Getting Started with Game Development using Unity
This article will be focusing on a PC experience but most of the same concepts apply to installing on the MAC.
I am going to take it you are very new to game development or new to Unity so this article will teach you how to install Unity by guiding you through hands-on exercises to creating your first Unity Project.
After completing, you’ll be able to:
- Understand Unity Hub and its purpose
- Understand the different licensing and which is suited to your needs
- Understand the different versions of Unity and which you should choose
- Explain the different additional modules that are available
Firstly, we will need to download Unity from https://unity.com/
Now, let us Create a Unity ID. Click on the icon that looks like a person as illustrated above and then select Create a Unity ID.
You will be presented with a form to provide your email, username, full name, and password. Go ahead and read and acknowledge the agreements.
Once you have your Unity ID, head back to the home page and click on Get started.
The two main plans you may be interested in when first starting out:
Personal — you may continue to uses this plan while you are earning less than $100K in the last 12 months from the games you have developed in Unity.
Plus — You can customise the splash screen, meaning you do not need to show the “Made in Unity” logo. You also have live analytics data available and some cloud features.
Under the Individual tab, select the Get started in the Personal section.
On the Start creating with Unity page, click on Start here.
Read the Terms and click on Agree and download if you wish to continue.
This will now download the Unity Hub software. Once it has finish download it, install it and you will be presented with the Unity Hub. Click on that Login icon and sign in with your Unity ID and password.
Now that you have signed in, let's take this moment to see what the Unity Hub is for.
In the Projects tab, this is where you may Add existing projects or create new projects which we will do shortly. You will also start to see a list of all the projects you have added or created to choose from as shown below are a few of my projects. You can see the project name, version of the project that you may change, target platform, and the last time I modified it.
The Learn tab is where you may learn from the Unity guided tutorials or projects.
The Community tab is the central spot that directs you to videos, demos, and talks, Unity Blogs, or where you may direct your questions for the community to help you.
The Installs tab is where we can add, modify or remove the different versions of Unity that are available.
Picking the right version
So now, go ahead and click the Add button to choose the version of Unity we wish to install.
“Gee, what does this all mean, which one do I choose?”
Your view may look different from mine at the time of writing.
Recommended Releases
Basically, Unity will recommend a version that they have thoroughly tested and is considered very stable. Unity will continue to provide long-term support (LTS).
Official Releases — Unity is happy with the stability of these versions. This will install LTS and the latest version.
Pre-Releases — These are the latest and greatest versions. Contains some of the coolest features in current development but be aware, not all bugs have been fixed
Download Archive — this has ALL of the versions ever released by Unity.
Go ahead and choose the version that Unity recommends, in my case, that is Unity 2020.3.5f1, and click Next.
Which Modules?
On the Add Unity Version screen, this is where we add the extra modules that allow us to build to different platforms or install off-line documentation.
I will highlight a few that tend to be the more popular:
Android Build Support — allows you to deploy to Android devices
iOS Build Support — allows you to deploy to iOS device which the aid of a Mac OS device.
WebGL Build Support — allows you to deploy a web build of your project.
Windows Build Support (IL2CPP) — allows you to deploy to Windows PC
For this, we are going to leave the default which is to build to WebGL. You can return to this and add or remove modules.
Click Done.
You should now see a box representing your version being installed. You can see the blue progress bar at the top of the box. First, it will download the files, then install them.
Once installed, return back to the Projects tab and click on the New button to create a New Unity Project.
In the Create a new project with Unity <version number> screen, we have a number of templates to choose from but for this exercise let's simply select the 3D template, give your project a name, choose the location where you want to save it and click the Create button.
Unity will now go ahead and set up your first unity project, congratulation for getting this far. In the next article, I am going to show you around the Unity Interface.
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