Hands-On Unity 2021 Game Development

Book excerpt: Achieve mesmerizing game experiences using the latest Unity 2021 features by following a practical approach to building professional games Key FeaturesUnleash the capabilities of C# scripting to create UIs, graphics, game AI agents and moreExplore Unity's latest tools, including Universal Render Pipeline, Shader Graph, UI Toolkit, Visual Scripting, and VFX graph, to enhance graphics and animationBuild an AR experience using Unity’s AR FoundationBook Description Learning how to use Unity is the quickest way to creating a full game, but that’s not all you can do with this simple, yet comprehensive suite of video game development tools – Unity is just as useful for creating AR/VR experiences, complex simulations, real-time realistic rendering, films, and practical games for training and education. Hands-On Unity 2021 Game Development outlines a practical journey to creating your first full game from the ground up, building it step-by-step and applying your knowledge as you progress. Complete with hands-on tutorials and projects, this easy-to-follow guide will teach you how to develop the game using several Unity tools. As you advance, you will learn how to use the Unity engine, create simple scripts using C#, integrate graphics, sound, and animations, and manipulate physics to create interesting mechanics for your game. You’ll be able to apply all the knowledge that you gain to a real-world game. Later chapters will show you how to code a simple AI agent to challenge the user and use profiling tools to ensure that the code runs efficiently. Finally, you'll work with Unity's AR tools to create AR experiences for 3D apps and games. By the end of this Unity book, you will have created a complete game and built a solid foundation in using a wide variety of Unity tools. What you will learnExplore both C# and Visual Scripting tools to customize various aspects of a game, such as physics, gameplay, and the UIProgram rich shaders and effects using Unity's new Shader Graph and Universal Render PipelineImplement postprocessing to improve graphics quality with full-screen effectsCreate rich particle systems for your Unity games from scratch using VFX Graph and ShurikenAdd animations to your game using the Animator, Cinemachine, and TimelineUse the brand new UI Toolkit package to create user interfacesImplement game AI to control character behaviorWho this book is for This book is best suited for game developers looking to upgrade their knowledge and those who want to migrate their existing skills to the Unity game engine. Those with prior Unity knowledge will also benefit from the chapters exploring the latest features. While you’ll still able to follow along if you don’t have any programming experience, knowing the fundamentals of C# programming will help you get the most out of this book.