Catlike Coding's C# and Shader Text Tutorials

Want to learn C# and shader scripting in Unity? Prefer text tutorials? You are in the right place!

Catlike Coding’s Unity C# and Shader Tutorials

The creation of these tutorials is funded via Patreon. It’s like Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, but ongoing. If you enjoy what’s available now and want more, please become my patron!

Basics
These tutorials provide an introduction to working with Unity.

Pseudorandom Noise
A series about generating and using pseudorandom noise.

Procedural Meshes
A series about generating procedural meshes.

Pseudorandom Surfaces
A series about generating pseudorandom surfaces.

Prototypes
A series about creating small game prototypes.

Movement

A series about controlling the movement of a character.

Object Management
A series of tutorials that deals with creating, keeping track of, saving, and loading game objects.

Tower Defense
A series about creating a simple grid-based tower defense game.

Flow
A collection of tutorials that cover the creation of flow effects, like water surfaces.

Mesh Basics
An introduction to procedural meshes. From a simple grid to deformable balls.

Custom SRP
A collection of tutorials about creating a custom scriptable render pipeline in Unity.

Rendering
A series about understanding Unity’s rendering pipeline. How a mesh turns into pixels that look like real objects.

Advanced Rendering
These are tutorials covering more complex or specialized rendering techniques, going beyond Unity’s standard shaders. They build on the work done in the Rendering series.

Hex Map
A series about hexagon maps. Lots of strategy games use them.

Marching Squares
A series about drawing and reconstructing shapes using a 2D grid. Why not Marching Cubes? Because the concepts are the same for both 2D and 3D, and dealing with two dimensions is already complex enough.

Found these tutorials useful? Want more? Become my patron via Patreon or Ko-fi!

(What follows is the original first post from more than a decade ago.)
Hi! I made a very basic C# text tutorial: Clock, a Unity C# tutorial. It’s aimed at people who want to learn to program in Unity. It’s a first draft. Feedback is appreciated! I’m wondering if there’s interest in this kind of tutorial, as opposed to video tutorials. If there is, I’ll make more.

14 Likes

Hi,
I had a very quick look at the tutorial, just a summary look and it looks good. I am sure there will be interest if you were to make more, no doubt!

I sure hope so! By now - less than a day online - it got a couple dozen views and people are already finding it on Google. I’ll make a second one using the same format.

excellent, I like the format a lot and the questions and answers at the end. I can’t wait to see another one! (my vote is 2d sidescroller or top down view)

Thanks, good to know! The next one is in the works, it’s about drawing graphs. After that, maybe a sidescroller.

Took a quick look, very cool. I’d love to see more, especially after I get through this other tutorial.

Yes! It’d be helpful for newbies like me!

All right then! I got the second tutorial done: Graphs!

I decided that the third one will be a simple side-scroller. However, these things are a lot of work, so I’m asking for donations. If I get a little money I’ll go ahead and create it.

I did not look at the graph tutorial yet… but maybe to stimulate people to donate you may want to do some preview of the side-scroller or description of what it will cover… or if the tutorial is really good and in depth you could even stick a pice to it, maybe.

Yes, I’ll put up some preview material, but I’m super busy right now so it’ll take a while. The donation thing is an experiment. If it doesn’t work, I’ll switch to simply selling it.

Had a better look at your 2 existing tutorials, they are good.
You may also consider what others do, e.g. Burzergarcade.com and his YouTube channel. Ads revenue. With good traffic it may work.

it’s perfect for beginners :smile:

:slight_smile: Nice to know you two like them!

I’m not fond of ads but it’s certainly an option to investigate, if the traffic gets good.

Hey this is good, I’m actually learning C# right now, so the combo of Unity and C# is something that I really find great, I hope you make more, thanks for this :slight_smile:

Yes, there’ll be more! I’m still figuring out the best way to fit it in my schedule though.

:slight_smile: Well, here it is, my third tutorial: Runner!

This is the side-scroller I mentioned before. Subjects it deals with include physics, object reuse, events, layered backgrounds, player input, and GUI. Have fun!

nice tutorial, very well explained.

I’ve released my fourth tutorial, Star!

850948--31788--$star-editing.png

This tutorial shows you how to create your own custom editor. You will make a star component that uses a dynamically generated mesh. Then you will build a nice inspector for it, add WYSIWYG editing, and allow editing right in the scene view, while supporting undo, redo, reset, prefabs, and multi-object editing.

Go check it out!

I’ve finally updated the Graphs tutorial so it uses the new Shuriken particle system! Not much changed, but it got a little easier to use and performs better.

Personally, I much prefer text-based tutorials. I hate having to stop-rewind-pause-rewind-pause-pause all the time. I don’t always type or move as fast as the guy who has been using unity or scripting forever. Text tutorials give you the ability to work at a slower pace. I would love to see many many more of them.