Unity Essentials Weekly
A weekly blog about all things Unity and C#. Since many developers are coming to Unity from either Flash or a C++ based game engine, we cover those topics from C# which were out of scope for the official Unity manual.
GSD Software's programmers have been developing for Microsoft.Net and C# since its inception, and even we learn new tricks all the time. C# is a powerful language; and we want to share to help build a stronger Unity community.
Memory (Part 2 of 3)
Article 6 - February 1, 2010
Expanding on the previous article, this is a discussion of the data objects, camera manager, and game object representing the cards in the Memory game from last week's article.
Demo Game - Memory
Article 5 - January 27, 2010
This is the first demo game article, providing an example implementation of the game "Memory". Future articles will describe details about each of the design decisions used.
Built-In Unity Resources
Article 4 - January 24, 2010
Unity's documentation talks about there being a number of useful built-in icons, but doesn't list these resources anywhere. I looked through the binary files and this was the list I was able to find.
Organizing Object References, Part 1
Article 3 - January 19, 2010
Between Unity's APIs and features built-in to c#, there are an overwhelming number of possible ways to organizing a project. In this article, we'll discuss a few of the options for organizing inter-object communication, and some of the reasoning and drawbacks behind using each model.
This article just scratches the surface of possibilities and provides a general overview of what tools are available for linking objects together. Later articles will discuss specific referencing topics, such as camera and GUI managers, but these discussions will need the foundations laid forth in this article.
C# Delegates
Article 2 - January 12, 2010
Unity offers a number of methods for doing events and callbacks, but the Unity scripting manual neglects some powerful c# alternatives: delegates and events. C++ developers will be reminded of void function pointers, while Flash, Actionscript, and Javascript developers may compare them to closures. Regardless of your background, these strongly type methods for passing callbacks and waiting for events should be in every Unity coder's toolbox.
C# Generics
Article 1 - January 5, 2010
Developers are attracted to c# scripting from javascript by the amount of power and flexibility the language has to offer. However, strong typing can create a number of headaches and unsightly piles of cast operators. C# generics, like c++ templates, offers a route to more elegant code.
Later this month...
- C# Delegates
- The Singleton Pattern and Other Ways to Reference Components
- Google AdSense Tricks and Tips
Upcoming articles...
- Beyond C# Delegates: Events
- The C# Threading Model: Using Your Events
- Developing Class Libraries (.dll) in Visual Studio or MonoDevelop
- Using Monodoc and Inline Documentation
- C# Preprocessor Directives
- Implementing a Background UnityEditor Window
- And the articles you request...
The Unity Essentials Weekly blog is brought to you by GSD Software under our Unity Essentials brand name.
This product is presented to you free of charge, in the hope that spreading knowledge about Unity will lead to more development using Unity, which will lead to more projects for our company involving Unity, because we think it's the best thing since slice bread as far as 3D platforms go.
GSD Software is a Tempe, Arizona based company, specializing in web development, desktop software development, and virtual worlds.
