Designing and Preparing - Pro Unity Game Development with C# - page 2

already familiar with the basics, and aims to show how you could use Unity and C# in a practical
context, making real-world games —the kind you could seriously think about selling if you wanted.
Consequently, reading this topic should feel much like putting on a pair of magical glasses that allow
you to see new possibilities in familiar surroundings. Its main benefit should be in allowing you to see
new and creative ways to use the tools you already know.
Note It's important to be flexible and open-minded about solutions and approaches in game development.
Just because the word professional is used in this topic, don't think the techniques and methods I'll show
you here will always be the best or optimal methods for your own projects in every case. Games are highly
context sensitive. For any game there'll likely be many roads to the same destination, and choosing the right
road often takes careful consideration. So be open to exploring and avoid rigidity. This topic offers plenty of
food and ideas to help you formulate alternative plans and to see things from new perspectives.
Designing
This is Chapter 1, so we'll be thinking here about how to get started making a C# Unity game. When
most people begin making a game, there's typically a strong temptation, born from excitement and
enthusiasm perhaps, to immediately fire up Unity and MonoDevelop, and to “jump in” and get started
in a free-form style. The desire for instant, tangible results like this can be strong indeed. But resist
it. Jumping into coding without any prior planning is almost always a recipe for disaster and drift;
not to mention wasted time! If you want professional quality results, then invest time ahead simply to
think, consider, and plan, and also to write down the results of your thinking, whether that's in words,
pictures, or diagram form—whatever best helps you remember your own thoughts.
Maybe you think you know your own thoughts well and don't need to write them down. But resist
this way of thinking, too. Get into the habit of making written plans. Over time, we typically forget,
and our thoughts and ideas get fuzzy. But solid and dependable coding critically requires clarity of
mind, and that's true no matter which programming language we use. Half the solution comes from
understanding the problem. The famous philosopher John Searle echoed this when he said, “If you
can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself.” So make written plans and work on the basis of
those. With that said, we'll begin by writing a summary and overview of the game we'll be making in
this topic.
Game Overview
The FPS game we'll make in this topic will be titled Crazy Mad Office Dude ( hereafter referred to as
CMOD) , as shown in Figure 1-1 . You can also visit my YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/user/
alanthorngames to see the game in action. CMOD is an action-shooter in a deliberately comic and
cartoon style, played in first-person perspective (from the eyes of the game character).