Unity is the most popular game development engine that is used by developers to design and develop entertaining and dynamic games and interactive visualizations. It is a cross-platform gaming engine that lets you create, operate, and monetize 2D and 3D games for various target platforms. However, with the gaming industry on the rise, there is a soaring demand for game developers in the market. Various responsibilities come under the shoulder of a Unity Game developer that we will discuss later in the blog. Unity, the third-party game engine lets Unity developers, artists, and designers create and operate experiences in real-time. It is an extremely flexible, highly extensible, and well documented process. It provides the developers with the flexibility to create interactive prototypes for enhanced user experiences. Its physics, real-time 3D rendering, and animation are great tools that can help you explore and experiment with automation, simulations, and architecture. 

The process of developing a Unity game by Logic Simplified

We have a team of game designers for hire, engineers, coders, and testers who together develop a video game using the Unity game engine. The game development process involves stages such as planning, pre-production, production, testing, pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. It allows the users to develop games in 2D as well and 3D and in languages such as C#, Java, or Boo. A Unity 3D games developer designs and creates high-quality 2D and 3D games and applications using Unity software. 

After the idea is framed and before the development process begins, the team creates a project plan and production roadmap in the pre-production phase where decisions regarding the features and functionalities are finalized. Afterwhich, the game development process begins that includes steps that may vary depending upon the requirement of the game.

1. The process starts by creating a new project in Unity 3D. 

2. You customize the layout using the windows - Scene, Game, Hierarchy, Project, and Inspector.

3. You save the scene and set up the build by choosing the desired platform and player settings.

4. Then create the stage by adding cubes and adding a  plane GameObject.

5. Next, create the player using the GameObjects and add physics by adding components. 

6. Then make the player move by adding and minimizing components. Then start creating a script in the programming language you prefer. Add lighting and fine-tune the camera angle in a way that follows the players and their movements. This is done by creating a script called “cameraMovement”.

7. After all this is done, save the scene and the project. Next, create items and hazards by creating GameObjects and then you test the game.  

Popular and award-winning games like Norman’s Island, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run, Temple Run Trilogy, Subway Surfers, and more have been created using the technology provided by Unity. Highly realistic environments and effects, physically accurate and zero-gravity object behaviors and collisions, baked-quality artwork, and other such features and functionalities have allowed developers to use them to the best of their ability to create realistic animations and interactive games in many games. 

At Logic Simplified, the team of talented and creative Unity game developers follow all the guidelines and create immersive games that represent the client's idea 100%. They work with the highest level of precision when it comes to implementing game functionality, transforming game ideas, concepts, with strong coding, programming, and analytical skills.

You may also read: Hire Unity 3D Game Developers to understand in detail the aspects that make us so good at what we do, the development process that we follow, and get an idea of the kind of work we have done in the past.

Cost to develop a Unity game

It is always better to set a budget for your game project by considering all the factors that will go into producing it, especially hiring.

The various factors that influence the cost of developing a game are the operating platforms, pre-development expenses, complexity of the game, story, and others. To get a better understanding of the same, you may read “How To Determine The Unity3d Game Development Cost”.  

We, as a game development company, provide cost-effective solutions to our clients but at the same time, we offer quality game development skills and services by preparing a customized cost and delivery plan for them. 

Hiring the team 

For all hirers, hiring for any position involves finding, selecting, and hiring candidates that suit the role requirements the best and creating the perfect game development team. The team would mainly include game developers, designers, and testers. The specific technologies that are required for the game will determine the kind of experts one needs to hire. The requirements that are looked into are expertise in a certain programming language, a designing tool, UI/UX, audio, 3D modeling, and other unity game developer skills depending upon the job role.  

The must-have Unity Game Developer Skills: Technical

The most important skills that a Unity developer must possess are as follows - 

1. Knowledge of C# programming skills.    

2. Good knowledge of the Unity software and tools that help in scripting, animation, GUI styles, texture, and more.

3. Experience with technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial intelligence, 2D, and 3D development. 

4. Experience in creating games for console and mobile platforms.  

5. Good knowledge of game physics and particle systems. 

6. Good understanding of Data-oriented programming and Object-oriented programming (OOP).  

7. Experience in working with Entity Component Systems.

8. Good understanding of code versioning tools.

Other than having the applied knowledge and core technical Unity game developer skills, there are other proficiencies that one should look for when hiring a Unity game developer.  

The must-have key proficiencies in a Unity developer    

1. A good game developer is expected to implement game functionality effectively by interpreting design concepts, ideas, and needs into an entertaining and operational game. 

2. Creating games is an intricate and extensive skill. The functionality and versatility of gameplay plays an extremely important role in making a good game. A Unity Developer must have a good understanding to know when and how to focus on the creative side and the coding aspect. Both are equally important like every other minute facet of the game development process.

3. Game development engines nowadays offer a great range of tools and features for the developers to experiment and try new things and using the Unity tools efficiently is what one must know. This can have an astonishing impact on how a game idea turns out. The developer must know how to make the most of the asset store available that offers assets that can be used at various stages of development.      

4. Hard and soft skills of a developer that impacts the development of an idea. The team of Unity developers uses program designs, an extensive experience that includes evaluation of code, testing the performance of the game, identifying errors and problems, and making improvements accordingly.  

5. Knowledge of the Unity framework, writing and maintaining a trusted and reusable code, ensuring the game specifications.

6. Software expertise - Creating a new project, adding and manipulating game objects, organizing and optimizing your work, and importing and using assets from other programs, such as meshes, textures, and audio. Each lesson should refresh your knowledge and prepare you for real questions you’ll face on the exam.

7. Pre-production and scoping are necessary skills that let the developers communicate their abilities to the clients in a way that gives them an understanding of the developer’s work and how a client can trust them with their project. 

To know more about us, just contact us or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com.

A statistic by Statista illustrates that Unity 3D engine was the most popular game engine used for video game development in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2019. The greatest share of respondents reported using Unity 3D Engine was 72 percent. 

Unity is a steadily growing gaming engine and a gaming platform that offers enormous scope for experimentation and innovation in game development. The game engine has a 48% market share in the entire gaming market. Hence, there is hands down no debate to why to use Unity 3d for your first gaming project. It is the best cross-platform game engine with multiple features and functionalities that also allows you to work with AR, VR, and several other technologies. It has a huge library of resources, robust cloud based tools like Unity Analytics, Unity Ads, Unity Collaborate, and Unity multiplayer that can be used to create single player and multiplayer games. Game developers can also create intelligent gaming with Unity ML-Agents.   

Also read: Unity or unreal for game development 

The games made with Unity include several preset stages that include Planning, Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, and Launch. The development phase includes the Alpha phase, Beta phase, and Release phase which blankets every game production step from working on features and functions, to testing and fixing the bugs for the game release. There are several factors that determine how much it costs to make a mobile game with Unity and accordingly there are different service providers who offer contrasting payment structures for such services.

Before quoting the unity3D game development cost for a project, let’s understand the requirements and aspects that a game development company takes into consideration. 

