Review:Unity 3D Game Development by Example

I feel like I am in 3rd grade again writing book reviews. Yes…it makes me feel like I am still young at heart. Before I give the review, I want to make a couple of points.

First, I received Unity3D Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide by Ryan Creighton from Packt Publishing for free. They do things like that to spread the word about their new books. If I didn’t like this book, I would give them feedback and not do a review (which I have done in the past).

Also, I have been reading Unity3D material for about a year, including the Essentials book that Packt put out as well. I am still pretty much a beginner, but a slightly elevated beginner.

At one point while reading, I was pretty on the fence with giving it a good review, but it came through and feel it is much more helpful than I originally anticipated. Read on and find out why this book turns out to be a pretty good gem.

On the Fence?

This book was a bit of a mystery in terms of what it was going to cover. How much of this is a copy of Unity3D Essentials book?

When I first started reading, it was a little slow (I already knew how to install and navigate around the application). He talks quite a bit more about game design, which I enjoyed. It didn’t appear to cover that much about using Unity at the start. He even mentioned that if you want to learn about some things, grab the other book.

As I kept reading on, it sort of just went into overdrive once he starts getting into his example games. I had a little paradigm shift at that point and really started to enjoy it.

Overall Review

As noted, the beginning part will be a tad on the boring side if you have already read the other Unity3D book. The game design concepts he sprinkles in at the beginning give enough meat to read through it. After the groundwork is in place, he jumps into the examples.

The first chapter of the example game was pretty good. By the second game, I really started feeling like I was actually making games. It isn’t just “copy and paste this code” and watch it work. He goes into great detail about his method to learning things or finding solutions. It isn’t just explaining API calls and how game logic works. He actually explains what he wants to do, and then explains how he does research to find a solution. The “researching” skills he teaches is very important - and something I don’t see much in books.

With the experience I have in making games (which isn’t much), sometimes the biggest obstacle to getting something done is knowing what questions to ask or how to do research to find the answer. I guess you could call it “critical thinking” skills.

By the last few chapters, he starts going into a lot of concepts that the essentials book doesn’t cover such as using multiple cameras and creating your own animations in Unity.

Balancing Learning and Doing

I read recently in a book that knowledge isn’t power - knowledge plus action is power. Knowledge alone is nothing more than building potential. Learning any skill effectively means you need to balance learning concepts and applying them. This applies to everything from learning how to dance, raising a child(which I don’t have in case you are wondering), or making a video game.

This book does a good job at that balance. It talks about concepts, then has a “call to action” of applying those skills. I am sold on this style of learning since it is the most engaging and fastest way I have gained experience doing anything. He explains all new concepts or code snippets that weren’t previously covered. He chooses to not talk about some concepts like Quaternion in detail, which is a good idea for a beginner book.

Should you buy this book - or the other one?

I feel that the essentials book has better material for covering a variety of different topics. While it covers more topics, it feels like an extended tutorial, so the “tutorial” mindset comes into play. The kind where you do the steps and kind of understand them, but don’t think about WHY you are doing it at a macro level.

I feel that Unity3D Game Development by Example really solves this area of the subject. While it doesn’t go over some topics, it goes over the big questions game developers probably have when they are trying to start a game. When starting game development, he mentions most of the time it is just you. You can’t create the next Halo with 50 hours of story, gameplay, and multiplayer features. You have  to start very small and slowly work in features - with everything being a learning process.

Creating realistic goals and setting the game into the proper scope is a really important skill to develop to avoid frustration. Ryan really does a great job at setting expectations and letting you know what is possible when you are starting off.

So what should I read first?

The first essentials book is a good book to read first. It covers the basics and does some light programming. The new “by example” book is more difficult to understand in my opinion. There is quite a bit more code in this book. He doesn’t waste any time getting into classes, functions, or other game logic.

You can still complete the book without too much difficulty if you are a beginner, but some of the programming logic will probably go over your head until you spend more time with the language.

Final Thoughts

Read the essentials book to get the basics of learning the application. To learn more about creating your own game and digging deeper into code, pick up this new  “by example” book. They both have a lot of great information in them. I can tell Ryan really made an effort to expound on  a lot of game design and development features that weren’t covered in the essentials book. I feel that I have learned quite a bit in this book for being a “beginner” book. It really has different layers of complexity depending on how experienced you are. I can’t wait to see what type of Unity books could come out next.