Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter
1
Designing and Preparing
Welcome to Chapter 1, the beginning of a comprehensive and “professional” C# programming
course for the Unity engine. The core objective of this topic is to thoroughly explore the development
of a first-person shooter (FPS) game from start to finish. Further, it aims to do so in a way that'll
have strong practical relevance for you and your own projects. This topic is intended to be read as
a complete course; meaning you should read it on a chapter-by-chapter basis, in sequence from
beginning to end, thinking of each chapter as an independent class or lesson. If you follow this
topic carefully in order, sitting at the computer and working along with me in Unity, then by the end,
you should have completed a playable FPS game that runs on desktop platforms and has mobile
potential. But much more than this: you'll have seen and explored many C# coding techniques that
have wider relevance and importance than only to the specific game created here. As we progress,
considering techniques and ideas, it's important to see them in their broader context, as tools you
can use in your own ways and for your own games. Don't just think of them as ideas limited to
this
topic and
this
project— because they're not.
A further and final quality of this topic, which makes it unique among the tutorial literature available
today, is its strong “professional” focus. The topic title is
Pro Unity Game Development with C#,
and
the word
Pro
has an important meaning worth clarifying before getting started with development.
Pro (short for
professional
) and is especially vague in the games industry. This is because it means
different things to different people, and there's little or no consensus about which definition is correct,
if any. To some, being a professional simply means your main income stems from making video
games. To others, you can also be a professional by making games part-time, or even as a hobby,
so long as you sell them for money. For others, being a professional is about having a recognized
degree or qualification from an established authority, like a university. And to others, professionalism
has nothing to do with money or education, and is about making games of a specific quality
and polish.
Now, it's not my intention to promote any of these definitions as correct exclusively. I want to capture
at least something of them all in this topic when I use the term
professional
. By “professional,”
I mean
this topic has a strong practical flavor and value, as opposed to a theoretical or academic flavor. Its
aim is
not
to
introduce
you to Unity or C# development as though you were a complete newcomer,
or to debate about the nuances or specifics of more advanced features. Rather, it assumes you're
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