Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers: The ultimate guide to creating games with Unity and Microsoft Game Stack

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers

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This book is dedicated to my wife, Yi Liang, for her encouragement and support, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic; her positive attitude toward life has inspired me and helped me through difficult times.

– Jiadong Chen

Foreword

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.

– Industry catchphrase

You now hold in your hands the tools to make great games. If this was a Mario game, then you just punched a question mark block, and then a glowing, flashing, smoking mushroom just rose out of it. If this was a Zelda game, then you just navigated a boss dungeon, found a treasure chest, pulled this book out of it, and raised the book high above your head (with some suitable music playing). In other words, you just acquired a key powerup for your quest.

You can feel that dedication to excellence (which the industry quote refers to) when you play Nintendo games, Halo, Minecraft, and Sonic the Hedgehog (and pretty much whatever your favorite game is). Now you have the same opportunity: you can use your knowledge and your new Unity skills (granted, you probably haven't learned them yet) to make a powerful statement through your work.

Nintendo's philosophy is to never go the easy path; it's always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new.

– Shigeru Miyamoto (2005)

So that's why Nintendo makes some great games (and some really weird ones)! Regardless, here's your chance to make something that's unique and that really shows who you are. With these tools, your passion opens limitless opportunities.

And that brings us to a Microsoft quote (you knew it was coming).

Learning to fly is not pretty, but flying is.

– Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh

You learn tools to create masterpieces (or to at least get a job, or a better one). It's not easy to learn these new tools, but after you gain this knowledge, you can make great games.

Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers makes that process a whole lot easier! Unity is the world's most widely used, real-time 3D development platform for a reason! If you approach Unity with the .NET Framework, then you can leverage the power of C#, Microsoft Game Dev tools, Microsoft Azure Cloud services, and Azure PlayFab. You'll also see how these resources work seamlessly with Visual Studio and GitHub.

Our author, Jiadong Chen, used to work at Unity Technologies as a field engineer. He's been working in this .NET and Unity gaming stack for over 9 years. He's a member of the .NET Foundation, and has been a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for 6 years. (That means he's been awarded the title every year since 2015, based on his impact on the Microsoft developer community.) As you can imagine, his MVP award category is Developer Technologies. In other words, Jiadong is the perfect person to teach you how to use the .NET Framework and Microsoft developer stack to learn how to develop with the Unity game engine and how to take your games to the next level!

Make no mistake: as the title implies, this is a book for .NET developers to learn Unity. First, Jiadong starts with the basics of the Unity game engine. Then, you'll dig into scripting, using Unity to build your game UI, animating your game graphics, building physics, and adding audio and video (the basic components of building your game). Next, Jiadong gets into game math, while also using a rendering pipeline, data-oriented tech, a serialization system, and assets management. Finally, he shows you how to leverage the Microsoft Game Dev suite of technologies, Azure Cloud, and Azure PlayFab as you develop with the Unity engine.

In Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers, Jiadong Chen takes you on a tour, explaining the concepts with images and examples, so that you can fully understand each topic. He then takes you through the process, using real code, so that you can implement your own solutions. The process of learning how to develop games isn't easy, but this book will make it a lot easier.

After you're done reading the book, if life was a Mario game, you'll have grabbed the flag at the top of the flag pole and entered a sewer pipe! If this was a Zelda game, you'll have collected the Triforce. And if it's a Sonic game, then you just beat Dr. Robotnik in a giant robot mech that looks like him. As Satya Nadella implied, learning to fly won't be easy, but once you're done, you're going to be able to really take off and do some great things with Unity!

Ed Price

Senior Program Manager of Architectural Publishing

Microsoft, Azure Architecture Center (http://aka.ms/Architecture) Co-author of seven books, including Meg the Mechanical Engineer, The Azure Cloud Native Architecture Mapbook (Packt), and ASP.NET Core 5 for Beginners (Packt)

Contributors

About the author

Jiadong Chen is one of 3,000 international Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award winners, recognized by Microsoft as one of the technology industry's best and brightest six years in a row, and is currently working as a senior software developer at Company-X, based in Hamilton, New Zealand.

He specializes in the Microsoft Azure cloud, Unity and XR development, and .NET/C#. He is a Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, a Microsoft Certified Azure Developer, a Microsoft Certified Azure AI Engineer, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He is also a member of the .NET Foundation.

Before joining Company-X, Jiadong worked for Unity, the creator of the world's most widely used real-time 3D development platform, as a field engineer.

After this long adventure, I would first like to thank my wife for her support. Writing a book is not an easy task, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and my wife's support has given me the psychological comfort to overcome the difficulties and finish the book.

A special thanks to the Packt team (especially Aaron, Manthan, and Feza) for being with me on this journey.

