Unity, being an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) pretty much makes building your final product mostly point-n-clicky. In its simplest form, select from the top menu, File -> Build Settings and then the press the Build button.
In fact, once you get your build parameters setup correctly, you can just choose File -> Build and Run.
Of course, setting the build parameters is where it all gets interesting. It’s also where things can get a bit weird. First of all, notice all the different platforms you can build for.
For now, we’ll skip over all of that but keep it in mind. Let’s just focus on the Standalone build for now. The button you want to take note of, even though it is not exactly obvious is the ‘Player Settings’ button in the lower left.
This opens up a whole new dialog with a bazillion settings that, at least to my mind, seem to be in an unusually named place. Regardless, there are a LOT of things you can do to tweak your build, and I’ll only discuss a few here. Because of that, be sure to take note of the usual ‘Help’ icon (the question mark in the upper right). You’ll need it if you get serious about messing around in here.
Thought it sounds a bit silly, you should fill in the “Company” information, especially the version number if you start making it available to others. This information can be displayed in your game and can be very useful when it comes to troubleshooting bug reports, etc.
The next thing to note is the Fullscreen mode setting. It is especially important to note the full screen mode setting can be problematic if you have not yet programmed your exit key! During testing, ‘Windowed’ mode might be a bit safer.
If you choose Windowed mode, you will see two additional fields appear.
The default values for Screen Width/Height will probably not be what you want. In my case, I developed the game using 16:9 aspect ratio. If you set the wrong dimensions, your game will not behave properly. e.g. if the screen resolution is wrong, your player may go off screen and not be visible.
Here are some standard 16:9 screen resolutions.
| Width | Height | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 640 | 360 | nHD |
| 854 | 480 | FWVGA |
| 960 | 540 | qHD |
| 1024 | 576 | WSVGA |
| 1280 | 720 | HD |
| 1366 | 768 | FWXGA |
| 1600 | 900 | HD+ |
| 1920 | 1080 | Full HD |
| 2560 | 1440 | QHD |
| 3200 | 1800 | QHD+ |
| 3840 | 2160 | 4K UHD |
| 5120 | 2880 | 5K |
| 7680 | 4320 | 8K UHD |
If you wish to tinker further, other settings allow you to modify the plain black and white “Made With Unity” splash screen. You can add an icon to the upper left window menu, add your own logo, custom cursor and a background as well, giving your game just a bit of extra polish.
