Mastering Unity 2D Game Development: Using Unity 5 to develop a retro RPG, 2nd Edition 2nd Revised edition

This is hands down an excellent book. Most Unity books out there are hit or miss. This one is definitely a hit.If I were to say who the target audience is for this book. I would lean more towards the intermediate C# programmer and someone familiar with how Unity works. Although the author provides excellent information on the inner workings of Unity's 2D systems. There isn't much hand holding. The right balance is there for you to not get lost but to also stretch your knowledge at the end of each chapter. The author pretty much encourages the reader to push themselves and take the learned content further.*A dedicated and confident beginner could have a go at the text but prepared to push yourself if you are a newbie coder. It gets pretty heavy at times and that is a good thing!** I also haven't had to look up the errata after going through 3/4's of the book. The instructions are clear, focused, and the code works. Imagine that...For what it is worth this is about as complete of a book you can get on developing a 2D game with Unity. Not only do you walk away with knowing how to approach 2D game development. You're also provided with excellent tips and best practices for architecting your game and additional tips on how to avoid common rookie mistakes.I thoroughly have enjoyed this book thus far. Honestly, I almost passed on it because the base game is an RPG. I'm so glad I didn't pass it up as the knowledge gained is applicable beyond the genre itself.Definitely a joy to read.At the half way mark you'll already have an excellent grasp on how to approach 2D gaming with Unity.If other books have left you scratching your head or you're still lost in the woods. Then this book is your beacon for sure.Ashley. Please write more Unity books. Thank you for this one.

I own the first edition and thought this new second edition would be fully updated. The section on animation only covers Mecanim state machines, even though Unity includes the Anima2D skeletal animation package as part of the standard library. Many of the original chapters are not updated at all, and are even using deprecated calls. They’ve not swapped “typeof” calls with generics. The grammar issues are still legion. For this much money ($55), and this recent of a publication date, I expected to learn. Some of the most important subjects are still glossed over with a few brief paragraphs. Like deploying to consoles, C# delegates, serializing data (to save your game) and events. These are the prime bits of information desperately needed by new Unity developers. I awaited this edition eagerly, as I had assumed more light would be shed this time around. If you’ve got the first edition, search elsewhere. Nothing to see here. But if you haven’t read the first edition, this book is still the best 2D Unity book out there.

This book requires intermediate programming skills, e.g., implementing a few design patterns.Pros - Intermediate programming topics, e.g., use of delegates, managers, to reduce code complexity. - Use of AssetDatabase to create assets - Saving player's previous position prior entering battle zones - The best: Use of animation states as state machines (matching up states and their corresponding animations nicely)Cons - No architectural diagram. It's difficult to visualize the relationships of the different classes/scripts. I coped by modeling them myself. - It seems that Chapter 10's code isn't as 'clean' as previous chapters. There are long if-else chains which I changed to ternary operators. - No explanation of the CustomAssetUtility which uses generics. It works but I don't know why it works. (Caveat: I'm a C# noob so this is not really an issue for those with years of C# experience) - Runtime error but easy to fix because Unity's error messages are helpful, e.g., checking whether objects in OnGui are null before attempting to use them. - I find the BattleManager bloated but I expect in practice, BattleManager would be further modularized into logical classes. - The Battle Scene is unfinished, e.g., Player can select Dragon to attack but there's no attack animation or counter attack learning (it's left to us to implement those).Wish - I wish the topics re the Editor were replaced with more gameplay related ones, e.g., give more room to complete the Battle SceneI'd still recommend this book as a good buy. It's not perfect but I'm not completely disappointed.

this book is just great. all is explained from scratch and the books covers all the important topics for someone who wants to learn an end to end video game creation with unity. it gave me a lot of drive and ambition to create my own video game.

I like it, it's a very focused book (2D RPG) and the code is very readable: I can mostly tell what it does just by reading it.It's also a very utilitarian book in nature: every chapter starts with a 1-page explanation as to what you're going to code, 1 or 2 diagrams, the code, and a page for other things you could improve - no long-winded explanation on the industry standards, the focus is on getting to the point - the game. No platforming, no achievements, no multiplayer, just straight up 2D RPG.Note that it shouldn't be your very first book on Unity if you don't have any experience with code as the book will not explain what a script or a function is, or even the difference between a public and a private variable. The book will however explain the differences between similar functions in Unity (ex: difference between Update, LateUpdate, FixedUpdate) depending on their relevance to the project.

The book covers core features of RPG game and shows how to implement those with Unity. Some topics dig deeper and utilize some expansions of Unity editor. However the book is a bit light weight and for those who have explored Unity tutorials will find only few new things from the book. In overall the book is easy to read and gives good starting point for anyone interested in 2D RPG game development.

Libro (nuovo) arrivato nei tempi (brevi) previsti. Al contrario di altri manuali, arrivato in condizioni intonse.Per ora sono al capitolo #3.Si tratta di un lungo tutorial, buono partendo da zero, ma non perfetto:* Per scaricare gli asset usati nel libro, ci si deve iscrivere nel sito indicato. Procedura che però, ad un certo punto richiede un metodo di pagamento. Annullando, l'account viene comunque creato e resta free. Procedura laboriosa, controintuitiva, fastidiosa, lunga.* Parte C# debole (es. ad un certo punto chiama, quelli che dovrebbero essere metodi, oggetti), inoltre il codice riportato è abbastanza confusionario. Capisco però che il libro è rivolto a chi è alle prime armi.* Non sto usando la stessa versione di Unity riportata nel libro (io sto usando la 2022.3), quindi magari le cose sono cambiate da quando è stato pubblicato il libro, ma alcuni passaggi sembrano proprio mancare (come ad esempio in che finestra/tab fare determinate cose). Sembra che l'autore abbia dato per scontato qualcosa.Alla fin fine, si potrebbero risparmiare i soldi del libro, e cercare qualche buon tutorial gratuito on-line.Io che apprezzo i manuali cartacei, lo reputo abbastanza buono per iniziare.Senza infamia, senza lode.