Setting Up and Structuring Our Project

For some time, Unity has been issuing exams that cover a range of different skills for people who are either graduates, self-taught, or are classed as veterans in their field.

If we check the prerequisites on Unity's website (https://certification.unity.com/products/certified-programmer), they tell us that this exam isn't for absolute beginners and you need at least 2 years of experience working with Unity and computer programming, including C#. This book will take you through the process of becoming as familiar as possible with Unity and its services, to the point where it might feel like a beginners course; however, I expect you to understand the fundamentals of C# programming, such as what an if statement is, what a function does, and what a class represents. If you don't, I would recommend reading Harrison Ferrone'sLearning C# by Developing Games with Unity 2019book first (https://www.packtpub.com/gb/game-development/learning-c-developing-games-unity-2019-fourth-edition). Be aware that this exam is based on Unity 2017.3 and it hasn't been updated since it's launch, but it's definitely the best place to start if you are working with the fundamentals of Unity.

As you can imagine, it is sometimes difficult to gauge what level a programmer is at with their experience. Imagine what it's like for an employer to recruit someone. Often, a programmer is judged by their portfolio, but what happens if you're a graduate without one or you lack a large quantity of work because you've been too busy studying? Perhaps you've been a programmer for years but can't show any recent work due to signing non-disclosure agreements? Some employers might look at your CV and not even look at your portfolio as the qualifications just don't look impressive enough. The tests a potential employer can put a developer through can also be unbalanced, unfair, unrealistic, and not challenging enough; it's likely that the employer has grabbed a programmer's questionnaire template off the internet to test you.

However, having qualifications from Unity itself sends a clear message that you've been tested and covered all the fields that acknowledge you as a certified Unity programmer. Even if you have a decent portfolio showing a level of standardization and focus, having qualifications from Unity can give you the edge over someone else in a job application.

This book serves two main purposes:

• To take you through a fun, simple, side-scrolling shooter project with some downloadable art assets and sounds that will cover the core objectives in Unity's exam
• To get you as ready for the exam as possible with regular testing and reviewing

So, if you feel like you don't need to carry out the project, skip to the very end of this book to try out the final mock test—actually, I recommend you do this now. Flick to the back of the book, take the test, and if you don't do as well as you planned (that is, score over 75%), at least you know you have something to learn, and working through the project might help. Don't take the exam too soon after taking the mock test if you aren't happy with your score—you will be going up against your own muscle memory, rather than the knowledge itself.

Unity has split the necessary areas of this exam into six core objectives. We will cover what these objectives are in this chapter before introducing our side-scrolling shooter project, which will cover the majority of the objectives. We will also cover specialized subjects outside of the project, such as networking, VR, and more, in the Appendix section of this book.

Throughout the following chapters, we will refresh ourselves with the general practices of coding—a bit like the dos and don'ts when coding a project. Then, we will get to grips with the genre of the game and, hopefully, get you thinking about how to set up a game framework. Finally, we will download and set upour empty project in Unity and learn about Unity services.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• The six core objectives
• Overview of design patterns
• The SOLID principles
• Designing the Killer Wave game
• The Killer Wave game framework
• Setting up Unity 2017.3
• Collaborate

We won't be doing any coding in this chapter as our focus is on what Unity wants from you in the exam. We will discuss an overview of the methodology and structuring code with design patterns. You may feel tempted to skip some parts because you simply aren't interested, but remember the only reason I am mentioning the majority of this stuff is that it's highly likely it will come up in the exam. So, please don't feel like I'm punishing you on purpose!

The next section will detail the core objectives covered in this chapter.