Unit 2 - Introduction

Lesson 2.1 - Player Positioning

Lesson 2.2 - Food Flight

Lesson 2.3 - Random Animal Stampede

Lesson 2.4 - Collision Decisions

Challenge 2 - Play Fetch

Lab 2 - New Project with Primitives 

Quiz 2

Mod the Cube

Quiz: Create with Code 1

Lab 2 - New Project with Primitives

Gain familiarity with some of the most important programming and Unity concepts, including if-then statements, random value generation, arrays, collision detection, prefabs, and instantiation.

In this Mission, you will program a top-down game with the objective of throwing food to hungry animals - who are stampeding towards you - before they can run past you. In order to do this, you will become much more familiar with some of the most important programming and Unity concepts, including if-then statements, random value generation, arrays, collision detection, prefabs, and instantiation. In completing this Unit, you will learn how to program a basic game with the ability to launch projectiles and maneuver the player to keep the game alive.

Basic Gameplay

Unity Junior Programmer

Kickstart your programming career with Unity's Junior Programmer Pathway. Learn coding fundamentals, C#, and game development to create your first interactive projects. Start learning for free!

Junior Programmer Pathway - Learn Coding & Game Development | Unity Learn

We recommend that you have basic knowledge of Unity or complete 

Ready to code? This guided learning Pathway will take you from zero to job-ready!

Welcome to Junior Programmer! Designed for anyone interested in learning to code or obtaining an entry-level Unity role, this pathway assumes a basic knowledge of Unity and has no math prerequisites. Junior Programmer prepares you to get Unity Certified so that you can demonstrate your job-readiness to employers.

Junior Programmer

Course Introduction

Install Unity Software

Unit 1 - Introduction

Lesson 1.1 - Start your 3D Engines 

Lesson 1.2 - Pedal to the Metal

Lesson 1.3 - High Speed Chase

Lesson 1.4 - Step into the Driver's Seat

Challenge 1 - Plane Programming

Lab 1 - Project Design Document

Introduction to project management and teamwork

Quiz 1

Learn how to create new C# scripts, call basic functions, and use variables to modify the results of those functions.

In this first mission in the Junior Programmer pathway, you will program a car moving side-to-side on a floating road, trying to avoid (or hit) obstacles in the way. In addition to becoming familiar with the Unity editor and workflow, you will learn how to create new C# scripts and do some simple programming. By the end of the Unit, you will be able to call basic functions, then declare and tweak new variables to modify the results of those functions.

Player Control

Unit 3 - Introduction

Lesson 3.1 - Jump Force

Lesson 3.2 - Make the World Whiz By

Lesson 3.3 - Don't Just Stand There

Lesson 3.4 - Particles and Sound Effects

Challenge 3 - Balloons, Bombs, & Booleans

Lab 3 - Player Control

Quiz 3

Learn how to add music, sound effects, and visual particle effects to transform the experience of your project.

In this Mission, you will program a fast-paced endless side-scrolling runner game where the player needs to time jumps over oncoming obstacles to avoid crashing. In creating this prototype, you will learn how to add music and sound effects, completely transforming the experience of your projects. You will also learn how to create dynamic endless repeating backgrounds, which are critical for any side-scrolling games. Finally, you will learn to incorporate particle effects like splatters and explosions, which make your games so much more satisfying to play.

Sound and Effects

Unit 4 - Introduction

Lesson 4.1 - Watch Where You’re Going

Lesson 4.2 - Follow the Player

Lesson 4.3 - PowerUp and CountDown

Lesson 4.4 - For-Loops For Waves

Challenge 4 - Soccer Scripting

Lab 4 - Basic Gameplay

Quiz 4

Learn how to implement new gameplay mechanics including powerups and increasing difficulty.

In this Mission, you will program an arcade-style Sumo battle with the objective of knocking increasingly difficult waves of enemies off of a floating island, using power ups to help defeat them. In creating this prototype, you will learn how to implement new gameplay mechanics into your projects, which are new rules or systems that make the game more interesting to play. On one hand, you will learn to program a powerup, which give the player a temporary advantage. On the other hand, you will learn to program increasingly difficult enemy waves, which make survival more challenging for the player. A good balance of powerups and increasing difficulty make for a much more interesting gameplay experience.

Gameplay Mechanics

Unit 5 - Introduction

Lesson 5.1 - Clicky Mouse

Lesson 5.2 - Keeping Score

Lesson 5.3 - Game Over

Lesson 5.4 - What’s the Difficulty?

