Working with C# script files
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
Until you learn some basic concepts of programming, it's too early to study how scripts work, but you still need to know how to create one.
There are several ways of creating a script file using Unity:
- In the menu, navigate to Assets | Create | C# Script.
- In the Project tab, navigate to Create | C# Script.
- Right-click in the Project tab, and from the pop-up menu, navigate to Create | C# Script.
All of these ways create a .cs file in the Unity Assets folder. From now on, whenever I tell you to create a C# script, use whichever method you prefer.
As our Unity project progresses, we will have lots of different types of files in the Project view. It's highly recommended that you keep a clean and simple folder structure in your project.
Let's keep our scripts in the Scripts folder, textures in Textures, and so on so that it looks something like this:
From now on, let's not keep any loose files in the Assets folder.
Unity allows us to customize the user interface. Everyone has their own favorite. I prefer a one-column layout Project tab instead of Unity's default two-column layout. To change this, open the context menu in the top-right corner of the Project tab, as shown in this screenshot:
When working in a team, you will notice that every team member has his/her own layout preference. A level designer may like to use a big Scene tab. An animator will probably use the Animation and Animator tabs. For a programmer like you, all tabs are fairly important. However, the Console tab is the one that you will use a lot while testing your code. I mostly prefer a layout divided into four columns—from left to right, Scene and Console, then Hierarchy, then Project and finally Inspector. It looks like what is shown in the following screenshot:
Feel free to change the interface however you want. But try to keep the Console tab visible all the time. We will use it a lot throughout the book. You can also save your custom layouts in the Layout menu.
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