Human Computer Interaction Unity 3D Labs

Transcription

1 Human Computer Interaction Unity 3D Labs

2 Part 1 Getting Started

3 Overview The Video Game Industry The computer and video game industry has grown from focused markets to mainstream. They took in about US$9.5 billion in the US in 2007, 11.7 billion in 2008, and 25.1 billion in 2010 (ESA annual report). Modern personal computers owe many advancements and innovations to the game industry: sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, faster CPUs, and dedicated co-processors like PhysX are a few of the more notable improvements. Sound cards were developed for addition of digital-quality sound to games and only later improved for music and audiophiles. Early on, graphics cards were developed for more colors. Later, graphic cards were developed for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and games; GUIs drove the need for high resolution, and games began using 3D acceleration. They also are one of the only pieces of hardware to allow multiple hookups (such as with SLI or CrossFire graphics cards). CD- and DVD-ROMs were developed for mass distribution of media in general; however the ability to store more information on cheap easily distributable media was instrumental in driving their ever-higher speeds. Game industry value chain Ben Sawyer of Digitalmill observes that the game industry value chain is made up of six connected and distinctive layers: Capital and publishing layer: involved in paying for development of new titles and seeking returns through licensing of the titles. Product and talent layer: includes developers, designers and artists, who may be working under individual contracts or as part of in-house development teams. Production and tools layer: generates content production tools, game development middleware, customizable game engines, and production management tools. Distribution layer: or the "publishing" industry, involved in generating and marketing catalogs of games for retail and online distribution. Hardware (or Virtual Machine or Software Platform) layer: or the providers of the underlying platform, which may be console-based, accessed through online media, or accessed through mobile devices such as smartphones. This layer now includes network infrastructure and non-hardware platforms such as virtual machines (e.g. Java or Flash), or software platforms such as browsers or even further Facebook, etc. End-users layer: or the users/players of the games. Disciplines The game industry employs those experienced in other traditional businesses, but some have experience tailored to the game industry. Some of the disciplines specific to the game industry include: game programmer, game designer, level designer, game producer, game artist and game tester. Most of these professionals are employed by video game developers or video game publishers. However, many hobbyists also produce computer games and sell them commercially. Game developers and publishers sometimes employ those with extensive or long-term experience within the modding communities.

4 Game Development You can read more here about the History Of Video Games.

5 Game Engines A game engine is a software development environment designed for people to build video games. Developers use them to create games for consoles, mobile devices, and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine ("renderer") for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may include video support for cinematics. The process of game development is often economized, in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine to create different games or to make it easier to port games to multiple platforms.

6 Game Engines - History Before game engines, games were typically written as singular entities: a game for the Atari 2600, for example, had to be designed from the bottom up to make optimal use of the display hardware this core display routine is today called the kernel by retro developers. Other platforms had more leeway, but even when the display was not a concern, memory constraints usually sabotaged attempts to create the data-heavy design that an engine needs. Even on more accommodating platforms, very little could be reused between games. The rapid advance of arcade hardware which was the leading edge of the market at the time meant that most of the code would have to be thrown out afterwards anyway, as later generations of games would use completely different game designs that took advantage of extra resources. Thus most game designs through the 1980s were designed through a hard-coded ruleset with a small number of levels and graphics data. Since the golden age of arcade video games, it became common for video game companies to develop in-house game engines for use with first party software. While third-party game engines were not common up until the rise of 3D computer graphics in the 1990s, there were several 2D game creation systems produced in the 1980s for independent video game development. These include Pinball Construction Set (1983), ASCII's War Game Construction Kit (1983), Thunder Force Construction (1984), Adventure Construction Set (1984), Garry Kitchen's GameMaker (1985), Wargame Construction Set (1986), Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit (1987), Arcade Game Construction Kit (1988), and most popularly ASCII's RPG Maker engines from 1998 onwards. Klik & Play (1994) is another legacy offering that's still available. The term "game engine" arose in the mid-1990s, especially in connection with 3D games such as first-person shooters (FPS). (See also: first-person shooter engine.) Such was the popularity of Id Software's Doom and Quake games that, rather than work from scratch, other developers licensed the core portions of the software and designed their own graphics, characters, weapons and levels the "game content" or "game assets." Separation of game-specific rules and data from basic concepts like collision detection and game entity meant that teams could grow and specialize. Later games, such as id Software's Quake III Arena and Epic Games's 1998 Unreal were designed with this approach in mind, with the engine and content developed separately. The practice of licensing such technology has proved to be a useful auxiliary revenue stream for some game developers, as a one license for a high-end commercial game engine can range from US$10,000 to millions of dollars, and the number of licensees can reach several dozen companies, as seen with the Unreal Engine. At the very least, reusable engines make developing game sequels faster and easier, which is a valuable advantage in the competitive video game industry. While there was a strong rivalry between Epic and id around 2000, since then Epic's Unreal Engine has been far more popular than id Tech 4 and its successor id Tech 5. Modern game engines are some of the most complex applications written, often featuring dozens of finely tuned systems interacting to ensure a precisely controlled user experience. The continued evolution of game engines has created a strong separation between rendering, scripting, artwork, and level design. It is now common, for example, for a typical game development team to have several times as many artists as actual programmers.