About the reviewer

Simon Jackson is a long-time software engineer and architect with many years of Unity game development experience, as well as an author of several Unity game development titles. He loves to both create Unity projects and lend a hand to help educate others, whether it's via a blog, vlog, user group, or major speaking event.

He currently works at a mixed-reality research lab called xRealityLabs, building the future of digital solutions for the construction and medical industries.

His primary focus at the moment is on the Reality Toolkit project, which is aimed at building a cross-platform mixed-reality framework to enable both VR and AR developers to build efficient solutions in Unity.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Basic Unity Concepts

Chapter 1: Hello Unity

Technical requirements

Getting started with the Unity Editor

Choosing the right Unity release for you

Choosing the right subscription plan for you

Downloading and installing the Unity Editor

Exploring the Unity Editor

Working with different features in Unity

What is a game engine?

Features in Unity

.NET/C# and scripting in Unity

.NET profiles in Unity

Scripting backends in Unity

Building Unity games with Visual Studio

Summary

Chapter 2: Scripting Concepts in Unity

Technical requirements

Understanding the concepts of scripting in Unity

GameObject-components architecture

Common classes in Unity

Prefabs in Unity

Special folders in Unity

The life cycle of a script instance

Initialization

Update

Rendering

Creating a script and using it as a component

How to create a new script in Unity

Adding a script as a component to a GameObject in the Scene

Accessing a component attached to a GameObject

Packages and the Unity Package Manager

Unity Package Manager

Package

Summary

Part 2: Using C# Scripts to Work with Unity's Built-In Modules

Chapter 3: Developing UI with the Unity UI System

C# scripts and common UI components in Unity

Canvas

Image

Text

Selectable UI components

C# scripts and the UI Event System in Unity

Input Modules

The new Input System package

The Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and the UI

Performance tips to increase performance of the UI

The Unity Profiler

Multiple canvases

Use Sprite Atlas

Summary

Chapter 4: Creating Animations with the Unity Animation System

Technical requirements

Exploring the Unity animation system's concepts

Animation Clips

Animator Controller

Avatar

Animator component

Implementing 3D animation in Unity

Importing animation assets

Configuring the Animator Controller

Implementing 2D animation in Unity

Improving the performance of Unity's animation system

The Unity Profiler

Animator's Culling Mode

Anim. Compression

Summary

Chapter 5: Working with the Unity Physics System

Technical requirements

Concepts in the Unity Physics system

Collider

Rigidbody

Trigger

Scripting with the Physics system

Collision methods

Trigger methods

Methods of Rigidbody

Creating a simple game based on the Physics system

Increasing the performance of the Physics system

The Unity Profiler

Increasing the fixed timestep

Reducing unnecessary layer-based collision detections

Summary

Chapter 6: Integrating Audio and Video in a Unity Project

Technical requirements

Concepts in Unity's audio system and video system

Audio clips

Audio Sources

Audio Listener

Video clips

Video Player

Scripting with audio and video

AudioSource.Play

AudioSource.Pause

AudioSource.Stop

VideoPlayer.clip

VideoPlayer.url

VideoPlayer.Play

VideoPlayer.frame and VideoPlayer.frameCount

Things to note when using Unity to develop web applications

URL

Frame rate

Increasing the performance of the audio system

The Unity Profiler

Using Force To Mono to save memory

Summary

Part 3: Advanced Scripting in Unity

Chapter 7: Understanding the Mathematics of Computer Graphics in Unity

Getting started with coordinate systems

Understanding left-handed and right-handed coordinate systems

Local space

World space

Screen space

Working with vectors

Vector addition

How to subtract vectors

Dot product

Cross product

Working with the transformation matrix

Translation matrix

Rotation matrix

Scaling matrix

Working with quaternions

Creating rotations

Manipulating rotations

Working with Euler angles

Summary

Chapter 8: The Scriptable Render Pipeline in Unity

An introduction to the Scriptable Render Pipeline

The Fontainebleau Demo

The Spaceship Demo

The BoatAttack Demo

The Heretic: Digital Human

The Heretic: VFX Character

Universal Render Pipeline

The High Definition Render Pipeline

Working with Unity's Universal Render Pipeline

Exploring the sample scene

The Universal Render Pipeline asset

The Volume framework and post-processing

The Universal Render Pipeline shaders and materials

Commonly used shaders

Upgrading project materials to Universal Render Pipeline materials

Creating a shader and a Shader Graph

Increasing performance of the Universal Render Pipeline

The Frame Debugger

The SRP Batcher

Summary

Chapter 9: The Data-Oriented Technology Stack in Unity

Technical requirements

DOTS overview

Object-oriented design pattern versus DOTS

C# Job System

ECS

The Burst compiler

Multithreading and the C# Job System in Unity

Coroutines

async/await

Working with the C# Job System

Working with ECS in Unity

Using C# and the Burst compiler

Summary

Chapter 10: Serialization System and Assets Management in Unity and Azure

Technical requirements

Serialization system in Unity

What is Unity's serialization system?

