Extending Unity with Editor Scripting

I used this to learn how to build a custom level editor for a 2d tile-based game that I'm working on. The information pertaining to custom gizmos and editor windows is invaluable. Great source. Highly recommended.

Where most books discuss how to use the framework already built in to the “Unity” program, this book explains how you can actually customize the programs editor. This is especially useful for automating and simplifying content creation, and enables users to create more efficient pipelines. The book also explains how to change the overall look and feel of the Editor, including the primary scene view, where most of the assembly work is done.“Extending Unity with Editor Scripting” is for users that are already proficient at creating content with Unity. The book is intended for use with “Unity 5.x,” and all of the scripting is done in C#. Be sure to watch your headers in “Visual Studio,” because most of these scripts are editor scripts. While this book is clearly geared towards the more advanced Unity user, the author sporadically comments his code. That is probably fine for those with a lot of experience with C#, but that is only about a third of “Unity” users, at the most. To be fair, most of the methods are explained in the book’s text, however it would be nice to also see it in the code.The author, Angelo Tadres has written a useful book on optimizing “Unity.” While the meat of the instruction can be a utilitarian, the included sample project will provide most readers enough of a reprieve to make it through. This does bring me to my second complaint, which is the fact that the necessary assets are split between a couple of websites. It would have been nice for them to all have been hosted on PACKT’s website. That being said, there some invaluable tools in this book. Though the book utilizes a 2D platformer as its example, there are certainly plenty of other applications that can be improved with Editor scripting.(A complimentary review copy of the ebook was provided by the publisher for this review)

The author starts with an elementary example:A new scene and a gameobject (with an attached script) are created via code (only C#).Over the cource of the book, you learn how to setup your very own gizmos, propertyeditors and finally a windows inside Unity, a tool for creating tilemaps.Not bad, I was really suprised, that Unity enables such possibilities for extending the editor.I have noticed one thing: to customize Unity effectively, you need to know a lot of rather specific details.Hereof, the book is a great helper, that saves you a lot of time and research work.Furthermore, I didn't found any other book on this topic (Unity editor Scripting).

This is a great book to dive into the unity editor with. I've personally been working with Unity for over 5 years and have done a lot of editor coding myself and this book teaches you some very valuable ways to create editor tools for any project. The code is pretty clean, but not documented much if at all in some parts. This isn't a huge issue as the the author explains the code in the text to give you an understanding on what it's doing.If you are a beginner with editor scripts & C#, this might be a bit challenging for you as this book quickly gets into some of the more intermediate level scripting techniques that may be difficult to understand. For those that have some experience in both, this will be a pleasure to learn from as it covers some pretty moderate problems when creating tools for the unity editor.Overall this is a great book to learn from as well as use for reference to build editor tools in Unity. The example project that the author has you create through the book is a great way to see how creating editor tools can increase the workflow and development time for all your projects.

I would say It's “the cookbook of customization”. I read many books about Unity to improve my skills but I finally found an interesting book that I can learn different things as how to customize my own tools at the inspector and my scene view, exploring the gizmos to improve my organization, how to set up Git and other cool tricks. The examples are easy to understand and they are done with Unity 5.x with C# with code commented by the author.

One of the best Unity books I've purchased. I buy a lot of Packt books, and this one is full of great tips and tricks. If you have been using Unity for a while, and are looking to improve your editor scripting, you definitely can't go wrong here. Well laid out, great information and examples.

Amazing book.