Today, we look at a number of tools for building and populating vast game environments with Unity’s Terrain System. This system generates (and regenerates) a terrain mesh at runtime that is optimized for our game, providing high level of detail at a close proximity and maintaining a low poly mesh for distant features, all tocontinue reading
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Lesson 10: FPS Game
This week we are looking at some advanced Unity features that we can use to create our own “first person shooter” (FPS) style game. We will take a look at tools for quick level generation, dive into Unity’s Character Controller, take a deeper examination of the offerings of the Physics library, and finally dip our toes into some Enemy AI. Starting today, our remaining lessons are no longer required to complete the assignments. From this point on, all lessons are strictly educational, but I strongly recommend trying to follow along as these systems are very useful for developing your own games.
continue readingAssignment 9: The Final Project
Dun dun… DAAAAAAAAH! This is it, folks. The last and final assignment for this course. The big burrito, with a side of all the chips – your very own game. This one is worth a little over 25% of your grade for the course, so make sure to read the directions carefully. You don’t want to get caught on a technicality!
continue readingAssignment 8: Platform Game 3 – Advanced
This week we learn some new techniques for enhancing the look and feel our our game levels. Use these tools and build out more of the mechanics of your game level to make your platform game complete!
continue readingLesson 9: Advanced 2D
For this class, we looked at a few more advanced techniques to enhance our platform games. The first is Animation Effects, which allow us to call a scripted event from inside an animation clip, which we used to make a “coin box”. Then we look at defining physics collisions, setting up areas that affect our physics with 2D Effectors, and finally look at Sprite Shapes.
continue readingLesson 8: Attack Methods
No class for Week 8, but I have added some videos for a recent lesson developed for another class that feature a simplified character controller, as well as methods for attacking with stomp, melee, and projectile attacks.
Perhaps the most useful component of this is the OnDrawGizmos( ) and OnDrawGizmosSelected( ) method which can be used to draw info in your Editor’s Scene view. These are very useful for visualizing things like areas of effect, especially for those things that use triggers or physics calls. This method is called automatically by the engine just like “Update()” but are even running while the game is not playing, as this is an editor specific tool.
Check out the Unity Script Reference – Gizmos for more…
continue readingAssignment 7: Platform Game 2 – Animation
This week we learn how to animate things – our characters, our objects, even our tiles. Now it is time to put that to knowledge to practice and bring your own personal game to life.
continue readingLesson 7: 2D Animation
It’s time to bring our world and our characters to life. This week, we dive into the wonderful world of animation, specifically how animation is implemented in our engine.
continue readingAssignment 6: Platform Game
It’s time to dive into 2D development with the creation of your very own side-scrolling adventure. In this round, you have much more creative freedom than before – your characters, story, and level design are up to you! You will be seeing less and less constraints over the next few assignments, as the training wheels are coming off and you get to decide what your game should be.
continue readingLesson 6: 2D Side Scroller
This week we take a closer look at Unity’s 2D systems, and start out on our own side-scrolling adventure. Over the next two weeks, we will develop a fully functional platform game complete with hero, enemies, and so many moving platforms. Let’s begin!
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