Jiadong Chen - Game Development with Unity for
 .NET Developers

The ultimate guide to creating games with Unity and Microsoft Game Stack

Jiadong Chen

BIRMINGHAMMUMBAI

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First published: May 2022

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This book is dedicated to my wife, Yi Liang, for her encouragement and support, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic; her positive attitude toward life has inspired me and helped me through difficult times.

Jiadong Chen

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

Industry catchphrase

You now hold in your hands the tools to make great games. If this was a Mario game, then you just punched a question mark block, and then a glowing, flashing, smoking mushroom just rose out of it. If this was a Zelda game, then you just navigated a boss dungeon, found a treasure chest, pulled this book out of it, and raised the book high above your head (with some suitable music playing). In other words, you just acquired a key powerup for your quest.

You can feel that dedication to excellence (which the industry quote refers to) when you play Nintendo games, Halo, Minecraft, and Sonic the Hedgehog (and pretty much whatever your favorite game is). Now you have the same opportunity: you can use your knowledge and your new Unity skills (granted, you probably haven't learned them yet) to make a powerful statement through your work.

"Nintendo's philosophy is to never go the easy path; it's always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new."

Shigeru Miyamoto (2005)

So that's why Nintendo makes some great games (and some really weird ones)! Regardless, here's your chance to make something that's unique and that really shows who you are. With these tools, your passion opens limitless opportunities.

And that brings us to a Microsoft quote (you knew it was coming).

"Learning to fly is not pretty, but flying is."

Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh

You learn tools to create masterpieces (or to at least get a job, or a better one). It's not easy to learn these new tools, but after you gain this knowledge, you can make great games.

Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers makes that process a whole lot easier! Unity is the world's most widely used, real-time 3D development platform for a reason! If you approach Unity with the .NET Framework, then you can leverage the power of C#, Microsoft Game Dev tools, Microsoft Azure Cloud services, and Azure PlayFab. You'll also see how these resources work seamlessly with Visual Studio and GitHub.

Our author, Jiadong Chen, used to work at Unity Technologies as a field engineer. He's been working in this .NET and Unity gaming stack for over 9 years. He's a member of the .NET Foundation, and has been a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for 6 years. (That means he's been awarded the title every year since 2015, based on his impact on the Microsoft developer community.) As you can imagine, his MVP award category is Developer Technologies. In other words, Jiadong is the perfect person to teach you how to use the .NET Framework and Microsoft developer stack to learn how to develop with the Unity game engine and how to take your games to the next level!

Make no mistake: as the title implies, this is a book for .NET developers to learn Unity. First, Jiadong starts with the basics of the Unity game engine. Then, you'll dig into scripting, using Unity to build your game UI, animating your game graphics, building physics, and adding audio and video (the basic components of building your game). Next, Jiadong gets into game math, while also using a rendering pipeline, data-oriented tech, a serialization system, and assets management. Finally, he shows you how to leverage the Microsoft Game Dev suite of technologies, Azure Cloud, and Azure PlayFab as you develop with the Unity engine.

In Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers, Jiadong Chen takes you on a tour, explaining the concepts with images and examples, so that you can fully understand each topic. He then takes you through the process, using real code, so that you can implement your own solutions. The process of learning how to develop games isn't easy, but this book will make it a lot easier.

After you're done reading the book, if life was a Mario game, you'll have grabbed the flag at the top of the flag pole and entered a sewer pipe! If this was a Zelda game, you'll have collected the Triforce. And if it's a Sonic game, then you just beat Dr. Robotnik in a giant robot mech that looks like him. As Satya Nadella implied, learning to fly won't be easy, but once you're done, you're going to be able to really take off and do some great things with Unity!

Ed Price

Senior Program Manager of Architectural Publishing

Microsoft, Azure Architecture Center (http://aka.ms/Architecture) Co-author of seven books, including Meg the Mechanical Engineer, The Azure Cloud Native Architecture Mapbook (Packt), and ASP.NET Core 5 for Beginners (Packt)

Jiadong Chen is one of 3,000 international Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award winners, recognized by Microsoft as one of the technology industry's best and brightest six years in a row, and is currently working as a senior software developer at Company-X, based in Hamilton, New Zealand.

He specializes in the Microsoft Azure cloud, Unity and XR development, and .NET/C#. He is a Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, a Microsoft Certified Azure Developer, a Microsoft Certified Azure AI Engineer, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He is also a member of the .NET Foundation.