Beginning C# with Unity (2023 Edition) - Operators

Summary

In this educational video, Vegetarian Zombie guides viewers through the basics of C# operators in Unity, emphasizing the importance of celebrating small coding successes. The tutorial begins with an assignment operator, then explores incrementing and decrementing variables, and introduces equality checks. Sponsored by cadeco.com, the video also includes a practical demonstration of creating a button in Unity and responding to clicks using a script. The lesson covers arithmetic operations, the modulus operator, string concatenation, and the order of operations. It concludes with a challenge to create a tip calculator, encouraging viewers to apply their newfound knowledge.

Takeaways

• 🎓 The video is an educational tutorial aimed at beginners in C# and Unity, focusing on the use of operators.
• 👏 It encourages learners to celebrate small successes and be patient with themselves as they progress in coding.
• 🔢 The video introduces the assignment operator, explaining how to use it to increment variables like hit points and experience points in a game.
• 💻 Sponsored by cadeco.com, a platform for developers offering learning resources on various development topics, including game development in Unity and Unreal.
• 🛠️ The tutorial demonstrates adding interactivity to a Unity project by creating a button and a script to respond to button clicks.
• 📝 It discusses the importance of understanding operators for game development, such as increment, decrement, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and modulus.
• 🧠 The video presents a brain teaser to illustrate the difference between postfix and prefix increment operators, highlighting a common source of confusion for new programmers.
• 🔄 The concept of integer division is explained, showing how it truncates decimal values, and the modulus operator is introduced as a tool for remainder calculations.
• 📑 The tutorial covers string concatenation and the need for manual spacing when combining strings with the addition operator.
• 🧮 Emphasis is placed on the order of operations in arithmetic, advising viewers to write clear and simple code to avoid confusion.
• 🔄 The cast operator is introduced for type conversion, with a cautionary note about data loss when converting from a larger to a smaller data type.
• 💡 The video concludes with a challenge to create a tip calculator, providing a practical application of the concepts discussed.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video?

The main focus of the video is to introduce the viewer to the world of operators in C# programming within the context of Unity game development.

Why is it important to celebrate small successes in coding?

Celebrating small successes in coding is important because coding is hard and it takes time to understand concepts. Recognizing and rewarding progress helps maintain motivation and patience.

What is the assignment operator in programming?

The assignment operator in programming, denoted by the equal sign, is used to assign the value of one variable to another, rather than to check for equality as in mathematics.

What is the purpose of the 'my operators' script created in the video?

The 'my operators' script is created to demonstrate how to respond to button presses in Unity and to show how to increment variables using different operators.

How does the video explain the difference between prefix and postfix operators?

The video explains that the prefix operator increments the value before the operation, while the postfix operator increments the value after the operation. It also cautions that the postfix operator can be confusing and recommends using the 'plus equals' operator for clarity.

Why does the video recommend avoiding the use of postfix operators when starting out?

The video recommends avoiding postfix operators for beginners because they can be easily misunderstood, leading to bugs and confusion, especially when the order of operations is not clear.

What is the modulus operator and how is it demonstrated in the video?

The modulus operator returns the remainder of a division operation. In the video, it is demonstrated by dividing 5 by 2, which results in a remainder of 1.

How does the video handle the addition of strings in C#?

The video shows that when adding strings in C#, it is necessary to manually add spaces between the strings to avoid them being concatenated without any separation.

What is the importance of the order of operations in coding as discussed in the video?

The video emphasizes the importance of the order of operations to ensure that calculations are performed correctly. It reminds viewers to follow the standard order (parentheses, exponents, multiplication/division, addition/subtraction) to avoid errors.

What is the cast operator and how is it used in the video?

The cast operator is used to convert a variable from one data type to another. In the video, it is used to convert an integer to a float and vice versa, demonstrating how data loss can occur when converting from a larger to a smaller data type.

What challenge is presented at the end of the video?

The challenge presented at the end of the video is to create a tip calculator that calculates the total amount including a tip based on the bill total and a tip percentage.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction to C# Operators

The video, sponsored by cadeco.com, begins with a recap of the viewer's journey in learning C# and Unity, highlighting their progress from scripting basics to handling variables and types. The host, Vegetarian Zombie, encourages celebrating small victories in coding and introduces the concept of operators. The video then delves into the assignment operator, explaining its role in incrementing variables. It also touches on equality checking, which will be covered in future episodes. The sponsor, cadeco.com, is introduced as a platform for developers to learn various programming topics, including game development in Unity and Unreal. The tutorial proceeds with a practical demonstration of adding interactivity through a button in Unity, guiding viewers to create and attach a script that responds to button clicks.