Pointer_1: A Game design document (GDD) is an agile software design document that functions as a blueprint and defines the scope of the game and gives the game project a direction. It gives details of the game upfront like the executive summary, the game mechanics, elements, assets, resource requirement, and gameplay. Hence, game designers, developers and artists create GDD that helps them understand the requirements understand the requirements of the client and draft a costing accordingly.

Pointer_2: Mobile game platforms like Windows, iOS and Android game development platforms are the majorly preferred platforms. iOS and Android create entertainment products for iOS and android devices and when choosing one of these platforms, there are certain for and against that are taken into consideration. The unity3D game development cost and other expenses is also one big factor. The hardware cost, the installation cost, the increased requirement for iOS games in the app store are a few parameters that play a key role in determining the cost of development. 

Pointer_3: Dimensionalities in a video game like 2D, 2.5D, and 3D work with different toolsets. 2D games use sprites that are flat images and the camera used has no perspective, while 3D games use 3-dimensional geometry besides using materials and textures. 2.5D games are 2D games using 3D geometry for the elements, characters, and the environment.

Pointer_4: Type and Complexity of a game is another very important aspect that is taken into consideration while determining Unity3D game development cost. Combinatorial game theory is a technique that uses mathematics and computer science to study a game's complexity in several methods like computational complexity, decision complexity, game-tree complexity, game tree size, and state-space complexity. Just like combinatorial game theory, there are other ways of analysing project planning, coordination, control, goals, objectives, required resources, quality, and safety, and so much more. It is crucial to understand what the game is about and what it is going to take to make it. 

On the basis of the complexity of the game, the games are categorised into small, medium, and large games. Small games have simple game controls, basic 2D graphics and not too many levels. Example - hyper casual games Medium games are a little complex unlike small games. The complexity in such games comes from a lot of elements, an interesting storyline, additional features, more sound effects, visual effects, user interface, and more. Large games are rich in everything - content, storyline, elements, technology, and all. They are also heavy graphic wise as 3D graphics are used, visual effects, gameplay is complex, more strategies are involved in the game, and it involves refined animation. 

Pointer_5: Single-player or multiplayer games involve the interaction between the players and the players and the environment. The experience in both the types of games is different as the story portrayal, characters, and social interaction differs in both modes. 

The single player game involves several stories and the experience depends on the storytelling, characters while in multiplayer games, extra maps and characters are required and they can be enjoyed by many players at a time. Unlike multiplayer games, with single player games, the developers do not face the problem of online latency.  

Pointer_6: Game development companies leverage technologies like AR, VR, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and others to make games more accessible and improve game playing by making the player’s experience more entertaining and immersive. And that’s not it, facial recognition, gesture control, voice recognition, high-definition display allows real interaction between the players and the gaming world. Every technology and the way it is used in a game says a lot about the skills of a Unity 3D programmer. Hence, the choice depends upon the requirements of the game.  

Pointer_7: Duration of the project can be from as short as a few weeks to long projects that go on for months. The time duration of a Unity mobile game development project depends on the type of project, resources available, and finances. 

Pointer_8: A team’s investment in building a game from scratch is distributed into many dimensions. The team of a game development project usually includes the Project Coordinator, Backend & Frontend Developer, Designers (2D and 3D) & Animators, a Tester, and other roles are added as per requirements. There is a lot of effort and time that goes into creating a Unity game idea, the story, rules, strategies, art style, animation, style, VFXs, and other aspects. A game development team does all of that and more. 

Graphic designing, motion designing, illustrations, and more are created by the designers. You have to hire Unity game developers or a team of developers to bring your Unity game idea to life. They are responsible for the game’s performance, identifying bugs and addressing it, and ensuring that the game’s architecture is reliable. The quality analyst will make sure that the game works seamlessly by testing the code and performance of the game. Every team member plays a significant role in the development of a game and in making the game just like it was imagined to be.

Unity3D game development cost

Mobile gaming is on the rise and so is the investment in the game development industry in the past few years. In general, the cost for game development starts with 2000$ and goes on depending upon the additional functionalities, features, and other traits that the client might want in their game.

Logic Simplified is a Unity game development company and it has a team of Unity game developers for whom developing exciting and entertaining games lies in their area of expertise and skills. That’s not it, but they are keen on experimenting with new techniques and approaches involved in building a complex game. They have been creating games for the past 10 years now and therefore the games that the company creates reflect years of skills and expertise. To know more about us and to get the estimate of unity3d game development cost for your next project, you can contact us here or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

For those of you who are not well acquainted with the term “Unity Machine Learning Agents”, it is an open source Unity plugin with a license of Apache 2.0. that allows developers to train, modify, and embed intelligent agents to create an intelligent gaming experience by creating smart behaviors and reasonable virtual characters. A Unity ML-Agent allows programmers to not just code but teach these agents and make them intelligent using imitation learning, neuro evaluation, deep reinforcement learning, and other ML techniques through a simple Python API that contains the RL Algorithm for interacting and manipulating a learning environment. These Unity ML-Agents learn from the AI environments that contribute towards enhancing gameplay and giving players an immersive gaming experience. 

In September 2017, Unity released its first version of Machine Learning Agent Toolkit, the v.10 Unity package which was verified for the 2020.2 Editor release. Then in May 2021, they released the v2.0 version of the ML-Agent Unity package. The primary benefits that it gave the developers was to use Unity to train and integrate intelligent agents with API stability, easy installation, and a verified package. Over the years, these agents have improved and evolved in the gaming industry by addition of new training options like curriculum learning, the curiosity module and by improving the speed and efficiency, self play for multi-agent scenarios, and providing native, cross-platform inference support for all Unity ML-Agents. This toolkit has been developed by Unity through the years and there continues to be work done to make it even better in its performance and efficacy.

You may also read: Unity or unreal for game development

Machine Learning in video game creation is leveraged by developers across the globe to adjust game balance by training models. This helps in creating games that are entertaining, balanced and aligned with the creator’s vision. However, Unity brings these amazing innovations and upgrades that contribute towards the expansion and transformation of the gaming industry.

1. Grid sensors in Unity ML-Agents were developed and restructured by Eidos and added to the extensions package with changes to both sensor interfaces and behaviors.

2. It has cross-platform inference support which means that the developers that use Unity inference engine can deploy their ML-Agents on any platform that is supported in Unity.

3. It offers 18+ example Unity starter environments which contain the Unity scenes and all the game characters. This environment is a scene that has one or more ML-agents and other GameObjects that the agents can interact with. The Unity game developers can use these environments to get started on their projects by just opening an example environment and training the agent in it. Having said that, the agents have a certain behavior which can be Heuristic (this is used to test the environment), Training (where the AI trains), or Inference (where the learned model is used to make decisions) which determines how the agent will make decisions.

4. A Unity ML-agents Extensions package contains optional add ons to the C# SDK for the Unity ML-agents Toolkit. Its structure includes documentation, Editor, runtime, and tests where the runtime includes Physics-based sensors, input system package integration, custom grid-based sensors.

5. The Match 3 Unity environment was introduced in Release 10 and new features were added to the extensions package.

6. Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) is being used to build Unity’s core that lets builds be smaller in size and run faster boosting its overall performance. This also lets developers train agents in large and complex Unity environments.

