Looking to buy unity book for studying

Hello,

I've just started to study unity and I'd like to buy a decent book for studying. I was wondering how outdated is the information if I buy a book which is published in 2014 for an example? Like this: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Program...rds=C#+Game+Programming+Cookbook+for+Unity+3D

Or should I just spend more money and buy one which is published in 2017?

 

Don't spend money on old books. Start learning here, by doing the tutorials and studying the documentation:

• https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials
• https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html

Or, if you really want to pay, take the certification course: https://certification.unity.com/courseware

 

The problem with books about Unity is that they just get outdated so quickly. It's not a huge deal if you don't mind figuring out what's different in the editor since the date the book was published (or using an older version of Unity), and if you just much prefer a book over online stuff, it's certainly still doable.

But if you're just looking for a good place to start out, definitely check out the resources @AnneSchmidt linked above.

 

I just buy all thouse digital:
1)Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity 5.x
2)Unity AI Game Programming
3)Mastering Unity 2D Game Development
4)Unity UI Cookbook
5)Unity 5.x Cookbook

Stop at "Unity AI game Programming" for now.Requires a lot of practice.
regards Bestazy.

 

The second edition of my book Unity in Action is about to come out! In print that is; it's already available as an ebook download.

 

Well last year I bought SAM's Teach Yourself Unity in 24 Hours, I had a read of it and it looked very simple, I just can't do the stuff as my PC won't run Unity

I paid £17.99 for the book on eBay as I recall.

 

With the 2018 changes that are about to start rolling out quickly any book just hitting the shelves right now will be obsolete in 3 months lol.

 

That's not true of the basics.... Raycasting isn't changing.

The question is if they need to learn just unity or C# too. If you're a new programmer, you want something that introduces programming. Unity is a great environment to learn that in, just make sure you get a book on that topic (C#).

 

I'll take this a step further and say the lessons learned in an old version of Unity are just as useful in the most recent ones. I don't know of any actual games that use Unity's Terrain system, but learning how it works and tinkering with it are still great ways to learn concepts like height maps, and it can even give you ideas on how to structure your own custom systems once you get to that point.

Even learning how Enlighten works doesn't mean you'll be totally lost with the Progressive lightmapper. You just apply the concepts slightly differently, or modify your workflow a little (for the better, even!)

The specifics of how you do something may differ a bit, but nothing you can learn about anything is useless.

 

I started with this book: "Unity 3D Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide". Good example and easy to follow guide.

 

I'm having trouble finding menu's in old tutorials, so an old book will be similar, unless it's about C# coding etc. But for game basics on the general function such as raycasts and rigibody/collider basics etc, any book about that age should be ok, as long as its cheap...Unity books are expensive, like most engine books. That's why I haven't bought them. Just bought a £3.30 C# visual studio book with 1000 pages instead of 2017 version for about £40. Basics are still the same etc. But unity menu's and the new functions in unity 5, will not be covered in old books, so you will have to print or search for tutorials on unity etc.

I know what you mean buy wanting a book though. I would prefer a few small to medium size game projects with scripting lessons etc in one book like a visual studio book of 1000 pages, and not just the 350 pages in most engine books that are mostly pictures and little writing, as far as I have found with Unreal books etc. Just make sure they are very cheap, or do tutorials on youtube. TV + Laptop seems best for me. Just for the programming text to be seen easily.
Hope this is useful, i'm not always

 

I've tried to read some books about Unity 3D, but it was really hard to find one dedicated to a person with my profile; I'm a developer, so master C# is not really a problem. But, pass from classic development to "Unity 3D" development was a little complicated due to Unity has it's on way to work referencing graphical objects in a code, develop a game got a lot of Physics involved, and you have to get to know the libraries and functions responsible for this in C# with UnityEngine, and even the concepts involving design patterns seem different.

After, tried some books - some took too long to go deep in the subject, other went too quickly -, I've decide learn by doing. So, I started to watch tutorials (skipping the explications about coding, etc), and it help me a lot. Instead of seeing a bunch of concepts, you know where to apply few of them. (I even recommend a YouTube channel, which is helping me a lot: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYbK_tjZ2OrIZFBvU6CCMiA)

The main problem when you start to learn game development is start and finish a game. Following a tutorial will help you to get it done, and it's really really really important.

 

I recommend buying some up to date books, old ones may be good in theory too but it depends what do you need.

 

I think most of the unity books are outdated, only a handful cover the latest version of Unity. Also, most of the new books that cover the latest Unity features are not written too well yet. I did some research, and my best bet is Harrison Ferrone's book - Learning C# by developing games with unity 2020 and Hand on game development with unity 2020 by Nicolas Alejandro Borromeo.

Source: I found this article useful to pick the best unity books

 

Yeah the second edition of my book is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I'm currently working on the third edition. My original plan was to do it in the spring actually, but stuff happened. and by "stuff" I mean a pandemic

 

Some of the best Unity Books that i recommended are:

1: Unity Game Development in 24 hours by Mike Geig
2: Unity Zero to Proficiency by Patrick Felicia
3: Unity In Action by Joe Hocking
4: Developing 2D Games with Unity by Jared Halpern

and Many more Unity books are available in the Internet and also you can check this Unity course (https://learn.unity.com/courses) offered by the Unity this also help me a lot to learn the concepts. Hope this will help..