Unity Dev Essentials: Connecting Unity to .NET IDEs

For devs working in Unity, it’s important to wire up your Unity game code to a .NET IDE

(This is an intro to Unity / .NET article. If you’re experienced in Unity dev or using an IDE, this article is likely NOT for you)

If you’re new to Unity, it’s important to understand that all the code you can edit in your game is driven (primarily) by C# .NET

This includes not only the code which makes your game go, but also Unity tool customisations you may want to add / include to make the development process less bare-bones.

Now, this might come off as self-evident for experienced to Unity devs, but for people just getting started, it can be a bit baffling how anyone would edit their code using the basic setup in the Unity interface. With the bare-bones Unity configuration on Windows (can’t speak to Mac), any scripts you try to open will perpetually prompt you for what kind of program you want to use. This is irritating at best and a downright spirit-killer at worst.

Why do I want to use an IDE?

If you’re new to development, an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) allows you to edit code in an interface designed for editing and debugging code. It’s all well and…