05:05

🔗 Unity UI Interaction and Operator Basics

In this segment, the focus shifts to Unity's user interface, where the host guides viewers through attaching a script to a text element and setting up a button's 'OnClick' event to call a method from the script. The script is updated to include a method that increments a variable and displays its value, introducing the concept of shorthand operators for arithmetic operations. The video explains the difference between postfix and prefix increment operators, noting the potential for confusion with postfix operators. It advises beginners to use the 'plus equals' operator for clarity. The segment concludes with a brain teaser to reinforce understanding of operator precedence.

10:11

🧠 Understanding Prefix and Postfix Operators

This part of the video script discusses the nuances of prefix and postfix operators, emphasizing the importance of understanding their order of operation. It provides an example to illustrate how the postfix operator can lead to unexpected results if not used carefully. The video also covers the modulus operator, demonstrating how it returns the remainder of a division. The discussion extends to string concatenation and the importance of manually adding spaces. The segment ends with a reminder about the order of operations, advocating for simplicity and clarity in coding to avoid confusion and bugs.

15:13

🔢 Exploring Order of Operations and Casting

The script delves into the importance of order of operations in coding, using a social media puzzle as an example to explain the correct approach. It advises using parentheses for clarity and breaking down complex expressions. The video introduces the cast operator, showing how it can convert data types and the potential data loss when converting from a larger to a smaller type. The segment concludes with a challenge for viewers to create a tip calculator, providing a brief overview of the steps involved in setting up the calculator and connecting it to UI elements in Unity.

20:16

💻 Building a Tip Calculator in Unity

The final part of the script guides viewers through creating a tip calculator in Unity. It outlines the process of setting up a new script, adding variables for the bill total and tip percentage, and calculating the total amount including the tip. The video demonstrates how to connect the script to a button and text element in Unity, ensuring that the total amount is displayed when the button is clicked. It concludes with an encouragement for viewers to experiment with different approaches and to celebrate their progress, reminding them of the importance of writing clear and understandable code.

Keywords

💡Operators

Operators in programming are symbols that perform operations on variables and values. In the context of the video, operators are introduced as a fundamental concept in C# programming, essential for tasks such as increasing player's hit points or experience points in a game. The video covers various operators including assignment, arithmetic, and increment operators, highlighting their use in game development scenarios.

💡Assignment Operator

The assignment operator, denoted by the equal sign (=), is used to assign values to variables. The video explains that in programming, this operator is not about equality but about assigning the value on the right to the variable on the left, as in 'x = x + 1', which increments the value of 'x'.

💡Arithmetic Operators

Arithmetic operators include addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), and division (/). These operators are used to perform basic mathematical operations. The video demonstrates how to use these operators to manipulate game variables, such as increasing a player's strength or calculating the cost of an item.

💡Increment Operator

The increment operator is used to increase the value of a variable by one. The video distinguishes between the postfix and prefix increment operators, explaining their different behaviors in expressions. This is crucial for understanding how values are updated in game loops or event handlers.

💡Equality

Equality in programming often refers to the comparison of two values to check if they are the same. Although not deeply explored in the video, the concept is mentioned in passing when discussing the assignment operator, hinting at future episodes that will cover comparison operators in detail.

💡Variables

Variables are used to store data values that can change during the execution of a program. The video emphasizes the importance of variables in game development, such as storing player stats like hit points and experience points, and how operators are used to modify these values.

💡Methods

Methods are blocks of code that perform a specific task. In the video, a method is used to handle button clicks, demonstrating how to write a method that responds to user interactions in a Unity game. This introduces the concept of event-driven programming, where actions are triggered by user events.

💡Unity

Unity is a game development platform used to create video games. The video uses Unity as the environment for demonstrating C# programming concepts, showing how to integrate code with the Unity engine to create interactive game elements, such as buttons that trigger actions.

💡Casting

Casting is the process of converting a value from one data type to another. The video explains how to use casting to convert between different numeric types, such as from float to int, which is important when performing arithmetic operations that require specific data types.

💡Modulus Operator

The modulus operator returns the remainder of a division operation. In the video, it is used to demonstrate how to find the remainder after division, which is a concept that can be used in various game mechanics, such as determining the result of a dice roll or calculating scores.

💡Order of Operations

The order of operations, also known as PEMDAS (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction), dictates the sequence in which mathematical operations should be performed. The video emphasizes the importance of understanding this order to avoid errors in calculations, especially when writing complex expressions in code.

💡Codeco.com

Codeco.com is mentioned as a sponsor of the video and is described as a site for developers with resources for learning various development topics, including Unity and game development. This serves as an example of how educational content can be supported by sponsors that offer relevant resources to the audience.

