Book Review: Unity Game Development Essentials
Posted by Dennis on Dec 8, 2009 in 3D • 1 comment
Flash offers a lot of cool features to play with. The last few years we’ve seen an abundance of 3D engines which have all been optimised to run on a very limited platform. The results are very impressive and have spawned many ground breaking and visually stunning online experiences.
Despite all this many developers are frustrated with the weak performance. The latest Flash Player version (10) offers some native 3D methods like Utils3D.projectVectors(), Graphics.drawTriangles(), Matrix3D and TriangleCulling but no support for hardware rendering.
This is where Danish Unity steps in to fill the void. Their web player takes you into the third dimension properly. If you have never installed the plugin I highly recommend you do so right now 
Unity has a complete development environment that allows you to create games easily. There are three programming languages that you can use: JavaScript, C# and one of their own creations called Boo (a Python dialect).
Packt Publishing have published a Unity book that teaches you how to create games using JavaScript. It is written by Will Goldstone, an English interactive designer and tutor.
The book takes you through the process of building a First-Person-viewed 3D game, from start to finish. You don’t have to be an experienced programmer to be able to grasp the concepts presented in this book. You don’t even have to be a 3D expert. Everything is well explained, from basic 3D concepts to collision detection, terrain generation, ray casting, prefabs, particles, deployment, testing, etc.
Anyone who is tired of Flash 3D should make a start with Unity to be able to fully express their creativity. This book is a proper introduction to this exciting new platform.
The only downside to this book is the layout. All of the illustrations are printed in black & white and the text layout could be organised in a better way. This is a minor thing though. I highly recommend this book as the proper way to start exploring Unity.
More information about this book can be found on the Packt Publishing website: http://www.packtpub.com/unity-game-development-essentials/book
Hi Dennis, just a quick one to say thanks for reviewing the book, much appreciated! Also I know the layout is a little problematic but just so people know there are colour images in the PDF version if some people are okay with using that to learn from. To anyone who is interested in the book, I hope it gives you a useful introduction to the wonderful world of Unity, happy devvin’!
Cheers
Will