Building Games for the Humanities with Unity3D Rudy McDaniel University of Central Florida Orlando, FL USA

Today’s Topics Context: Why Games for the Humanities? Downloading Unity3D & Introduction to SW Starting a project Download and play a sample project Important vocabulary Understanding the software interface Understanding the scene and game views Building a basic scene environment (game level) using the terrain editor

Part I: Context

But… Our recognition in this area is primarily for our efforts in preparing students to enter careers in video games design and development in commercial entertainment Building games for the humanities is a huge area of opportunity for UCF and for other institutions Building games is a complex endeavor that benefits from multi-institutional collaboration

2011 Workshop

2015 Workshop

Making Game Creation More Accessible & User-Friendly Scratch: Alice: Hour of Code: GameStar Mechanic: see also 18/how-game-based-learning-can-save-the- humanities/ 18/how-game-based-learning-can-save-the- humanities/

Why Build Games for the Humanities? Engage young learners in familiar territory Implement multimodal strategies Provide context for exploring historical assets Allow for procedural learning Collect data in a non-intrusive, behind-the- scenes sort of way Provide engaging narratives that can be experienced in non-linear forms

Humanities Learning Games Desperate Fishwives: berdecember/curio/travales-travails berdecember/curio/travales-travails

Many Other Examples HASTAC’s “game” tags: The Cheeky Lit Teacher resources: University of Arkansas:

Part II: Unity Crash Course

Downloading Unity3D Current version is You will need to register a free account in order to install the free license version License comparison:

What is Unity3D? 3d game engine Can also create 2d games Cross-platform (Mac and PC) Some popular games such as Temple Run and The Room were created in Unity3D Large support community and asset store Free! View games made with Unity here:

More Details Unity only creates limited 3d assets (spheres, cubes, etc.) That is why it is useful to combine with other tools (Maya, Blender, Photoshop, etc.) MonoDevelop is the scripting tool packaged with Unity3D for writing your programming code

Starting a Project Select a location to store your project Select “3d” or “2d” depending on genre Import required packages (if you are missing something, you can import it later) When developing a game later, you should only select the packages you plan to use in the game

Starting the Software

Asset Store Free and paid assets for use in projects

Free Projects to Download

Learning by Deconstruction Download a sample project from the asset store. Click “Build and Run” to run the game so that you can see a working example. This method of reverse engineering is a common tactic for quickly learning how to solve complex design problems. This is similar to learning how to code HTML pages using “View Source”.

To Build and Run

Help Sources

Documentation You can also view the documentation in Spanish and in other languages Visit Change the language in the right hand corner Translation is still in progress for some areas of documentation

We will spend some time today learning about the interface and the various features of the program

The Interface

Some Important Vocabulary Scenes are individual levels in your game GameObjects are assets used within scenes Components are used for creating behaviors, defining appearance, and customizing objects Scripts are used to program custom functionality Prefabs are containers that store GameObjects with components and properties embedded

Project Browser

m/Manual/ProjectView. html m/Manual/ProjectView. html Access and manage project assets You can also search and add favorites using this feature

Hierarchy Contains every GameObject in the current scene. Objects can have parent/child relationships.

GameObject Relationships This example shows one GameObject as a child node within a parent GameObject.

Toolbar

Scene View

Working in Scenes Scene view is where you design your levels. Scene View Navigation See Scene View Navigation for full details on navigating the scene view. Here’s a brief overview of the essentials:Scene View Navigation – Hold the right mouse button to enter Flythrough mode. This turns your mouse and WASD keys (plus Q and E for up and down) into quick first-person view navigation. – Select any GameObject and press the F key. This will center the Scene View and pivot point on the selection. – Use the arrow keys to move around on the X/Z plane. – Hold Alt and click-drag to orbit the camera around the current pivot point. – Hold Alt and middle click-drag to drag the Scene View camera around. – Hold Alt and right click-drag to zoom the Scene View. This is the same as scrolling with your mouse wheel.

Working with GameObjects

Activity: Building a Scene

Things to Try Use the terrain editor to create a game scene. Add raised areas to indicate mountains. Create a volcano. Add trees throughout your level. Drop a “first person controller” or “third person controller” prefab into your level. Try it out!