Fr

ee

Unity is an exciting and popular engine in the game

industry. Throughout this book, you'll learn how to use
Unity by making four fun game projects, from shooters

What you will learn from this book

and platformers to exploration and adventure games.

Understand core Unity concepts, such as

game objects, components, and scenes

Unity 5.x By Example is an easy-to-follow guide to

Learn level design techniques for building

immersive and interesting worlds

using Unity in a practical context, step by step, by making

real-world game projects. Even if you have no previous
experience of Unity, this book will help you understand
the toolset in depth. You'll learn how to create a
time-critical collection game, a twin-stick space shooter,
a platformer, and an action-fest game with intelligent
enemies. Starting from the ground up and moving toward
an intermediate level, this book will help you establish a
strong foundation in making games with Unity 5.

Who this book is written for

The ideal target audience for this book is game
developers. They need not have previous experience
game development with Unity.

Use the toolset creatively to build games of

different themes and styles
Learn to handle player controls and
input functionality

P U B L I S H I N G

E x p e r i e n c e

D i s t i l l e d

Dive into the process of working with terrains

and world-creation tools

Unity 5.x By Example

Import custom content into Unity from

third-party tools, such as Maya and Blender
Get to grips with making both 2D and
3D games

$ 49.99 US
31.99 UK

community experience distilled

pl

C o m m u n i t y

Alan Thorn

with Unity since this book will cover all the basics of

Learn to make functional games with

C# scripting

Unity 5.x By Example

Unity 5.x By Example

Sa
m

An example-based practical guide to get you up and running

with Unity 5.x

Prices do not include

local sales tax or VAT
where applicable

Visit www.PacktPub.com for books, eBooks,

code, downloads, and PacktLib.

Alan Thorn

In this package, you will find:

The author biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 1 'The Coin Collection Game
Part 1'
A synopsis of the books content
More information on Unity 5.x By Example

About the Author

Alan Thorn is an award-winning author, mathematician, and independent video

game developer based in London, UK. He is the founder of the game development
studio, Wax Lyrical Games, and the creator of the critically acclaimed PC adventure
game, Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok. Alan works freelance for some of the
world's largest entertainment corporations. He has lectured on game development at
some of the most prestigious institutions in Europe and written nine books on games
programming, including the highly popular Teach Yourself Games Programming,
Game Engine Design and Implementation, and UDK Game Development. Some of Alan's
other interests include computing, mathematics, graphics, and philosophy. More
information about his company, Wax Lyrical Games, can be found at http://www.
waxlyricalgames.com/.

Preface
Video games are a cultural phenomenon that has captivated, entertained, and moved
billions of people worldwide over the past fifty years. As an industry and movement,
video games are an exciting place to be, both for the developer and the artist. In
these roles your vision, ideas, and work can influence wide audiences, shaping
and changing generation after generation in an unprecedented way. In more recent
times, there's been a general movement towards democratizing game development,
making the development process simpler, smoother and more accessible to a wider
audience, including developers perhaps working from home on a very limited
budget. Instrumental in this movement is the Unity engine, which forms the main
subject of this book. The Unity engine is a computer program that works with your
existing asset pipeline (such as 3D modeling software) and is intended for compiling
video games that work seamlessly across multiple platforms and devices, including
Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Using Unity, developers
import ready-made assets (such as music, textures, and 3D models), and assemble
them into a coherent whole, forming a game world that works by a unified logic.
Unity is an amazing program. The latest version is free for most people to download
and use, and it works well with many other programs, including free software such
as GIMP and Blender. This book focuses on the Unity engine and how it can be used
in a practical context for making playable and fun games. No prior knowledge of
Unity is expected, although some knowledge of programming and scripting (such as
JavaScript, ActionScript, C, C++, Java, or C#) would be beneficial. Let's now take a
look at what this book covers, on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Preface

What this book covers

This book explores how to use the Unity engine in a hands-on, practical way by
looking at concrete examples that result in real-world playable games. Specifically, it
focuses on the implementation of four distinct projects divided across eight chapters,
two chapters per project. Let's take a look at what these projects are:
Chapter 1, The Coin Collection Game Part 1, begins our journey into Unity by creating
a first-person collection game. This is a great starting point if you're totally new to
Unity and are ready to create your first game.
Chapter 2, Project A the Collection Game Continued, continues from the previous
chapter and completes the first project. It assumes that you have completed the first
chapter and brings a closure to our project, leading neatly to the next chapter.
Chapter 3, Project B the Space Shooter, marks the beginning of our second project,
focusing on the creation of a space shooter game. Here, we'll create a project in which
the player must shoot the oncoming enemies.
Chapter 4, Continuing the Space Shooter, completes the space shooter project, taking the
project from its state in the previous chapter and adding final touches to it.
Chapter 5, Project C a 2D Adventure, enters the world of 2D and UI functionality.
Here, we'll explore Unity's wide range of 2D features in making a side-view
platformer game that relies on 2D physics.
Chapter 6, Continuing the 2D Adventure, completes the 2D adventure game project that
was started in the previous chapter, adding the final touches and linking it together
with the overarching game logic. This is a great place to see how multiple parts and
facets of a game come together to form a whole.
Chapter 7, Project D Intelligent Enemies, focuses on artificial intelligence and creating
enemies that can patrol, chase, and attack the player's character at relevant times,
while cleverly navigating their way around the level.
Chapter 8, Continuing with Intelligent Enemies, brings closure to the AI project started
in the previous chapter, as well as to the book content as a whole. Here, we'll see
how to use finite-state machines to achieve powerful intelligence functionality that'll
help us in a variety of scenarios.

