IGDPD First Edition [1Ed]

Welcome to the website for Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development. Here, you will find a page for each chapter of the book that contains any additional information or materials you need, including demo software, lecture slides, and starting files for some of the later tutorials.

In the menu at the left, there are sections for each of the three major parts of the book. Click on a part name to see all the chapters that it contains.

If you have any comments or questions about the book, feel free to use the Contact link to send me an email about it.

Thank you very much for purchasing the book. I sincerely hope it helps to accelerate your progress towards game design and development.

                                                 — Jeremy Gibson Bond

p.s. My wife and I recently changed our names, so my name is now Jeremy Gibson Bond.

Unity 5.4+ Updates

Unity made some changes to both code and the editor UI for Unity 5 which have affected chapters of the book. Happily, if you open an older project in Unity 5, it will automatically update the code to the new standard (especially in the case of #1 & #2 below). However, if you are reading the book and typing the code, you will need to make the changes highlighted on the pages of this site for chapters 29-35.

The most important Unity 5 changes for this book are:

  • 1. Most of the quick property accessors in C# code were removed. For example, now gameObject.GetComponent<Rigidbody>() must be used instead of gameObject.rigidbody. The quick property accessors that have been removed are: .rigidBody, .rigidbody2D, .camera, .light, .animation, .constantForce, .renderer, .audio, .networkView, .guiTexture, .collider, .collider2D, .particleSystem, .particleEmitter, .guiText, .hingeJoint (those in bold text were used in the book).
  • 2. Screen.showCursor has been replaced by Cursor.visible.
  • 3. Starting with Unity 4.6 and continuing with Unity 5, the new GUI system has grown in complexity and depth. Now the old GUIText type of immediate mode GUI is strongly deprecated, so I’ve added a page with instructions on how to incorporate the new UGUI into the book prototypes here.
  • 4. The processes for registering Unity, creating a new project, and opening a project have all changed somewhat. They’re all pretty straightforward, but there are notes on those chapters about the differences.
  • 5. Unity has completely changed the engine that they use for baking lighting, which changes much of the baking instructions in Chapter 34 – QuickSnap. An updated version of that chapter will be posted to this site as soon as it is ready.
  • 6. New scenes now open with a skybox backdrop rather than the solid color that existed in previous versions of Unity. If you prefer the solid color background, this can be changed by selecting the Main Camera in the scene and selecting Solid Color from the Clear Flags pop-up menu in the Camera Component of the Main Camera.
  • 7. Additionally, a skybox also appears in the Scene pane, though this change has no effect on the game you actually create. If you wish to remove the skybox from the Scene pane, click the little downward triangle next to the mountain silhouette and uncheck skybox as shown in the image below.
  • disable-skybox-in-scene-pane

  • 8. Instead of the standard Diffuse material that has traditionally been the default material for any new object, Unity now uses the much more complex Standard Shader. To revert to the old default Diffuse Shader, you must create a new Material (and name it Default Diffuse) and in the Inspector for the Default Diffuse Material, you must use the Shader pop-up menu to select Legacy Shaders > Diffuse.

This site continues to be updated to keep the book information as current as possible. Chapters that have been affected include errata information on their page of this site. I’m also in the process of uploading full code listings for any .cs files which contain changes for Unity 5.