You’re ready to build your own games and apps, but it is tough. The latest titles are amazing, the graphics look so realistic and the way they play blows your mind. All the great games use a game engine. No way even a big studio could program all the 3D graphics and physics engines and still ship a game this decade. Just choosing the “best” engine is complicated. I’ve built a lot of games in the past, worked in Unreal, CryEngine, and other more ‘proprietary’ engines. Unity is THE game engine, and will be in the future. You’ll get why in a minute.

You might think getting started with Unity would have been a cakewalk for a veteran programmer like me. But reality is never quite so simple and getting ramped up still took a long time. Unity is quite a bit different than other game engines. The paradigm shift is big, and it’s been hard to find good resources that explain what needs to be done and how to do it “the unity way”. There are bad examples all over the place, and only a few places teach how to do more than a simple task at a time or re-create the bare bones of a game play prototype.

Even 5 years in, I was still stumbling across engine features I had no idea existed (and nobody else I talked to seemed to know about them either).  The editor is a powerful thing, and there’s so much more under the hood than noticeable at first glance. But the coding is the same right? I’d also done my fair share of tool development, c# web sites, and just general programming. It’s just c#…

You’d think that was true. Maybe you’ve been slinging code for years, or have just done a bit of C#, but Unity is a different animal. While it’s true the primary and soon to be sole language of the engine is c#, the patterns and concerns are drastically different from things you’ll encounter in typical line of business situations. Getting this right is key to making your game work and perform at the level you need.

There are also plenty of people know the Unity basics, but really don’t quite get the code yet.  That’s not your fault..  c# is a huge language, probably the most complex one that exists.  Being giant, with a robust Base Class Library can be a huge benefit, but also a tough thing to learn.  What’s the right way to get stuff done?  Is there an easy way to find this specific object I need?  How do events work?  Should I use LINQ here?  These are all questions that need to be answered, and often the answer varies based on the use case. 

Over the years, building dozens of Unity games for Mobile, PC, & VR, I’ve run into all these problems.  And spent a good part of my career finding the right answers.  Figuring out when Garbage Collection was going to be a problem, how to optimize the hell out of my graphics, learning when to use deferred vs forward rendering. 

But optimization isn’t everything.  One of the most important things I’ve figured out is how to cleanly architect a Unity game.  How to make it easy to work in, extensible, and avoid the brittle messes of my early projects. 

It wasn’t an easy journey either, I’d tried bringing in dependency injection, pulling over all the c# patterns I already knew, MVC, MVVM, and just about anything else you can think of.  Some of the patterns were a perfect fit while others turned out to be complete anti-patterns when applied to Unity. 

Now that I’ve learned the deep secrets of Unity, and built so many games, it’s time to start giving back. You can skip years of frustration when we open up this one time class. I can help you bring your skills up to the same level, and FAST. Make no mistake though, it’s going to be intense. There’s a lot to learn, and we will go fast. You’ll be discovering new concepts, building all kinds of systems, and learning more each week than most people do in a year. But hard work pays off, and by the time you’re done, you’ll have the skills to build just about anything you want.

We’ll start off by building an entire 2D game..  not a prototype, not a single level or part of a game, but a full game.. with multiple levels.  In this section, we’ll focus heavily on c# as it relates to Unity.  We’ll discuss things like garbage collection, optimization, physics, input, animation, object collection, gamestate, sprites, effectors, enemies, ai, level selection, transitions, scoring, powersups, & UI systems. 

This first section is all about code.  Getting a good grasp on the fundamentals and quickly diving into the important Unity specifics.  We’ll work together and focus on code architecture & best practices for game development.   By the end of this section, you’ll know all about events, delegates, component based design, injection, monobehaviours, poco’s, interfaces, abstraction, and the BCL. 

In section 2, we’ll make a big shift.  We’ll jump away from 2D and start fresh with a full on 3D game.  We’ll be shooting projectiles, battling enemies, picking up items, and building worlds. 

3D development involves a lot.. we’ll learn how to setup characters and navigation, animate those characters, and get into combat.  We’ll also need to learn how to light a scene, setup materials, deal with character controls, particles, input, weapons, health, mana, spells, & of course some 3D UI’s.

And we’re not stopping there.  Once we’ve got a handle on 3D development, we’re moving on to section three.  Where we’re building a multiplayer game.  If you’ve got a few controllers laying around, you may want to grab them out for this part. 

Throughout this process, we’ll be constantly profiling, learning to find bottlenecks, and discovering easy tricks to optimize out projects for the best FPS possible. 

By the end of the course, you’ll be ready to build just about any kind of game.  You’ll have the skills to put together a full 2D game for a console, pc, or go straight to mobile.  And if you’re more interested in 3D, you’ll have the experience to build something for your favorite genre.  And most importantly, you’ll have experience completing projects and the knowledge of how to architect your game and make failure not an option.

F.A.Q.

Q: I’m interested in taking the course but I”m busy and may not have time.

A: Don’t worry.  I know exactly how that is, and for that reason, every lesson is available to you indefinitely.  If you can’t get the lesson done for the day, you can re-visit it any time.

Q: How much time do I need to spend each day?

A: You can expect to spend between an hour and two each day learning and working on projects.  The lessons will be straight to the point to make sure your time isn’t wasted.

Q: Will there be any other expenses like buying assets? 

A: No.  There won’t be anything you’re required to purchase throughout the course.

Q: I’m primarily interested in building non-game apps.  Will this help me? 

A: Definitely.  I build non-game apps all the time in Unity myself and the knowledge you’ll gain here is directly relevant.

Q: Are there any prerequisites to take the course? 

A: No, just your willingness to learn a new skill.