The Coin Collection

Game Part 1
This chapter starts the first project on our list, which will be a fun collection game.
Remember, it doesn't matter if you've never used Unity before. We'll go through
everything necessary step by step. By the end of the next chapter, you'll have pieced
together a simple, but complete and functional, game. This is an important thing to
achieve because you'll get familiar with a start-to-end game development workflow.
This chapter will demonstrate the following topics:

Game design

Projects and folders

Asset importing and configuration

Level design

Game objects

Hierarchies

[1]

The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Game design
Let's make a coin collection game. Here, the player should control a character in the
first-person mode, and he must wander the level, collecting all coins before a time
limit runs out. If the timer runs out, the game is lost. On the other hand, if all coins
are collected before the timer expires, the game is won. The first-person controls will
use the default WASD keyboard setup, where W moves forward, A and S move left
and right, and D walks backward. Head movement is controlled using the mouse,
and coins are collected by simply walking into them. See Figure 1.1, featuring the coin
collection game in action in the Unity Editor. The great benefit in making this game is
that it demonstrates all the core Unity features together, and we don't need to rely on
any external software to make assets, such as textures, meshes, and materials.

Figure 1.1: Preparing for a coin collection game (the completed game)

The completed CollectionGame project, as discussed in this

chapter and the next, can be found in the book companion files
in the Chapter01/CollectionGame folder.

[2]

Chapter 1

Getting started Unity and projects

Every time you want to make a new Unity game, including coin collection games,
you'll need to create New Project. Generally speaking, Unity uses the term Project to
mean a Game. There are two main ways to make a new project, and it really doesn't
matter which one you choose because both end up in the same place. If you're
already in the Unity interface, looking at an existing scene or level, you can select
File | New Project from the application menu. See Figure 1.2. It may ask if you want
to save changes to the currently opened project and you should choose either Yes
or No, depending on what you need. After selecting the New Project option, Unity
leads you to the project creation wizard:

Figure 1.2: Creating a new project via the main menu

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Alternatively, if you've just started Unity for the first time, you'll probably begin
at the welcome dialog. See Figure 1.3. From here, you can access the new project
creation wizard by choosing the NEW PROJECT button:

Figure 1.3: The Unity welcome screen

On reaching the NEW PROJECT creation wizard, Unity can generate a new project
for you on the basis of some basic settings. Simply fill in the name of your project
(such as CollectionGame), and select a folder on your computer to contain the
project files that will be generated automatically. Finally, click on the 3D button to
indicate that we're going to create a 3D game, as opposed to 2D, and then click on
the Create project button to complete the project generation process. See Figure 1.4:

Figure 1.4: Creating a new project

[4]

Chapter 1

Projects and project folders

Unity has now created a blank, new, and empty project. This represents the starting
point for any game development project and is the place where development begins.
The newly created project contains nothing initially: no meshes, textures, or any
other Assets. You can confirm this by simply checking the Project panel area at
the bottom of the editor interface. This panel displays the complete contents of the
project folder, which corresponds to an actual folder on your local drive created
earlier by the project wizard. This folder should be empty. See Figure 1.5. This panel
will later be populated with more items, all of which we can use to build a game.

Figure 1.5: The Unity project panel docked at the bottom of the interface

[5]

The Coin Collection Game Part 1

If your interface looks radically different from Figure 1.5, in terms of its
layout and arrangement, then you can reset the UI layout to its defaults.
To do this, click on the Layout drop-down menu from the top-right
corner of the editor interface, and choose Default. See Figure 1.6.

Figure 1.6: Switching to the default interface layout

[6]

Chapter 1

You can view the contents of your project folder directly via either Windows
Explorer or Mac Finder, by right-clicking the mouse in the Project panel from the
Unity Editor to reveal a context menu, and from there, choose the Show in Explorer
(Windows) or Reveal in Finder (Mac) option. See Figure 1.7:

Figure 1.7: Displaying the project folder via the Project panel

[7]

The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Clicking on Show in Explorer displays the folder contents in the default system file
browser. See Figure 1.8. This view is useful to inspect files, count them, or back them
up. However, don't change the folder contents manually this way via Explorer or
Finder. Specifically, don't move, rename, or delete files from here, because doing so
can corrupt your Unity project irretrievably. Instead, delete and move files where
needed within the Project panel in the Unity Editor. This way, Unity updates its
metadata as appropriate, ensuring that your project continues to work properly.

Figure 1.8: Viewing the Project panel from the OS file browser

Viewing the project folder in the OS file browser will display

additional files and folders not visible in the Project panel, such
as Library and ProjectSettings, and maybe a Temp folder.
Together, these are known as the project metadata. This is not directly
a part of your project per se, but contains additional settings and
preferences that Unity needs to work properly. These folders and
their files should not be edited or changed.

