Patrick McCabe - Create Computer Games: Design and Build Your Own Game

CREATE COMPUTER GAMES DESIGN AND BUILD YOUR OWN GAME

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Copyright 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959162

ISBN: 978-1-119-40418-7 (pbk); ISBN: 978-1-119-40422-4 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-119-40424-8 (ebk)

This book explains the basics of game design using the free game development tool Unity. This book was created to make Unity accessible for young adults who are interested in the process of game design but dont know where to begin.

Game design is tough. It involves figuring out and understanding everything from design to coding. Knowing where to begin is daunting and can feel inaccessible. Just keep in mind that no one starts off great at game design. You dont need to know everything to start, and thinking that you do is one of the hardest challenges to overcome.

This book was written to get people like me to start thinking about game design in a different way. This book isnt about making a perfect game or about teaching you everything about game development or even Unity. This book is a starting line. It teaches the basics and encourages you to think about games differently.

This book was written with the thought that games are tough to make and that coding is confusing. Think of this like a cookbook that explains why you use two eggs instead of three and what the pepper does to help bring out the flavor. The codes and game development that this book walks you through are approached from the bottom up. Things make sense when you understood why certain codes or components are needed. Just knowing the ingredients to a recipe doesnt teach you how to cook.

This book was written for teenagers who have an interest in developing games. People who have spent years working in game design will find this book repetitive and probably not useful at all. I dont pretend that this teaches everything about game design I know for a fact that it doesnt. This book is an introduction to the field, so it was made for people who have little to no idea where to even begin when they design their games. Some rudimentary typing skills and access to a computer and the Internet are all you really need to read this book. Youll also need a copy of Unity, which you can download for free (Ill show you how).

Throughout this book, I use the following icons:

Tips give some clarifications or offer shortcuts. I use tips to help you understand the program better or do things in an easier way.

Anything marked by the Remember icon reminds you of principles or ideas that you should think about throughout your game development.

This book takes you step by step through the process of designing a 3D platformer. If you have a clear idea of what game development is and know about Unitys interface, you can skip the first two chapters and start with , where I dive into actually developing a game.

use a separate program known as Blender and go into the basics of animation. If you arent interested in adding animation or you already have animations you want to include in your game, you can skip those chapters.

All the other chapters build off of each other and are designed to take you through the steps necessary for developing an example game that youll build with this book.

In this chapter, youll ask yourself questions about not just your games but all games. When youre designing computer games, you need to think about the fundamental reasons people play games in the first place. The reasons people play strategy games arent the same reasons they play horror games. Both kinds of games are fun, but for very different reasons. The goal of this chapter is to help you understand what those reasons are so that the games you design deliver what your players are looking for.