Guide B — Shared Reference

The parts that appear in more than one game, written once. Your own guide will point you here.

B1. The standard player prefab (2D platformer)

Eleven of the seventeen games use this. Build it once, save it as a prefab, and your guide will tell you what to add on top.

Build it

1. GameObject → Create Empty, name it Player.
2. Set its Tag to Player (dropdown at the top of the Inspector). This is the most important single step in the whole build — 29 scripts look for it.
3. Add a Sprite Renderer and drop in your character sprite. No art yet? Use one of Unity's built-in sprites (Add Component → Sprite Renderer, then click the circle next to Sprite and pick Square), and colour it something obvious.
4. Add these components:

5. Right-click Player → Create Empty, name it GroundCheck. Move it to the very bottom of the sprite — just at the feet, not below them.
6. Select Player again. In PlayerController2D:
   • Ground Check → drag the GroundCheck child in
   • Ground Layer → tick Ground (and nothing else)
7. Drag Player from the Hierarchy into Assets/MyGame/Prefabs/.

PlayerController2D — the fields worth knowing

Coyote time and jump buffering are why the controls feel good. They let you jump a fraction of a second after walking off a ledge, and let a jump pressed slightly early still work when you land. Players never notice them working; they very much notice them missing. Leave them alone until you've played the game.

B2. The scene manager objects

These are plain empty GameObjects with one script each. Make them once per scene.

AudioManager and SceneLoader survive scene loads. Put them in your first scene only. If you put them in every scene you'll get duplicates — harmless, they delete themselves, but confusing in the Hierarchy.

Sounds

On AudioManager, expand Named Sounds and add an entry per sound. Each has a Name (what scripts ask for) and a Clip. Common names across the kit:

jump · land · hit · collect · death · door_open · door_locked · level_complete

No audio yet? Skip it. Every sound call is optional — a missing sound is silence, not an error.

B3. The camera (Cinemachine)

1. GameObject → Cinemachine → 2D Camera. This adds a CinemachineBrain to your Main Camera and creates a CinemachineCamera object.
2. Select the new CinemachineCamera and Add Component → CameraTargetAssigner. Leave Target empty — it finds the Player tag on Start.
3. On the Position Composer, good starting values for a platformer:

Stopping the camera at the level edge

1. Add CinemachineConfiner2D to the CinemachineCamera.
2. GameObject → Create Empty, name it CameraBounds. Add a Polygon Collider 2D, tick Is Trigger, and edit its points to outline your level.
3. Drag CameraBounds into the confiner's Bounding Shape 2D.

A static camera

Some games (a single-screen maze, an arena) don't want any of this. Just don't add CameraTargetAssigner and leave Follow empty.

B4. The standard enemy prefab

1. Empty GameObject, name it, Tag → Enemy.
2. Sprite Renderer + your enemy sprite.
3. Components:

4. Two empty children: WallCheck (in front, at chest height) and LedgeCheck (in front, just below the feet). Drag both into EnemyPatrol. Set Ground Layer → Ground.
5. A child called Hurtbox: Box Collider 2D with Is Trigger ✓, plus a Hurtbox component with Team = Enemy. Set the child's Layer to Hurtbox.
6. A child called BodyHitbox: trigger collider + Hitbox component, Target Team = Player, Damage 1, Repeat Delay 1. Layer → Hitbox. Leave this one enabled — it's touch damage, not a swing.

Hurtbox = where I can be hit. Hitbox = what hurts you. Every fighting thing in the kit has one of each. The Hitbox/Hurtbox layers only collide with each other (the setup tool did that), which stops attack boxes snagging on walls.

B5. The twelve wirings

These are UnityEvent connections you make by hand in the Inspector. Your guide lists the ones you need; this is the full set for reference.

B6. Animator parameters

Only add the ones your character actually uses. Every script checks whether a parameter exists and skips it silently if not — so a missing parameter means "no animation," never an error.

Minimum viable animator

Two states, one parameter:

[Idle] ── Speed > 0.1 ──▶ [Walk] ── Speed < 0.1 ──▶ [Idle]

On both transitions, untick "Has Exit Time" and set Transition Duration to 0. This is the single most important animator setting in the kit. Left on, Unity waits for the current animation to finish before switching, and your character feels a quarter-second late to everything.

Add Jump and Fall when you're ready:

B7. Things that don't need an Animator

Worth knowing before you spend an afternoon: most animated objects in these games are animated by code. Spinning saws rotate themselves. Crushers move themselves. Spikes pop up by themselves. Collectibles bob by themselves. Doors slide by themselves.

You only need an Animator for characters — the player, enemies, a pet. Everything else in your hazard and level list is already moving.