Challenge 5 - Whack-a-Food

Lab 5 - Swap out your Assets

Quiz 5

Introduction to user feedback and testing

Learn how to implement a User Interface - or UI - into your projects, such as a title screen and score display.

In this Mission, you will program a game to test the player’s reflexes, where the goal is to click and destroy objects randomly tossed in the air before they can fall off the screen. In creating this prototype, you will learn how to implement a User Interface - or UI - into your projects. You will add a title screen with a difficulty select menu that will control how challenging the gameplay is, you will add a score display that will track how many points the player has earned, and you will add a Game Over screen, which will allow the player to restart and try again. In learning these skills, you will be able to create a fully “playable” experience that the user can enjoy from start to finish without having to restart the application to try it again.

User Interface

Next Steps - Introduction

Lesson 6.1 - Project Optimization

Lesson 6.2 - Research and Troubleshooting

Lesson 6.3 - Sharing your Projects

ECS Survival Guide

Career research and preparation

Introduction to portfolios

Debug the App

Counting Prototype

Quiz: Create with Code 2

Prepare to continue developing your Unity and C# skills independently, including learning how to complete your personal project.

In this Mission, you'll prepare to continue developing your Unity and C# skills independently, including learning how to complete your personal project and how to prepare for the Unity Certified User: Programming exam, which you can take through your school program, if available.

Publishing Your Project

Introduction to real-time 3D experience design

Set up version control

Explore the sample project

Principles of object-oriented programming

Create a scene flow

Implement data persistence between scenes

Implement data persistence between sessions

Quiz: Manage scene flow and data

Submission: Data persistence in a new repo

Learn about data persistence and an introduction to the core pillars of object-oriented programming.

In this mission, you’ll learn about data persistence, or how to manage the loading and unloading of data between both scenes and sessions. Along the way, you will be introduced to the core pillars of object-oriented programming, which will help you structure your code throughout the mission. There will only be one practical example throughout the mission, which will build on the new functionality you create with each tutorial. At the end of this mission, you’ll take everything you learned and apply it to a new project by building a persistent score system for a small game.

Manage Scene Flow and Data

Abstraction in object-oriented programming

Inheritance and polymorphism in object-oriented programming

Encapsulation in object-oriented programming

Profile code to identify issues

Job preparation: Junior Programmer

Quiz: Apply object-oriented principles

Submission: Programming theory in action

Deep-dive into the pillars of object-oriented programming and their application, then learn how to profile and optimize code.

In this mission, you’ll refactor the inventory project you completed in the previous mission using the pillars of object-oriented programming as a guide. You’ll deep dive into the inner workings of each pillar individually, so you can better understand its value in developing applications. Next, you’ll learn how to profile your code to identify any optimization bottlenecks that would slow down the final build of your application. To close out this mission, you’ll develop a small application for your portfolio that uses fully optimized code built on OOP principles. 

When you complete this mission you will complete the Junior Programmer pathway - CONGRATULATIONS!

Apply Object-Oriented Principles

9e3cb0c5-987a-4875-8aa8-e4ced0237ae6:d600187a3383

Overview

Download the provided assets and import them into a new Unity Project

Observe the default script functionality

Modify the cube.cs script

Create a WebGL project showing off your modded cube!

Criteria

Next Steps

timmywatto

mod the cube

pawan4532

udayjdv

mlock09

Mod the Cube Challenge

Krishna Kanth Manchipalli

WebGL Builds

Cardinal99

TheGamersTG1811

Junior Programmer Pathway - Mod The Cube Exercise

zzy9921

Demonstrate basic Unity programming skills, such as identifying and editing methods, selecting the correct variable type, and comprehending simple scripts

Level 1 Code Comprehension

Joy Horvath

Instructional Designer

In this exercise, you'll be challenged to modify a provided script to change the behavior of an object it's applied to.

Identify the purpose of common methods found in MonoBehaviours such as Start() and Update()

Define the major features of a script such as namespaces, classes, variables, and methods. 

Comprehend simple code by identifying essential programming structures

Identify common data types, including ints, floats, doubles, bools, strings, arrays, lists, and dictionaries

Devise comments that describe a given code block

Recognize naming conventions conforming to Unity standards, given a set of code blocks

Distinguish object-oriented code from data-oriented code

Distinguish an ECS (Entity Component System) class from any other type of class, given a code block containing a class definition

Interpret basic code in a Unity code base

Correct common syntax errors (e.g. missing semicolons, missing curly braces, type mismatches, etc.) by using the IDE's error checking features

Change a variable's accessibility in the Inspector by editing its access modifier to public or private

Efficiently code with correct method and parameter names by using the IDE’s intellisense (autocomplete) features

Print debug messages to the console by calling the Debug.Log method

Change the default scripting IDE

Improve simple code using the features of an IDE

ModTheCubeChallengeAssets.zip

In this mission you learned how to open, read, and modify scripts. You practiced fundamental programming challenges, and hopefully you’re starting to feel comfortable with basic scripting. In this exercise, you’ll be tasked with modifying the behavior of an already existing script. We’re leaving this challenge open-ended, so now’s the time to get creative! 

