Welcome to Chapter 2, Working with Assets. In a way, you can think of this as leveling up as you begin to progress through the book. Give yourself a pat on the back, you're persisting through the early stages of game development. Good for you! Now, this chapter gets a little bit hands-on; it will prepare you for what is to come in Chapter 3, Let's Make Some Prefabs. We will get you familiar with all the different settings and tools in Unity when it comes to handling Sprites. In addition, we will also begin our journey into 2D game development. Our first game will be a 2D top-down arcade-style game, like the famous Pac-Man; you can see an example of what our (finished) game will be like in the following figure:
Throughout this chapter and by making this game, you will learn a bit about what is involved in creating a game that is focused on collecting objects. We will do this by exploring some famous examples in other games both old and new. You will then begin to import assets into Unity and get all the graphics set up and ready to go. By the end of this chapter, you will have your images sliced up and ready to be implemented.
The following is an overview of what we will be covering throughout this chapter and what you will learn by the end of it:
- What are Textures and Sprites?
- What is the Sprite Renderer?
- Sprite Editor
- Sprite Packer
- Sprite Creator
- How to set up the Angel Cakes project, including how to generate Sprites from an Atlas and Sprite Sheet
- Best practices for getting the project ready for applying scripts and sound effects
By the end of this chapter, you will know the following:
- The core tools for creating, modifying, and editing Sprites and Textures
- How to use the core tools and utilize them for the assets within the project
So, let's get going!