Game Project Elements of Unity 3D
There is is set of elements(or components) which together forms a Game, developed using Unity engine. These elements play a major role in making the game interactive as well as in adding features that can vividly express your Game's objective. Let's discuss about these elements and their functionality.
Assets
Assets are the representation of project item(s) which you can implement in your game or project. An asset can be a file imported from outside of Unity, like the 3D model, audio and sound file, images (jpeg, gif, png etc), textures or any of the other file types which is supported by Unity. There is also a collection of asset-types which can be produced within Unity.
Examples of such assets are:
- Animator Controller
- Audio Mixer
- Render Texture
- Pictures
- Animation files
The Project
Project in Unity is a folder or location which holds your complete game project along with all its associated assets which may contain the library and assets sub-folder also.
Packages
It is a precompiled cluster of game assets. Unity comes with various packages.
GameObject
Every object present within the game is a GameObject. Technically, they don't append any functionality to your game project but merely acts as holders for components like the Transform, Light, Script, and RigidBody components. You will learn about them in the coming chapters, with practical implementation in the form of small projects.
Components
Components are the basic building blocks i.e. the nuts & bolts of objects and their activities in a game. They act as functional pieces for each GameObject. By default, every GameObjects have a Transform Component set automatically, because, it dictates where the GameObject is positioned within the Unity environment, and how it gets rotated and scaled.
Scenes
A Scenes can be defined as the base or the parent object, where you can place your GameObjects to make a level of the game. One or more scenes (aka, levels) are generally put into a game and they are linked together, which your audience will cross or pass by clearing some specific objectives. All these objectives and the logic of the game will be put in methods which will run along with the player within the scene.
Prefab
Prefabs are the reusable GameObject components which are laid up in the Project View window. Prefabs can be introduced into any number of scenes, as many times as you want, per scene. You can create instance of these prefabs which are linked to the main Prefab. It doesn't matter how many instances exist in your project; when you do any changes to the Prefab, you can visualize the change applied to all other instances. You will work with prefabs in the later chapters, while developing small game projects.
Build
It is an exported adaptation of your game that will contain all the essential scenes for playback on the specific platform.