Save and load text and media assets from local or remote sources, publish your game via Unity Cloud, and communicate with websites and their databases to create online scoreboards
• Discover advanced techniques, including the publisher-subscriber and state patterns, performance bottleneck identification, and methods to maximize game performance and frame rates
• Control 2D and 3D character movement, and use NavMeshAgents to write NPC and enemy behaviors such as seek, flee, flock, and waypoint path following

In Detail

Unity 5 is a flexible and intuitive multiplatform game engine that is becoming the industry's de facto standard. Learn to craft your own 2D and 3D computer games by working through core concepts such as animation, audio, shaders, GUI, lights, cameras, and scripting to create your own games with Unity 5.

Completely re-written to cover the new features of Unity 5, this book is a great resource for all Unity game developers, from those who have recently started using Unity right up to Unity professionals.

The first half of the book focuses on core concepts of 2D game design while the second half focuses on developing 3D game development skills. In the first half, you will discover the new GUI system, the new Audio Mixer, external files, and animating 2D characters in 2D game development. As you progress further, you will familiarize yourself with the new Standard Shaders, the Mecanim system, Cameras, and the new Lighting features to hone your skills towards building 3D games to perfection. Finally, you will learn non-player character control and explore Unity 5's extra features to enhance your 3D game development skills.

Style and approach

Each chapter first introduces the topic area and explains how the techniques covered can enhance your games. Every recipe provides step-by-step instructions, followed by an explanation of how it all works, and useful additional refinements or alternative approaches. Every required resource and C# script (fully commented) is available to download, enabling you to follow each recipe yourself.