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
  • 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

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.