Unity Game Development in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours) 1st Edition

I was amazed that after just a few hours of reading this book, studying the examples, and following the step-by-step exercise I had a fully functioning 3D game. Incredible.The chapters broken into easily digestible concepts and the instructions are easy to understand and implement. The first six chapters of the book concentrate on designing your 3D world in Unity. You learn about coordinate systems (XYZ axes), how to create objects and color, texture, and shade them. A few chapters are devoted to creating the game's terrain or landscape. You learn how to sculpt them, how to texture and color them, how to add things like trees, grass and a sky, water, how to add lighting effects. Actually my only criticism of the book it that too much time was spent on terrains too early in the book. I kept thinking - lets create a game....But in Chapter 7 we did create a game using the cool terrain created in chapters 4-6. And the Amazing Racer game was pretty amazing. Amazing that I could create some that intricate looking in just a few minutes.In the next part of the book you learn about scripting. C# scripting in particular. I spent a few years programing GIS systems in Java so I found the scripting part pretty straight-forward. But if you have never programmed in an object-orientated language, the next few chapters might get confusing. Complex concepts like Classes, Methods, Functions, Inheritance, Instantiating are touched on, but because of the scope of the book the author is not able to cover them in detail. But all of the C# code is documented in the book, or you can download the files from the website.By the end of the book you setup three more games and cover a lot more gaming topics. When I finished the final chapter I actually felt ready to create a Unity game of my own design. I know there are a million other things that I have to learn, but this book taught me the basics and gave me the confidence to dive into the world of Unity.PS: The games were created using Unity engine version 4.1 and 4.2, but the current Unity version is 4.3. For the most part everything is the same, but I did have a few problems copying things like complete Scenes and Animations directly from the author's downloadable examples into my 4.3 Unity folders (the animations just wouldn't run). I found it best to copy the complete 4.1/4.2 games to my computer and then allow Unity to upgrade them from 4.1/4.2 to 4.3. Once I did that I could copy the Scenes and Animations from the author's folders to my folders without any glitches.So thanks Mr. Geig, I learned a lot from the book, and now I am ready to take on Unity.

I found this book to be a very good introduction as well as an impetus to learn more about Unity. I purchased this book as a tool to help a friend learn more about the engine. While using this book, I also learned a few tidbits here and there.Short of a few grammar errors, the book is well laid out and pretty easy to follow. Additionally, some topics could use a bit more explanation. With that said, there is just a lot of content to cover and I understand they were trying to keep each chapter(hour) relatively short. Many of these instances are given alternative places to research, such as the Mecanim animation system, with links to various webpages.The end of the hour exercises also help individuals learn more about the topics covered in each hour. I fully recommend doing each of these.I plan to use this book to help others learn about Unity3d in the future.

This book takes a confusing and more than occaisionally frustrating and complex product and breaks it into pieces we can all understand, I tried one of the other books getting through Unity 3,x and it was a no-go. This book helps me as the instructor and my students, a group of really smart 8 - 14 year olds.Unity integrates with mechanim and lots of other cool stuff and the book teaches how to import and use assets as effectively possible in a 3D environment, The book is broken into logical units and the source code for examples is easily downloadable, I recommend the Kindle version as it can be with you at all times as a guide and reference,

As a college graduate, I used this book in a Character animation and game development class. This book is incredible! Unity is very powerful and very easy to learn. Using this book as a companion really helps to jump-start the learning process. I was an absolute beginner. With the step-by-step process this book guides you with along with a few helpful hints every now and then, I was able to create a few "mini games" in just a few hours. I am glad that my professor chose this book for the class. For the cheap price, I was very satisfied.

Because this book is already 2 years old, it's pretty much outdated. All the examples are for Unity 4 when Unity 5 has already been released. Some of the lessons due work, but the further you read the more frustrating it gets. I hope the author releases a new version for Unity 5 because this book would have been awesome back then.

I was the one of the best Unity books I ever read. First, the author knows game design very well, he explain even the hardest concepts like the differences between shaders & textures. Second, the book is very concentrated & teaches the basic concepts of game design & Unity. I read and reread the book. If you are a beginner to Unity it is a must read!

There are newer books on this subject.My friend uses this to teach a university coarse on Unity.

It's good. However 4.3 is out which has 2d defaults. The ui has changed a bit, so if you are learning unity you'll have to filter all of that out. These "cram" books are a good crash course, but you'll need A LOT more to get the most of unity. Again, great to get up and running but not much more.