Complete Unity Developer - Section 5 - Block Breaker

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In This Section

• 2D Collisions & destroying objects.
• Triggering SFX and music.
• Responding to mouse input.
• Automated playtesting.
• Build & share your own levels.

Section 5 Game Design Document

Your Block Breaker Assets

Section 5 Notes

Gimp Image Editing 101

• How to use GIMP as an alternative to PhotoShop
• Selecting in Gimp
• Cropping and Scaling
• Adjusting Colour and Exposure
• Saving Your Image

Creating A 2D Brick Sprite

• Researching brick sizes.
• Source an appropriate image.
• Edit our brick sprites.
• Create new project and import.

Import The Menu System

• Export the menus from Number Wizard UI.
• Import to this project.
• Customise the words & fonts.
• Wire up the buttons.

Playing Background Music

• How persistent music improves quality.
• Add a Music Player Game Object.
• Add a music track of your choice.
• Use GameObject.DontDestroyOnLoad().
• Test your music plays consistently.

Useful Links

• Sounds - Freesound.org

About Statics & Singletons

• How a static can help us here.
• Watch Unity's short video
• Preventing duplicate music players.

Useful Links

• Unity 3D Statics

Using Static Variables

A Note About The Music Manager

Explaining that we don't use the music manager again for a while.

Execution Order & Singletons

• Introducing Script Execution Order
• Exactly when do scripts get called?
• Debugging & explaining our music glitch
• A simple fix using the Awake() method

Useful Links

• Unity - Execution Order of Event Functions

Z-Depth in 2D games

• What z-depth means.
• The problem: sprites becoming semi-transparent or invisible for unknown reasons.
• The solution: look at the z-position of sprites relative to the background.

Setting Up Your Play Space

Ball + Gravity + Colliders = Fun

• Add a ball to your space
• Import the ball sprite to Sprites folder.
• Set a sensible “Pixels Per Unit” value.
• Place the ball in the middle of the play space.

Colliders, Triggers & Collisions

• What are colliders
• If colliders overlap during a frame then…
• … messages may be passed by the engine.
• What is message passing?
• Signatures of messages passed
• Types of colliders explained

Tidying Up Before Moving On

• Delete Music Player on Level_01 scene.
• Setting Game window to 800 x 600.
• Two handy keyboard shortcuts.
• Remove Canvas and Event System from Level_01.
• Make loose collider load next level.

Choosing Collider Type In Unity

• Add our brick sprite as a player paddle.
• Choosing our paddle collider type.
• Rigid Body 2D
• CHALLENGE: Add components to our paddle.

Using Physics Materials

• What is a physics material.
• Add a bouncy material.
• Observe funky physics.

Movement By Mouse

• Using Input.MousePosition.x
• Screen.width to get screen width.
• Move the paddle this.transform.position
• Introducing float and Vector3.
• Using Mathf.Clamp to constrain paddle.
• Fix the paddle's “Pixels per unit” to 128.

Useful Links

• Unity - Scripting API

Launching Ball On Mouse Click

• Start the ball sitting on the paddle.
• Capture the relative position from the editor.
• Respond to Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0).
• rigidbody2D.velocity to launch the ball.
• Using bool hasStarted to keep track.

Invisible Colliders & Gravity Scale

• Setup all your play space wall colliders.
• Adjust the initial velocity and gravity.
• Understanding Gravity Scale

Creating & Using Unity Prefabs

• What is a prefab in Unity
• Why prefabs are useful.
• Setting up your prefabs.
• How prefab linking works.

Unity Editor Snap To Grid

• How Edit > Snap Settings works.
• Snap initially to get on the grid.
• You can do this with multi-select.
• Hold cmd (ctrl) while dragging!
• Build your first level

Making Everything A Prefab

• Make everything a prefab!
• Set Main Camera background to black.
• Move & group Loose Collider.
• Test by making new level.

GameObject.FindObjectOfType

• Why linking prefabs programmatically helps.
• Unity doesn't support “nested prefabs”.
• How to use GameObject.FindObjectOfType< >
• Link the ball to the paddle programatically.
• Challenge: do this for LevelManager

Level Build Order

• Create Loose Scene, modify LooseCollider.cs
• Add LoadNextLevel() to LevelManager.cs
• Add all our levels to Project > Build Settings
• Modify Block.cs by adding SimulateWin()
• Test that game transitions between levels

Destroying When Hit

• How the Destroy() method works.
• Why we destroy gameObject not this.
• Challenge: only destroy on max hits

Useful Links

• Unity Scripting API - Object Destroy

Importing Sprite Sheets

• Why a sprite sheet is useful.
• Key features of a sprite sheet.
• Creating sprites for partially broken blocks.
• Importing sprites into Unity.

Swapping Sprites In Script

• The affordance principle
• What is an array?
• Using arrays to store these sprites.
• Loading sprite when hit.

Consolidating Hit Counting

• What are tags?
• Why tags are useful for keeping track.
• Tagging unbreakable bricks.
• Use tags to decide when level is won.

Useful Links

• Unity - Tags

Statics To Detect Win Condition

• Why loading levels could be problematic.
• How a static Brick variable can help.
• Keeping track of breakable bricks in the level.
• Creating a simple BrickDestroyed “message”.
• Testing inc. when 2 bricks destroyed at once.

Playing Sound Effects On Impact

• Using audio.Play() to play “boing” sound;
• Why AudioSource.PlayClipAtPoint useful.
• Using this for playing “crack”.
• Test & demonstrate.

Using Random.Range()

Automated Play Testing

• Create & tidy your levels
• Ensure Hierarchy is tidy in each level.
• Give each level a different 800x600 background.
• Play test all the levels.
• Ensure level order is right in File > Build Order.

Build & Share On The Web

• Revising setting your Game window.
• How to tweak sound levels.
• Doing a test web build and playing locally.
• Revising building and sharing to web.
• Looking forward to seeing your levels!

Useful Links

• Unity Scripting API - AudioSource

Fixing User Reported Bugs

• How to reproduce the problem?
• Debug to find the root cause.
• Make the fix, and re-test.
• Remove debug code.
• Challenge: Fix the bug

More Complex Collider Shapes

• What's a polygon collider.
• Why it can help us improve our game.
• How to manipulate polygon colliders.
• Challenge: Chamfer your paddle.

Making Code Extendable

• The coding trade off triangle.
• Think about your future self on the project.
• Renaming a game object and class.
• Using Debug.LogError().

Using Particle Systems

• Create a simple particle system.
• Make brick look like it goes “up in smoke”.
• Write code to trigger smoke puffs.
• Tweak the smoke prefab while play testing.

Useful Links

• Unity Manual - Particle Systems
• Unity Scripting API - Object Instantiate

BB Unity 5 Upgrade & WebGL Build

OPTIONALLY converting your project to Unity 5, and sharing with Web GL.

DOWNLOAD Section 5 Unity Project

Section 5 Wrap Up

• Recap and what's next
• Congratulations, you've learnt a lot.
• Make your own levels.
• Ask a friend to make levels.
• Care with commercial music.
• Share your creation with our fantastic community, or on our Complete Unity Developer Facebook Group.