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Unity API or more?
Hello, I'm tying to get familiar with Unity API classes, methods, and I was wondering if that Library is the only one there is. Are the classes and stuff described in Resourses> Script Refernse all there is? What is Mono and MSDN and .NET framework. Are they extended libraries? Are they cross-platform? Are they Libraries that also can be used in Unity scripting?
Also, is there a book (not online) to learn the in's and out's of the whole Unity API?
Answer by dannyskim · May 08, 2012 at 08:30 AM
The Unity Script Reference does a pretty good job of covering almost everything that the Unity Engine has to offer. To clarify:
Mono is the cross platform and open sourced implementation of Microsoft's language C# and the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which is binary compatible with Microsoft's .NET framework.
MSDN is the Microsoft Developer Network.
.NET is a Microsoft Development framework. C# is the language that you write in for it.
So in essence, Mono can be thought of as the cross-platform .NET, making them pretty much the same in laymen's terms ( but, by definition, they aren't as I just explained ).
No they are not extended libraries. If anything, the Unity Engine and framework is the "extended library" built on top of .NET. Since this is the case, yes you can use .NET's namespaces and classes inside of a Unity project. Take for example, when you see:
using System;
or
using System.Collections;
these are .NET namespaces that are used in conjunction with Unity. As a note, Unity's implementation of the Mono stack is a subset, so you don't have full accessibility to all the features that .NET has to offer, but for most cases, the subset provided to you will more than suffice.
As far as further explaining, I'm not up to the task. Every single part of your post could have been easily answered by Googling what is .
Indeed, except C# is one of several languages, not "the" language (which applies both outside and inside Unity).
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