7. NVIDIA PhysX 4.0 works great for robotic simulation and thus Unity 2020.1 has a new articulation joint system powered by NVIDIA PhysX 4.1 which has improved in robotic arms and joints simulation. It works on a featherstone’s algorithm, a non-linear iterative solver, and a reduced coordinate representation which helps in shrinking the unwanted stretch on the joints and helps accomplish stable movement.

8. There are several training options that are environment agnostic and environment specific that it offers the users. Curiosity for sparse-reward environments, RND for Sparse-reward Environments, Self-Play and MA-POCA for multi-agent scenarios, and few others are the varied training options.

9. The trained intelligent agents help in automated testing of the game builds, controlling NPC behaviour,  and assessing numerous game design decisions previous to its release. 

10. Its progressive algorithms are based on TensorFlow that lets Unity 3D game developers train brainy agents in different Unity environments with ease.

The working of an ML-Agent

The process involves Integration, training and Embedding. It starts by consolidating and connecting the Unity ML-Agent toolkit package. Then the agents are trained as per the desired behavior. Once the training ends, the trained agent has to be embedded back to the Unity project. The setup is quick and easy and requires minimum coding. 

From v1.0 to v2.0

In the past years there have been fifteen key updates bringing new training algorithms, improvements in workflow, and promoting performance. Cooperative Push and Dungeon Escape are two new sample environments that have also been developed. Both the environments highlight tasks that require one agent (in Dungeon Escape) and also multiple agents (in Cooperative Push) to complete. Then another feature update that the toolkit offered is to enable game characters’ reactions to various entities. The memory allocation during interference has been more enhanced. The deprecated APIs are removed in the newer version and along with that the API footprint is also reduced. The three core developments in this version have been the ability to train corporate behaviors, support training multiple tasks, and enable agents to observe various entities in their environment. 

The newer 2.0 version was about algorithm improvements and enhanced approaches like Grid Sensors component, Match 3 game boards, ML-Agents Cloud offering, exciting new game environments and with every release there were many more incredible features that were added to the list.

You may also like to read about ML-Agents v2.0 release

The update with ML-Agent Cloud gave the programmers the ability to start, pause, resume, and stop training experiments whenever they like. It lets them upload game builds with ML-Agents implemented. Multiple experiments can be launched at the same time with cutting-edge machines and also results can be downloaded from multiple training experiments. Other than this, there is continuous work being done to develop ML-Agents Cloud and to add great functionalities to it.

The Closing

The Unity Machine Learning Agents Toolkit comprises of a C# software development kit and an advanced library to train AI agents for 2D, 3D, and VR and AR environments. The advancements in ML in Game AI development and the tools, features, and programmes in this tool-kit allows developers and artists to create real-time solutions for different industries. 

This plugin in the Unity game engine lets game developers and AI researchers innovate & create and its pre-made environments already contain the Unity scene, game characters, and the environment elements where the agents observe, act, and learn. The process allows you to create intelligent agents and integrate them into your own Unity games to impart compelling and intelligent experiences. 

Logic Simplified is one such game development company based out of India that works towards giving the gamers around the world an enhanced gaming experience with its games that are built using advanced technologies and techniques to keep up with the emerging industry. Over the years, our team of game designers and developers have learnt a lot and their curiosity and zeal towards their work pushes them to explore and to be creative and innovative with their approach and it wouldn't be wrong to say that all of this reflects in the amazing projects and work that our company has done so far. To know more about us and our work, just contact us here or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

That said, I am going to discuss the features and capabilities of both Unity and Unreal Engine, along with factors to consider to make the best bet.

But first,

Unity was introduced to the world of game app developers as a cross-platform game engine by Unity Technologies in 2005. The game engine, which has immensely evolved in six versions so far, is popularly used for 2D and 3D game development world over.

Epic Games, which was behind Unreal Tournament, debuted Unreal Engine in 1998. Unreal Engine quickly became a popular choice to build first-person shooter (FPS) games, but is now also widely used for building many different genre games like side-scrollers, MMORPGs, RPGs, etc.

I am comparing below the features and what the both game engines are capable of:

Based on the features and capabilities of the two game engine powerhouses, the decision comes down to answering four major questions.

What type of game do you want to build?

The type of game you want to build is an easy way to solve a good part of the puzzle. For example, if you’re planning to build the next Gears of War and visuals are more important for you (sometimes even more important than gameplay), Unreal Engine should ideally be your bet for next-gen physics and graphics. Blueprint does wonders for such games. But if your game is a simple puzzle game like Braid, 3D platformers, logic games, and even first-person shooter games, Unity is the best game engine to go for. We can put it as Unreal for heavy-hitting genre titles such as Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Unity for games like Temple Run and Cuphead. 

What type of device do you want to build the game for?

If your game’s target devices are mobile phones, using Unreal Engine’s high processing power is unnecessary. Unity works the best for lower-powered devices as it allows to create complex games without requiring a powerful setup as of a PC. But if you want to create an immersive and magical experience for high-end devices, Unreal is a good choice but that is also subject to if you can’t do that with Unity. The key here is if you’re looking at your game as a visual artist or as a game developer because the former would more likely go for Unreal and the latter for Unity.

What’s Your Team Size?

If your team size is small, you will be very unlikely to finish a quality game on time using Unreal Engine. To make the best of Unreal Engine, you need a big team where different roles can be distributed to different individuals, like someone just working on getting the particles right and someone only doing the shaders. Unity’s Asset Store and community support makes it way easier for smaller teams to build fast without compromising on what was actually desired. The beauty of Unity game development services is that smaller teams can also create an effective experience by building AR and VR for their games. Triple A studios with bigger teams usually use Unreal Engine for better horsepower for development and more polishing, 

What’s your budget?

If it’s the first time you’re building a game, you have a limited budget and can only afford a small team, go for Unity. Unity 3D is also free until you earn $100K USD in annual revenue. You only pay when you upgrade to Unity Plus or Unity Pro for things like Asset Bundle, etc. Unreal is also free to use except for the first $3,000 per quarter and then 5% royalty on gross revenues per quarter. But that price doesn’t bother much after the game hits the game charts and turns into a revenue generator machine.

I hope that this blog has answered all it takes to decide on choosing the best game engine among Unity and Unreal. But, if there's still something I missed out on in this blog, please feel free to get in touch with us, and I will be more than happy to answer that particular query of yours. Now, I would like to introduce you to Logic Simplified, an India-based game development company with more than six years of hands-on experience of building video games using both Unity and Unreal. At Logic Simplified, we shape video games ideas into a reality. It’s not just our expertise in using the power of tech, but our overall passion for games to imagine the concept and create a game design & architecture that a specific target audience craves for in a particular genre of video games. Working on a game idea from scratch is not an easy task for its own challenges, however, our expert game designers and developers are committed to help game visionaries who dare to dream and this is what we are really proud of. We also very well understand the changing requirements of modern games and level them up by leveraging the power of AR/VR, AI and IoT as well. For any query that would help you make a decision to start building the next gaming mania, please write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com. We will be obliged to help you with gaming solutions that we take great pride  in.

