Script, Build, Customize Your Game from Scratch
For Beginners and Expert s
Kent Peterson
Contents
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Chapter One: Introduction
The past ten years has heralded a phenomenal rise in indie game developers and video games. The industry was once reserved for a few multi-million-dollar triple-A studios. The creation of a number of game development tools has brought modern game development resources into the hands of individuals or small, ad-hoc collections of programmers and designers.
Indie game development teams have shown that it is possible to create successful games and innovations with small budget. There has also been a rise in a number of shockingly successful indie titles including games like; Minecraft , Limbo , and Super Meat Boy , it is now even possible for people who do not have the skills to get into game creation with tools like Buildbox and others.
And this landscape has been involving at a dizzying speed thanks to tools like unity 3d which has emerged as a de-facto standard in the game development world, its low cost, ease of use, community wide appreciation and broad feature set has made it one of the best tools for rapid game development. Unitys flexibility and innovative processes has become useful for hobbyists, indie game developers and even big studios such as CCP who created the EVE Online phenomenon to create games rapidly and cost effectively. The software provides and all-inclusive game engine which is adaptable to virtually any genre of gaming.
Even though unity has become a go to software for game development and though it has a visual editing tool, unity is not a zero-programming software. You would still need to learn and understand some programming concepts and languages in order for you to produce results. Inspire of all this unity gives you a vast array of tools than any game making tool could.
Why Unity?
There are a lot of options available for an indie developer when it comes to choosing an engine to work with, these options can include Construct 3, Godot Engine, Unreal Engine, Gamemaker Studio or Unity. Listed are some of the best Game engines around but unity is the least opinionated of the 5 platforms.
For starters, unity is low-cost, and really lowers the barriers of entry for serious beginner indie game developers. Unity gives you a very raw product out of the box, but also highly flexible and extensible to build for any genre you want to build.
1.2 History
Unity 3D is a game creation engine that was developed in the year 2005 as a Mac OS X exclusive game engine. It has since evolved to support mobile, desktop, console and virtual reality platforms. The unity 3D cross platform game engine has since been used to create top games like Call of Duty: Mobile, Pokmon Go, Beat saber and Cuphead. Reviews about the software has come out as easy to use and perfect for indie game developers.
The success of the Unity3d engine was almost immediate as it was named runner up in the best use of Mac OS X Graphics category at Apple Incs Apple Design Awards. A new version (Unity 2.0) was released with over 50 new features which included optimized terrains engine, real time dynamic shadows, directional lights and a whole lot more. Its purpose was to democratize game development by making it accessible to more developers.
The Unity 3D engine has heralded an increase in indie game developers as it has made it easy for indie game developers to startup with low cost. This increase in indie game developers has risen from a few 100,000 to more than 1.5 million indie developers by 2012.
As of 2016, unity changed the subscription model for the game engine from a paid version to a free and paid licensing option. The free version or license is for personal use or small companies generating less than 100,000 annually which was later raised to 200,000 annually. The subscription license is based on revenue generated by the games using unity. Unity Pro which is the paid option has been required for developers who make 200,000 and above annually. This has changed in the year 2021 to also include those that make games on the closed console systems like Playstation, Nintendo, Switch and Xbox
1.3 Features of Unity 3D
Compared to other game engines Unity offers a lot of features that have made it easier for game developers around the word such as:
Wide range of supported platforms
The unity game engine support a great number of platforms such as PlayStation, Nintendo, android, iOS. It is a one click export to all platform features ensures that game developers dont have to waste development time on exporting to individual platforms.
Large Asset store
Unity 3d has a great asset store that has a large number of access that are free and paid. It ranges from tools, utilities, lighting, models, templates and even completed projects. This asset store allows developers to have access to assets they can use on their games which will reduce development time and cost in the long run.
Easy workflow
Compared to other game engines, unity 3d has a very easy workflow. It gives you access to the scripting and also a graphical interface. One of the best features is that you can test out your games on the engine and also debug as you go.
Quality game creation
Over the years game creation quality has been enhanced in the aspects of models, animation, mechanics, physics etc. and it is possible in part because of the unity 3d game engine.
Dedicated tools for both 2d and 3d game creation with shared conventions to make it easy for developers
Unique and flexible animation system. Unity system of animation is one of the best in the gaming industry as it can be optimized to be smooth and create very natural animation in less time.
Smooth frame rate: a smooth frame rate is achieved when optimation is done in unity and it can also be applied once and take effect on all platforms the game is exported to.
Reduce game development time: all these features are made possible to reduce time and effort invested in game development, making it possible to invest the money and time on other aspects of game development.
All these features keep evolving over time making unity one of the most up to date game engines in the world.
VR and AR support
We all know that VR and AR are the future of games and Unity has tried to adapt early to this new technology. Several platforms are already using Unity to develop VR experiences. The Unity Engine is one of the game engines providing easy to use tools when it comes to creating VR/AR experiences.
