Installing Unity 3D Game Engine

Game development requires the use of an IDE along with one or two programming language(s). This IDE will be the Game Engine on which you will be developing you game project. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install/setup and use the Unity Game Engine to use it as your game development environment.

Setup Unity 3D environment for Windows

For using Unity 3D, you have to download the Installer from the Unity's official website. For that, just follow the steps given.

1. Download and install the Unity Editor from the link: unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive




2. Clicking on the Download (for Windows) button, will show a drop down list of options like this,

   Select your required choice and start the downloading.




3. The installer uses a Download Assistant and has detailed instructions that you need to follow. Unity Download Assistant is a light weight, small sized executable (.exe) program, that will let you select the components of the Unity Editor, which you want to download and install.

4. Select the editor component to install and then click the Next button.




5. In the next step, if you're not sure which components you want to install, you can leave the default selections, click Next to continue, and follow the installer's instructions.

   In the below shown screenshot, some of the check boxes are:

   1. Microsoft Visual Studio tools for Unity (is required).
   2. Windows Build Support (if you are planning to make Windows phone based Game as well).
   3. Android Build Support (if you are planning to make Android based Game using Unity 3D).
   4. Rest, leave default selected check-boxes.




6. Now, let that installer download and install Unity in your PC and then launch the Unity Game Engine after it gets installed.

Installing Unity on macOS X

We can either use command line to install Unity 3D on Mac OS X or use the Unity Download Assistant.

Installing using the Download Assistant

1. Download the Unity Installer file for your Mac PC from the link: unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive




2. A .dmg file names UnityDownloadAssitant will be downloaded. Double click on it to start the installation process.

   Double Click on the Unity Download Assistant icon to start installation.




3. Agree to the Terms and Conditions and click on Continue. Then you will be asked to select packages to be installed, stick to the default ones, if you are a beginner.

Installing Unity using the Command Line

1. Download the Unity Editor file for your Mac PC from the link: unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive

2. The individual Unity Editors are provided as .pkg files that you can install using the command line.

3. This will get installed into the folder /Applications/Unity on the specified target volume. Type the following command first-

   sudo installer [-dumplog] -package Unity.pkg -target /

   Here Unity.pkg is the filename that we downloaded in step 1.

4. Now in order to install the Standard Assets, which will get installed into folder /Applications/Unity/Standard Assets on the specified volume, use the commands-

   sudo installer [-dumplog] -package StandardAssets.pkg -target /

   The file StandardAssets.pkg can be downloaded from the same drop down from which we downloaded the Unity Editor file in the step 1. Click on the option Standard Assets.

5. To install Example Project, which will reside in the folder, /Users/Shared/Unity/Standard-Assets on the specified volume, the command will be-

   sudo installer [-dumplog] -package Examples.pkg -target /

   The file Examples.pkg can be downloaded from the same drop down from which we downloaded the Unity Editor file in the step 1. Click on the option Example Projects.

Assets Store

Unity based game Developers can get the assets from the assets store as well. Just follow the link given below:

Visit: Unity Asset Store