Logic Simplified, supported by its team of diligent, hard-working developers and animators has perfected the art of creating true-to-life games. Our Unity game developers have spent countless hours getting the right camera shot developed for various games. When you partner with us, you know you’re partnering with the experts.

What are cameras in the Unity Shooter Games 

While building Unity Shooter games, a Unity game development company creates scenes by arranging and moving objects in a three-dimensional space. However, this three-dimensional orientation cannot be portrayed, as it is, on computer screens, since those are two-dimensional. Thus, different views are needed to be captured and flattened. “Cameras,” in the context of Unity games, help accomplish this. You can hire shooter game developers to create a new shooting game mania for millions of fans out there.

In the Unity platform, a camera is an object that describes a view in a game scene. The placement of this object determines the point of view. Using the “Camera component,” the size and shape of the region that falls within the view can be decided. According to these set parameters, the camera “captures” a scene and displays it on the screen. When the camera object moves and rotates, the view on the screen also moves and rotates accordingly.

Although Unity supports several camera views, there are several factors to be considered when using these cameras. These factors are determined by the game, the gameplay, a particular scene, or gesture. Some of the factors that play an important role in camera determination and performance are as follows.

Lighting

Lighting effects in Unity work by simulating the behaviour of light in the real world. For more realistic results, detailed models of light behaviour are used, while for stylized results, simplified models are used.

Direct and indirect lighting

Unity has provisions for both direct and indirect lighting. Direct light is the one that is emitted from a source, hits a surface a single time, and is then reflected directly into a sensor (for example, the camera, in the gaming world, or the eye, in the real world). Indirect light can be defined as the light that, after emitting from a source, reflects from multiple objections and eventually falls on a sensor. This includes the light that hits surfaces several times and the skylight. Since unity provides provisions for both, realistic lighting results can be achieved by using Unity.

Real-time and baked lighting

Sometimes, lighting parameters need to be calculated at runtime. This is called real-time lighting. Unity enables adjusting lighting at runtime, which makes for a great development and playing experience.

Baked lighting is the lighting that has been predetermined by Unity by performing lighting calculations in advance. After performing the calculations, the results are saved as lighting data, which is then applied at runtime.

Unity allows using both real-time and baked lighting, or the combination of the two (called mixed lighting) depending upon the gameplay requirements.

Global Illumination

Global illumination is a combination of techniques that use both direct and indirect lighting to provide realistic lighting results. Unity allows two global illumination systems, which facilitate combining direct and indirect lighting. These are the Baked Global Illumination system and the Realtime Global Illumination system.

The Baked Global Illumination system comprises lightmapping, Light Probes, and Reflection Probes. The Realtime Global Illumination system comprises Realtime Global Illumination using Enlighten, and provides additional functionality to Light Probes.

Projections: perspective and orthogonal

Two very popular camera projections used in games are perspective and orthographic views.

Perspective Projection

In the real world, as objects move farther, they look smaller from the point of view. This is known as the perspective effect. There is a “sense of depth” included. This effect is observed not only in case of cameras, but the human eye too. This perspective effect is extensively used in computer graphics to create scenes as realistic as possible. Unity has provisions for including perspective camera renderings in games and graphical videos you might create on its platforms.

Field of View

In other words, the camera angle becomes significant when you choose the perspective view. It is measured in degrees and signifies how much of the current view would you like to include in the shot. The degree here becomes important because we are talking about perspective view and not orthogonal. Thus, how much of the scene to cover becomes important.

Orthogonal Projection

On the other hand, sometimes one may not require a perspective effect. That is, sometimes you might need to display some information or map for which a real-world, perspective camera effect may not be required. It may not be required to diminish the objects on display with distance. This is known as orthogonal projection. Unity provides an option for this too.

Thus, with Unity you can use both perspective and orthographic camera renderings, for developing your shooter game, as and how the storyline of the game might dictate.

Size

Since what the camera “sees” and shows remains static, the size of the visible region has to be determined by the developer. In orthogonal projection, the size becomes important. Because size determines how much of a region can be viewed and not the camera angle.

Clipping planes

Clipping planes are two imaginary planes that are perpendicular to the camera’s forward direction. There are two clipping planes, the near clipping plane and the far clipping plane. The region beyond these planes is not “viewed,” hence the word clipping. The near clipping plane is close to the camera and behind it lies the region that is too close for the camera to “see”. Similarly, the far clipping plane is farthest to the camera and defines the limit beyond which the camera cannot “see”.

The visible region

In both modes, perspective and orthographic, the distance to which cameras can “see” from their current position is limited. Two planes, the far clipping plane and the near clipping plane, determine the viewable region. These planes are perpendicular to the camera’s forward direction. They are called clipping planes because regions beyond these planes are excluded from rendering. The viewable range is the region lying between the two planes.

Unity Development with Logic Simplified

We at Logic Simplified understand the nuances of developing games on the Unity engine. The great news is, we enjoy the complexity! Our dedicated game designers and developers are experts at understanding the requirements of your game idea and turning it into reality. Whether you're looking to develop a first- or a third-person shooter game, our Unity game development services cover them all! Partner with us to see how we turn your dream game into reality!

Grand Theft Auto and The Last of Us are two great examples of that as they got extremely successful not just because of advanced game mechanics and creative stories, but also because of amazing cinematic cutscenes. What it implies for a Unity game development company is the significant importance of the camera to bring video games to life and make them intriguing. So, if we talk Unity action games, most 3D shooting game developers use Cinemachine, a great offering by Unity to make cutscenes and revolutionize in-game cameras like a Hollywood movie director.

How Cinemachine helps create Magic in Third Person Shooter Games

Third-person shooter games are like watching a film because unlike first-person shooter games, they show the protagonist from an "over the shoulder” camera or "behind the back" so the entire player body is visible from behind and you ‘follow’ the protagonist. So, game concept designers get more freedom in third-person games to create a more strongly characterized avatar. But yes, as shooter games are about shooting and it’s not easy to aim from a third-person camera, most third-person shooter games also offer a first-person view. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is a good example that allows players to shoot from a first-person perspective, whereas chase and do hand battles from a third-person perspective. If we talk about another example of a third-person shooter that was given a person-person perspective to improve the interface for aiming and shooting, then Halo: Combat Evolved is the one that currently comes into my mind.

Now, What is Cinemachine?

Cinemachine is a complete Unity package which empowers Unity game developers, designers, camera artists and cutscene creators to get precise controls for every camera in a gaming project. The beauty of Cinemachine lies in freeing the developer from the burdensome task of writing reams of codes to get the cameras to follow an object, follow a track, orbit an object, and much more. Cinemachine comes with no external dependencies which means you can easily install it as a plugin and start using it.

After installing Cinemachine, you will see a new Cinemachine menu as shown below.

But before you start creating a virtual camera or any other camera from the dropdown, you need to add Cinemachine to your main camera. Once Cinemachine-enabled, the camera starts using a new component: the Cinemachine Brain.

