Unity

This post is just to show what people are able to create when they are using Unity and some of the features that Unity offers. Now I am in no way a professional at game design as for me it is mostly a hobby that I do in my spare time using video tutorials and forums that I find on the internet.

Firstly the interface of this game engine at first can seem a little daunting to people but it can easily be mastered. Using the countless amount of video tutorials that are available on YouTube I was able to find a number solutions to problems I met when making the level below. I was even able to find videos that showed me certain pieces of coding allowing me to fire bullets from a gun for instance. Within a week I was able to make a basic gun that fired bullets that also disappeared on contact with a wall.

Unity also has a particularly useful feature known as the Unity Store which is a place where users upload all sorts of useful things. The picture shown above was made from free packages that I downloaded from the Unity Store to make a basic level. Unity also comes with a basic capsule shaped avatar as well complete with movement and a camera. This means that the user can jump straight into making a environment and experience it from a players perspective as well. 

The only problem that I found with the store is that there wasn't much in the way of rigged meshes. For anyone that doesn't know what a rigged mesh is its a mesh that allows the user to move it into different poses depending on what the user wants. This can be a problem for people who want to populate their environments which is why the level I made is devoid of creatures or people. 

Another advantage of using Unity is that it comes with its own coding program allowing users to write their own scripts. Scripts can then be assigned to objects within the map that will perform the coding in the script. I was able to create a very basic AI that detected the player once it came into a certain distance, it then preceded to chase the player. For someone starting off meshes aren't really very important as a simple game can really be made from the basic shapes available from the start. 

Up above is a menu screen that I was in the middle of building just to see if I could if I'm honest. I didn't get around to finishing this screen but I did find out the basics of making a main menu in Unity and how to get it to work. The image you see above is a room like the ones players explore only the camera has no movement options so the player only sees what the developers want them too. The buttons that players press are also objects in the game with coding attached to them that activate usually on detecting a left click.

Particle Effects were also a feature of unity that I experimented with so I could better understand what I could do with them. In the image able to fires that are seem a particle effects that came with the game engine only made a little larger. The game engine itself allows the user to made all sorts of changers to the particles so they could get what they wanted to. For the fire I didn't changed much but I also added snow to the level as well which allowed me to experiment a little better. I as able to create a light snow storm to a full on blizzard couple with fog as well that prevented the player from getting any sort of visibility. In the image of the main menu I used a dust storm effect that I think came with one of the free packages that I downloaded. 

Overall I think that Unity is a very useful game engine that can be used to create wonderful games although it does require a user that is able to make their own 3D models.