To begin this challenge, you must first download the challenge assets and import them into a new Unity project:

1.  Download ModTheCubeChallengeAssets.zip.

2.  To unzip the contents of the folder, right-click the folder and select Extract All (macOS: double-click the zipped folder). Inside you will find ModTheCube.unitypackage.

Note: While it is possible to view the contents of a folder while it’s still zipped, the data is still compressed. Attempting to import the contents of the ModThCubeChallengeAssets folder while it’s still zipped will result in an error message in Unity. Ensure that you have unzipped the folder before proceeding to the next step.

3.  Create a new Unity project using the 3D template —  remember to use one of the supported versions of Unity, such as 2022.3 LTS or 6000.0 LTS.

4. Import ModTheCube.unitypackage into your new 3D template project.

Before you begin editing the code, take a few minutes to understand what the script does by default. The imported .unitypackage contains three items: a C# script, a material, and a scene.

1.  Open the scene located in the ModTheCube folder. 

The only thing in the scene aside from the Camera and Directional Light is a cube. Attached to the cube is the script you will be modifying.

2.  Enter Play mode (select the play button on the toolbar) and observe the default behavior of the script assigned to the cube.

When you enter Play mode, you will observe several of the cube’s properties change. All of these changes are hardcoded into the cube.cs script attached to the cube in the scene. This means that the cube will be modified in the same way each time the scene is run. 

Now that you understand what the cube script is doing, you can begin to customize it. As previously mentioned, all of the changes the script is making to the cube are specified in the code. It would be easier to control the cube from the Unity Editor instead of editing the script. You can make this possible by changing variables to be public. Public variables appear in the Inspector window where you can modify their values.

1.  Open the cube.cs script in your code editor and observe the code.

2.  Identify at least two changes that you can make to the cube’s behavior.

Here are a few examples of modifications you might consider:

Change the angle at which the cube rotates.

If you’re feeling confident, you can attempt the following as well:

Modify any of the changes above so they change randomly each time the scene is played.

Add extra functionality to the cube. For example, how might you change the color of the cube over time?   

3.  Implement your planned changes in the code.

4.  Test the scene regularly as you work to ensure your code is performing as expected.  

Now that you have edited your script and thoroughly tested your changes, your remaining task is to submit your project here and show off your work! You will create a WebGL build of your project, upload it to Unity Play, and then complete this challenge by linking your submission below. 

1.  If you haven’t already done so, frame your camera in the scene so it’s easy to see the cube in the Play view.

3.  Ensure that your version of Unity has the WebGL module installed. 

4.  Install the WebGL Publisher package. This package will allow you to easily publish your project on Unity Play. If you aren’t sure if you have the package or don’t know how to add it, refer to this tutorial.

5.  Select File > Build Profiles from the main menu. Under the Platforms section, select Web, then select the Switch Platform button and wait until the process finishes.

6.  Create a WebGL build of your project. This may take a few minutes, depending on your computer. If you need help creating the build, refer to step 3 of Getting started with Unity Web.

7.  Publish your WebGL build on Unity Play. 

8.  Copy your Unity Play link, and paste it below! 

You’ll know you’re successful if you’ve met these criteria:

You’ve modified the cube script so that at least two changes are made to the cube’s behavior.

You’ve created a WebGL build of your project.

You’ve uploaded the WebGL build to Unity Play.

You’ve copied your Unity Play link for submission.

Congratulations on completing the first mission in Junior Programmer! You now have a strong foundational understanding of the structure of basic scripts and how to make simple modifications. As you continue through the pathway, consider taking time to think about how you might modify other scripts you encounter to customize them to your liking. Sometimes the best way to reinforce what you’ve learned is to apply it in different ways on your own!  

Mod the Cube

1. Overview

2. Download the provided assets and import them into a new Unity Project

3. Observe the default script functionality

4. Modify the cube.cs script

5. Create a WebGL project showing off your modded cube!

6. Criteria

7. Next Steps

Your submission preview

Complete this Exercise