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

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 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

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

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

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

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Create Title text and menu buttons

Add a DifficultyButton script

Call SetDifficulty on button click

Make your buttons start the game

Deactivate Title Screen on StartGame

Use a parameter to change difficulty

Lesson Recap

CWC_U5.L4.S2_U6.mp4

CWC_U5.L4.S1_U6.mp4

CWC_U5.L4.S3_U6.mp4

CWC_U5.L4.S4_U6.mp4

CWC_U5.L4.S5_U6.mp4

CWC_U5.L4.S6_U6.mp4

It’s time for the final lesson! To finish our game, we will add a Menu and Title Screen of sorts. You will create your own title, and style the text to make it look nice. You will create three new buttons that set the difficulty of the game. The higher the difficulty, the faster the targets spawn!

Starting the game will open to a beautiful menu, with the title displayed prominently and three difficulty buttons resting at the bottom of the screen. Each difficulty will affect the spawn rate of the targets, increasing the skill required to stop “good” targets from falling.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Store UI elements in a parent object to create Menus, UI, or HUD

Add listeners to detect when a UI Button has been clicked

Set difficulty by passing parameters into game functions like SpawnRate

Unit 5 - User Interface

Unit 5 - User Interface (Unity EdLab Edition)

The first thing we should do is create all of the UI elements we’re going to need. This includes a big title, as well as three difficulty buttons.

Duplicate your Game Over text to create your Title Text, editing its name, text and all of its attributes

Duplicate your Restart Button and edit its attributes to create an “Easy Button” button

Edit and duplicate the new Easy button to create a “Medium Button” and a “Hard Button”

Our difficulty buttons look great, but they don’t actually do anything. If they’re going to have custom functionality, we first need to give them a new script.

For all 3 new buttons, in the Button component, in the On Click () section, click the minus (-) button to remove the RestartGame functionality

Create a new DifficultyButton.cs script and attach it to all 3 buttons

Add  using UnityEngine.UI to your imports

Create a new private Button button; variable and initialize it in Start() 

Now that we have a script for our buttons, we can create a SetDifficulty method and tie that method to the click of those buttons

Create a new void SetDifficulty function, and inside it, Debug.Log(gameObject.name + " was clicked");

Add the button listener to call the SetDifficulty function

The Title Screen looks great if you ignore the target objects bouncing around, but we have no way of actually starting the game. We need a StartGame function that can communicate with SetDifficulty.

In GameManager.cs, create a new public void StartGame() function and move everything from Start() into it

In DifficultyButton.cs, create a new private GameManager gameManager; and initialize it in Start() 

In the SetDifficulty() function, call gameManager.StartGame();

If we want the title screen to disappear when the game starts, we should store them in an empty object rather than turning them off individually. Simply deactivating the single empty parent object makes for a lot less work.

Right-click on the Canvas and Create > Empty Object, rename it “Title Screen”, and drag the 3 buttons and title onto it

In GameManager.cs, create a new public GameObject titleScreen; and assign it in the inspector

In StartGame(), deactivate the title screen object

The difficulty buttons start the game, but they still don’t change the game’s difficulty. The last thing we have to do is actually make the difficulty buttons affect the rate that target objects spawn.

In DifficultyButton.cs, create a new public int difficulty variable, then in the Inspector, assign the Easy difficulty as 1, Medium as 2, and Hard as 3

Add an int difficulty parameter to the StartGame() function

In StartGame(), set spawnRate /= difficulty;

Fix the error in DifficultyButton.cs by passing the difficulty parameter to StartGame(difficulty)

Title screen that lets the user start the game

Difficulty selection that affects spawn rate

Lesson 5.4 - What’s the Difficulty?

Overview Video

1. Create Title text and menu buttons

2. Add a DifficultyButton script

3. Call SetDifficulty on button click

4. Make your buttons start the game

5. Deactivate Title Screen on StartGame

6. Use a parameter to change difficulty

7. Lesson Recap

Complete this tutorial