[8]

Chapter 1

Importing assets
Assets are the raw materials for gamesthe building blocks from which they're
made. Assets include meshes (or 3D models), such as characters, props, trees,
houses, and more: textures, which are image files such as JPEGs and PNGs (these
determine how the surface of a mesh should look); music and sound effects to
enhance the realism and atmosphere of your game, and finally, scenes, which are 3D
spaces or worlds where meshes, textures, sounds, and music live, exist, and work
together holistically as part of a single system. Thus, games cannot exist without
assetsthey would otherwise look completely empty and lifeless. For this reason,
we'll need assets to make the coin collection game we're working toward. After all,
we'll need an environment to walk around and coins to collect!
Unity, however, is a game engine and not an asset creation program. This means that
assets, such as characters and props, are typically made first by artists in external,
third-party software. From here, they are exported and transferred ready-made to
Unity, and Unity is responsible only for bringing these assets to life in a coherent
game that can be played. Third-party asset creation programs include Blender
(which is free of charge), Maya or 3DS Max to make 3D models, Photoshop or
GIMP (which is free of charge) to create textures, and Audacity (which is free of
cost) to generate audio. There are plenty of other options too. The details of these
programs are beyond the scope of this book. In any case, Unity assumes that you
already have assets ready to import to build a game. For the coin collection game,
we'll use assets that ship with Unity. So let's import these to our project. To do this,
select Assets | Import Package from the application menu. Then select Characters,
ParticleSystems, Environment, and Prototyping. See Figure 1.9:

Figure 1.9: Importing assets via the Import Package menu

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Each time you import a package from the menu, you'll be presented with an Import
dialog. Simply leave all settings at their defaults, and click on Import. See Figure 1.10:

Figure 1.10: Choosing Assets to import

By default, Unity decompresses all files from the package (a library of assets) into the
current project. After importing, lots of different assets and data will have been added
to the Project, ready for use. These files are copies of the originals. So any changes
made to the imported files will not affect or invalidate the originals, which Unity
maintains internally. The files include models, sounds, textures, and more. These are
listed in the Unity Editor from the Project panel. See the following screenshot:

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Chapter 1

Figure 1.11: Browsing imported assets from the Project panel

When selecting Assets | Import from the application menu, if you

don't see all, or any, asset packages listed, you can download and
install them separately from the Unity website at https://unity3d.
com/. From the downloads page, choose the Additional Downloads
option, and then select the Standard Assets package. See Figure 1.12.

Figure 1.12: Downloading the Standard Assets package

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

The imported assets don't exist yet in our game. They don't appear on screen, and
they won't do anything yet! Rather, they're simply added to the Project panel, which
behaves as a library or repository of assets, from which we can pick and choose to
build up a game. The assets imported thus far are built-in into Unity and we'll be
continually using them in subsequent sections to make a functional coin collection
game. To get more information about each asset, you can select the asset by clicking
on it with the mouse, and asset-specific details will be shown on the right-hand side
of the Unity Editor in the Inspector. The Inspector is a property sheet editor that
appears on the right-hand side of the interface. It is context-sensitive and always
changes to display properties for the selected object. See Figure 1.13.

Figure 1.13: The Inspector displays all the properties for the currently selected object

[ 12 ]

Chapter 1

Starting a level
We've now created a Unity project and imported a large library of assets via the
Unity Standard Asset package, including architectural meshes for walls, floors,
ceilings, and stairs. This means that we're now ready to build our first level using
these assets! Remember, in Unity, a scene means a level. The word scene and level
can be used interchangeably here. They refer simply to a 3D space, that is, the spacetime of the game worldthe place where things exist. Since all games happen in
space and time, we'll need a scene for the coin collection game. To create a new
scene, select File | New Scene from the application menu, or press Ctrl + N on
the keyboard. When you do this, a new and empty scene is created. You can see a
visualization or preview of the scene via the Scene tab, which occupies the largest
part of the Unity interface. See Figure 1.14.

Figure 1.14: The Scene tab displays a preview of a 3D world

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

As shown in Figure 1.14, other tabs besides the scene are visible and
available in Unity. These include a Game tab and an Animator tab;
in some cases, there could be more as well. For now, we can ignore
all the tabs except Scene. The Scene tab is designed for quick and
easy previewing of a level during its construction.

Each new scene begins empty; well, almost empty. By default, each new scene begins
with two objects. Specifically, a Light to illuminate any other objects that are added,
and a Camera to display and render the contents of the scene from a specific vantage
point. You can view a complete list of all the objects existing in the scene using the
Hierarchy panel, which is docked to the left-hand side of the Unity interface. See
Figure 1.15. This panel displays the name of every GameObject in the scene. In
Unity, the word GameObject simply refers to a single, independent, and unique
thing that lives within the scene, whether visible or not: meshes, lights, cameras,
props, and more. Thus, the Hierarchy panel tells us about everything in the Scene.

Figure 1.15: The Hierarchy panel

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Chapter 1

You can even select objects in the scene by clicking on

their name in the Hierarchy panel.

Next, let's add a floor to the scene. After all, the player needs something to stand on!
We could build a floor mesh from scratch using third-party modeling software such
as Maya, 3DS Max, or Blender. However, the Unity Standard Asset package, which
was imported earlier, contains floor meshes that we can use. This is very convenient.
These meshes are part of the Prototyping package. To access them via the Project
panel, open the Standard Assets folder by double-clicking it, and then access the
Prototyping | Prefabs folder. From here, you can select objects and preview them
from the Inspector. See Figure 1.16.
You could also quickly add a floor to the scene by choosing GameObject
| 3D Object | Plane from the application menu. However, this just
adds a dull, grey floor, which isn't very interesting. Of course, you
could change its appearance. As we'll see later, Unity lets you do this.
However, for this tutorial, we'll use a specifically modeled floor mesh via
the Standard Assets package from the Project panel.

