Cookbook. From beginners to advanced users, from artists to coders, this book is for you and everyone in your team! This book is for anyone who wants to explore a wide range of Unity scripting and multimedia features and to find ready to use solutions to many game features. Programmers can explore multimedia features, and multimedia developers can try their hand at scripting.
Matt Smith
Matt Smith is senior lecturer in computing at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Dublin, Ireland (www.itb.ie). In 1980 (you do the math) Matt started computer programming (on a ZX80) and has been programming ever since. In 1985, Matt wrote the lyrics, and was a member of the band that played (and sang, sorry about that by the way) the music on the B-side of the audio cassette carrying the computer game Confuzion (wikipedia.org/wiki/Confuzion).
Matt holds a bachelor's degree in Business Computing (Huddersfield University, UK), and as that was a bit boring, he went on to get a masters in Artificial Intelligence (Aberdeen University, Scotland), and a PhD in Computational Musicology (Open University, UK). Having run out of money after 10 years as a full-time student, he began his career as a lecturer and academic. He has been lecturing and researching on programming, artificial intelligence, web development, and interactive multimedia for almost 20 years, holding full-time positions at Winchester University and London's Middlesex University, before moving to his present post in Ireland in 2002. In recent years, Matt has replaced Flash-based 2D multimedia with Unity-based 3D game development and interactive virtual environments subjects for his computing and digital media undergraduates.
To keep himself fit, Matt took up the Korean martial art of Taekwon-Do (he developed and runs his club's website at www.maynoothtkd.com), and a group of his BSc students are now developing a Unity-based Taekwon-Do interactive "tutor" with Microsoft Kinect cameras. Some of his previous Irish-French student team games can be found and played at www.saintgermes.com (thanks for continuing to host these, Guillem!). Matt was one of the two technical experts for a recent multimedia European project for language and cultural student work mobility (vocalproject.eu).
Matt is currently struggling to learn Korean (for his Taekwon-Do), and Irish (since his daughter Charlotte attends an Irish-speaking school and he doesn't believe her translations of her teacher's report cards ...). In 2012, he started taking classical piano lessons again (after a 20-year gap), with a view to sitting exams starting May, 2013.
Matt's previous authoring includes contributions to Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, Springer (2011), Musical Imagery, Routledge (2001). He was also lead editor for Music Education: An Artificial Intelligence Approach, Springer (1994), and a technical reviewer for Internet and World Wide Web: How to Program (3rd Edition) by Deitel, Deitel & Goldberg, Prentice Hall (2003).
