Over 100 recipes to spice up your Unity skills

Overview

• A wide range of topics are covered, ranging in complexity, offering something for every Unity 4 game developer.
• Every recipe provides step-by-step instructions, followed by an explanation of how it all works, and alternative approaches or refinements.
• Book developed with the latest version of Unity (4.x).

In Detail

Covering the latest version (Unity 4) of this established game engine, the Unity 4.x Cookbook explores a wide range of 3D, animation, multimedia, and scripting game features.

The power of Unity 4 is demonstrated through the 10 chapters covering many of this game engine’s features.

"Unity 4.x Cookbook" helps you learn how to make the most of the powerful but easy-to-use Unity 4 game engine.

Every Unity game developer is different. Some come from a multimedia background, some are new to game development, and some are transferring from other engines. Whatever your background, with the breadth and depth of topics covered you should find new features and techniques to enhance your next game.

This book offers detailed, easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes helping you master a wide range of Unity game features.

Chapters are provided focusing on the basics; audio, cameras, images, materials and animations, GUIs, external resources and devices, directional and artificial intelligence character control, and performance optimization.

"Unity 4.x Cookbook" provides a collection of ideas and resources that should offer new and useful techniques for every Unity game developer to enhance their next game.

What you will learn from this book

• Enhance your character`s animation in real time using Unity`s new Mecanim system
• Measure and control time, including pausing the game, displaying clocks and countdown timers, and even implementing “bullet time” effects.
• Work with cameras, images, and the Shuriken practical system, to create mini-maps, control zooming, and depth of field, and switch between cameras.
• Define materials for reflections, transparency, specular and self-illumination of materials, and cloudy outdoor effects.
• Use artificial intelligence techniques to make non-player character objects seek, follow, flee each other, or follow a waypoint sequence, and even flock together like a herd of animals.
• Make your game communicate with Microsoft Kinect cameras, for control of game characters, and even to record your own motion capture.
• Improve GUIS with real-time radars, custom mouse cursors, analogue and digital clocks, color section dialogs, mouse over material highlighting, graphical power-bars, and a flexible inventory class.
• Save and load text, XML, or media assets from local or remote sources, and communicate with websites and their databases to create online scoreboards

Approach

Cookbook.

Who this book is written for

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

This book is for anyone who wants to explore a wide range of Unity scripting and multimedia features and to find ready to use solutions to many game features. Programmers can explore multimedia features, and multimedia developers can try their hand at scripting..