Mastering UI Development with Unity

✍ Scribed by Dr. Ashley Godbold

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 468
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

A functional UI is an important component for player interaction in every type of video game. Along with imparting crucial statistical information to the player, the UI is also the window through which the player engages with the world established by the game. Unity's tools give you the opportunity to create complex and attractive UIs to make your game stand out.

This book helps you realize the full potential of Unity's powerful tools to create the best UI for your games by walking you through the creation of myriad user interface components.

Learn how to create visually engaging heads-up-displays, pause menus, health bars, circular progress bars, animated menus, and more. This book not only teaches how to lay out visual elements, but also how to program these features and implement them across multiple games of varying genres.

While working through the examples provided, you will learn how to develop a UI that scales to multiple screen resolutions, so your game can be released on multiple platforms with minimal changes.

✦ Table of Contents

1: Designing User Interfaces
UI and GUI
Four game interface types
Layout
Color schemes
Interface metaphors
Resolution and aspect ratio
Summary

2: Canvases, Panels, and Basic Layouts
UI Canvas
UI Panel
Rect Transform
Anchor and Pivot Point
Canvas Group component
Introducing UI Text and Image
Examples
Summary

3: Automatic Layouts
Types of Automatic Layout Groups
Layout Element
Fitters
Examples
Summary

4: The Event System and Programming for UI
Accessing UI elements in code
The Event System
Input Manager
Input functions for buttons and key presses
Input Modules
Event Trigger
Event inputs
Raycasters
Examples
Summary

5: Buttons
UI Button
Transitions
Examples
Summary

6: Text, Images, and TextMesh Pro-Text
UI Text
UI Image
UI effect components
TextMesh Pro-Text
Examples
Summary

7: Masks and Other Inputs
Masks
UI Toggle
UI Slider
UI Scrollbar
UI Scroll View
UI Dropdown and TextMeshPro – Dropdown
UI Input Field
TextMeshPro – Input Field
Examples
Summary

8: Animations and Particles in the UI
Animation clips
Animator Controller
Particles in the UI
Examples
Summary

9: World Space UI
When to use World Space
Appropriately scaling text in the Canvas
Other considerations when working in World Space
Examples
Summary

10: Mobile-Specific UI
Recommended button sizes
Full screen/screen portion taps
The thumb zone
Multi-touch input
Accelerometer and gyroscope
Device resources
Examples
Summary

✦ Subjects

Programming; Game Development; Unity; Unity3d; User Interface; GUI