Unity in Action: Multiplatform Game Development in C# with Unity 5 1st Edition

Most people who look at IT or CS majors think that everything is done with a teacher giving long lectures, and students just knowing how it all works. The reality is the teacher picks out a good book that can be used as a reference with other projects, and shows clean code with good explanations. The teacher often uses the book as the lecture, and the students find tutorials online to further any specific need. That sounds counter intuitive to charging students hundreds of dollars for a single class, but it is actually the teacher finding the right book, and knowing how to fix the code when it screws up.Unity in Action teaches with good clean code, that gives ideas on how to alter it for more interesting results. I went in thinking of this as if it was a class, only at my own time and pace. But I am learning, have good references to what I need to do, and how it works, plus the ability to alter the code to try out new ideas. Right now I am trying to get a sphere to grow bigger if you kill it. Everything up to the growing bigger is given in the book, and I am searching for the simple command to make it grow larger before it dies. The enemies are running around with twisting cubes around them, and will grow bigger and change color when shot. Everything is there, plus the opportunity to find out more and try out ideas.For a class, whether through university or your own personal time, this book is a great start into Unity engine.

I've been using this book to learn a lot of basic Unity concepts. It's great for learning some basic C# scripts and crafting scenes along with examples. Everything is pretty clear and straightforward until chapter 6 (2D GUI). Then suddenly it says to go to the Unify Wiki and copy/paste this HUGE page of code into your script without explaining ANY of it. It also starts to subtly tell you to delete or add chunks of code from scripts without a visual example, which causes unsureness that wasn't a problem in the beginning of the book. After finishing chapter 6, my UI code wasn't functioning correctly with the scene and I couldn't find a clear point in which I went wrong. The precise explanations and clarity with the concepts disappear after Chapter 5 because the book assumes you've mastered every function of code that you've used one time in previous chapters.I'm starting to learn Unity with more video courses now. This book helped me learn a lot of foundational concepts, but there's a certain point with learning skills like coding where all books fail.

Wow, what a great book. I enjoyed every chapter and can say with confidence that I learned lots of new tricks.few of the highlights:1. As a software engineer, I appreciated the fact that Joe put lots of effort in making sure the code is very well structured, easy to understand and concise. I found the usage of patterns very helpful, especially the separation of managers into sub managers. Unfortunately, that kind of detail is often left out in many tutorials (even in Unity's official online tutorials)2. The flow between chapters is perfect. Each proceeding chapter builds on top of the skills learned in the previous ones (although you can easily skip them if you're already familiar the subject). I have read many software engineering books and often times there is no logical flow between chapters. This book was very easy to follow.To sum it up, I have learned a lot from this book. I've already started porting some of the scripts (Managers) into my own project (Animated Chess game) and planning on refining some of my old scripts with the tricks I learned from this book (i.e re-implementing my audio system).Thanks for writing such a great book.

Well written and easy to follow, especially considering the highly technical subject. I can't recommend this enough for anyone wanting a jump-start with Unity. Unfortunately, the price is higher than what a lot of game-dev dreaming kids will be able to afford.There really isn't much here that isn't covered by the extensive online Unity documentation and tutorials, but my cheap-ass went that route at first myself and was left frustrated and stumped by all of the holes in what I was learning. This book puts it all together and explains it well in one understandable start-to-finish guide that you just can't really find anywhere else. Following along with the book helps give you the momentum and confidence you need for starting out.I'd have liked the book to touch on a few more key subjects, but was overall very happy. I still go back to reference it occasionally, months later while working on my own project. I strongly recommend downloading the free online PDF for that reason; being able to search for keywords is very nice. Later portions of the book build on previous chapters, which also makes that search helpful. The code in my book didn't work for downloading my PDF, but the publisher was very friendly and responsive daily with me via email to help resolve the situation.

This is a well thought out guide to acquiring experience and comfort in creating games with Unity 5. The author isn't just another guy with expertise, he is an excellent teacher who knows what to share to help you gain skills (and remember them!) at the right times and in the right order. I was spurred into writing this review when, for the 4th time in as many chapters, he wrote what I was thinking and was spot on. When a tech book seems like it's reading your mind it is a very good experience. So far I've been extremely happy with the results.There's nothing here that isn't also in tutorials online, but I've read (and watched videos of) a bunch of those and found them wanting. None of those resources have been as grounded in the basics nor have they offered a smoother learning curve than this book. It's a great intro and I feel better equipped to learn more on my own.