Unity Game Development in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours)

I was amazed that after just a few hours of reading this book, studying the examples, and following the step-by-step exercise I had a fully functioning 3D game. Incredible.The chapters broken into easily digestible concepts and the instructions are easy to understand and implement. The first six chapters of the book concentrate on designing your 3D world in Unity. You learn about coordinate systems (XYZ axes), how to create objects and color, texture, and shade them. A few chapters are devoted to creating the game's terrain or landscape. You learn how to sculpt them, how to texture and color them, how to add things like trees, grass and a sky, water, how to add lighting effects. Actually my only criticism of the book it that too much time was spent on terrains too early in the book. I kept thinking - lets create a game....But in Chapter 7 we did create a game using the cool terrain created in chapters 4-6. And the Amazing Racer game was pretty amazing. Amazing that I could create some that intricate looking in just a few minutes.In the next part of the book you learn about scripting. C# scripting in particular. I spent a few years programing GIS systems in Java so I found the scripting part pretty straight-forward. But if you have never programmed in an object-orientated language, the next few chapters might get confusing. Complex concepts like Classes, Methods, Functions, Inheritance, Instantiating are touched on, but because of the scope of the book the author is not able to cover them in detail. But all of the C# code is documented in the book, or you can download the files from the website.By the end of the book you setup three more games and cover a lot more gaming topics. When I finished the final chapter I actually felt ready to create a Unity game of my own design. I know there are a million other things that I have to learn, but this book taught me the basics and gave me the confidence to dive into the world of Unity.PS: The games were created using Unity engine version 4.1 and 4.2, but the current Unity version is 4.3. For the most part everything is the same, but I did have a few problems copying things like complete Scenes and Animations directly from the author's downloadable examples into my 4.3 Unity folders (the animations just wouldn't run). I found it best to copy the complete 4.1/4.2 games to my computer and then allow Unity to upgrade them from 4.1/4.2 to 4.3. Once I did that I could copy the Scenes and Animations from the author's folders to my folders without any glitches.So thanks Mr. Geig, I learned a lot from the book, and now I am ready to take on Unity.

I found this book to be a very good introduction as well as an impetus to learn more about Unity. I purchased this book as a tool to help a friend learn more about the engine. While using this book, I also learned a few tidbits here and there.Short of a few grammar errors, the book is well laid out and pretty easy to follow. Additionally, some topics could use a bit more explanation. With that said, there is just a lot of content to cover and I understand they were trying to keep each chapter(hour) relatively short. Many of these instances are given alternative places to research, such as the Mecanim animation system, with links to various webpages.The end of the hour exercises also help individuals learn more about the topics covered in each hour. I fully recommend doing each of these.I plan to use this book to help others learn about Unity3d in the future.

Perhaps some readers attend Spanish-English materials. I have been able to study the vast majority of materials in Unity. The pedagogy of this is the best of all offered materials; even each chapter can be studied as a thematic unit with observable results almost immediately. This should be the first study material for those who venture into game development in Unity. The scripts are in C #. Fresh, forceful, no more talk than necessary, with several practices for each item / content, very clear and understandable concepts. Excellent material.[nkt]---------------------------Talvez algunos hispano-lectores acudan a materiales en inglés. He podido estudiar la gran mayoría de materiales en Unity. La pedagogía de este es la mejor de todos los materiales ofertados; incluso cada capítulo puede estudiarse como una unidad temática con resultados observables casi inmediatamente. Este debería ser el primer material de estudio para todos aquellos que incursionan en el desarrollo de videojuegos en Unity. Los scripts están en C#. Conceptos frescos, contundente, sin mas palabrería de lo necesario, con varias prácticas por cada ítem/contenido, muy claro y entendible. Excelente material.[nkt]

This book takes a confusing and more than occaisionally frustrating and complex product and breaks it into pieces we can all understand, I tried one of the other books getting through Unity 3,x and it was a no-go. This book helps me as the instructor and my students, a group of really smart 8 - 14 year olds.Unity integrates with mechanim and lots of other cool stuff and the book teaches how to import and use assets as effectively possible in a 3D environment, The book is broken into logical units and the source code for examples is easily downloadable, I recommend the Kindle version as it can be with you at all times as a guide and reference,

As a college graduate, I used this book in a Character animation and game development class. This book is incredible! Unity is very powerful and very easy to learn. Using this book as a companion really helps to jump-start the learning process. I was an absolute beginner. With the step-by-step process this book guides you with along with a few helpful hints every now and then, I was able to create a few "mini games" in just a few hours. I am glad that my professor chose this book for the class. For the cheap price, I was very satisfied.