Figure 1.16: The Standard Assets/Prototyping package contains many meshes for quick scene building

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

The mesh named FloorPrototype64x01x64 (as shown in Figure 1.16) is suitable as a

floor. To add this mesh to the scene, simply drag and drop the object from the Project
panel to the Scene view and then release the mouse. See Figure 1.17. When you do this,
notice how the Scene view changes to display the newly added mesh within the 3D
space, and the mesh name also appears as a listing in the Hierarchy panel:

Figure 1.17: Dragging and dropping mesh assets from the Project panel to the
Scene view will add them to the scene

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Chapter 1

The floor mesh asset from the Project panel has now been instantiated as a
GameObject in the scene. This means that a copy or clone of the mesh asset, based
on the original in the Project panel, has been added to the scene as a separate
GameObject. The Instance (or GameObject) of the floor in the scene still depends
on the floor asset in the Project panel. However, the asset does not depend on the
instance. This means that by deleting the floor in the scene, you will not delete the
asset. However, if you delete the asset, you will invalidate the GameObject. You
can also create more floors in Scene if you want by dragging and dropping the floor
asset many times from the Project panel to the Scene view. Each time, a new instance
of the floor is created in the Scene as a separate and unique GameObject, although
all the added instances will still depend on the single floor asset in the Project panel.
See Figure 1.18:

Figure 1.18: Adding multiple instances of the floor mesh to the scene

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

We don't actually need the duplicate floor pieces, however. So let's delete them. Just
click on the duplicates in the Scene view and then press Delete on the keyboard to
remove them. Remember, you can also select and delete objects by clicking on their
name in the Hierarchy panel and pressing Delete. Either way, this leaves us with a
single floor piece and a solid start to building our scene. One remaining problem,
though, concerns the floor and its name. By looking carefully in the Hierarchy panel,
we can see that the floor name is FloorPrototype64x01x64. This name is long,
obtuse, and unwieldy. We should change it to something more manageable and
meaningful. This is not technically essential but is good practice to keep our work
clean and organized. There are many ways to rename an object. One way is to first
select it and then enter a new name in the name field in the Object Inspector. I'll
rename it WorldFloor. See Figure 1.19:

Figure 1.19: Renaming the floor mesh

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Chapter 1

Transformations and navigation

A scene with a floor mesh has been established, but this alone is uninteresting. We
need to add more, such as buildings, stairs, columns, and perhaps more floor pieces.
Otherwise, there would be no world for the player to explore. Before building on
what we've got, however, let's make sure that the existing floor piece is centered at
the world origin. Every point and location within a scene is uniquely identified by
a coordinate, measured as an (X, Y, Z) offset from the world center (origin). The
current position for the selected object is always visible from the Object Inspector.
In fact, the Position, Rotation, and Scale of an object are grouped together under a
category (component) called Transform. Position indicates how far an object should
be moved in three axes from the world center. Rotation indicates how much an
object should be turned or rotated around its central axes. Scale indicates how much
an object should be shrunk or expanded to smaller or larger sizes. A default Scale of
one means that an object should appear at normal size, two means twice the size, and
0.5 means half the size, and so on. Together, the Position, Rotation and Scale of an
object constitute its transformation. To change the position of the selected object, you
can simply type new values in the X, Y, and Z fields for Position. To move an object
to the world center, simply enter (0, 0, and 0), as shown in Figure 1.20:

Figure 1.20: Centering an object to the world origin

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Setting the position of an object, as we've done here, by typing numerical values is
acceptable and appropriate for the specifying of exact positions. However, it's often
more intuitive to move objects using mouse-based controls. To do this, let's add a
second floor piece and position it away from the first instance. Drag and drop a floor
piece from the Project panel in Scene to create a second floor GameObject. Then
click on the new floor piece to select it and switch to the Translate tool. To do this,
press W on the keyboard or click on the translate tool icon from the toolbar at the top
of the editor interface. The translate tool allows you to reposition objects in Scene.
See Figure 1.21:

Figure 1.21: Accessing the translate tool

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Chapter 1

When the translate tool is active and an object is selected, a Gizmo appears centered
on the object (three colored axes visible in the Scene tab). The translate Gizmo
appears as three colored perpendicular axes: red, green, and blue corresponding to
X, Y, and Z respectively. To move an object, hover your cursor over one of the three
axes (or planes between axes), and then click and hold the mouse while moving it
to slide the object in that direction. You can repeat this process as often as needed to
ensure that your objects are positioned where you need them to be. Use the translate
tool to move the second floor piece away from the first. See Figure 1.22:

Figure 1.22: Translate an object using the translate Gizmo

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

You can also rotate and scale objects using the mouse, as with translate. Press E to
access the rotate tool or R to access the scale tool, or you can activate these tools
using their respective toolbar icons from the top of the editor. When these tools are
activated, a Gizmo appears centered on the object, and you can click and drag the
mouse over each specific axis to rotate or scale objects as needed. See Figure 1.23:

Figure 1.23: Accessing the rotate and scale tools

Being able to translate, rotate, and scale objects quickly through mouse and keyboard
combinations is very important when working in Unity. For this reason, make using
the keyboard shortcuts a habit as opposed to accessing the tools continually from
the toolbar. However, in addition to moving, rotating, and scaling objects, you'll
frequently need to move around yourself in the Scene view in order to see the world
from different positions, angles, and perspectives. This means that you'll frequently
need to reposition the scene preview camera in the world. You'll want to zoom in
and zoom out of the world to get a better view of objects and change your viewing
angle to see how objects align and fit together properly. To do this, you'll need to
make extensive use of both the keyboard and mouse together.

