Real time 3D games have been around for well over ten years now. We’ve played them, created assets in the style of our favorites, and maybe even “mod”ed a few of them. But until recently, the cost of licensing one of the premier game engines has ranged from several hundred thousand to several million dollars per title (!), relegating the dream of creating your own 3D game to an unattainable fantasy.

Times have changed. 3D has become affordable not only in the movie industry, as seen by the number of titles featuring CG (computer graphics), but also in the game industry where we’ve seen a shift in casual games from 2D to a 3D format. With Unity’s bold move to offer a robustly featured free version of their engine, a radical change in the pricing models of the high-end engines has rocked the industry. The cost of the engine is no longer a barrier to taking your game from a nebulous idea to a working prototype and even on to a marketable product.

Whether your interest is in casual games or you have more ambitious aims, if you have no previous scripting experience but are eager to bring your art assets and story to life, this may be just the book to get you underway. In today’s modern game engines, the heavy programming is handled by the engine itself, so the logic and game play can be scripted by those with more creativity than traditional programming knowledge.

In this book, I will approach game creation and design decisions from a 3D artist’s view, taking the logic and scripting in small pieces, while introducing artists, budding game designers, and novice programmers to real-time game engine concepts at the same time.

This book is written in a project-based format so you will not only end up with a playable game and scripting resources you can reuse for other games, but you will experience typical design decisions that need to be addressed throughout the process. You will create your game by starting with the basics and refining it as you add functionality; I will explain the logic behind certain choices and real-time game concepts as you go along.

The project for this book is based on a first person point and click adventure game, complete with inventory, state management, load/save functionality, and a strong emphasis on the visual aspects of game creation. Even if you are more of a first person shooter-type game enthusiast, you will be able to see how including entertaining or interesting tasks and features can enhance your favorite genre.

The aim of this project is to introduce you to a logical progression of design decisions and problem solving that will be of value well beyond the scope of the adventure game genre. It provides a framework and a methodology for creating and, more importantly, finishing your own game. You will be going beyond the basic Unity functionality and use of standard assets to investigate topics rarely covered in online tutorials or books. All of the necessary art assets to complete the project are provided.