7 Game Engines Nowadays there are numerous game engines to choose from. From really simple ones, featuring only code sets, to ones with great complexity and functionality featuring their own GUI. We can now choose the game engine that best suits our needs depending on a series of factors (previous knowledge skillset type of game target platforms etc.). Some major game engines are also open-source allowing for customization. Major Game Studios usually develop using their in-house game engines or by utilizing a custom version of a popular game engine.

8 Game Engines Here is a list of some popular Game engines you could check out: Epic s Unreal Engine MonoGame GameMaker Cocos2D-X Amazon s Lumberyard Scirra s Construct 2 And of course, our main subject: Unity 3D

9 Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Inc.'s Worldwide Developers Conference as an OS X-exclusive game engine. As of 2018, the engine has been extended to support 27 platforms. The engine can be used to create both three-dimensional and two-dimensional games as well as simulations for desktops and laptops, home consoles, smart TVs, and mobile devices. Several major versions of Unity have been released since its launch, with the latest stable version being Unity f1, released on August 30, From Wikipedia.com

10 Many popular titles have been created with Unity, including: Cuphead Ori and the Blind Forest Monument Valley 2 Temple Run Angry Birds Epic Pokémon Go For a list of games and projects made with Unity you can check here & here.

11 So, let s get started. Go to It is wise to create a Unity account (Unity ID) first. You can do that by going to the top right corner of the web page and hitting the head icon. A menu should pop up prompting you to either Log In or create a Unity ID (you choose the second) Enter the requisite info and you are good to go. A Unity ID is mandatory and crucial for your future projects since you use it to have access to Unity s Asset store (we will talk about it soon).

12 Now let s download Unity. Hit the Get Unity at the top right corner of your screen. You will be redirected to to choose among some options regarding the version of Unity you want. For these labs we will be using the Personal Edition, which is free. Accept the terms and choose Download installer for Windows. There is an option called Unity Hub which is in preview. Unity Hub essentially groups the various version installations of Unity you might have on your PC. You are not going to need it for these labs and you are not going a version older than the latest ( x) if you don t have any old Unity projects under development.

13 After Unity s Download Assistant has successfully been downloaded, click on it to execute it. After it opens, hit Next, agree with the license of agreement and hit Next again.

14 Tick the options as shown in the screenshot and hit Next. In case you already have a version of VS2017 installed don t tick this option.

15 Leave the options here as set by default and hit Next.

16 Accept VS s license terms and hit Next.

17 After that the download of Unity should begin

18 After that the download of Unity should begin

19 Visual Studio 2017 Regarding Visual Studio installation you could check the official guide right here. If you already have a version of Visual Studio 2017 installed on your PC follow the next steps in order to ensure smooth communication with Unity 3D, crucial for Debugging purposes. Open Visual Studio Installer In your installed instance, click on More and select Modify.

20 Visual Studio 2017 Scroll down until you find the Mobile & Gaming section Tick Game Development with Unity Since you have already installed Unity you can un-tick the optional selection Unity bit Editor. Leave everything else as is and click modify.

21 Back to Unity installation After finishing successfully the installation of Unity you can successfully launch it. You will be presented with the following screen:

22 You might be prompted to complete a survey before or after signing in. After successfully signing in you are going to see the following screen:

23 On Disk option presents you with all of the projects you have stored on your PC. In the Cloud option allows you to access projects you are syncing via cloud.

24 By clicking on the Learn tab you are presented with a series of options regarding training resources.

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