Cinemachine Brain: The central Cinemachine component

Cinemachine Brain is what Cinemachine uses to control the Unity Camera. This component is responsible for monitoring all the Virtual Cameras in the scene and takes the best shots. It does the camera positioning and configuration based on the instructions passed on by the virtual cameras. The brain installed on the Unity camera observes the instructions and takes action to ensure that the camera is in the right place at the right time.

Learn how to configure the Cinemachine Brain

A question that might be popping in your head - Do you need to replace your existing camera with Cinemachine? Well, the answer is No. Cinemachine is built to work alongside your existing camera system and you can easily switch between both systems. If you can’t resist using some camera tech,  you can continue using it but can also use Cinemachine for something else you deem fit. So yes, you can mix the two together as well.

Fundamental Behaviours of Cinemachine

Custom Blends

It means defining relationships between two cameras and comes handy for state-machine type setups. A wonderful way to create custom camera blend setups pr level.

Composer

Lets you configure the camera to enable automatic rotation to adjust framing so as to ensure that your subjects are always in the screen space, irrespective of the position. Composer paves the way for real-time procedural composition. 

Transposer

Transposer helps you attach the camera to any object and set up how you would want to follow any object. A wide range of options and behaviours lets the camera to follow the object under various conditions.

Free-look

Free-look cameras help manage 3rd-person action-adventure orbit cameras. You get a lot of controls for orbit speed, shape, recentering, damping and input type. Depending on game events, you can blend multiple Free-look cameras to get incredible control.  

Target Groups

Target Groups help track multiple objects and also adjust the weight and influence of each object in the group. You can track, compose and adjust Field of View (FOV) and even how the camera is positioned based on the activities of multiple subjects.

Advanced Control and Powerful Features

Split Screen and Picture-in-Picture

As the name suggests, you can easily configure multiple Cinemachine Brains to enable picture-in-picture, split-screen or quad split screen. You can also switch from single to split screen.

Follow Zoom

Even in the event of changing positions of characters, the on-screen size of the subject is always right. The camera will automatically zoom-in and zoom out to ensure the desired size. This helps create great interactive dialogue scenes.

Post-processing Stack Integration

Unity Cinemachine provides the ability to create custom looks or each camera and blend between them. Post-processing profiles support is there and those settings can be blended as well.

Clear Shot

Clear Shot picks the best camera when something gets between the character or subject to give the best shot. This is a brilliant feature for replays or cutscenes as it perfectly evaluates the shot in variable scenarios.

Impulse

Camera shakes add value to your videogame actions that players cherish. For example, camera shakes during explosions. Once you set up Impulse sources on objects, the camera responds on the basis of scale and distance. A six dimension shake is what you get to hand-craft or generate procedurally. 

Mixer

This feature gives you ultimate control by allowing you to customize your shots. You can mix up to eight virtual cameras to create the perfect shot under varying conditions.   

Collider

Collider helps avoid obstacles without having you required to write any code. There are multiple ways you can prevent your camera from getting tangled in your gaming world. 

Confiner

You get to define limits with Collider so that your camera doesn’t leave specific volumes or areas. So, you can define the internal boundaries for your cameras 

Priority

With the Priority feature, the most desired camera comes into action in large state-machine setups.

Unity Timeline and Cinemachine lets game app developers experiment and build a dynamics camera for 3rd person shooter games. With the Timeline feature, you can add your shots right there in one place. If things change, the Cinemachine camera knows the shot you wanted and more procedurally moves to recompose to keep the shot. Timeline allows you to mix and match and experiment with your shots by adding different camera tracks. And the best part is that it takes rapid prototyping to the next level because you no longer need to rework all of your cameras when making animation changes. Besides, developers can refine the cameras even when they move close to completing their shooter games, whether a first-person shooter or a third-person shooter using Unity.

So, are you also looking forward to creating the next Gears of War 4 or Tom Clancy’s The Division or Tomb raider? Yes! That’s wonderful!  Don’t worry about technology challenges, as that’s exactly what Logic Simplified, a Dehradun-based game development company, exists for on this planet. By offering Unity game development services, Logic Simplified helps gaming businesses of all sizes to bring the best into their videogames. You can also hire 3D shooter game creators from us to convert your shooting game idea a reality. Our game designers, developers, 3D modellers, concept artists and animation artists are passionate about gaming and know what solutions will suit your game requirements. We know what it takes to bring the magic of Cinemachine in a third-person shooter game to create highly immersive experiences. Remember, it’s not only about storyline, but how you show your story too which makes a difference in today’s modern games.

For any query related to a third-person shooter game development using Unity 3D Cinemachine, write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we will get back to you shortly to get you started in a jiffy.

Or for the developer's sake, let's go by Lights, Camera, Action!

Don't go, "Eh! Really" on this traditional cue. Since, I don't intend to talk about cinematography but about the cinema of gaming - about the perspectives that are built by lights and cameras in the making of action video games, particularly shooter games. The category profoundly known to test the player's spatial awareness, reflexes, and speed in both single-player or connected multiplayer environments. Interestingly, with this in mind, we'll be talking about the emphasis that specific types of camera, their position, and the angle lays on the shooter games. Adding to it, the different perspectives used to give a life-like feel that enables the player to ignore the real-world surroundings and be engrossed in an experience that's immersive, engaging, entertaining, whatever word you like.

Cameras capture the virtual world of a player, and manipulating it along the lines is an ‘art’. Playing with the depth, the resizing, and positioning of the camera's view on the screen is what a developer must understand to the core in order to create multiple views in a game world.

How we view a game vs. how we play it

As I see it, while on a game, close attention to particulars is not something an average player pays heed to, but a professional surely does. Therefore, picking the best-suited view becomes indispensable. As a result of which there is outright focus on the details to give the player an immersive gaming experience. And, this factor hinges around several variables.

When on the battlefield, a player would want to be able to control their movements and view. However, that lack of control, along with the frequent repositioning of the camera, can be infuriating for the player. So, I believe a player should be able to view every angle, irrespective of what the game thinks. The player should have control.

With that said, let's begin with understanding what Projection is. When one displays a three-dimensional object on a 2-D plane, that's Projection for you. A technique that profoundly impacts a game's look, feel, and mechanics. So, how about we delve into its types.

Orthographic Projection

This kind lacks perspective, depth, and a consistent relationship between its axes, like in 2-D or isometric games. Therefore, the characters and objects don't reduce in size when they move closer to the horizon. The reason being, there is no real horizon in this view. Moreover, in a side-view Orthographic projection, you view a scene as seen through the player's eyes. You get a top-down perspective on placing the camera at some height while positioning it down, and when you move the camera over the player's head, it gives you a bird's eye view.

Perspective Projection

Painstakingly, this projection works on the principle of focal point, with the camera's angle and position holding no credibility in the process. Just like the human eye, the camera renders objects in a way that makes them look smaller as their distance from the viewer increases (perspective stays intact). To give you more information on this, let's first walk you through the different modes in gaming.

The involved creativity in shooter game development provides the developer with confident choices of either creating 2D (flat images drawn on the screen with the camera having no perspective) and 3D content separately or of using them together in the same project. And, then comes an exception to both, where a 3D game simulates a 2D view into 2.5D. Oh! Yes, don't raise your eyebrows. There's 2.5D as well, also known as 3/4 view, where 2D games use 3D geometry for the environment and characters.

