Unit 9 — Data & Systems
The big ideas Unity cannot teach alone: how numbers live in bits, how files are data, how datasets lie and tell the truth, and how the internet and encryption actually work — each tied back to the game you built.
Lessons
| ID | Title | What you build / learn |
|---|---|---|
| 9.1 | Binary: How Numbers Live in Memory | bits, powers of two, int overflow in your own game |
| 9.2 | Hex, RGB & Data Abstraction | colors as four bytes; palettes as data classes |
| 9.3 | Compression: Lossy vs Lossless | RLE by hand; why sprites demand PNG |
| 9.4 | Your Scene Is Data: Metadata & Files | scenes are YAML; guids; serialization both ways |
| 9.5 | Datasets: Insights from Playtest Data | playtests.csv — cross-column questions, aggregates |
| 9.6 | Bias, Filtering & Fair Data | sampling bias in your own playtest pool; scoped claims |
| 9.7 | Computer Systems: What Runs Your Game | CPU/GPU/RAM/storage and the 16.67 ms frame budget |
| 9.8 | The Internet: Packets, Routing & DNS | your git push, packet by packet |
| 9.9 | Encryption: Keys, TLS & Public Key | the padlock icon, narrated |
| 9.10 | Impact, Ethics & Licenses (Your Fork!) | MIT vs GPL, attribution, the digital divide |
Concepts this unit owns
This unit carries the DAT-1/DAT-2 and CSN-1/CSN-2 topic families and half of IOC-1 — the material the MC section drills hardest, taught through your own project. CED: DAT-1, DAT-2, CSN-1, CSN-2, IOC-1.
Reference docs in this unit
- Binary & Hex — the full reference with conversion tables
- The Internet — packets, routing, DNS, TCP vs UDP
- Encryption — symmetric, asymmetric, TLS, hashing