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Chapter 1

To zoom closer or further from the object you're looking at, simply scroll the mouse
wheel up or downup zooms in and down zooms out. See Figure 1.24:

Figure 1.24: Zooming in and out

To pan the Scene view left or right, or up or down, hold down the middle mouse
button while moving the mouse in the appropriate direction. Alternatively, you can
access the pan tool from the application toolbar (or press Q on the keyboard) and
then simply click and drag in the Scene view while the tool is active. Pan does not
zoom in or out; it simply slides the camera left and right, or up and down.

Figure 1.25: Accessing the Pan tool

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Sometimes, while building levels, you'll lose sight entirely of the object that you
need. For example, your viewport camera could be focusing on a completely
different place from the object you really want to click or see. In this case, you'll often
want to shift the viewport camera automatically in order to focus on that specific
object. Specifically, you'll want to reposition and rotate the viewport as necessary to
bring a desired object to the center of the view. To do this automatically, select the
object to focus on (or frame) by clicking on its name from the Hierarchy panel. Then,
press the F key on the keyboard. Alternatively, you can double-click its name in the
Hierarchy panel. See Figure 1.26:

Figure 1.26: Framing a selected object

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Chapter 1

After framing an object, you'll often want to rotate around it in order to quickly
and easily view it from all important angles. To achieve this, hold down the Alt
key on the keyboard while clicking and dragging the mouse to rotate the view.
See Figure 1.27:

Figure 1.27: Rotating around the framed object

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Lastly, it's helpful to navigate a level in the Scene view using first-person controls,
that is, controls that mimic how first-person games are played. This helps you
experience the scene at a more personal and immersive level. To do this, hold down
the right mouse button and (with the button depressed) use the WASD keys on the
keyboard to control forward, backward, and strafing movement. Movement of the
mouse controls head orientation. You can also hold down the Shift key while moving
to increase movement speed. See Figure 1.28:

Figure 1.28: Using first-person controls

The great thing about learning the versatile transformation and navigation controls
is that, on understanding them, you can move and orient practically any object in
any way, and you can move and view the world from almost any position and angle.
Being able to do this is critically important to build quality levels quickly. All of
these controls, along with some others that we'll soon see, will be used frequently
throughout this book to create scenes and work in Unity generally.

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Chapter 1

Scene building
Now that we've seen how to transform objects and navigate the scene viewport
successfully, let's proceed to complete our first level for the coin collection game.
Let's separate the two floor meshes apart in space, leaving a gap between them that
we'll fix by creating a bridge, which the player will be able to cross, moving between
the floor spaces like islands. We can use the translate tool (W) to move objects
around. See Figure 1.29:

Figure 1.29: Separating the floor meshes into islands

If you want to create more floor objects, you can use the method
that we've seen already by dragging and dropping the mesh asset
in the Project panel in the Scene viewport. Alternatively, you can
duplicate the selected object in the viewport by pressing Ctrl + D
on the keyboard. Both methods produce the same result.

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Next, we'll add some props and obstacles to the scene. Drag and drop some house
objects onto the floor. The house object (HousePrototype16x16x24) is found in the
Assets | Standard Assets | Prototyping | Prefabs folder. See Figure 1.30:

Figure 1.30: Adding house props to the scene

On dragging and dropping the house in the scene, it may align to the floor nicely
with the bottom against the floor, or it may not align like that. If it does, that's
splendid and great luck! However, we shouldn't rely on luck every time because
we're professional game developers! Thankfully, we can make any two mesh objects
align easily in Unity using vertex snapping. This feature works by forcing two
objects into positional alignment within the scene by overlapping their vertices at a
specific and common point.

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Chapter 1

For example, consider Figure 1.31. Here, a house object hovers awkwardly above the
floor and we naturally want it to align level with the floor and perhaps over to the
floor corner. To achieve this, start by selecting the house object (click on it or select
it from the Hierarchy panel). The object to be selected is the one that should move to
align and not the destination (which is the floor), which should remain in place.

Figure 1.31: Misaligned objects can be snapped into place with Vertex Snapping

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The Coin Collection Game Part 1

Next, activate the translate tool (W) and hold down the V key for vertex snapping.
With V held down, move the cursor around and see how the Gizmo cursor sticks to
the nearest vertex of the selected mesh. See Figure 1.32. Unity is asking you to pick a
source vertex for the snapping:

Figure 1.32: Hold down V to activate Vertex Snapping

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With V held down, move the cursor to the bottom corner of the house, and then click
and drag from the corner to the floor mesh corner. The house will then snap align to
the floor, corner to corner. When aligned this way, it release the V key, and the two
meshes get aligned exactly at the vertices. See Figure 1.33:

Figure 1.33: Align two meshes by vertices

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Now you can assemble a complete scene using the mesh assets included in the
Prototyping package. Drag and drop props in the scene, and using translate,
rotate, and scale, you can reposition, realign, and rotate these objects; using vertex
snapping, you can align them wherever you need. Give this some practice. See
Figure 1.34 for the scene arrangement that I made using only these tools and assets:

Figure 1.34: Building a complete level

Lighting and sky

The basic level has been created in terms of architectural models and layout; this
was achieved using only a few mesh assets and some basic tools. Nevertheless, these
tools are powerful and offer us a multitude of combinations and options to create
great variety and believability in game worlds. One important ingredient is missing
for us, however. This ingredient is lighting. You'll notice from Figure 1.34 that
everything looks relatively flat, with no highlights, shadows, or light or dark areas.
This is because scene lighting is not properly configured for best results, even though
we already have a light in the scene, which was created initially by default.

