Let the games…begin!
Installing Unity as the first step in a new game development journey
Arming myself with the tools
Now that we’ve covered how and where to store our projects let’s look at installing the software that is going to be our primary tool on this adventure, Unity!
Unity can be downloaded at https://unity.com for free and contains both the game engine software that is utilized by game developers worldwide to create impressive games playable on virtually every platform available, and the IDE to create with it.
Installing Unity is a fairly straightforward affair. Once you have downloaded the installer for your operating system of choice you simply run it and follow the steps provided by the installer.
Once the installer finishes we are presented with the Unity Hub window and the “Projects” tab. This is the area of the program that helps organize the Unity projects you are working on and acts as a launcher for your projects.
The “Learn” tab provides tutorials and learning materials provided by Unity themselves.
The “Community” tab provides us with resources for collaborating with other unity developers and places, like the forums, where we can seek assistance or look for answers to any issues we may run into.
Also available is the ability to install other versions of the Unity engine. You are allowed to have multiple versions of the software installed simultaneously. You can install and manage those versions through the “Installs” tab on the Unity Hub interface.
Clicking on the “New” button provides you with the dialog for creating a new Unity project. On this window, you can choose what type of project you will be making (2D, 3D, etc.) as well as some options for Unity’s scriptable rendering pipelines which can be used to create games built on renderers that are optimized for different platforms like Game Consoles and Mobile Devices.
Once you’ve named your project and selected a place for it to exist on disk, clicking the “Create” button loads you into the Unity Editor interface and you can begin to create here!
Next time
Now that we have our tool set in place and the project created we can look at starting to build our games! Tomorrow we will look at how we can rearrange our Unity Editor environment to improve our workflow! If you enjoyed this article, or want to come along with me as I progress on my journey, follow me at gamedevchris.medium.com.
