How we are using Unity for our 4th game. The 3rd party tools we use and how we lay out our projects. Bring your game vision to life with Unity’s ecosystem of powerful creator tools, support, and engine agnostic Operate Solutions to keep players engaged. Visual Studio brings a premium debugging experience to the Unity game engine. Identify issues quickly by debugging your Unity games in Visual Studio—set breakpoints.
-->Overview
Visual Studio Tools for Unity is a free Visual Studio extension that turns Visual Studio into a powerful tool for developing cross-platform games and apps with Unity.
While the Unity editor is great for putting your game world together, you can't write your code in it. With Visual Studio Tools for Unity, you can use the familiar code editing, debugging and productivity features of Visual Studio to create editor and game scripts for your Unity project using C#, and you can debug them using Visual Studio's powerful debugging capabilities.
But Visual Studio Tools for Unity is more than that; it also has deep integration with Unity editor so that you'll spend less time switching back and forth to do simple tasks, provides Unity-specific productivity enhancements, and puts the Unity documentation at your fingertips.
Compatible with Visual Studio Community on Windows and macOS and bundled with Unity
Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac Community is available for free, and is bundled with Unity installs. Visit the Visual Studio Tools for Unity getting started documentation for more information about installation and setup.
IntelliSense for Unity messages
IntelliSense code-completion makes it fast and easy to implement Unity API messages like OnCollisionEnter, including their parameters.
Superior debugging
Visual Studio Tools for Unity supports the robust debugging features that you expect from Visual Studio:
- Set breakpoints, including conditional breakpoints.
- Evaluate complex expressions in the Watch window.
- Inspect and modify the value of variables and arguments.
- Drill down into complex objects and data structures.
Integrated suggestions for best practices and performance insights
Write better code that captures the best practices with Visual Studio's deep understanding of Unity projects.
CodeLens support for Unity scripts and messages
Unity scripts and message functions are decorated with hints to make it easier to recognize what's provided by Unity and what's your code.
Note
CodeLens support is available in Visual Studio 2019.
Optimized view of all your scripts to match Unity
The Unity Project Explorer (UPE) is an alternative way to view you project files over the standard Solution Explorer. The UPE filters the files shown and presents them in a hierarchy that matches Unity (View > Unity Project Explorer in Visual Studio 2019).
Note
The Unity Project Explorer is available in Visual Studio 2019. In Visual Studio for Mac, the Solution Pad has similar behaviour by default for Unity projects - no additional views are required.
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This guide assumes you already have installed Unity using the Unity Hub program. If you are new to Unity, we recommend visiting Unity Learn and complete the Unity Essentials learning path first.
Install Unity support for Visual Studio
Visual Studio Tools for Unity is a free extension that provides support for writing and debugging C# and more. Visit the Tools for Unity overview for a complete list of what the extensions includes.
Note
This installation guide is for Visual Studio. If you're using Visual Studio Code, please visit the Unity Development with VS Code documentation.
Download the Visual Studio installer, or run it if already installed.
Click Modify (if already installed) or Install (for new installations) for your desired version of Visual Studio.
On the Workloads tab, scroll to the Gaming section and select the Game development with Unity workload.
Note
This installation guide is for Visual Studio for Mac. If you're using Visual Studio Code, please visit the Unity Development with VS Code documentation.
Tools for Unity is included with the installation of Visual Studio for Mac and no separate installation steps are required. You can verify this in the Visual Studio for Mac > Extensions > Game Development menu. Visual Studio for Mac Tools for Unity should be enabled.
Check for updates
It's recommended to keep Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac updated so you have the latest bug fixes, features, and Unity support. This doesn't require an update of Unity versions.
Click the Help > Check for Updates menu.
If there is an update available, the Visual Studio Installer will show a new version. Click the Update button.
- Click the Visual Studio for Mac > Check for Updates... menu to open the Visual Studio Update dialog.
- If there is an update available, click the Install button.
Unityvs.com
Configure Unity to use Visual Studio
Http://unityvs.com
By default, Unity should already be configured to use Visual Studio or Visual Studio for Mac as a script editor. You can confirm this or change the external script editor to a specific version of Visual Studio from the Unity Editor.
In the Unity Editor, select the Edit > Preferences menu..
Select the External Tools tab on the left.
The External Script Editor dropdown list provides a way to choose different installations of Visual Studio. You can also click Browse... from the dropdown list to add an unlisted version.
If Browse... was selected, navigate to the Common7/IDE directory inside your Visual Studio installation directory and select devenv.exe. Then, click Open.
Once Visual Studio is selected in the External Script Editor list, confirm that the Editor Attaching checkbox is selected.
Close the Preferences dialog to complete the configuration process.
Unityvs Tools
In the Unity Editor, select the Unity > Preferences menu..
Select the External Tools tab on the left.
The External Script Editor dropdown list provides a way to choose different installations of Visual Studio. You can also click Browse... from the dropdown list to add an unlisted version.
Close the Preferences dialog to complete the configuration process.
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Next steps
To learn how to work with and debug your Unity project in Visual Studio, visit Using Visual Studio Tools for Unity.