Direct Download or use a package manager:
- OSX:
brew cask install unity
- Linux:
sudo apt-get install unity
- npm: Just kidding, Unity isn't on npm (yet...)
Some of you may want to use Android over Unity, if so try here. If you want to know why you should choose Unity over Andriod see the bottom of this list.
If you are working on Windows, Visual Studio is the undisputed king of IDEs for C# and has Unity integration, for other platforms, Unity comes bundled with MonoDevelop, which is pretty terrible in comparison. Your other choice is to use a text editor, I reccomend one of these:
- All platforms: VS Code Your only other choice with inteligent C# code completion.
- All platforms: Sublime Text Because everyone loves to be told to buy your product on every second save.
- OSX: TextMate My personal favourite, you sublime fools don't know what you're missing.
- Unity Web Player We all gave up on browser plugins like Flash years ago, unfortunately you still need one to play Unity games in your browser. asm.js can't come fast enough.
- Unity Manual General Unity help.
- Unity API Docs Specificaly for the coding part (probably important).
- Mono Docs Mono is the .net environment that unity is built on, this is where you'll find things that aren't included in the Unity API.
- Git Some people still don't know how to use git, I won't judge, instead I'll tell you to go here.
Making art and music takes AGES, fortunately, the internet has already done all the hard work for you for free!
- IncompeteTech Made famous by Youtube videos everywhere, you'll
- CCMixter Vamix will haunt you for the rest of your days.
- Creative Commons Search
- Google Advanced Search Search by usage rights and you're away.
I probably should have titled this section procrastination instead, anyway, say goodbye to your time.
As if me telling you to wasn't enough, here's some more reasons why Unity is better suited to this project.
###You're Making a Game
The Android SDK is great (arguably) if you want to develop an Android app, but given the project spec tells us we are making a game first and an app second, you should really use something that was designed to do that. A nice side note: as well as Android, Unity also lets you target Windows, OSX, Linux, Web Browsers, iOS, Playstation, Xbox and more.
We've done a lot of Java here at UoA. Meanwhile, C# is really hirable right now so it's great to put on your CV and to talk about in job interviews. Unity experience is also great if you want to go into game development profesionally or take part in game jams since 99% of games use it these days including:
- Hearthstone Everyone's favourite free to pay card game
- Cities Skylines How to prove that even you could do a better job running a city than Auckland council
- Kerbal Space Program Crash rockets, get money
- Thomas Was Alone Putting graphics cards to the test since 2010
- Poly Bridge Last months hottest reddit karma generator
Even Microsoft has one redeeming feature, and that feature is C#. Coming from Java you'll find C# incredibly comfortable. It may seem scary to move from an object oriented, statically typed, general purpose language with C-style syntax, until you realise that you are moving to another object oriented, statically typed, general purpose language with C-style syntax. Aside from the fact that C# encourages CaptialisedMethodNames()
you'll find the languages almost identical. Just don't make the mistake of using Unity Javascript.