A downloadable book

Rat Race: Creating a 2D Classic Arcade Style Maze Chase Game in UNITY 3D

Remember the Golden Age of the arcade in the 1980s? It was what
could have been called a PAC·MAN-eat-dot industry; any game that didn’t
earn a quarter every three minutes got removed and replaced. Thus the
games were built to have lights and sounds to attract the players, and then
to challenge the players enough that they were likely to lose the game, and
fast. Still, from time to time, a skillful player would do unusually well and
achieve a spot on the high score list.

We can build a game of this type. We have the technology: faster,
stronger, better. And it will cost much less than six million dollars. We
shall use the UNITY game engine, whose game editor and corresponding
integrated development environment (IDE) runs on the PC and Macintosh.
UNITY can deploy games than run on the PC and Mac as well as on Linux,
in a web browser and on mobile devices.

By following this text, you will accomplish the following:

  • Install Unity and other software.
  • Create polygon sprites for prototypes.
  • Set up the beginnings of a maze with the sprites.
  • Learn C# programming.
  • Make a sprite move under keyboard control.
  • Make the sprite collide with walls without passing through.
  • Create a grid to build the game on.
  • Check your project into source control.
  • Use Procedural Content Genration (PCG) to build a playable maze.
  • Learn the basics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming to control the 
    prototype enemy.
  • Create pickups (the dots) the player can consume.
  • Write a draft Game Design Document (GDD) for the game.
  • Create sprites for the game: mouse, cat, cheese, wall segments.
  • Animate the mouse and cat sprites.
  • Add a game state machine to control in
  • game states, win and lose, and attract mode.
  • Add teleportation tunnels.
  •  Create and add sound effects and music, and learn a little bit of 
    music theory.
  • Play-test, find, and fix bugs.
  • Save options between games.
  • Learn to refactor code.
  • Maintain a high score list between games.
  • Write software to record and play back a demo.
  • Add scripted cutscenes.
  • Optionally walk through a crash course in Blender 3D modeling
     software to make some of the graphics.
  • Add a "cheat codes" system
  • Build, deploy, and publish.

Download

Download
Rat_Race_Creating_a_2D_Classic_Arcade_St.pdf 29 MB

Install instructions

Open in your favorite .pdf reader, such as Adobe Reader.

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