Chapter 1—Welcome to the Third Dimension

This chapter covers the key concepts we'll need to understand and complete the exercise in this book. It takes a brief look at 3D concepts and the processes used by Unity to create games.

Chapter 2—Environments

Our game world is but an empty void! We'll kick off with this chapter by taking a look at the various ways to incorporate terrains, externally produced 3D models, and other Unity engine features such as sound and lighting to get your game environment up and running.

Chapter 3—Player Characters

Every game needs a hero, right? In this chapter, we'll be taking a look at every element that goes into making the first-person player character from input controls to cameras and colliders. Once you've learnt what goes into making him, you'll introduce the player character to your island and take a stroll around.

Chapter 4—Interactions

Games are all about interacting with a virtual world, so where would our character be without some in-game actions? In this chapter, I'll introduce you to collision detection and ray casting. We'll look at how we can combine these techniques with scripting and animation to transform our static building into one that responds to our player.

Chapter 5—Prefabs, Collection, and HUD

Giving your player a sense of achievement in your game is essential. To help with this, you'll need to remind them of actions they've taken so far in the game, and give them something to aim for. In this fifth chapter, we will construct what is often referred to as a Heads Up Display (HUD) with text and graphical displays that change dynamically as the user plays.

Having created a simple HUD, you'll create a short object-collection game, which will allow the player character to pick up batteries in order to gain access to the building on the island.

Chapter 6—Instantiation and Rigidbodies

Almost every game scenario that you can imagine will involve creating or "spawning" objects in your environment. Known in programming terms as Instantiation, the creation of objects during the game's runtime is a crucial concept for every beginner developer to get to grips with.

Having created our collection game and building interaction in previous chapters, we'll be building upon the interactivity in our game by creating a basic target game, which will involve throwing objects at targets to unlock a part of our environment. This will not only teach you about instantiation, but also the crucial concept of using rigid body physics objects in your games.

Chapter 7—Particle Systems

What's a 3D game these days without some fancy graphic effects to wow the player? In this chapter, you'll be creating a log fire to keep our player warm — using two particle systems, one for flames and the other for smoke.

Using a Particle System, we'll look at how we can mimic the behavior of fire and utilize images for each particle to add realism; we'll finish by disabling the fire, giving the player something to aim for — getting it lit to keep warm!

Chapter 8—Menu Design

Creating a professional, easy-to-navigate menu is a crucial part of making an enjoyable game product. What user is going to want to play your game if he or she can't even find the Start button? In this chapter, we look at the various ways of creating menus and other user interfaces for the player to interact with.

You will create menus using both GUI textures and the GUI class in order to create scalable interfaces that can be deployed on the desktop or the Web.

Chapter 9—Finishing Touches

In game production, especially in Unity, you will reach a point at which you have just created some piece of interaction in your game that you're so pleased with, you want to add that extra polish to make it really stand out to the player.

In this chapter we'll take a look at further uses of sound, lighting effects, trail rendering, and other dynamic effects that are easy to implement, and make the difference between a simple working game and a polished final product.

Chapter 10—Building and sharing

In this chapter, we will look at how we can export your game for the Web and as a standalone project. We'll look at various different settings you will need to consider when you are preparing your finished product for your audience, such as graphical quality, control input, and more.

Chapter 11—Testing and further study

In this chapter, we will discuss the ways in which you should move on from this book, and how you can gather information from test users to improve your game. This will help you prepare your project to be tested by a wider audience to get feedback and make even better games!