It’s me again, Sue Blackman, and I am pleased to tell you that my second Unity book is now out! The title is Unity for Absolute Beginners (Apress, publishers). Don’t be mislead by the title, this is not a ‘dummies’ book. But this book does assume that you may have little or no experience with game development, scripting, 2D or 3D assets.
As with my first book (1st and 2nd editions) the book is project based. This one is more mainstream, however, and takes you through the process of creating a querky little third person shooter game featuring a 'modified" garden gnome. It’s full of key concepts, functionality and mayhem. It uses C# but if you prefer Unity’s javaScript, we can help out here on the forum if you get stuck on converting code.
For those of you new to Unity, you will soon discover that Unity tends to make changes in each release that can make authoring for this great game engine, well, challenging. Bookmark this first post- I’ll be adding errata, clarification, and later, changes required by new Unity releases. The book should be pretty solid from the start as I had a top-notch tech reader this time around, our very own ‘Dreamora’, from the Unity forums. Thanks Marc!
Anyway, drop in and let me know if you find errors or confusing bits and I’ll be happy to help if possible. And I always enjoy hearing how readers have taken the next step and have used what they have learned to create their own games!
Looks really good. Been trying to spend more time learning Unity3D myself. Going to recommend it to a few friends and put it on my wishlist. Glad you are also doing it in C#.
@memiles - haha- I had the assets uploaded along with the regular chapters mid April- I wasn’t told to upload them to the ftp 'til last week…
re publish dates…publishers are always optimists and most tech-book authors have day jobs, so add Unity’s propensity for making changes that require re-writes throughout the authoring process and I think we are all relieved whenever the book is finished
@ - no idea which is best for you. I know Apress has gone to ‘print on demand’ with Amazon, but not sure what that means for cost or speed of delivery
I downloaded the pdf version a couple of days ago, didn’t think about assets. Will they be available on the Apress site - currently there’s no Source Code tab on the books page.
Really enjoying this book, I have others, but so far this the best introduction to unity so far.
I’m as far as the chapter 5 and 6, and in both chapters I’ve run across a problem : -
in chapter 5 : -
void onCollisionEnter …etc
and in chapter 6 : -
void OnTriggerEnter … etc
in both cases, I’m warned I cannot use ‘void’ in this manner, I’ve written everything out word for word, but monoDevelop will not compile the code, has Unity changed this functionality and if so, how should I rewrite these types of functions ?
I’ve copied and pasted the following code, based on how far I got in chapter 6 with it : -
The error message was : -
Keyword ‘void’ cannot be used in this context when referring to void OnTriggerEnter, expanding the error message I get**, Unexpected symbol (', expecting ,‘, ;', or =’**
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
public class SensorDoors : MonoBehaviour {
public AnimationClip clipOpen; // The open animation
public AnimationClip clipClose; // The close animation
// Use this for initialization
void Start () {
}
// Update is called once per frame
void Update () {
// open the gates
void OnTriggerEnter (Collider defender) {
if (defender.gameObject.tag == “Player”) {
animation.Play(clipOpen.name);
}
// close the gates
void OnTriggerExit (Collider defender) {
if (defender.gameObject.tag == “Player”) {
animation.Play(clipClose.name);
}
}
}
Same problem with the void code in chapter 5 also, copied it word for word, but won’t compile and get same error message, I jumped forward to chapter 6 assuming it was something I had done, I’ve even tried the code you provided in the downloadable source files, same thing…
ahhh ! I just figured out what I’ve been doing wrong, based on the previous scripting introduction in chapter 5, I was adding my code ‘within’ the void Update function, and not outside of that, in your book you clearly say : -
Below the Update function, add an OnTriggerEnter() function:
Which is just interpreted as ‘within’, not below, so I’ve fixed it now, apologies for wasting your time, still love the book !
Just picked up the book this afternoon and loving it! I am currently on page 82, where I’ve added the light, but I am not getting any shadows from the trees. I’ve rechecked the steps and can’t find anything I’ve missed. What should I look for to fix it?
Ok, I’ve found that I do have shadows if I am in very close, but the radius seems very small and I can’t find a setting that enlarges it. How can I make the draw distance for the shadows larger?
from the Window menu, select Lightmapper & you will get an inset in the scene view- it will allow you to adjust the Shadow Distance
also, you can set them in Edit, Project Settings, Quality
if the distance is too great, you will be using a lot of resourses
if you have pro, you can use the dual lightmaps where the baked shadows show outside of the dynamic distance zone
. Sent query to apress.