Unity Course Notes

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My informal notes on a Unity course I am taking towards the Unity Certification!

Lesson 1 - Welcome to Unity Certified Developer Courseware

Conducted by Koh Siang Leng, 5 Sept 2020, 10am

Unityhublts.png

Note how some versions in unity hub have LTS and some do not.

Are you irritated cos unity updated and everything BROKE? Use version of unity LTS "Long term support" - a version which does not accept any new features but will be supported for about 2 years.

Economics of Games

Unityunity.png

Unity has its own ad platform which makes it easier for a developer to integrate advertising for monetisation. Analytics is used extensively in mobile gaming too. Should be integrated in from the very start... (How?)

Monetise in the form of...

  • Physical Purchase
  • Download
  • Subscription
  • Freemium
  • In game purchase
  • Advertising

Game Genres to think about...

  • Action
  • Adventure
  • Arcade
  • Fighting
  • Non-Game (<-- probably me)
  • Platformer
  • Puzzle
  • Racing
  • RPG
  • Shooter
  • Simulation
  • Sports
  • Strategy
  • Survival
  • Open world etc

Game Design Document and Technical Design Document

  • For small company - the document is nice to read but in practice sometimes along the way people do not update along the way as they are building and playtesting the game.
  • For big company - there is probably a dedicated team doing this all day, that's their job to make the roadmap updated all the time!

Game Production Pipeline

Step 1 Pre-production

  • Create the game design document and technical design document

Step 2 Production

  • Implementing assets and creating game play
  • building the game for release

Step 3 Maintenance

  • Fixing bugs and releasing patches
  • Incremental functionality improvements

Step 4 Upgrade

  • Building and releasing new content
  • Major additions and mods, such as new levels, seasonal content, special release (like upsize of your happy meal - it is easy to upsell when they are always interested in your product)

Job Roles

Unityjobroles.png

THEY WILL TEST THIS IN THE EXAM. take note on art director vs concept artist in particular.

  • Concept art = provides unifying point for art direction (hence commonly confused with art director role)

Getting Started / User Interface

Install the IDE

Set up the interface in an ergonomic way

Unityinterfaceorgsuggested.png

Can even put inspector on its own on a 3rd col on the right.

Creating Game Object

Creategameobject.png

Child & Parent Objects

Creategameobjectchild.png

Tagging

Tagginggameobject.png

  • What is the purpose of tagging? (common question in unity exam) - We say its used to find gameobjects (not grouping). It doesn't matter to Unity what is the gameobject tag. Its for the developer to find items with same tags.

Importing from Asset Store

Importzombie.png

GameObject Settings

Linkspritesheet.png

Transform (moving)

You can be precise about the position you move in Inspector

Transformunity.png

Importing Packages the right way

Importcustom.png

  • Often there are clashes with basic assets like main camera, you can overwrite them all usually and ignore the warning.

Arranging Prefabs

  • (Mac) Command-D to copy, Command drag to drag with snapping (Ctrl-D for windows)
  • Command-delete to delete the prefab
  • Common rookie mistakes by students - trying to drag into the game instead of scene editor, or double clicking into editing the prefab itself instead of the scene
  • Create empty gameobject, put all the blocks inside it so this container holds all your blocks

Navigation

  • Window > AI > Navigation > Clear & Bake
  • Change Agent size and other values to tune your pathfinding

Createsceneandbakenavigation.png

  • Created an empty and put the maincamera as a child of the hero and its like a fps (3rd person view)! It works! (trainer approved)

Basicgamenityplatform.gif

Game Level Design

  • A game could be composed of several different levels.
  • With level design, you can progressively teach the player new skills in the game (hidden tutorials)

Examples of Game Level Design:

  • Basketball shooter game: a level design would occupy a finite space, be bounded to a basketball size with walls, have a basket on either end, and floor markings to indictate the play area.
  • 2D platformer games: consists of one continguous continuous background. level design elements are to facilitate game mechanic, placement of elements don't correspond to real world placement as much as game mechanic.
  • 3D shooter: level design dictated by mechanics of the game - cover mechanism allows player to duck behind objects, placement of objects and lighting allows game to be played effectively.
  • Endless Runner: obstacles test the player's reflexes, bounding or side wall conditions, overhead and underfoot tracks/wires elements.
  • Zombie Toys: cover for player, enemies in form of props, concealment point
  • Trainer shared an example of a game level design map drawn by his children. boss levels and all. :-D

Difficulty of game level

  • must not be too hard
  • must allow user to gain mastery progressively
  • after user has mastery, they will find it harder to stop playing your game

Lesson 2 - Managing Project, assets, game level

Additional Box Collider

  • Let's say you have many elements, what if your player decides to do a weird wall hug and squeeze thru your buildings and perhaps fall off the game map entirely?
  • In Inspector > Add additional box collider > Extend your collider
  • Remember to set your collidable items as "static"

Rigidbody

Rigidbodyunity.png

Raycast

Project Management

  • Naming convention
  • can be simple (human readable) or have a system (requires a legend for universal understanding amongst team members
  • eg in animation, dope sheet

Shaders

Shaderunity.png

  • Albedo map - flat colour without light
  • Normal map - makes detail on surface
  • Occlusion - shadow map
  • Emission - emit light

Cutout

Unitycutout.png

  • Shader > Cutout For alpha channel artwork - adds complexity quickly

Cookie

Cookieandcutoutps.png Cookieandcutout.png

quiz qn examples

  • The breadcrumb in project window shows: FILE PATH OF SELECTED ASSET (you must select it first)
  • Acceptable formats for audio are: AIFF, MP3, WAV, and OGG. (Unacceptable -> MIDI, RCA, IFF, QuickTime, Egg, wav, avi)
  • Project Window toolbar allows searching assets by: Label and Type
  • Modifying organisation of assets is done in PROJECT WINDOW (assets is just your files on the computer)
  • The 2 script types supported are C# and UnityScript
  • specular property controls COLOUR and STRENGTH of reflection

Lesson 3 - Lighting and animation

Lesson 4 - Intro Scripting in Game Dev

Lesson 5 - navigation / pathfinding / player allies enemies

Lesson 6 - Particle Systems

Lesson 7 - audio, camera, player selection, system, user interface

Lesson 8 - building and prepping for mobile deploy

Certification Exam

  • 100 questions pulled randomly from a bank - mcq, drag and drop, matching, hotspot
  • 90 mins to complete
  • must score 70% to earn Unity Certified Developer
  • Unity Exam shortcut section - based on PC

Beyond Unity

  • Unity isn't the game for every sort of game. Can also consider Cocos-2dx.