Learn how to make Games: Unity and Playmaker (Part 5)- Let's add Graphics and Particle Effects

In this intro to game design tutorial, I'll be going over how to start adding graphics to our game and to also use particle effects. How to Make a Video Game With Unity3D and Playmaker Series: Part 1: Introduction to Unity3D - https://youtu.be/loCS3NtySaU Part 2: Installing and Using Playmaker - ht

Part 5 of the series is where the space shooter starts looking like a game: a hand-drawn starfield scrolling in parallax behind the ship, and a particle exhaust that makes the rocket feel like it's actually flying. Here's the full pipeline from Photoshop to Playmaker.

Step 1 — Paint the starfield

Create a 1920 x 1080 canvas at 72 ppi (any paint tool works — Photoshop, MS Paint, free alternatives). Work over a black layer so you can see what you're drawing, then scatter stars with a pencil brush at varying sizes and no pattern. Two details matter: keep stars away from the edges, because this texture will tile and a star cut by the border breaks the loop; and vary the star colors — lock the layer transparency and tint a few pink or blue, like real stars. Add a gentle Outer Glow layer effect, make the background transparent, and save a PNG into your Sprites folder (keep the .psd outside the game folder in its own directory).

Step 2 — Material, quad, and light

In Unity, create a Materials folder and a new material named background stars. Drag the PNG into its Albedo slot and switch render mode from Opaque to Transparent. Create a 3D Quad scaled to 19.2 x 10.8 to match the image's proportions, and drag the material onto its Mesh Renderer. Because a quad is a lit 3D object, you'll also need a Directional Light angled until the stars read clearly. One more crucial setting: select the star sprite and change its Wrap Mode from Clamp to Repeat, so the texture tiles seamlessly when it scrolls.

Step 3 — Scroll the texture with Playmaker

Add an FSM to the quad with a state named background move holding two actions. Float Add accumulates a movement variable every frame — set it to per second, or the scroll runs absurdly fast (0.1 per second ends up right after starting at 0.4). Set Texture Offset then applies that variable to the material's Y offset every frame, wrapping the texture downward forever.

Step 4 — Parallax with a duplicate

Duplicate the quad. The copy keeps its own FSM, so set its speed to 0.2 — twice the original. Distant things move slowly and near things move fast (think mountains versus highway signs from a car window), and two layers at different speeds is all it takes to fake that depth. Flip the duplicate by scaling X from 19.2 to -19.2 so the same star pattern doesn't visibly double up.

Step 5 — Rocket exhaust particles

Right-click the rocket and add a particle system as a child. Enable looping and Prewarm (so exhaust exists at frame one), rotate the transform 90 degrees to aim the cone down, and tighten the cone's angle and scale to about 0.1. Then randomize nearly everything with Random Between Two Constants: lifetime around 0.4-0.7 seconds, start size roughly 0.1-0.2, start speed 0.8-1.5, and emission pushed up to about 400. Start color goes Random Between Two Colors (orange to red-orange), and Color Over Lifetime fades the tail end of each particle's alpha to zero so they dissolve instead of popping. Last fix: the quads render in front of the ship and dull it, so push their Z position back slightly. Hit play — the rocket flies.