Ashley Godbold - Mastering Ui Development with Unity: An In-Depth Guide to Developing Engaging User Interfaces with Unity 5, Unity 2017, and Unity 2018

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Dr. Ashley Godbold is a programmer, game designer, artist, mathematician, and teacher. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, a Master of Science in Mathematics, a Bachelor of Science in Game Art and Design, and a Doctor of Computer Science in Emerging Media where her dissertation research focused on educational video game design. She also authored Mastering Unity 2D Game Development: Second Edition (Packt Publishing). She enjoys playing video games and watching anime with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

Adam Larson started programming professionally in 2005. He has shipped 14 console games, 2 PC titles, and 8 mobile games. In 2012, he founded a company that focused on using Unity for business applications. He spent the following 5 years building a million-dollar agency that built high-end software. Recently, he moved to another start-up, which is focusing on revolutionizing the banking industry. When he isn't doing something with technology, you will find him spending time with his wife and 3 kids.

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There are a multitude of built-in UI elements that can be incorporated into a game built in Unity. This book will help you master Unity's UI system by describing indepth the various UI objects, functionalities, and properties, and providing step-by-step examples of their implementation.

This book is intended for game developers who have worked with Unity and are looking to improve their knowledge of the UI system introduced in Unity 4.6. Individuals looking for in-depth explanations of specific UI elements and individuals looking for step-by-step directions explaining how to implement UI items that appear in multiple game genres will also find this book helpful.

, Designing User Interfaces, covers basic information related to designing user interfaces. Additionally, a detailed explanation of setting the aspect ratio and resolution of a Unity project is discussed.

, Canvases, Panels, and Basic Layouts, begins exploring the development of a user interface by appropriately laying out UI elements within a Canvas. Panels will be used and an introduction to Text and Images will be provided. The examples included in this chapter show how to lay out a basic HUD, create a permanent background image, and develop a basic pop-up menu.

, Automatic Layouts, discusses how to implement the various automatic layout components to streamline the UI building process. The examples included within this chapter utilize the automatic layout functionality to create a selection menu in the HUD and a gridded inventory.

, The Event System and Programming for UI, explains how to program interactions for graphical and hardware user interfaces. The examples covered in this chapter explain how to use the keyboard to make menus appear and disappear, how to pause the game, and how to create a drag and drop inventory system.

, Buttons, explores the various properties of buttons. The examples in this chapter walk through how to set up keyboard and controller navigation of buttons, how to load scenes when buttons are pressed, how to create animated button transitions, and how to make buttons swap their images.

, Text, Images, and TextMesh Pro-Text, discusses the properties of images and text more thoroughly and demonstrates how to affect their properties via code. The examples at the end of the chapter show how to create a dialog box with text that animates as if it was being typed in, how to create a custom font, how to make horizontal and circular progress meters/health bars, and how to create text that wraps with a gradient.