Above.
I have an idea to try and make a simple Space Invaders style retro scrolling shooter, I can create simple Alien characters in GIMP and possibly use them as Assets in the game? Or do I create shapes in Unity to use as the characters?
Yes, you can use basically any external drawing/image-editing/3D modeling/etc. software to create assets and import them into Unity.
You can find the supported 3D model file formats here:
And the supported image file formats here:
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Here’s a character I made in GIMP, saved as PNG files, how do I add them as playable characters? Daft question but I’m a total noob.
There’s three ways to import assets into Unity:
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Inside Unity, right-click the Assets folder in the Project Window, select “Import New Asset”, and then select your files.
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Outside Unity, select your files, then drag them into Unity and drop them into the Assets folder in the Project Window.
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Outside Unity, copy/cut your files, navigate to your project’s Assets folder on disk, and paste them there.
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So I put the stick figures into the Assets folder, how now do I use them as playable characters?
Well, “a playable character” is an overarching task to complete, and what “a playable character” is varies from game to game.
You need to break it down in to multiple smaller tasks:
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Show the player character in the scene.
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Make the player character move.
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Make the player character jump.
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Have the camera follow the player character.
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Animate the player character’s movements.
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Etc.
There’s lots of different ways to implement it.
Try checking out the Roll-a-Ball tutorial and some other tutorials to get a general idea of how to write your own scripts and such to accomplish your tasks.
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Thanks, I’ll have a look at that, I have a busy day tomorrow.
So I have some assets including a character I want to use, do I need to put a camera on him and write movement script?
I believe the suggestion was to get the Roll-a-Ball tutorial working first. It’s the project I started with a few years ago when I started at Unity! Did you get it working? It does basically what you are asking. You could probably replace the images with your own.
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I tried to print out the Roll a Ball tutorial last night but I ran out of paper in my Printer, fortunately I bought a big load of paper on Amazon last week, so I’ll print some stuff out.
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Sounds like a jolly grand idea Rich!
You don’t need to “print it out”, you download the project and open it in Unity. Are you able to run the project? If you want to read the code, you double click on a script file and it will open it in your editor for reading. Reading it page after page will likely only be confusing. Also, you don’t want to print out the binary files, that would take pages of unreadable text.
I blame Unity. Unity web engineers or project managers or whoever decided this, in their infinite wisdom, disabled the copy function on code in the learn section. Can you imagine? Now, there is a workaround, if you hit the print function the code on the print preview can be copied. You just need to make sure you don’t print the page out but cancel. I reported this many times.
Sorry, I thought he was downloading (and printing) a zipped project file.
I honestly, don’t know, I was just reminded to this. I hope he doesn’t download code and print it out. 
No, I’m printing a text tutorial for the roll a ball project.
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This may help too https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/tutorial-projects/roll-a-ball-tutorial-complete-77198
I downloaded it but can’t open Unity direct from the Chrome browser.
This may help, you can open My Assets from within the Editor
What for? You can download and save the different pages of the tutorial by right clicking on the page and use the “save as” menu, select “Page web, complete”. Then you can open all the pages in your browser, even if you are off line. 