Complete Unity Developer - Section 9 - Zombie Runner

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In This Section

Introduction to Zombie Runner

• Creating a stunning 3D terrain.
• Built-in character controllers.
• AI navigation and pathfinding.
• VR compatible HUD interface.
• Item pick-ups.

Section 9 Game Design Document

About this document...

• A brief specification of your game.
• Can change as you go along.
• Meant to help keep you focused
• … and to remind you of your original idea.
• We suggest you write one every time.

Your Zombie Runner Assets

Section 9 Notes

In this section...

• Creating a stunning 3D terrain.
• Built-in character controllers.
• AI navigation and pathfinding.
• VR compatible HUD interface.
• Item pick-ups.

About Unity 5.1 Features

• Ensure you have Unity 5.1 or later installed.
• What's new in Unity 5.1
• What we'll be using in this section.

Creating A Terrain

• Read the Game Design Document.
• How to setup your terrain.
• Some Unity terrain settings.
• Raising and lowering terrain.
• Painting textures on terrain.

First Person Character Controller

• What is a First Person controller.
• Why would we want to use it?
• Using the standard First Person controller.
• Previewing your terrain from ground level.
• About slope limits.

Placing Trees & Details

• How to place trees on your terrain.
• How to paint grass details.
• About grass and billboards.
• Performance impact of grass.

Adding A Water Table

• Using Unity 5's wonderful water prefab.
• Create a “water table” in your terrain.
• Dig down to create some water hazards.
• Paint mud under the water's surface.
• Preview water from the ground.

Awsome-ify Your Scene Lighting

• Moving scene view to character view.
• Adding fog to your scene.
• Add a lens flare to the sun.
• Add a flare layer to the FPSController camera.

Setting Up Your Navmesh

• What is a Navmesh.
• Setting up a terrain Navmesh.
• About bake settings.
• Bake our NavMesh.
• Preview to ensure it suits our terrain.

Scaling Your Characters

• Using a reference cube in your scene.
• Setting your first person character eye height.
• Checking character scale against environment.

Setup Player Spawn Points

• Setup player spawn points in hierarchy.
• Update FPSController prefab before deleting.
• Create a PlayerSpawner.cs script.
• Arrange for player to spawn randomly on Start()

Using Input Mapping

• About the Unity Input Manager.
• Create input for view zoom (default v).
• Create input for call helicopter (default h).
• Give both inputs basic 'placeholder' behaviour.
• Preventing duplicate key presses.

Adding 3D Helicopter Sound

• About 3D sounds.
• Attaching and tweaking your first 3D sound.
• Arranging simple helicopter landing.
• About 2D / 3D Spatial Blend.
• Using multiple audio sources.

Rigged “Mechanim” Animation

• Introducing Unity's Mechanim system.
• Exploring how Ethan is constructed.
• Finding the rigging and muscles tool.

Exploring Humanoid Animation

• An overview of how Ethan is animated.
• About re-targeting animations.
• Introducing Blend Trees.
• What is Inverse Kinematics (IK)?

Simple Day-Night Cycle

• A little about Earth's orbit.
• Coding a simple day-night cycle.
• Using a time scaling parameter.

Searching For Clear Area

• Looking for a suitable landing place.
• Which type of collider to detect a clear area?
• Creating a simple system.
• Our vision for the game.

Using SendMessageUpwards

• Introducing SendMessageUpwards()*
• Creating a message for the helicopter call.
• Making the helo respond to the message.

* Unity Scripting API - Component.SendMessageUpwards()

Inner Voice To Guide Player

• Using an inner voice to guide the player.
• Recording some sound prompts.
• Triggering sound prompts at the right time.
• Handling multiple AudioSources.
• Using audio priority.

Using BroadcastMessage()

• BroadcastMessage() sends down the hierarchy.
• Creating a natural parent RadioSystem object.
• Creating a new child of player called InnerVoice.
• Reduce to one Audio Source per game object.

Refactoring Our Message System

• Sending messages up and down the hierarchy.
• Using Invoke() to delay audio playback.
• Writing RadioSystem.cs for radio communication.

Normalizing Audio Files

• Recording dialog placeholders.
• Remember you may need a .mp3 licence
• About normalizing sound volume.
• Organising and attaching audio.

Landing Area Prefab

• Creating a landing area prefab.
• Using the flare particle effect.
• Setting the game to start at dusk.
• Making the player deploy the flare.

Compacting Your Unity Folder

• What we've left-out and why.
• Checking our project is tidy.
• How to compact your Unity folder.
• Finding our code on GitHub.
• Over to you.

DOWNLOAD Section 9 Unity Project

The end state of our Zombie Runner project is attached for download.

Section 9 Wrap-Up