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Let's start setting the scene for the coin collection game by enabling the sky, if it's
not already enabled. To do this, click on the Extras drop-down menu from the top
toolbar in the Scene viewport. From the context menu, select Skybox to enable
Skybox viewing. A Skybox simply refers to a large cube that surrounds the whole
scene. Each interior side has a continuous texture (image) applied to simulate
the appearance of a surrounding sky. For this reason, clicking the Skybox option
displays a default sky in the Scene viewport. See Figure 1.35:

Figure 1.35: Enabling the sky

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Now, although the Skybox is now enabled and the scene looks better than before,
it's still not being illuminated properlythe objects lack shadows and highlights. To
fix this, be sure that lighting is enabled for the scene by toggling on the Lighting icon
at the top of the Scene viewport. See Figure 1.36. This setting is for display purposes
only. It only affects whether lighting effects are shown in the Scene viewport and not
whether lighting is truly enabled for the final game.

Figure 1.36: Enabling scene lighting in the Scene viewport

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Enabling lighting display for the viewport will result in some differences to the scene
appearance and, again, the scene should look better than before. You can confirm
that scene lighting is taking effect by selecting Directional Light from the Hierarchy
panel and rotating it. Doing this controls the time of day, rotating the light cycles
between day and night and changing the light intensity and mood. This changes how
the scene is rendered. See Figure 1.37:

Figure 1.37: Rotating the scene directional light changes the time of day

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Let's undo any rotations to the Directional Light by pressing Ctrl + Z on the
keyboard. To prepare for final and optimal lighting, all non-movable objects in the
scene (such as walls, floors, chairs, tables, ceilings, grass, hills, towers, and more)
should be marked as Static. This signifies to Unity that the objects will never move,
no matter what happens during gameplay. By marking non-movable objects ahead
of time, you can help Unity optimize the way it renders and lights a scene. To mark
objects as Static, simply select all non-movable objects (which includes practically
the entire level so far), and then enable the Static checkbox via the Object Inspector.
Note that you don't need to enable the Static setting for each object separately. By
holding down the Shift key while selecting objects, you can select multiple objects
together, allowing you to adjust their properties as a batch through the Object
Inspector. See Figure 1.38:

Figure 1.38: Enabling the Static option for multiple non-movable objects improves lighting and performance

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Chapter 1

When you enable the Static checkbox for geometry, Unity auto-calculates scene
lighting in the backgroundeffects such as shadows, indirect illumination, and
more. It generates a batch of data called the GI Cache, featuring Light Propagation
Paths, which instructs Unity how light rays should bounce and move around the
scene to achieve greater realism. Even so, enabling the Static checkbox as we've done
still won't produce cast shadows for objects, and this seriously detracts from realism.
This happens because most mesh objects have the Cast Shadows option disabled. To
fix this, select all meshes in the scene. Then, from the Object Inspector, click on the
Cast Shadows checkbox from the Mesh Renderer component, and choose the On
option from the context menu. When you do this, all mesh objects should be casting
shadows. See Figure 1.39:

Figure 1.39: Enabling cast shadows from the Mesh Renderer component

Voila! Your meshes now cast shadows. Splendid work: in reaching this far, you've
created a new project, populated a scene with meshes, and successfully illuminated
them with directional lighting. That's excellent. However, it'd be even better if we
could explore our environment in the first-person mode. We'll see how next.

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Play testing and the Game tab

The environment created thus far for the coin collection game has been assembled
using only the mesh assets included with the native Prototyping package. My
environment, as shown in Figure 1.40, features two main floor islands with houses,
and the islands themselves are connected together by a stepping-stone bridge. Your
version may be slightly different, and that's fine.

Figure 1.40: The scene created so far contains two island areas

Overall, the scene is good work. It's well worth saving. To save the scene, press
Ctrl + S on the keyboard or else choose File | Save Scene from the application menu.
See Figure 1.41. If you're saving the scene for the first time, Unity displays a pop-up
Save dialog, prompting you to name the scene descriptively (I called it Level_01).

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Chapter 1

Figure 1.41: Saving a scene

After saving the scene, it becomes scene asset of the project and appears in the Project
panel. See Figure 1.42. This means that the scene is now a genuine and integral part
of the project and not just a temporary work-in-progress as it was before. Notice also
that saving a scene is conceptually different from saving a project. For example, the
application menu has entries for Save Scene and Save Project. Remember, a Project
is a collection of files and folders, including assets and scenes. A scene, by contrast, is
one asset within the project and represents a complete 3D map that may be populated
by other assets, such as meshes, textures, and sounds. Thus, saving a project saves the
configuration between files and assets, including scenes. Saving a scene, in contrast,
just retains the level changes within that specified scene.