The assets workflow in Unity

GUID and File ID

Meta files

The AssetPostprocessor class and the import pipeline

The Library folder

Introducing the special folders in Unity

Resources folder

StreamingAssets folder

Azure Blob storage with Unity's Addressable Asset system

Setting up an Azure Blob storage service

Installing the Addressable Assets system package

Building addressable content

Deploying content to the Azure Cloud

Loading addressable content from the Azure Cloud

Summary

Chapter 11: Working with Microsoft Game Dev, Azure Cloud, PlayFab, and Unity

Technical requirements  

Introducing Microsoft Game Dev, Microsoft Azure Cloud, and Azure PlayFab

Microsoft Game Dev

Microsoft Azure Cloud

Azure PlayFab

Setting up Azure PlayFab for a Unity project

Creating a new Azure PlayFab account

Setting up a game studio and a game title in Azure PlayFab

Setting up the Azure PlayFab SDK in the Unity project

Signing up and logging in players using Azure PlayFab in Unity

Signing up players in Azure PlayFab

Logging in players in Azure PlayFab

Implementing a leaderboard using Azure PlayFab in Unity

Setting up a leaderboard in Azure PlayFab

Updating the score of a player from Unity using the Azure PlayFab API

Loading the leaderboard data from Azure PlayFab in Unity

Summary

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

As one of the most widely used game engines in the world, Unity provides easy-to-use and powerful game development tools, which undoubtedly attracts many developers to choose it to develop their own games. However, the tools needed in modern game development are not limited to game engines; other tools and services such as the cloud are increasingly used in game development. In this book, we will explore how to use the Unity game engine and the Microsoft Game Dev, including the Microsoft Azure Cloud and Microsoft Azure PlayFab services, to create games.

Starting by understanding the fundamentals of the Unity game engine, you will gradually become familiar with the Unity Editor and the key concepts of writing Unity scripts in C#, which will get you ready to make your own game.

Then, you'll learn how to work with Unity's built-in modules, such as the UI system, animation system, physics system, and how to integrate video and audio in your game to make your game more interesting.

As you progress through the chapters, I'll take you through advanced topics, such as the math involved in computer graphics, how to create post-processing effects in Unity with the new Scriptable Render Pipeline, how to use Unity's C# Job System to implement multithreading, and how to use Unity's Entity Component System (ECS) to write game logic code in a data-oriented way to improve game performance.

Along the way, you'll also learn about the Microsoft Game Dev, the Azure cloud services, Azure PlayFab, and using the Unity3D PlayFab SDK to access the PlayFab API to save and load data from the cloud.

By the end of this book, you'll be familiar with the Unity game engine, have a high-level understanding of the Azure cloud, and be ready to develop your own games.

Who this book is for

The book is for developers with intermediate .NET and C# programming experience who are interested in learning game development with Unity. Basic experience in C# programming is assumed.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Hello Unity, explains the fundamentals of the Unity game engine. Beginning with the Unity installation process and then exploring the editor, you will also learn about .NET profiles and the scripting backend offered by Unity, and finally, you will have a broad understanding of Unity.

Chapter 2, Scripting Concepts in Unity, continues from the previous chapter and introduces scripting in Unity in detail. It begins by introducing the most commonly used classes in Unity scripting and then explains the life cycle of scripts. It also covers how to create a new script in Unity and attach a script as a component to a GameObject, and demonstrates how to add or remove packages through the Unity Package Manager.

Chapter 3, Developing UI with the Unity UI System, covers the different types of UI elements commonly used in Unity. Additionally, this chapter also discusses how to develop UI in Unity by using a Model View ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern. It ends by exploring some optimization tips for Unity UI.

Chapter 4, Creating Animations with the Unity Animation System, covers the most important concepts of the Unity animation system, such as animation clips, Animator Controller, Avatar, and the Animator component. Here, you will implement 3D and 2D animations using the animation system. It ends by exploring some optimization tips for the animation system in Unity.

Chapter 5, Working with the Unity Physics System, presents an overview of the physics solutions provided by Unity, including two built-in physics solutions, the NVIDIA PhysX engine and the Box2D engine. It also covers key concepts in the Unity physics system, such as Collider and Rigidbody. Here, you will implement a physics-based ping-pong game. It ends by exploring some optimization tips for the physics system in Unity.

