Mobile Game Engines - Mobile Game Design Essentials - page 220

Unity3D Tutorial - part 1
Now that we have described several game engines, it is time to pick one and start
assembling a game with it. As our reference title to develop the tutorial we chose a
classic game named Space Invaders by Activision.
In this first part of the tutorial, we will create the setup for our game environment.
In the next chapter, we will add the main actors for our game: the player's ship and
the enemies, and define their behaviors. In the last part of the tutorial in Chapter 10 ,
Balancing, Tuning, and Polishing Mobile Games , we will add the final touches re-
quired by the game. As the engine to be used to develop the game, our choice is
Unity, for several reasons. First of all it is a professional tool, so whatever you learn
about it can be useful for your career as a game developer. It is a both an excellent
2D and 3D engine, which means you can develop any game you like with it. Unity is
also very user-friendly, which will help grasp the basics with a short tutorial. Finally,
the basic user license of Unity is free, which means you can download it and follow
the tutorial at no cost!
In case you haven't done it yet, go to http://unity3d.com/ and download Unity, we sug-
gest Version 4 or 3.5.7. The first is the latest, the second is the more stable.
You may also need a 3D-modeling software to create the assets that will be used for
the game. We mentioned several such tools in Chapter 3 , Graphics for Mobile , of this
topic, we suggest you to pick one of them to work with, as this will help you to get
familiar with software that are considered as Industry standards.
In case you can't or don't want to to model your own assets, we will provide them any-
way as part of the contents of this topic.