classic game design franz lanzinger

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· 15 ratings · 3 reviews

Start your review of Classic Game Design: From Pong to Pac-Man with Unity

As a college graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Game Design currently in pursuit of a career within the video game industry, I find this book to be a solid introduction to Unity as well as Blender, GIMP, Audacity. Using classic arcade games from the late 1970s and early 1980s as examples, it goes over the basic uses of Unity's development tools involved in level design and programming, the first steps to making 3D models in Blender, the basic drawing/illustration techniques of GIMP, the simple As a college graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Game Design currently in pursuit of a career within the video game industry, I find this book to be a solid introduction to Unity as well as Blender, GIMP, Audacity. Using classic arcade games from the late 1970s and early 1980s as examples, it goes over the basic uses of Unity's development tools involved in level design and programming, the first steps to making 3D models in Blender, the basic drawing/illustration techniques of GIMP, the simplest way to make basic sounds in Audacity, and how all four software can be used in unison to create basic games i.e, by saving the Blender, GIMP, and Audacity files within the project folders of Unity itself. Written for those who want to make video games but don't know where to begin and are under budget (meaning they may not be able to afford commercial software like Adobe Photoshop and Maya), the lessons and exercises give readers a basic foundation in game design and opportunities to expand on the basic formulas provided in this book.

As a means to provide the foundation, the author briefly goes over the history of Pong, Breakout, Space Invaders, Scramble, and Pac-Man; and has the reader build games modeled after these classics in terms of design and mechanics. Since Blender, GIMP, and Audacity are all free software like Unity, readers should be able to learn the very basics of 3D modeling, digital illustration, and sound design without the need to spend extra money, a plus for those on a tight budget. Based on the lesson structure, readers should be able to complete each individual lesson in less than a few hours. At the end of each lesson, the readers are provided exercises that would have them expand on the games they have built from scratch. After that, it would be in their hands to build upon what they have learned in their own games.

While this is a solid introductory book to game design with Unity, there are a few issues that I should address here. One issue is that it was written a year before Unity 4 was upgraded to Unity 5. A few features discussed in the book may be a little outdated but it should not pose too much of a problem for readers. Another issue is with saving Blender files within Unity projects. I'm not sure if it's because I have the Steam version of Blender, but in my experience, Unity could not find any Blender files I have saved in my projects. In order to proceed with the lessons, I worked around the issue by exporting the Blender meshes as .fbx files. Those with the same issue will have to use this method during the lessons.

Minor technical issues aside, I would recommend this book to first year video game design students and aspiring indie developers who are interested in Unity but are on a tight budget. It is also best suited to those who lack a strong background in 3D modeling, digital illustration, sound design, and programming since the material provided here should help give them a basic understanding of those areas of game development.

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