4. Getting into the Details of Methods
by Chris Dickinson, John P. Doran, Greg Lukosek
Unity 5: Learning C# by Developing Games
- Unity 5: Learning C# by Developing Games
- Table of Contents
- Unity 5: Learning C# by Developing Games
- Unity 5: Learning C# by Developing Games
- Credits
- Preface
- 1. Module 1
- 1. Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready
- Prerequisite knowledge to use this book
- Dealing with scriptphobia
- Downloading Unity
- Teaching behavior to GameObjects
- C# documentation – where to find it? Do I need it at all?
- Working with C# script files
- Creating a C# script file
- Introducing the MonoDevelop code editor
- Instance? What is it?
- Summary
- 2. Introducing the Building Blocks for Unity Scripts
- 3. Getting into the Details of Variables
- Writing C# statements properly
- Understanding component properties in Unity's Inspector
- Changing a property's value in the Inspector panel
- Private variables
- Naming your variables properly
- Beginning variable names with lowercase
- Using multiword variable names
- Declaring a variable and its type
- Assigning values while declaring a variable
- Where you declare a variable is important
- Variable scope – determining where a variable can be used
- Summary
- 4. Getting into the Details of Methods
- 5. Lists, Arrays, and Dictionaries
- 6. Loops
- 7. Object, a Container with Variables and Methods
- 8. Let's Make a Game! – From Idea to Development
- 9. Starting Your First Game
- 10. Writing GameManager
- 11. The Game Level
- 12. The User Interface
- 13. Collectables — What Next?
- 1. Discovering Your Hidden Scripting Skills and Getting Your Environment Ready
- 2. Module 2
- 01. 2D Twin-stick Shooter
- Project overview
- Setting up the project
- Creating our scene
- Implementing player movement
- Shooting behavior
- Creating enemies
- Adding GameController to spawn enemy waves
- Particle systems for enemy explosion
- Adding in sound effects/music
- Adding in points, score, and wave numbers
- Publishing the game
- Summary
- Challenges
- 2. Creating GUIs
- 3. GUIs Part 2 – Clicker Game
- 4. Mobile Endless Game – Procedural Content
- Project overview
- Prerequisites
- Project setup
- Adding the background
- Adding a simple animated character
- Making a repeating background
- Working with sorting layers
- Creating our player behaviour
- Creating obstacles
- Spawning obstacles at runtime
- Game start and end behaviours
- Keeping score
- Summary
- Challenges
- 5. Shooting Gallery – Working with Animations and Tweens
- 6. Side-scrolling Platformer
- 7. First Person Shooter Part 1 – Creating Exterior Environments
- 8. First-person Shooter Part 2 – Creating Interior Environments
- 9. First Person Shooter Part 3 – Implementing Gameplay and AI
- 10. Building an In-Game Level Editor
- 11. Finishing Touches
- 01. 2D Twin-stick Shooter
- 3. Module 3
- 1. Detecting Performance Issues
- 2. Scripting Strategies
- Cache Component references
- Obtaining Components using the fastest method
- Removing empty callback declarations
- Avoiding the Find() and SendMessage() methods at runtime
- Disabling unused scripts and objects
- Consider using distance-squared over distance
- Avoid retrieving string properties from GameObjects
- Update, Coroutines, and InvokeRepeating
- Consider caching Transform changes
- Faster GameObject null reference checks
- Summary
- 3. The Benefits of Batching
- 4. Kickstart Your Art
- Audio
- Loading audio files
- Encoding formats and quality levels
- Audio performance enhancements
- Minimize active Audio Source count
- Minimize Audio Clip references
- Enable Force to Mono for 3D sounds
- Resample to lower frequencies
- Consider all encoding formats
- Beware of streaming
- Apply Filter effects through Mixer groups to reduce duplication
- Use "WWW.audioClip" responsibly
- Consider Audio Module files for background music
- Texture files
- Mesh and animation files
- Summary
- Audio
- 5. Faster Physics
- Physics Engine internals
- Physics performance optimizations
- Scene setup
- Use Static Colliders appropriately
- Optimize the Collision Matrix
- Prefer discrete collision detection
- Modify the FixedUpdate frequency
- Adjust the Maximum Allowed Timestep
- Minimize cast and bounding-volume checks
- Avoid complex Mesh Colliders
- Avoid complex physics components
- Let physics objects sleep
- Modify Solver Iteration Count
- Optimizing ragdolls
- Know when to use physics
- Consider upgrading to Unity 5
- Summary
- 6. Dynamic Graphics
- Profiling rendering issues
- Front end bottlenecks
- Back end bottlenecks
- Fill rate
- Overdraw
- Occlusion Culling
- Shader optimization
- Consider using Shaders intended for mobile platforms
- Use small data types
- Avoid changing precision while swizzling
- Use GPU-optimized helper functions
- Disable unnecessary features
- Remove unnecessary input data
- Only expose necessary variables
- Reduce mathematical complexity
- Reduce texture lookups
- Avoid conditional statements
- Reduce data dependencies
- Surface Shaders
- Use Shader-based LOD
- Memory bandwidth
- VRAM limits
- Fill rate
- Lighting and Shadowing
- Optimizing graphics for mobile
- Summary
- 7. Masterful Memory Management
- 8. Tactical Tips and Tricks
- A. Bibliography
- Index
In the previous chapter, you were introduced to a variable's scope, within which a variable exists and is allowed to be used. The scope is determined by the opening and closing curly braces. The purpose of those curly braces is to act as a container for a block of executable code—a code block. In the second chapter, you understood that a method is a code block that can execute by just calling the method's name. It's time to understand the importance of code blocks and the variables used in them. A method defines a code block that begins and ends with curly braces.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Using methods in a script
- Naming methods the good way
- Defining a method
- Calling a method
- Returning a value from a method
Variables are the first major building block of C# and methods are the second, so let's dive into methods.
There are two reasons to use methods in a script:
All of the executable code in a script is inside methods. The first purpose of a method is to work with the member variables of the class. The member variables store data that is needed for a component to give a GameObject its behavior. The whole reason for writing a script is to make a GameObject do something interesting. A method is the place where we make a behavior come to life.
The second purpose of a method is to create code blocks that will be used over and over again. You don't want to be writing the same code over and over. Instead, you place the code in a code block and give it a name so that you can call it whenever needed.
Let's take a quick look at this example:
This is a perfect example of the function that does something useful. It might look a bit strange to you as it takes two parameters. Don't worry about it too much as of now; we will cover it in detail soon. All I want you to notice right now is that the preceding method can take some data and do something useful with it. In this case, it is adding two numbers and printing the result on the Unity console. Now, the best part now—we can call this method as many times as we want, passing different parameters, without repeating the code every time we need it. If you feel confused, don't worry. Just remember that a function can save you from repeating code over and over again.
Methods can also return some data. We will cover this at a later stage in this chapter.
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