Getting Started with Game Development in Unity

Day 1- Making 2D Space Shooter Game

Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, which is primarily used to develop video games and simulations for computers, consoles and mobile devices.

Let us start off by going to https://unity.com/. Here you can see a get started button. Click it

You will then be led to a new window with all the subscription packages. You are going to select Individual tab and select get started with the personal version. The pro version is not that different from personal version beside some added features like Team License, Unity Cloud Build Pro, Unity Analytics Pro, exclusive Asset Store discounts, etc.

If you are working individually and earned below $100,000 in revenue in the previous fiscal year then personal would be the best option.

Select get started in personal and you will be taken to another window to get started with Unity. Click Start here and select Agree and Download. It is now going to download Unity Hub to you computer.

The Unity Hub is a standalone application that streamlines the way you find, download, and manage your Unity Projects and installations. In addition, you can manually add versions of the Editor that you have already installed on your machine to your Hub.

Install Unity Hub in your computer and you can now control which version of unity you want to work with so it is a perfect version control tool while working on both new and old projects.

As you can see in the image above, I have bunch of projects already created. This ‘Project’ tab is where all your projects will be listed so you can open any project you like from this tab.

This next tab ‘Learn’ is where you can find all the tutorials and projects to get you started with learning unity from some of the leading experts in game design with unity.

There is also a beta release of Community where you can join all the unity communities so you can ask questions if you are new and answer some if you are confident in your solution to help yourself and the broad community of fellow unity developers. You can also join in discussions with some of the experts in unity to broaden your knowledge in unity so be sure to check that out.

Finally, we have installs where all the versions you have downloaded in the past will be listed. If you have already downloaded a version then you can simply import using locate and if you want to download a version then you can click on New and select a version you want to download.

You can select a version of your choice. If you are new then it is best practice to download the recommended release and don’t choose the Pre-Release version even if it is new since it is still being optimized.

Here you need to select Microsoft Visual Studio which is an IDE where you are going to write all the scripts used in your game and select other build support of your choice.

After that select Next and agree to the End User License Agreement and select Done. It is going to ask you to verify, select yes and it will start downloading and installing the version to your computer.

You can see the progress of your download and installation in the installs tab. After the installation is complete, you can now go to projects, select down arrow key right to New and choose the version of unity you want to use for your build. Its best to use the latest version for your project.

After you have selected the unity version, you will be taken to a new window where you can give a name to your project, give the location for project storage and on the left you can see many templates that can be used for the specific type of project.

Since we are making 2D game, you should select 2D as your template, fill in the project details on the right and select create and now you are good to go.

This is the first screen you are going to see after you open your unity project. This is where you are going to build all of your games and application.

On the middle is what you call scene view where all of your game objects are going to go. You are going to design all of your UI and game levels in this view.

What you build in this view is going to be rendered in your game which can be previewed from a tab called Game just to the right of scene tab. It is going to show you how the end product of your build in scene view is going to look and feel. This is also where you are going to play test your game.

This is the left part of your screen where all of your game objects are going to be listed. As you add more game objects in your game, more it is going to populate so it is best to manage the hierarchy for easier development experience

On the right is the Inspector view, this is going to give you detailed information about the object you have selected. As I have selected a main camera in the Hierarchy, you can see all the information of that camera. If you select a different object then you can see the information related to that selected object.

On the bottom is the project view which is going to store all the assets that you add to your project. If you add a 3D mode, 2D model, pictures, scripts, etc, it is going to go there.

To navigate inside your scene view, you can left click on the object and as you can see the object gets highlighted in the Hierarchy as well. you can right click on the screen to move around and scroll your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of your scene view.

You can also right click and navigate using w, s, a, d key and increase and decrease the speed using the mouse scroll which is called the fps mode. It is easier to navigate using fps mode in the 3D view but for 2D right click works fine.

With this you are ready to start developing your game or an application using unity while you learn more features as you move on.