It's good. However 4.3 is out which has 2d defaults. The ui has changed a bit, so if you are learning unity you'll have to filter all of that out. These "cram" books are a good crash course, but you'll need A LOT more to get the most of unity. Again, great to get up and running but not much more.

This book teaches you about every aspect of Unity3d engine to start your journey. After reading this book I have enough basic knowledge to create games on my own and I am ready to dive into more advanced topics. I highly recommended this book for every new unity adept.

I bought this book second hand in April 2020 because it was very cheap. Less than a quarter of the price of the 2018 version. Despite being 7 years old, it is still mainly relevant. The main issue encountered was importing the standard assets for the exercises. I managed to download the standard unity assets from the asset store but had to tweak the scripts to get them working in unity 2019. A less experienced developer might have given up at this point.I also did not get the sample code that is supplied on a CD but fortunately a Google search found the files on an online learning Google site by Mr Roth and Mr Terry (just Google that) with all sample files. Without this the book would be difficult to follow.The sample code is also outdated but it's easy to fix broken references and researching how to fix the code gives you a better understanding of unity anyway so not a waste of time doing this.This book does give you a good basic understanding of how to make games in Unity. I find it better to build stuff up from scratch and understand how all the parts work than the unity online learning method of 'here's a working game now let's tweak it and see what changes'. The latter approach might appeal to some but you learn more slowly and skip some important fundamentalsSo in summary, had the book been more than a fiver I would not recommend it. If the more recent version is less than 30 quid I would buy that one instead.

The book is well written and has a good pace. Everything is explained in detail and this provides a great experience. I didn't even have Unity downloaded before I picked this book up and by the time I finished it (about 3 weekends) I am confident in what I've learnt. Of course there is still the need to practice it which will be left up to me but I'm already fluent on some things that this book has taught me. The book initially takes you through the Unity IDE but gradually starts mixing in the scripts which are all discussed. If you've never done anything in C# (like me) then don't worry, it's all explained however I do come from a C/C++ background but I'm sure that this book would be fine for those with no experience.

Great book - I'm using Unity 4.5.2 to start off in game development and this covers all of the basics required to get you up to speed, including mobile development which is what I'm interested in. You actually build 4 complete working games in the book which gives you a really good insight into how Unity works. Really easy to follow, and using the Unity software becomes quite intuitive after 4 or 5 chapters. The only negative point I would make is that a couple of the later chapters (around animation) don't go into enough detail, although there's plenty of examples out there to supplement the book.

Really good introduction into Unity. Please be aware that this applies to Unity 4 and there are a few different in the UI and programming side of things. However, they are easy to work out, and the language will often automatically update itself to suit Unity 5, so make sure you take notes (and edit the book with a pencil, if you're brave!)You get to design 4 games in total, ending with a "Temple Run" style game, which is fun to try and customise afterwards.

Mike Geig has writen a pretty awesome book here. I covers a lot of diffrent aspects in Unity - been playing around with Unity a bit before i startet the book, and followed lots of tutorials - but Mike Geig has with this book given me a much greater insight with the book. And there are game exampels how to make 3 or 4 simple games - so thats pretty cool. I've have quite a bit of coding experince - so the part in the book where he explains the fundemental parts of programming and you skip if you have progamming experince. But i think its a good idea to allow people who dont have any exerince with progamming to get startet and get some blood on the teeth to get startet. I can higly recommend this book - for you who want to get a good hold to Unity3D!