Chapter 6, Integrating Audio and Video in a Unity Project, covers key concepts in the Unity audio system and video system, such as audio clip assets, Audio Source components, Audio Listener components, and Video Player components. It ends by exploring some optimization tips for the audio system in Unity.

Chapter 7, Understanding the Mathematics of Computer Graphics in Unity, covers the mathematics related to computer graphics, such as coordinate systems, vectors, matrices, and quaternions.

Chapter 8, The Scriptable Render Pipeline in Unity, presents an overview of three ready-made render pipelines to choose from in Unity, namely the legacy built-in render pipeline and two pre-made render pipelines based on the Scriptable Render Pipeline, the Universal Render Pipeline and the High Definition Render Pipeline. It also covers how to use the Universal Render Pipeline Asset to configure the render pipeline and how to use the Volume framework to apply post-processing effects to a game. It ends by exploring some optimization tips for the Universal Render Pipeline.

Chapter 9, Using Data-Oriented Technology Stack in Unity, covers what data-oriented design is and the difference between data-oriented design and traditional object-oriented design. It also explores the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) in Unity and the three technology modules that make it up – namely, the C# Job System, ECS, and the Burst compiler.

Chapter 10, Serialization System and Assets Management in Unity and Azure, discusses binary serialization, YAML serialization, and JSON serialization in Unity. It also covers the assets workflow in Unity and ends by exploring how to create an Azure Blob storage service in the Azure cloud and load addressable content from Azure into a Unity project.

Chapter 11, Working with Microsoft Game Dev, Azure Cloud, PlayFab, and Unity, discusses what Microsoft Game Dev, Microsoft Azure Cloud, and Azure PlayFab are and why you should consider using them in game development. Here, you will implement the registration, login, and leaderboard functions in a Unity project through the API of Azure PlayFab.

To get the most out of this book

This book assumes that you have some familiarity with .NET and C#. This book covers basic concepts, advanced topics of the Unity game engine, and also other technologies such as the Microsoft Azure cloud and Azure PlayFab.

You'll also need a Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Unity installed on your computer – 2020 or later is recommended. You can find out how to install Unity on your computer in Chapter 1, Hello Unity. All code examples have been tested with Unity 2020.3.24 on a Windows OS. However, they should work with future version releases too.

You'll also need a Microsoft Azure cloud subscription, and you can apply for a free Azure account at the following link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/free/.

If you wish to download sample projects from our GitHub repository, you will need a Git client; we recommend GitHub Desktop as it is the easiest to use. You can download it at the following link: https://desktop.github.com.

If you are using the Windows OS, you can also consider using Git for Windows. It can be downloaded at the following link: https://git-scm.com/download/win.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Game-Development-with-Unity-for-.NET-Developers. If there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801078078_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: If some content is generated at the beginning of the object collision via OnCollisionEnter, and you want to destroy them when the object collision ends, then you should consider using OnCollisionExit.

A block of code is set as follows:

using UnityEngine;

public class TriggerTest : MonoBehaviour

{

    private void OnTriggerStay(Collider other)

    {

        Debug.Log(${this} stays {other});

    }

}

}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

using UnityEngine;

public class PingPongBall : MonoBehaviour

{

    [SerializeField] private Rigidbody _rigidbody;

    [SerializeField] private Vector3 _initialImpulse;

    private void Start()

    {

        _rigidbody.AddForce(_initialImpulse,

ForceMode.Impulse);

    }

}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: Select 3D Object | Plane to create a new Plane object in the editor.

Tips or Important Notes

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Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [email protected] and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata and fill in the form.

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Part 1: Basic Unity Concepts

In this section of the book, we'll explore the fundamentals of the Unity game engine and introduce some of the key concepts of scripting in Unity to get you ready to make your own games.

This section includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Hello Unity

Chapter 2, Scripting Concepts in Unity

Chapter 1: Hello Unity

Before we get started with using Unity to develop games, I think it's good to first understand Unity itself. Many people, especially those who are interested in games and game development, know that Unity is a widely used game engine, and you may have played many games developed with Unity. But you may not be familiar with how to use Unity to develop games. For example, there are many different Unity versions available, so how do you choose the version that suits you? Unity provides different subscription plans, but which subscription plan is right for your situation?

If you have never used Unity before, it is necessary for you to learn how to use the Unity Editor first. In addition to the Unity Editor, what features does the Unity engine provide to help game developers develop games? It is also important to know the features in Unity. If you are a .NET developer, then it's likely that you are familiar with Visual Studio. You need to know how to use Visual Studio to develop a Unity game. But developing a Unity game is different from developing a .NET application.

Am I asking too many questions? Don't worry – this chapter will help you answer them.

In this chapter, we will introduce how to choose the right release of Unity and provide an overview of how to download and install Unity via the Unity