Game Design with Unity Engine

So you want to be a game designer. It's a very interesting choice of career; and we must
mention that it's a long road, with more than your share of roadblocks and challenges that
you'll have to overcome. But it's equally rewarding as well. After all, there's nothing like
watching a world which you created in your mind, come to life before you, ready to be
played, ready to tell your story.
Not to mention that there's also some hard cash to be earned. The average salary of a
game designer in the U.S.A. is about $84,000 per year.
Game Designer, is the person behind everything that's going on. It was a designer who
came up with the idea of Mario jumping over pits and pipes, they are the one who decide
that one clip in the machine gun will hold 34 bullets, they are the one who decide if the
game will be a multiplayer game or not. He/She is the creative head of the group. They
are also responsible for collaborating with artists, composers, voice actors, programmers,
testers and so on to ensure that the team has all the expertise required.
Excited? You should be. However, as a beginner, starting game making (note the
difference between game making and game designing), you'll more than likely be doing
the work of a lot of team members yourself, or in a small group. That's why this tutorial
series is aimed at getting you up and running to make games on your own or with your
own team that you can assemble, as you progress in your career/profession. What will
we be using for making all these games? How are we going to do this?
All your questions will be answered soon.

Why you should not ignore 2D games?

In a time where games like these are in the market:

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Why make 2D games? Do people still play those games? Especially since it's been so
long since the times when you would hook up your old NES (Nintendo Entertainment
System) to the TV and play Contra all day?
That's because 2D games haven't yet lost their charm, and most likely never will. If they
did, most Android games you know today wouldn't exist, and neither would a lot of 3D
games that started out as 2D concepts. 2D game development is also less taxing on your
resources, since you literally have one less dimension to deal with in your project. That
means it's great for beginners and small teams who have less resources to work with.
If you're still not convinced, have a look at these beautiful 2D games:

These are all 2D games. Yes, even the ninja game in the last picture.

Introduction to Unity
Initially released in 2005, Unity is a game development environment and engine for over
20 various platforms. It works on MAC OS X, Linux, and Windows.
Unity quickly became the go-to for people warming up to game making with its simple
and easy-to-understand interface. Frequent updates, good documentation and an even
better community made it one of the best engines to work on. In 2013, with its 4.3 update,
Unity released a variety of tools for teams and developers to make 2D games on, making

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the task much simpler than it was before. Unity also serves as a personal favorite of mine,
since it's one of the first game development programs I learned to use and it really fired
my passion for getting into the game making industry.
So, enough with the history and what may appear to be blatant advertising, let's sink our
teeth right in.

Scroll down, and you should find this:

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Click on the Try Personal button and get the installer. The installation process that you
see is standard for pretty much any program that you install, although I'm going to be
making a special note of the following screen:

See that highlighted stuff? That's where you should stop and think before you continue.
The ambitious (read: crazy) new developer would check every box that's in the list. Don't
be that. What you should do, is think about what you are aiming at. If you're interested in
making Android games or mobile games in general, feel free to tick the Android and iOS
boxes. Basically, grab what you need, don't, what you won't.
Your hard drive will thank you for it :)

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 Installing Unity 3D Game Engine
Game development requires the use of an IDE along with one or two programming
language(s). This IDE will be the Game Engine on which you will be developing you game
project. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install/setup and use the Unity Game
Engine to use it as your game development environment.

Setup Unity 3D environment for Windows

For using Unity 3D, you have to download the Installer from the Unity's official website.
For that, just follow the steps given.

1. Download and install the Unity Editor from the link: unity3d.com/get-
unity/download/archive

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 2. Clicking on the Download (for Windows) button, will show a drop down list of
options like this,

Select your required choice and start the downloading.

3. The installer uses a Download Assistant and has detailed instructions that you
need to follow. Unity Download Assistant is a light weight, small sized
executable (.exe) program, that will let you select the components of the Unity
Editor, which you want to download and install.

4. Select the editor component to install and then click the Next button.

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 5. In the next step, if you're not sure which components you want to install, you can
leave the default selections, click Next to continue, and follow the installer's
instructions.

In the below shown screenshot, some of the check boxes are:

1. Microsoft Visual Studio tools for Unity (is required).

2. Windows Build Support (if you are planning to make Windows phone
based Game as well).
3. Android Build Support (if you are planning to make Android based Game
using Unity 3D).
4. Rest, leave default selected check-boxes.

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 6. Now, let that installer download and install Unity in your PC and then launch the
Unity Game Engine after it gets installed.

Installing Unity on macOS X

We can either use command line to install Unity 3D on Mac OS X or use the Unity
Download Assistant.
Installing using the Download Assistant

1. Download the Unity Installer file for your Mac PC from the link: unity3d.com/get-
unity/download/archive

2. A .dmg file names UnityDownloadAssitant will be downloaded. Double click on

it to start the installation process.

Double Click on the Unity Download Assistant icon to start installation.

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 3. Agree to the Terms and Conditions and click on Continue. Then you will be asked
to select packages to be installed, stick to the default ones, if you are a beginner.

Installing Unity using the Command Line

1. Download the Unity Editor file for your Mac PC from the link: unity3d.com/get-
unity/download/archive

2. The individual Unity Editors are provided as .pkg files that you can install using
the command line.

3. This will get installed into the folder /Applications/Unity on the specified target
volume. Type the following command first-
sudo installer [-dumplog] -package Unity.pkg -target /

Here Unity.pkg is the filename that we downloaded in step 1.

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 4. Now in order to install the Standard Assets, which will get installed into
folder /Applications/Unity/Standard Assets on the specified volume, use the
commands-
sudo installer [-dumplog] -package StandardAssets.pkg -targ
et /

The file StandardAssets.pkg can be downloaded from the same drop down
from which we downloaded the Unity Editor file in the step 1. Click on the
option Standard Assets.

5. To install Example Project, which will reside in the

folder, /Users/Shared/Unity/Standard-Assets on the specified volume, the
command will be-
sudo installer [-dumplog] -package Examples.pkg -target /

The file Examples.pkg can be downloaded from the same drop down from which
we downloaded the Unity Editor file in the step 1. Click on the option Example
Projects.

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