Figure 1.42: Saved scenes are added as assets within your project

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You can see from Figure 1.42 that I've saved my scene in a folder named
Scenes. Folders can be created in your project by right-clicking on
any empty area in the Project panel and choosing New Folder from
the context menu, or else choose Assets | Create | Folder from the
application menu. You can easily move and rearrange assets among
folders by simply dragging and dropping them.

Now, the level, as it stands, contains nothing really playable. It's simply a static,
lifeless, and non-interactive 3D environment made using the Editor tools. Let's
correct this by making our scene playable, allowing the player to wander around and
explore the world in first-person mode, controlled using the standard WASD keys
on the keyboard. To achieve this, we'll add a first-person character controller to the
scene. This is a ready-made asset included with Unity, which contains everything
necessary to create quick and effective first-person controls. Open the Standard
Assets | Characters | FirstPersonCharacter | Prefabs folder. Then drag and
drop the FPSController asset from the Project panel in the scene. See Figure 1.43:

Figure 1.43: Adding an FPSController to the scene

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After adding the first-person controller, click on the play button from the Unity
toolbar to play test the game in first-person mode. See Figure 1.44:

Figure 1.44: Unity scenes can be play tested by clicking on the play button from the toolbar

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On clicking play, Unity typically switches from the Scene tab to the Game tab. As
we've seen, the Scene tab is a director's-eye view of the active scene; it's where a scene
is edited, crafted, and designed. In contrast, the Game tab is where the active scene
is played and tested from the perspective of the gamer. From this view, the scene is
displayed through the main game camera. While play mode is active, you can play
test your game using the default game controls, provided that the Game tab is in
focus. The first-person controller uses the WASD keys on the keyboard and mouse
movement controls head orientation. See Figure 1.45:

Figure 1.45: Play testing levels in the Game tab

You can switch back to the Scene tab while in play mode. You can even
edit the scene and change, move, and delete objects there too! However,
any and all scene changes made during play mode will automatically
revert back to their original settings when play mode ends. This behavior
is intentional. It lets you edit properties during gameplay to observe their
effects and debug any issues without permanently changing the scene.

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Chapter 1

Congratulations! Your level should now be walkable in first-person mode. When

completed, you can easily stop playback by clicking on the play button again or by
pressing Ctrl + P on the keyboard. Doing this will return you to the Scene tab.
Unity also features a Toggle-Pause button to suspend
and resume gameplay.

You should notice that, on playing the level with a first-person controller, you
receive an information message printed to the Console window. By default, this
window appears at the bottom of the Unity Editor, docked beside the Project panel.
This window is also accessible manually from the application menu, Window |
Console. The Console window is where all encountered errors or warnings are
displayed for your review as well as information messages. Errors are printed in
red and warnings in yellow, and information messages appear as a default grey.
Sometimes, a message appears just once, or sometimes it appears many times
repeatedly. See Figure 1.46:

Figure 1.46: The Console outputs information, warnings, and errors

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As mentioned, the Console window outputs three distinct types of message:

information, warnings, and errors. Information messages are typically Unity's way of
making best practice recommendations or suggestions based on how your project is
currently working. Warnings are slightly more serious and represent problems either
in your code or scene, which (if not corrected) could result in unexpected behaviors
and suboptimal performance. Finally, errors describe areas in your scene or code that
require careful and immediate attention. Sometimes, errors will prevent your game
from working altogether and sometimes errors happen at runtime and can result in
game crashes or freezes. The Console window, therefore, is helpful because it helps
us debug and address issues with our games. Figure 1.46 has identified an issue
concerning duplicated audio listeners.
An audio listener is a component attached to a camera object. Specifically, each and
every camera, by default, has an audio listener component attached. This represents
an ear point, that is, the ability to hear sound within the scene from the position of the
camera. Unfortunately, Unity doesn't support multiple active audio listeners in the
same scene, which means that you can only hear audio from one place at any one
time. This problem happens because our scene now contains two cameras, one that
was added automatically when the scene was created, and the other that is included
in the first-person controller. To confirm this, select the first-person controller object
in the Hierarchy panel and click on the triangle icon beside its name to reveal more
objects underneath, which are part of the first-person controller. See Figure 1.47:

Figure 1.47: Finding the camera on a first-person controller

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Chapter 1

Select the FirstPersonCharacter object, which is underneath the FPSController

object (as shown in Figure 1.47). The FirstPersonCharacter object is a child of the
FPSController, which is the parent. This is because FPSController contains or
encloses the FirstPersonCharacter object in the Hierarchy panel. Child objects
inherit the transformations of their parents. This means that as parent objects move
and rotate, all transformations will cascade downwards to all children. From the
Object Inspector, you can see that the object has an Audio Listener component. See
Figure 1.48:

Figure 1.48: The FirstPersonController object contains an AudioListener component

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We could remove the Audio Listener component from the FPSController, but this
would prevent the player hearing sound in first-person perspective. So, instead,
we'll delete the original camera created by default in the scene. To do this, select the
original camera object in the hierarchy and press Delete on the keyboard. See Figure
1.49. This removes the Audio Listener warning in the Console during gameplay.
Now give the game a play test!

Figure 1.49: Deleting a camera object

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Chapter 1

Adding a water plane

The collection game is making excellent progress. We now have something playable
insofar as we can run around and explore the environment in first-person mode.
However, the environment could benefit from additional polish. Right now, for
example, the floor meshes appear suspended in mid-air with nothing beneath them
to offer support. See Figure 1.50. Further, it's possible to walk over the edge and fall
into an infinite drop. So let's add some water beneath the floors to complement the
scene as a complete environment.