Highlights

Introduction to operators in C# programming

Importance of celebrating small successes in learning to code

Explanation of the assignment operator for variables

Sponsorship message from cadeco.com for developer learning resources

Adding interactivity by creating a button in Unity

Creating a new script called 'my operators' in Unity

Responding to button presses with a method in C#

Updating the UI text in response to user interactions

Incrementing variables and shorthand operators in C#

Understanding the difference between postfix and prefix operators

Demonstration of integer division and the modulus operator

Concatenation of strings using the addition operator

Emphasizing the importance of order of operations in coding

Advice on writing clear and understandable code

Introduction to the cast operator for type conversion

Challenge: Creating a tip calculator program in Unity

Setting up a tip calculator with public fields for bill total and tip percentage

Calculating the total amount with tip and displaying it on the screen

Encouragement to celebrate completing the first program

Transcripts

this video is sponsored by cadeco.com

[Music]

hey what's up everyone vegetarian zombie

here from learn create play to walk you

through the world of operators

but before we talk code let's review

Where We Are

when you started this course you were

probably new to C sharp and possibly

unity in that time you created a small

script to print messages on the screen

you started getting comfortable with

your code editor and you learned about

variables and types that's a lot so give

yourself a pat on the back coding is

hard and it takes time this means you

should really celebrate the small

successes and be patient with yourself

when it takes you a while to understand

things

now as is you know how to create

variables you can create variables for

hit points and experience points yet

what happens when the player kills the

boss how do you increase the player's XP

or how do you increase their hip points

when they take damage

welcome to the world of operators

there's a whole bunch of them but I'll

just introduce you to some of the more

common operators to get started we will

start with the equal sign in math we use

the equal sign to denote equality in

programming it's known as the assignment

operator let's take the following

statement mathematically the statement

doesn't make much sense a variable can

never equal itself plus one

instead what is happening is that you

are incrementing X Plus 1 and then you

are assigning the result of that

increment back to X

there's a way to check for equality but

that will come in a later episode

for now let's play around with operators

but before I do here's a message from my

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okay we are going to start this demo by

adding a little interactivity to do this

we're going to add a button to our

project let's get started by opening

your project in progress

select the canvas game object in the

hierarchy and click the plus sign select

UI and then button text mesh Pro

good work now arrange the button so that

it is on the bottom of the screen

we're going to create a new script Now

call it my operators if you've been

following this course you should already

be familiar with creating Scripts

open up the script and update it to the

following

you've seen this before it lets us write

on the screen now let's write a little

code to respond to button presses

this is called a method we'll be

covering methods in later episodes The

key thing to note is all our code goes

between the curly braces return back to

the unity editor first select the text

and remove our Mad Lib script from it

simply find it in the inspector click

the three dots and select the remove

component option

next drag our my operator script to it

excellent now for the button

select the button and scroll down in the

inspector until you see the button

component

my button is named button one so I'm

just going to rename it for now

now look at the inspector at the very

bottom is something marked on click

click the plus sign beneath it

this provides some options don't worry

about what they do simply drag the text

game object to the bottom option

you'll see the drop down next to it

brighten up click the drop down then

find my operators

from the fly out menu select the display

message method

we've just told the button to call that

method when the user clicks on it that's

all I'm going to say about this right

now you are getting used to working with

unity's user interface from a very high

level you'll have to trust me on this we

want to focus on c-sharp and not get

lost in unity but we're doing lots of

important practice think of Danielson

from Karate Kid I'm thinking of the 80s

version I never saw the Remake when he

did all these monotonous chores when in

fact he was actually building the muscle

memory for his karate that's what we're

doing here

okay now Run the game and I use the word

game in the loosest of terms

and click the button

great we got a message on the screen

okay let's go back to our code

in our new method add the following

we've just created a new variable we

don't need a public or private modifier

inside a method you'll learn why in a

later episode now let's increase it by

10.

update the text

and Run the game

we get one thousand we've incremented

our variable you're going to do this a

lot so there is shorthand code for it

back in the code add the following

this is the same as the previous

statement it's just condensed we can

also subtract

multiply

or divide

there's nothing magical about the code

it's just shorthand to save you time now

if you want to increment just by one you

can use the postfix and prefix operators

here we've incremented the strength stat

by one

and here we get our strength increment

that's the prefix the post-fix also

increments the value

here's a brain teaser what will be

printed on the screen take a moment to

think about it now let's run it

look at that it's still 18.

now let's print out the strength

it's 19 now

let's take a look at what's happening

here our strength variable is set to 18.

then the value is assigned to the stat

variable

after the assignment the value is

increased by one by way of the

post-fixed operator

thus the post-fixed operator occurs

after any operation

let's take a look at this statement here

if strength was 18 in this case the stat

variable would then be 36.

