Hands-On Unity 2020 Game Development: Build, customize, and optimize professional games using Unity 2020 and C#

This book is a good intro to Unity. It covers all of the big topics and gets you comfortable with the interface and all of the various moving parts. I went from never having touched Unity before to understanding how to build a game and what I need to look into next. This book is an introduction and nothing more - you can't use this book alone to learn everything you need to build a full game. Such a book would be 2,000 pages; Unity is just too big. But this book does give you everything you need to start going deeper and understanding what to experiment with next. By the end of this book you'll know what to learn next and you'll have enough info to start experimenting and trying things, which is where the real learning begins.My only gripe with this book is the way its organized. It spends a lot of time - like half the book - teaching you Unity's UI and learning about building scenes and graphics. You don't write a line of code until the last half or maybe even last third of the book. You are building stuff that whole time, but you are building static stuff. I understand the constraints the author was under, trying to introduce this massive load of material, but I did start to get antsy and want to make it do something after a while. I think this book could have benefited from introducing some scripting early and switching between scripting and graphics, rather focusing on one than the other. That's just my opinion though. My only other gripe is that this book doesn't cover switching scenes or how to architect a game with multiple scenes and global state - it hints at it and talks about it but never really shows it. The "game" you build in this game is one infinite level basically; I feel that switching scenes and preserving state while doing so is a ground level thing that needs to be taught. That said, you know enough by the end to figure that out.Overall I am very happy with this game. It was a great first step and I definitely recommend it.

Overall, this book presents Unity in a fantastic level of detail. It does not go into any one topic in great detail, but provides a good foundational knowledge of many topics, and gives an idea of where to direct future learning.My main issue with the book is that it takes a long time to get to any actual programming. The first half or so of the book is dedicated entirely to the design of the world space, audio, postprocessing, UI, etc. Actual interaction with the world is saved for much later on. I would prefer an earlier focus on getting the reader to a point where they can interact with the space and then worry about the polish.While this isn't ideal, the chapters are also largely self-contained, so I don't think there would be an issue if you wanted to skip ahead and go straight to the portions that interest you.

I purchased this for my son who is interested in writing code for game. He is only 11 so it is a bit overwhelming for him but he just reads sections he’s interested in. I see him reading it so I assume he’s getting something out of it. His first desk top PC is arriving in a day so he’ll finally get to try some of what he has learned out. I looked through the book and it seems like an excellent resource.

While this book has some decent info in it, I have had to use my expertise (IT multimedia degree and knowledge of game programming from past years) to fix no less than 15 critical errors in the book to continue to get through it. And by critical I mean stops you dead in your tracks until you can solve them. This is a 22 chapter book, so the interruptive inconvenience is continual.This is by far the most difficult programming book I have ever had to get through and it's not even describing difficult concepts. Aside from randomly changing his naming conventions, the author even has undefined parameters (or completely broken ones) that he never even touches so far into the book that it's frankly a demoralizing experience. If this is your first book for Unity programming, look somewhere else.Because of how frustrating it was to get through, and needing to walk away from the project outlined in the book for days at a time sometimes, it has literally taken weeks to get through and it's just not a fun experience. Definitely do not purchase this if it's going to be your first experience into Unity game programming in general. You're going to get super mad if it is. He only gets a 2-star rating and not a 1-star rating because SOME of it works as described. I have not been able to get animation controllers or animation transitions to work as described, for example.I have not even yet finished the book, but will update my review when I do. Currently once again stuck at chapter 17.

I have been building software professionally for 30 years. So, you might say, I have read my fair share of technical books. This book ranks among the best written and most enjoyable guides in recent memory. Well done Mr. Borromeo!My only complaint is that the photos in the book are printed black and white, which makes it hard to see some of the details and features that you put the pictures there for. I did download the color pictures from Git, so I can pull it up on my computer if need be. Regardless, I wont let that inconvenience get in the way of a 5 star review.

Its a great book to learn the basics of unity. The only problem is I didnt find it script heavy. I would of enjoyed the book if it focused more on scripts.

More of a review on the quality of the book, the table of contents is misprinted. (example: Ch. 1 Documentation says it's on pg. 25, but actually it's on pg. 29. Throwing the book off like about 4 pages.) It's probably too late for a replacement, so here I am.

Great introduction to unity for someone that's new to the program.Only 4 stars as there are a couple of annoying things in the example game. As an example if you follow the instructions the player character will pop towards and away from the screen. Takes quite a lot of googling to find a solution. Hint you have to remove the root transformation from the animations. There are other similar "bugs" to this one. The the author doesn't acknowledge or give any guidance on how to fix them.

Soddisfatta