Unity Basics 0. What is Unity

0. What is Unity

About Unity

  • A commercial closed-source game engine
  • Free to use for projects under $100 000 revenue
  • Pretty much the industry standard
    • $\Rightarrow$ Plenty of resources available online!
  • Much used especially in game jams & mobile
  • A huge “kitchen sink” software: you won’t ever need all the features
  • Made originally for 3D games (“Unity3D”)
  • Can be used for 2D & 3D
  • uses the C# programming language for scripting

Games made with Unity

  • My Summer Car, Johannes Rojolan tekemä suomalaiselle maaseudulle sijoittuva autonrakennussimulaattori
  • Hollow Knight, kolmen hengen tekemä metroidvania-tasoloikka
  • Cities: Skylines, alle kahdenkymmenen hengen yhtiön kaupunginrakennussimulaattori
  • Fall Guys, kahdensadan hengen yhtiön eliminaatiominipeleistä koostuva online-moninpeli
  • Genshin Impact, neljäntuhannen hengen yhtiön avoimen maailman toimintaroolipeli ja yksi menestyneimmistä peleistä koskaan

Continuous updates

  • Unity has been around for a long time now
    • Originally released for Mac in 2005
    • 3.0 was the first version with Windows support
  • Unity is updated continuously!
    • Usually people are stuck with the version they started the project with
      • -> Common to have multiple versions on the same machine
      • Unity Hub helps here

Note about deprecation

  • Sometimes, old features & programming styles are slowly deprecated as new ones are introduced
    • e.g., The input system
    • It helps to understand Unity if you study the history of Unity
    • It’s useful to know which ways are old and “shouldn’t be used” and which are still encouraged today
    • Then again, tomorrow everything might have changed

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Unity as an application

  • Unity can occasionally crash…
    • Save your work constantly!
  • Unity does many things for you that you do not need to learn about
    • Treat some aspects of Unity as black boxes
    • You give them input, and they give you the (hopefully!) desired output
  • Unity is closed source: you can’t learn everything about it

The Asset Store

  • You can download assets to your project from the Asset Store
  • 3D models, tools, character controllers, etc
  • Some assets are free, some paid
  • With the Asset store, you don’t have to reinvent every single wheel
    • Get the ball rolling and prototype quickly
    • But beware - there isn’t a free lunch
    • By using assets, you become more dependent on third-party code
    • Sometimes it’s faster to make your own system than learn another person’s way of thinking

“The Unity Way”

  • There are usually many ways to approach a problem
  • Sometimes, implementing something can feel downright impossible!
  • The reason might be that you’re swimming against the current
    • I.e., you’re not doing it the way Unity wants you to do it!
    • Learning from Unity projects by more experienced devs gives you perspective
    • Example: FPS template

Unity Documentation

  • Manual
  • Script Reference
  • If you don’t know how something works, this should be the first place to learn from
  • Docs will be heavily featured during the course!
  • Note: There are different docs for different versions of Unity
    • See the top left corner and the page URL if it matches
    • Some pages are missing from newer docs so I’ll refer to older ones in those cases

Unity Setup

  • We use Unity with the Unity Hub in the course
    • That way, we can install multiple versions of Unity if needed
  • Download Unity Hub
    • Install the latest Unity LTS (long term support) version 2021.3.21f1

Settings

  • Preferences > Editor > External Script Editor: Visual Studio Code
    • Click Regenerate project files
    • You might have to do this again on new projects.
  • Preferences > Colors > Playmode tint
    • Set to red
  • Project Settings > Editor> Play Mode Options
    • ✅Enter Play Mode Options
      • ⬛Reload Domain
    • This makes entering playmode INSTANT.