after that multiplication and assignment

the strength variable would be

incremented to 19.

if you are confused welcome to the club

while the prefix operator is pretty easy

to grasp the post-fix operator can be

easily misunderstood there have been so

many bugs from misunderstanding their

applications that they were removed

entirely from the Swift programming

language yet they are in wide use in C

sharp so you need to know about them my

recommendation is to just use the plus

equals operator until avoid these

operators when starting out personally I

avoid them entirely

now let's play around with division take

this code

okay guess the result and yes this is a

trick question

when we run the code we get 2 not 2.5

this is because integers do not contain

any decimal information it's just plain

old numbers baby

any floating Point information is

dropped

now we have the modulus operator let's

change the division sign into the

following

When We Run the game we get one can you

guess what this operator does

it Returns the remainder of a division

operation 2 goes into 5 twice and

afterwards one is left over and that's

the result that the modulus operator

returns

the modulus operator is commonly used to

determine whether a number is even or

odd if the result is zero you know you

are working with an even number

so we've played with addition with

numbers but how about addition with

strings let's try it out

okay so what's going to print out on the

screen I asked pretending this isn't a

trick question but it totally is a trick

question let's run it

we get the name printed out but there is

no space between it we need to manually

add it update your code to the following

now one important thing to keep in mind

when working with operators is the order

of operations chances are you haven't

thought about it since school but it's

critical to your success you'll often

see images on social media declaring

only Geniuses can solve this when in

truth it's just an order of operations

question take this one

if you completely forgot about the order

of operations you may start on the left

hand side and work right

so in this case you might answer two

three minus 3 equals zero times six is

zero then plus two but that's the wrong

answer order of operation States

parentheses exponent division

multiplication addition and subtraction

so in this case we start with six times

three now there's no other

multiplication in division since

addition and subtraction are on the same

priority level it doesn't matter which

comes first so we can start left and go

right three minus 18 equals negative

fifteen plus two equals negative

thirteen we can write the same thing in

code

now let's run the game

and here's our result okay technically

that works but people sometimes forget

the order of operations and also it's

confusing at a glance opt for Simplicity

over complexity

whenever you find yourself getting too

clever with code remember that people

don't play games for the code they play

games to have fun now I might write a

problem like this

parentheses always goes first so use

parentheses to your advantage also don't

be afraid to break up complicated math

into separate statements

it might not look too Cody or hacker

Elite but again we're opting for

Simplicity by emphasizing Clarity your

code is easier for other people to

understand but more importantly it's

easier for you to understand trust me

and this happens to me all the time

months later you'll be reviewing your

own code and be pulling a Gandalf

impression this is why it's important

for yourself and others to write clear

code

lastly we have the cast operator this

converts types say you want to convert a

float to an INT you simply provide the

type you want to use in parentheses this

converts the integer 100 into a floating

Point number now if you try to convert a

larger type into a smaller type you're

going to lose data since a smaller type

can't hold all the information of a

larger type

the cast basically tells the compiler

that you accept the data loss

in this case we've converted a 32-bit

number into an 8-bit number

needless to say a lot of data was lost

okay that concludes operators but the

fun is just beginning for your challenge

I want you to create a tip calculator

create a public field that is a bill

total create another field that is a tip

percentage when the user presses the

button the total amount should be

displayed on the screen if you want to

take this to the next level create a new

script called tip calculator and make

sure to attach it to the text and

connect the button

and now as a hint this task requires

some casting pause the video now and try

it out

God

[Music]

you can't put out this fight

okay we're back and ready to create a

tip calculator believe it or not this is

your first actual program granted it's a

tiny one but it's a good first step okay

first I get started by creating a script

called tip calculator

I open the script set it up and add a

new method

I add it to our text

first I remove the my operator script

then I select the button in the

inspector I add the text back to the on

click event

from the drop down I select my object

and choose the calculate tip method

then I switch back

next I create two variables

okay here's where the magic happens

first we calculate the tip amount

variable by multiplying the amount

variable times the percentage variable

since the percentage variable is a float

we need to convert the amount variable

to a float as well as we can't multiply

a float with an integer next we

calculate the total amount we do this by

converting our tip amount variable to an

integer and adding the amount variable

and that's it switch back to Unity in

the tip calculator set the amount to

100.

now we get 120 as a total amount nice

work if you did something different but

it works no worries at all there's lots

of ways to do the same thing just make

sure to Pat yourself on the back and say

good job

in any case I hope you enjoyed this

episode if you did make sure to click

that like button and also if you want to

be notified about more c-sharp videos

make sure to subscribe and enable your

notifications I'll see you in the next

one