Figure 1.50: The world floor appears to float and have no support

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To add water, we can use another ready-made Unity asset included in the Project
panel. Open the Standard Assets | Environment | Water | Water | Prefabs
folder. Then drag and drop the WaterProDaytime asset from the Project panel in
the scene. See Figure 1.51. This appears as a circular object, which is initially smaller
than needed.

Figure 1.51: Adding water to the environment

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After adding the Water prefab, position it below the floor level and use the scale tool
(R) to increase its planar size (X, Z) to fill the environment outward into the distant
horizon. This creates the feel that the floor meshes are smaller islands within an
expansive world of water. See Figure 1.52:

Figure 1.52: Scaling and sizing water for the environment

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Now let's take another test run in the Game tab. Press play on the toolbar and
navigate the character around in first-person mode. See Figure 1.53. You should see
the water in the level. Of course, you can't walk on the water! Neither can you swim
or dive beneath it. If you try walking on it, you'll simply fall through it, descending
into infinity as though the water had never been there. Right now, the water is an
entirely cosmetic feature, but it makes the scene look much better.

Testing the environment with water in FPS mode

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Chapter 1

The water is really a substanceless, ethereal object through which the player can
pass easily. Unity doesn't recognize it as a solid or even a semi-solid object. As we'll
see in more detail later, you can make an object solid very quickly by attaching
a Box Collider component to it. Colliders and physics is covered in more depth
from Chapter 3, Project B the Space Shooter onward. For now, however, we can add
solidity to the water by first selecting the Water object from the Hierarchy panel (or
in the Scene viewport) and then by choosing Component | Physics | Box Collider
from the application menu. See Figure 1.54. Attaching a component to the selected
object changes the object itself; it changes how it behaves. Essentially, components
add behavior and functionality to objects, making them behave in different ways.
Even so, resist the temptation to add lots of components to an object without reason
and with the view that it makes them more versatile or powerful. It's better to have
as few components on an object as necessary. This strategy of preferring relevant
simplicity keeps your workflow neater, simpler, and optimized.

Figure 1.54: Attaching a Box Collider to a Water object

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When a Box Collider is added to the water, a surrounding green cage or mesh
appears. This approximates the volume and shape of the Water object and represents
its physical volume, namely, the volume of the object that Unity recognizes as solid.
See Figure 1.55:

Figure 1.55: Box Colliders approximate physical volume

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Chapter 1

If you play the game now, your character will walk on water as opposed to falling
through. True, the character should be able to swim properly, but walking might be
better than falling. To achieve full swimming behavior would require significantly
more work and is not covered here. If you want to remove the Box Collider
functionality and return the water back to its original, ethereal state, then select the
Water object, click on the cog icon on the Box Collider component, and then choose
Remove Component from the context menu. See Figure 1.56:

Figure 1.56: Removing a component

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Adding a coin to collect

On reaching this far, our game has many features, namely, a complete environment,
first-person controller, and water. However, we're supposed to be making a coin
collection game and there aren't any coins for the player to collect yet. Now, to
achieve fully collectible coins, we'll need to write some C# script, which will happen
in the next chapter of this book. However, we can at least get started here at creating
the coin object itself. To do this, we'll use a Cylinder primitive that's scaled to form a
coin-looking shape. To create a cylinder, select GameObject | 3D Object | Cylinder
from the application menu:

Figure 1.57: Create a Cylinder

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Initially, the cylinder looks nothing like a coin. However, this is easily changed by
scaling non-uniformly in the Z axis to make the cylinder thinner. Switch to the scale
tool (R) and then scale the Cylinder inward. See Figure 1.58:

Figure 1.58: Scaling the cylinder to make a collectible coin

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After rescaling the coin, its collider no longer represents its volume. It appears
much larger than it should (see Figure 1.58). By default, the Cylinder is created
with a Capsule Collider as opposed to a Box Collider. You can change the size of
the Capsule Collider component by adjusting the Radius field from the Object
Inspector when the coin is selected. Lower the Radius field to shrink the collider
to a more representative size and volume. See Figure 1.59. Alternatively, you could
remove Capsule Collider altogether and add Box Collider instead. Either way is fine;
generally choose the simpler shape where possible. The colliders will be used in script
in the next chapter to detect when the player collides with the coin to collect them:

Figure 1.59: Adjusting the Capsule Collider for the coin

Here we are! We now have the basic shape and structure for a coin. We will, of
course, improve it carefully and critically in many ways in the next chapter. For
example, we'll make it collectible and assign it a material to make it look shiny.
However, here, using only a basic Unity primitive and scale tool, we're able to
generate a shape that truly resembles a coin.

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Summary
Congratulations! On reaching this point, you have laid the foundations for a coin
collection game that will be complete and functional in the next chapter. Here, we've
seen how to create a Unity project from scratch and populate it with assets, such as
meshes, textures, and scenes. In addition, we've seen how to create a scene for our
game and use a range of assets to populate it with useful functionality that ships
out of the box with the Unity engine, such as water, first-person controllers, and
environment prototyping assets. In the next chapter, we'll resume work from where
we ended here by making a coin that is collectible, and establishing a set of rules and
logic for the game, making it possible to win and lose.

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Get more information Unity 5.x By Example

Where to buy this book

You can buy Unity 5.x By Example from the Packt Publishing website.
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