Now that you understand the fundamentals of the subject, let's cut to the chase and give you the tour of the other various perspectives that exist in the world of shooter games, the First-person view, and the Third-person view.

First-person view in Unity 3D

"Your monitor is your eyes. Your mouse, your rifle.”

The First-person view in Unity shooter games is easier to understand than you think. The crux of the matter here is "the camera is the player and vice-versa." This category of games centers around action-packed gun-slinging segments.

FPS games, with a solid history of 48 years now, was formally introduced by ID software in 1992 with Wolfenstein 3D and the genre was popularized by Doom in 1993, which at its release, sold a million copies worldwide. The classic 1st person shooter games, like Bungie's Destiny 2, Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall 2, Sledgehammer Games' Call of Duty: World War II - to name a few, have been a breathtaking action-packed adventure that revolutionized the gaming experience for the 21st-century generation. Popularly known for its interactive environmental storytelling.

Gradually, the emerging technology and the rise in virtual reality, has let the genre pursue unmatched realism by creating competitive, intense, and incredibly exciting shooting games for the players.

Third-person view in Unity 3D

The 3rd person shooter games give you a complete view of the avatar in the game, and its area surrounding. Thus, the developer needs to pack a punch while working on the appearance and animation of the characters. Unlike the other in-games, this genre provides a tangible character that the player can relate to. Another good thing about this is the interactiveness which is created between the character, the objects around, and the player. This game gives the avatar the ability to perform different maneuvers as demanded by the role play - like using various weapons, a range of hand-to-hand combat, driving, navigating on foot, etc.

Primarily developed as desktop versions, few shooter games like Warframe, Fortnite have stunning graphics, impressive presentation, and gameplay, making the game addictive for the adrenaline-packed shooters.

Best of both worlds

Then there are games that utilize both perspectives (FPS and TPS) with varying levels of success.

I think the perspective matters on the viewpoint of the player as both the views individually do better in certain circumstances. Third-person perspective games give you the spatial awareness needed and the less jarring movements for better experience while in the first-person perspective games, you are closer to the screen and the reticle assists you with the shot.

From the 2018 Fortnite to it’s more realistic looking cousin, PUBG - the battle royales have been giving the much needed hunt-or-be-hunted environment that most gamers crave for. Plus, the added wow-factor that comes with both.

Over the shoulder in Unity 3D

Popularized by Capcom's Resident Evil 4 in 2003 and later by Gears of war in 2006. Since then, this concept became a standard for action-oriented games. In this viewpoint, as its name suggests, the camera is placed to the left or right of the controlled character's shoulder. It shows the world from a perspective behind and above the character's shoulders, usually not showing further down than the hips.

Regardless of what the future holds, it turns out that the virtual camera system has hooked more and more players with unimaginable immersive gaming. In my view, it is the subtle art of the developers to put the perspectives into action that has offered gamers a more accurate sense of gravity, lighting, sound, and collisions in a game.

“God is in the details”, as I quote the phrase, I intend to lay emphasis on how attention to the details - a selection of camera, camera angle of view, camera field on view, perspective, and minor to major choices like these make a significant difference in how the game looks and feels. By clapping eyes on these particulars, the elements of gaming are made better today.

Understanding the purpose and sense of the segment, Logic Simplified is a Unity game development company has a team of proficient game designers and developers that uses features like navigation, lighting, physics, networking & shaders, etc. to bring your game idea to reality.

Top Eight Unity-Powered Video Games

Alto’s Adventure

Alto’s Adventure – an endless-runner mobile game, made with Unity, by Snowman, and distributed by Noodlecake Studio. The game was an instant hit due to its stunning visuals and was purely developed for mobile devices. It later captured the attention of Linux and Windows audiences.  This game is all about snowboarding and requires players to jump, slide, and jump again while collecting llamas. The goal is to keep going as long as possible without hitting a rock, falling off a cliff, or getting caught by the elder. Additionally, in Alto's Adventure, six characters can be unlocked by reaching levels 1-51. Before a run, players have the option to purchase various perks that enhance each character's abilities for that specific run.

Among Us

Available for both Android and iOS, Among Us is a 2018 online multiplayer game developed by American game studio Innersloth and inspired by the party game “Mafia”. Using Unity’s multi-platform publishing capabilities, the game even supports cross-platform play! Among Us became a popular game during the pandemic, and continues to be so, offering a fun and engaging social experience for people to enjoy, both in person and remotely.

Monument Valley 2

Monument Valley 2, made by mobile game studio “Ustwo Games”, is a sequel to the critically acclaimed puzzle game built entirely on Unity for mobile. Just like MV1, it has stunning isometric visuals and great music that makes it highly engaging and worth every minute. Monument Valley 2 follows the same style as its predecessor and includes new gameplay features, making it a fantastic standalone game. Its visual style draws inspiration from Japanese prints and minimalist sculpture. Critics have compared it to M.C. Escher's drawings. Its atmosphere and puzzles offer a quiet, contemplative experience.

Crossy Road

Crossy Road is a fun and free arcade game developed and published by Hipster Whale. The classic Frogger game by Konami, which requires players to take their character across a busy road, has been recreated in a cartoonish pixelated style using the Unity game engine. The objective of the game is quite simple - cross the road! However, it's not as easy as it sounds. The road goes on endlessly, and the longer you play, the more challenging and risky it becomes. 

Reigns

Reigns is a card strategy game created by Nerial and published by Devolver Digital. It's a one-of-a-kind experience where players interact with various cards that represent characters. You respond to their questions with either a "yes" or "no," or choose from other pre-set responses based on the situation. Reigns provides a combination of randomness, complexity, and strategy, which makes it addictive and fun to play. When making decisions in the game, it's important to consider the church, military, wealth, and people. Once a decision is made, the game will reveal the consequences of those decisions.

Hitman Sniper

Hitman Sniper is a great example of an Android game developed using Unity game development services. Among the games listed here, only Hitman Sniper has a price tag of $0.99 with over 10 million downloads, making it a remarkable success. The objective of the game is to shoot enemies, which can be done in various modes for different purposes. The game offers many modes such as missions, tactical, and survivor (where you battle zombies), along with a variety of weapons to help you complete your mission. Additionally, the game includes in-app purchases and advertisements to generate revenue. 

Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a multiplayer digital collectible card game (DCCG) developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It uses the popular Warcraft universe and transforms it into a captivating card battle game that is easy to learn. It sets the standard for collectible card battle games due to its remarkable gameplay, thanks to the Unity game engine.

While regular play involves 30 cards, there are actually over 2500 playable cards in the game. Additionally, there are 9 distinct classes, each with its own set of cards and abilities that can be used based on available mana points during each turn of the game. For a free game, it offers an enormous amount of content, including a variety of characters, cards, music, sounds, animations, and visual effects. 

Axie Infinity

The modern gaming industry is incomplete without NFT video games and NFT game development services. Axie Infinity is a highly popular NFT game available on Android. This is a battle Pay-to-Win and Play-to-Earn game, in which players own fantastical creatures called Axies. Axies are fierce pets that can be battled & collected. Every Axie possesses distinctive strengths and weaknesses determined by its genes. With billions of genetic combinations available, the potential outcomes are infinite! NFT assets, such as battle axes, can be bought and earned in the game, as well as tokens for each victory.

