John C Hills – Medium

Jun 26

How to Play Sound Effects in Unity

Is a Game Really a Game without Sound Effects? — Creating Sound Effects for the Laser When the Player fires his laser at the enemies, there should be some sort of “spacey” laser sound effect. Without it, the game would dull and boring. Let’s dive right into what we have to do to create a cool laser sound effect in our game. At first you might…

Unity

3 min read

Jun 22

Immersion Starts with Sound

Adding Amazing Background Music to Your Game — I am not able to think of a single game I have played that did not have audio. Not having audio in your game would be like having macaroni without cheese, or peanut butter without jelly. They are all ok without the other, but when put together….IT IS AMAZING! Just…

Unity

2 min read

Jun 20

How to Use Post Processing in Unity

And Bringing Your Game to AAA Status — There is one important step to take before we can use Post Processing. What might that be, you ask? We have to install it from the Unity Package Manager. Take the following steps to install the Post Processing package. Click “Window”, located in the top menu of Unity. Click “Package…

Unity

5 min read

Jun 19

Damage VFX using Animated Sprites in Unity

“Captain! We Don’t Have The Power!” — In my last article, we created enemy explosions. Now it is time to show some visual effects for when our player is hit by a laser or enemy ship. Drag the sprite you have for damage into the Hierarchy, and place it below your player. Scale your sprite to how…

Unity

3 min read

Jun 15

Creating Enemy Explosions

Smooth Transition from Collision to Explosion Animation — The first thing in creating the enemy explosion is to create an animation for it. We need to be back in the Game scene for this. Make sure you save (Ctrl + S for Windows, or Cmd + S for MacOS). First, select your Enemy prefab in the Project view…

Unity

6 min read

Jun 11

Loading Scenes in Unity

Creating the Main Menu — Currently, we have one scene in our game. Today we will create a new scene, which will be our game’s Main Menu. Click “File” from the Unity menu. Click “New Scene” If prompted, click “Save” to save your current scene. You will notice that your Hierarchy now has an untitled…

Unity

6 min read

Jun 8

Creating a Retro Game Over Behavior

Lovin’ the 80s Video Game Style — A Moment of Reminiscing Some of you readers may not have been around when the 80s arcade boom happened. I remember when the first local arcades opened for business in my home town. It was nothing to throw $5 to $10 into the arcade machines in a couple of hours…or less. Being a paperboy…

Unity

5 min read

Jun 7

Ease of Building UI Elements in Unity

Adding a Score System — What Is My Score? Like in any game, we want to know how good we are doing. Maybe we want to compare scores with friends, to see who is the best player. For this to be possible, we need to add a score system to our game. What is a score in the game…

Unity

9 min read

Jun 1

Switch Statements to the Rescue

A Clean and More Efficient Code — In my last article, I showed you how to create a modular powerup system. In this article, I will show you how using Switch statements can make your code not only cleaner, but also more efficient. Goodbye “Else If” and Hello “Case”! Instead of making a clutter with the else if statements, we can now use…

Unity

4 min read

May 31

Creating Modular Powerup Systems

Using One Powerup Script for All of Your Powerups — Adding a Speed Powerup to the Game The first thing we need to do is locate your Speed Powerup. Mine is in the Sprites folder, under Power_Ups > Speed. Yours may be located elsewhere, so just locate yours and drag the first frame of the animated sprite into the Hierarchy. Move the powerup a bit higher, so…

Unity

4 min read