October 14 2009Unity Game Development Essentials
By now many folks are aware of the fact that Will Goldstone has written a book about Unity, it’s called Unity Game Development Essentials and it’s being published by Packt Publishing. Early on Will and his publisher graciously shared PDF copies with folks, including everyone on the Unity Community Forums. While it was extremely exciting to know that a book was in the works, then available in electronic form, I have to admit that the best moment of all came today when a brown box was delivered to my desk for me to open. I’m the guy that handles incoming mail and packages sent to the San Francisco office so it wasn’t unusual for me to have a “present” to open today. When I cracked open the box I found a nice surprise inside, the three copies of Will’s book I’d long ago ordered had finally arrived!
So for those that don’t know about it, consider this your heads up to check it out! It’s a book geared towards the beginner end of the spectrum and from what I’ve read so far (a fair chunk of the PDF already) he did an excellent job of laying things out for those of you just getting into Unity. If you’re interested give it a look on either the Packt Publishing site or over on Amazon.com:
Unity Game Development Essentials (Packt Publishing)
Unity Game Development Essentials (Amazon.com)
Kudos, and a huge thanks, to Will Goldstone for the effort, I know he put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this book and it shows. Well done Will!
Ashkan said on October 14th, 2009 at 3:15 am:
having a book or even more about unity is good but having a complete reference is required. please do something about your docs. rewrite them or at least rewrite the GUI part and solve the problem
you really need staff dedicated to documentation and it’s not a good idea that developers of each part write the docs of that part too.
tony said on October 14th, 2009 at 3:27 pm:
My copy arrived today too! and although I’ve already gone through the PDF version, I am absolutely delighted to have it in hard copy.
It’s a fantastic book.
Well done Will
Tom Higgins said on October 14th, 2009 at 6:18 pm:
@Ashkan: thanks for raining on the parade, you couldn’t let this just be a good post about a book that just arrived eh? :eye roll: FWIW, we did just recently hire a full time doc writer to improve our docs, but I just don’t find them as bad as your comment indicates.
@Tony: enjoy it and learn from it!
Mike said on October 14th, 2009 at 9:46 pm:
@Ashkan – You are a meanie, and you need better manners.
@Will – You are amazing, and this book proves it. I loved your video tutorials and your book. Great stuff and a must have.
Will said on October 14th, 2009 at 11:20 pm:
Hey Tom, thanks for the awesome write up! Nice of Ashkan to use this as a forum to vent his spleen about documentation, always good to be told what to do when you’re trying to share happy news!
Any other pics of the book you could take would be awesome – my copies of the book weren’t sent to me due to a ‘glitch’ in the system (ahem) at the publishers so have only just been posted as our royal mail service goes on strike, so I won’t see it for a while yet!!
Thanks again to everyone on the Unity team for your help whilst writing the book, I only hope it helps with profile now there is a book to bring further newcomers to such an awesome package! All the best!
Ray said on October 18th, 2009 at 10:00 am:
I too have just bought this having found Will’s online video tutorials very helpful. So far it’s a great resource and a good read for those interested in Unity, pitched perfectly at a beginner level for the likes of people like me.
I wish you success with this and hope this sells extremely well. Are there any plans for a follow up book pitched at higher level?
AngryAnt said on October 19th, 2009 at 8:57 am:
Got word that my copy is on its way a little while ago. Did get some time to browse through the copies at the cph office, but its going to be good to have my own copy on the shelf
AngryAnt said on October 19th, 2009 at 12:19 pm:
Heh. I check my mailbox on the way to work and sure enough there is my copy
Minevr said on October 21st, 2009 at 6:02 am:
Presented to me a copy.Haaaa
Ed said on November 17th, 2009 at 12:22 am:
Man.. I want to get this, maybe a christmas present? He He… 250 or so pages of an in-depth guide to Unity? Nice. My main problem is really scripting (modelling is second, any books on Cheetah 3D anyone?). Is scripting gratly covered in this book? And what about GUIs? I know some basic syntax, but undersatnding what gos where and why and what it does is super tricky..
Tom Higgins said on November 17th, 2009 at 6:54 pm:
@Ed: As the book’s page on Packt Publishing’s website indicates you’ll cover some scripting (like building your own 1st person player character, combining scripting and animations, etc) as well as GUI development (creating menus and “stunning user interfaces with textures and scripting”).