Make your games with Unity

Several other popular games are made using Unity since it is one of the best game development technologies available today. You can create some outstanding and money-minting games with Unity, that run flawlessly on every mobile platform. Are you looking for game artists and game developers to develop your game using Unity? 

Logic Simplified, a Unity game development company, has an expert team of Unity 3D game developers who have been successfully delivering exemplary Unity game development services to varied industry verticals. For any query related to Unity game development, write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com. We will help you with your dream project.

A game engine basically provides elements to draw 2D and 3D shapes, human-controlled character, computer-controlled character, objectives, levels, sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, etc.

However, choosing a game engine just because some publisher or developer of a successful game used it could prove precarious for your game. Before you choose a game engine, it’s paramount to be fully aware of the functionalities the game engine possesses and how they suit your specific game requirements. That said, we are going to a Unity vs Unreal Engine comparison to help you figure out which of the both could be the best fit for your game based on Usability, Functionality and Price Point.

Unity Vs Unreal Engine

Unity3D

Unity, created by Unity Technologies and first announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2005, has become a very popular cross-platform game engine among game developers world over. Six major versions of Unity have been released as of now, and it offer supports for languages, including C#, JavaScript and Boo.

Pros:

• Unity game developers can build both 2D and 3D games. Pokemon Go, Angry Birds Epic, Assassin’s Creed: Identity and Battlestar Galactica Online are some of the world-famous games that were built using Unity.
• Unity offers support for multiple platforms, including PC, mobile and major consoles showed below.

With Unity, you just need to complete a one-click process in order to publish to multiple platforms with ease. When it comes to cross-platform support, Unity tops Unreal Engine.

• Unity’s robust Asset Store offers numerous useful add ons, content characters, props and even things like sounds and particle effects. Unity’s app store is very big and has everything that your game requires. Unlike Unreal Engine, Unity provides access to a lot more additional stuff, like software for motion capture and tools for intuitive animation (at GUI level).
• Unity is free, which makes it a good choice for developers who just want to get started. The free version is capable of building excellent games, though you can get access to additional features by upgrading to Unity Pro or Unity Plus, but they come with a license fee attached to them.

You can purchase Unity Plus for $35 per month and Unity Pro for $125 per month. Upgrading to advanced versions of Unity is little expensive, but Unity does not charge any royalty fee from developers and publishers. You can check Unity’s website for different rate plans.

• As far as ease of use is concerned, Unity is generally seen as an easier and more intuitive choice to learn game engine. So, you will not face much hassles using Unity if you choose it for your game.
• Graphical capabilities of Unity are good, but can’t beat that of Unreal Engine, which is actually a next-generation game engine used by many AAA publishers. But, it doesn’t mean that you can’t develop a good 3D game with Unity.

Unity 5.6 brings support for Vulkan, a low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API, taking graphical performance to the next level. Unity also has a multi-featured tool for 3D development. It’s just that UE 4 has higher-level cutting-edge graphics suitable for intricate 3D mobile game development. Unity is more of the go-to-tool for building 2D games.

• Unity 5.6 also brings developers Facebook Gameroom, which allows to build and export your projects to Facebook using either WebGL or the Facebook Gameroom Windows app.
• New Light Modes in Unity replace Mixed mode lighting, which paves the way for users to combine baked lighting with real time lighting. Progressive Lightmapper enables proper handling of baked and real-time shadows.
• Unity has also announced the Timeline feature, a visual tool that allows to create cinematic content, cut scenes, complex particle systems, gameplay sequences, etc.
• Cinemachine is another amazing addition to Unity’s features list. It empowers a Unity game development company to use a virtual camera system in order to give the camera simple directions. And, the best part is that you can use the camera system to track and compose richly complex shots without even having to go through the hassles of coding.
• Unity also has a brilliant community support and offers an exhaustive documentation . Besides, it provides many learning opportunities through training sessions and live seminars.

Cons:

• Unity is expensive for those who want to access all its features. So, if you want to use Profiler as to unveil the areas that are making your game slow, you need to upgrade to a paid version of Unity. Same is the case for other features, like render textures, stencil support, buffer support, and many more.
• Although Unity’s code is stable, no access to the source code makes it difficult for developers to find, address and fix performance issues.
• Developers face performance issues with Unity’s built-in support for the PhysX physics engine. There’s a need to add some important functionalities in the PhysX physics engine to help developers craft the excellent game app.
• Unity games consume more memory, which often brings up OOM error and debugging issues.
• Unity lags when it comes to graphical performance, and requires a lot of optimizations if you wish to use Unity for creating a large AAA game title.
• Selecting object levels inside a level often turns out to be a very confusing and frustrating task as sub-objects have to be managed and attached to everything in the in-game object hierarchy.
• Unity’s animation controller system has some flexibility issues and causes more errors than Unreal Engine.

Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine was first brought to the attention of gaming world in 1998 with a first-person shooter game called Unreal. The engine, which was developed by Epic Games, got its name Unreal Engine from the game. The game engine was initially thought to be used only for first-person shooters, but it transcend its boundaries after being used for various other genres, including Stealth, MMORPGs, and other RPGs. Unreal engine only supports C++, but it offers an alternative discussed below for those who find coding difficult.

Pros:

• Unreal Engine is used for creating top-notch graphics for some of the highest quality AAA games on the market. Be it particles or lighting/shadows or process effects or terrain, Unreal engine brings them to life and makes them more interactive. Some of the games that were developed using Unreal Engine are: “Batman Arkham”, “Gears of War”, “Daylight”, and Fortnite.

So, if you are looking forward to create graphics for your game on a par with games you see being released on next-gen game consoles, Unreal Engine could fit your choice.

• Unreal Engine offers support for cross platforms showed below
• Unreal Engine is open source and free. So, you don’t have to pay anything for using Unreal Engine to develop your game, and you can still use everything that the game engine has to offer. There are no Pro or Plus with Unreal. However, you will have to pay 5% royalty fee after your game makes over $12000 annually (or, $3000 per quarter). The 5% royalty is to be paid after the first 3K quarterly.
• For API support, Unreal works with DirectX 10, DirectX 11, Vulkan (SM5) and OpenGL.
• Blueprint, a visual scripting editor, is one the best features of Unreal as it enables developers to build a game without even writing a single line of code. So, if you are not really good at programming, Unreal could be the engine of your choice for visualizations and architectural walk-throughs without having to worrying about writing code. Without a doubt, Unreal is a great engine for prototyping, but you need to have some C++ programming knowledge to complete serious tasks.
• Unreal Engine’s also has a brilliant asset store, allowing you to use a varied range of custom props, particle effects and characters. However, Unreal Engine’s asset store lag behind Unity when it comes to the size and price.
• Unreal Engine’s rendering technology is quite good and makes post processing really fast. The engine’s particle editor is much better than Unity's Shuriken system. Besides, Unreal has its own animation editor which includes separate tabs for skeleton, animation state machine, etc.
• Unreal Engine uses less memory and resources compared to Unity.
• Compared to Unity, Unreal has better access to visual debugging. So, you can test what, when and how is being drawn with ease. With Unreal, you also get complete control over the whole process and have clarity over how much time a certain element has taken.
• Unreal makes the entire source code available to community, therefore you can use the source code to figure out how certain functions and features work at lower level, and make the best use of them.
• Baking lighting is significantly faster in Unreal Engine
• As far as ease-of-use is concerned, it takes a bit of time to grasp Unreal Engine before you become familiar with it. But, it’s not that Unreal is not making efforts to address the ease-of-use issue. The user interface in the latest edition of the game engine was built to makes it easier and comfortable for users to learn and run the engine. However, Unreal is still not as easy to use as Unity is.

