Mastering Unity 2D Game Development

by Simon Jackson

Unity3D has long been seen as a massive 3D game-making middleware system, with lots of power and an easy-to-use editor. Now, with 2D games back in fashion, Unity has created a 2D toolset for developers with the know-how to create great, customized games.

If you are looking for a book that will show you how to make a fully functional, customizable game product with popular game functionality, then this is the book for you. You will learn how to build an RPG game, learning lots of tips and tricks along the way.

While creating your own character with its very own little village, you will come to learn about stats, 2D control systems and bounds, shaders, and basic 2D physics. Then you will dive into the big wild world that is set out for you and your character, discovering how to manage different types of scenes, scripted random events, and the dreaded encountering of enemies. Learn how to make your character ready for battle, then develop your game further by creating new levels of difficulty with editor extensions.

By the end of this book, you will be able to create, deploy, and integrate your game with your intended platforms, and have the knowledge to build and customize future Unity2D games with confidence.

Genres: Programming

500 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend this book for new Unity programmers! Taught me a lot of new Unity concepts to add to my programming arsenal!

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

As this was written targeting Unity3D 4.X quite a few of the editor instructions no longer exist or have moved.

The pacing of chapters was a little strange at times and I couldn't decide if this was supposed to be targeting a novice coder, or a more experienced programmer that was dipping their toes into game development.

There were also a number of questionable architectural choices (from my perspective as a non-game developer) that I guess could be forgiven as being the minimum to get something running, but a stronger focus on best-practices would likely be better for somebody starting out.

[Xianshun Chen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Managed to read half of the book, but was too exhausted to have any further interest to continue reading. Not that it is difficult, it is actually quite suitable for beginner. I think the book has too much distractions which are details that i don't really care (such as the logic of the game the authors tried to get the readers to develop, as it is not important for someone who already have experiences developing games) and no enough concise explanations on how various scenarios and technical issues to be handled using Unity 2D as game development tool.

The only good stuffs i got away from reading the book are:

1. the animation (such as Sprite Editor, Dope Sheet, Animator Editor)
2. the game physics part such as Polygon Collider, Collider2D, OnTriggerEnter2D

This book is definitely not something i am looking for (i am looking for a "recipe" type of book i guess), but the book may be good for someone who has the luxury of time to follow through the entire tutorial of developing a 2D game

[Heleen Durston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Unity game engine book from Packtpub was released in October, “Mastering Unity 2D Game Development” by Simon Jackson. This is an intermediate to advanced guide to using the 2D features of Unity. The book centers around creating a 2D RPG complete with world map, a conversation system, a store, and the beginnings of a battle system. When the book was initially released there were a variety of typos and show-stopping problems with the book and code. Packtpub has recently reissued the book and code and now everything works well.
Chapter 1 is an overview of the updates that occurred in Unity 4.3. I went through the book using Unity 4.6 beta and had no issues. “Mastering Unity 2D Game Development” is definitely meant for those with some experience using Unity and in particular the C# programming language. Many links are provided for reference throughout the book; but knowing how to use coroutines and delegates will definitely help you complete the examples in the book.
Chapters 2 and 3 explain how to set up the foundation of the RPG project and begin with having you create a 2D game character and animate it. Importing sprites and using the Sprite editor are discussed and then Unity’s Mecanim animation system is explained while the main character gets animated.
In chapter 4 the background for your initial scene is created and then populated with some trees, rocks and even store and house sprites. This chapter also talks about transitioning from the background edges to another scene that you will set-up. Chapter 5 is a heavily scripting-oriented chapter and has you create some NPCs and then set-up a conversation system. This chapter also discusses co-routines and how to use them in Unity.
Chapter 6 discusses places online to have maps drawn for you and alternately gives advice on how to create your own game world map. The world map for the game is placed in your project and a nice fade-in technique is used to transition between the world map and the local scene for your player.
In chapter 7 a battle system is created and the book explains how to have goblins randomly spawn in your scene. In chapter 8 a shop is created so that you can purchase a sword to fight the goblins from chapter 7. Both chapters discuss the creation of an inventory system and how to add the sword stats as a bonus to the battle system.
Chapter 9 talks about using a state system for the battle and also programming a user interface system to keep the player informed about the battle. Everything seemed to work fine using the ‘old’ user interface system in Unity 4.6 beta. For those that don’t know the UI was quite significantly updated in Unity 4.6; but all the code in the books seems to work fine.
Chapter 10 is all about creating particle systems for the battles in your RPG and chapter 11 discusses expanding the Unity editor to create some nice menus for your game. I found chapter 11 a really interesting read as I was not aware that you could expand Unity that much for your own purposes.
Chapter 12 concludes the book with information on building your game for different platforms. There is also a lot of links listed presenting information on a variety of tutorials and tools for working with Unity.
This is a great book for Unity and one that I will keep around for reference on how to do a lot of programming in Unity. I am really pleased that I had a chance to read the book and try the code. The link to the book on Packtpub is https://www.packtpub.com/game-develop.... You can also find the download with all the assets for the RPG project there and a PDF that has all the pictures from the book. Simon Jackson has a website at http://darkgenesis.zenithmoon.com/ and a forum for the book at http://darkgenesis.zenithmoon.com/Dar... .

[Marc-anthony Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is somewhat misleading. First off I think it may put people off who despite being beginners in Unity would almost definitely benefit from it. Nor do I think it takes you all the way to mastery (but I don't think any book can!). It does, however, take you beyond 'beginner' books and doesn't dawdle on the basics of programming. It is suggested that you be familiar with the basic workflow and terminology of Unity (to get you caught up you should check out Learning Unity 2D Game Development by Example which I reviewed here).

Throughout the book you work on a single RPG project. This approach lends itself to learning a framework like Unity well, allowing you to draw on various methods and practices again and again as you build your game. The choice of project also helps in learning to plan your game which is one of the most important lessons I have taken from the book. I find it helps that RPGs have, by necessity, a narrative that can be used to shape the development process.

The conception and the mechanics of creating a game are well covered with each subject and step explained in a concise fashion that doesn't force you out of learning even when you have to look elsewhere for details. (The book covers a wide variety of topics and the author does an admirable job of pointing you in the right direction when you need more info or to points of interest outwith the scope of the book.)

Jackson also seems to always have an eye on the future mentioning throughout about leaving things open for the possibility of an update or DLC. At only one point did I find this jarring, when discussing an in game store the subject of monetization comes up and seemed, to me, a little out of place.

This is definitely the most in depth book I have read on game dev and it would be easy to spend a long time following its instruction and probably still not get every possible thing out of it. It isn't easy going the whole way through and you are forced to tackle some tough topics but at no point do the tasks seem insurmountable. It is a book I will definitely be coming back to!

[Lim Chow siang · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are finding the best book to teach you how to develop 2D game in Unity then grab this book. This book covers a lot of things you need from setting up a project until publishing the game. You will face many challenges when designing 2D game and this book can guide you to solve most of the challenges. You will learn a lot of game programming techniques to build a robust game system and use unity built-in system to speed up game development workflow. Furthermore, it also provides you a lot of website links for further reading. I never see such book author that gives you so many useful extra reading material website links.

P.S. Look forward to your next book is advanced Unity 2D/3D game development book.