Cons:

• Although Unreal Engine is available for free to use, you will have to pay 5% royalty after the first $3000 per game per calendar quarter.
• Since Unreal Engine supports C++, Unreal has a bigger learning curve than Unity.
• Unreal Engine is not considered to be a good fit for small games and is often used for big projects that involve high costs and long duration. Most tools that Unreal provide are apt for building AAA games and much more. Unreal’s 2D is also lackluster compared to Unity.
• Unreal Engine offers limited support for older devices. The engine requires an updated, 64-bit Windows 7 system for optimal performance. It’s been learnt after conducting recent tests that UE4 drops to as low as 5 fps on older machines.
• Unreal Engine requires manual optimization for games.
• Unreal’s documentation is sparse and there is a lack of tutorials to help beginners quickly learn the technical know-how of the engine. So, Unity clearly gets an edge over Unreal here.

Both Unity3D and Unreal Engine are cutting-edge game engines, and like everything in the world they have their own pros and cons. Saying that “A sledgehammer is better than a clawhammer” will be wrong, as they both are tools and are not meant to be used for the same job. So, having clarity over what you want to achieve in your game makes  the choice between Unity vs Unreal engine much easier. 

We hope the Unity vs Unreal engine comparison helps you choose the right tool. Do you have a game idea and want to convert it into a reality but lack of tech know-how is holding you back? Don't worry! Logic Simplified can help you shape your dream game idea into a reality. Logic Simplified is a game development company and has hands-on experience of using various game engines, including Unity and Unreal, to build several highly engaging and interactive games. Please share your idea or game requirements by writing to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we will get back to you shortly to get you started outright.

The Unity version we are going to use for this game is Unity Personal Edition Version 5.5.1 f1. The reason I chose Unity game development for our FPS game is that it rids the need of using complex maths for 'movement' and 'looking around with the Mouse’.

Prerequisites to Build a Shooting Game in Unity

You need to have basic understanding of C# and maths for building your first FPS game in Unity. Besides, you need to have some knowledge of Unity app development and get familiar with the 
Unity
 interface 
and
 basic 
scripting
 concepts.

The First Shooter Elements To Consider for This Game are as Follows:

• WSAD-Maneuver & Jumping
• A weapon
• Bullets that explode when hit
• Point and shoot with the Mouse
• A decent looking level
• Something to shoot at

The most important concept in the Unity Editor is the GameObject. Every object that you want to create in your game has to be a GameObject. However, you need to add components to a GameObject to give it properties, so that it can become a character, an environment, or a special effect. You can add different combinations of components to a GameObject based on the kind of object you want to create.

Let’s begin with Project & Scene Setup

First, we are going to create a new project by going up to “File” and clicking on “New Project”. The next step is to give our new project a name and save in desired location.

Now, we will save the default scene (with desired or default name)

It’s time to create a player (Capsule). For this, you need to go to Hierarchy, as showed below. Right click on Hierarchy and choose 3D Object from the options. Doing so will bring more options, with the one called Capsule.

Click on Capsule and set the Capsule's transform in 'Inspector’ as showed below.

The next step is to make main camera child of player capsule and set its transform as showed below.

Now, we will add new script to the main camera and name it "MouseLook".

Check out the script below.

We can’t imagine our game without a ground. Therefore, we will add a Plane to the scene.

The next step is to scale the Plane to (15, 0, 0). And then, we need to add some cubes, sphere, and cylinder to our scene to make a level. We will place them randomly above the ground. If we run the game now, the player will look around.

Rename Capsule to "Player Capsule".

Now, we will add new script to player capsule and name it "PlayerMovement". The script for player capsule is mentioned below.

Continued…

Continued…

We want our GameObjects to act real when influenced by gravity or do something special under added forces. In order to make this happen, we need to add rigidbodies to our GameObjects. To add rigidbodies, we will first click on “Add Components” and then on “Physics” as showed below.

Clicking on Physics will bring us “RigidBody” with a few options as showed below (towards the bottom right). The next step is to set rigidbody constraints to ensure that player does not fall over on slight movements. Here, we are basically adding Physics to our GameObjects so that the game play appears real.

Our FPS can’t be complete without a gun. So now, we will be adding a gun in our game. Create an empty game object and name it "Gun".

The next step is to set its transform to given values.

It’s time to create a nested cube to “Gun”. Right-click on “Gun” and select a 3D Cube. Now, set cube's transform to given values showed below.

Now, attach a GunScript on Gun gameObject. The code to be pasted into it is mentioned below.

Continued...

Set the script variables to given values in the editor. For camera field drag-and-drop, select "MainCamera" which is child of "PlayerCapsule" GameObject.

No gun in any FPS game in this world is of any use until it shoots. Having said that, we will now create and add a script to make sure the gun fires whenever triggered.

To start, we will first add a new cube to the Gun object and name it Sight (Optional). We will set values as showed below to ensure the gun looks how a gun looks like.

The next step is to add an empty game object to Gun and name it "SpawnPoint". This object's position will work as a generation point for the shells of bullet when firing. The variables are showed below.

We are now going to add another empty game object to Gun and name it BulletSpawnPoint. This object's position will work as a point from where we will simulate bullet shooting via "Raycasting”. The variables are showed below.

Now, assign both "SpawnPoint" and "BulletSpawnPoint" to GunScript's variables "ShellSpawnPos" and "BulletSpawnPos". In order to help players aim at targets, we need to add the crosshair in our gun. You can download any crosshair of your choice in PNG format from the internet.

The next step is to create a 2D sprite in Gun object and name it "Crosshair" and assign it to the downloaded "sprite”.

Note: When importing the image in PNG make sure to switch image mode to sprite as showed below.

Moving forward, we need to set the Crosshair values as showed below.

Now, we will create “Shell”, for which we will create a sphere and name it “Shell”.

We will also set the Shell as showed below.

Now, add Rigidbody and ShellScript to the Shell, and set both component's values as showed below.

It’s time to create a folder in Project view and name it "Resources". Now drag n drop Shell GameObject from Hierarchy to Resources folder. We will now delete the shell from hierarchy. The final editor will look like as shown below.

That’s it! We have covered all the step to make our FPS game ready. How did you find it? Wasn’t it easy to create your first FPS game using Unity? I am sure it was. However, if you still have any query or not being able to understand anything in the tutorial, feel free share your concerns in the comment box below.