1.11.2 ▶

1.1 — Launch: Fork, Clone & Press Play

Today you get the world you will bring to life this semester. The sprites are drawn, the tilemaps are laid out, and your character already breathes an idle animation. Press Play and hold a direction key, though, and nothing happens: every script in the project is a shell with blank methods in it, and filling them in is the work of the year.

In the Editor~25 min

GitHub → open the cs-curriculum-main link your teacher posts in Canvas, sign in, and click Fork (top right). A fork is a copy of the repo that belongs to you — commits go to your copy, so you cannot break the original.
GitHub → green Code button, copy the HTTPS URL. Then GitHub Desktop → File → Clone Repository → URL tab → paste it → Clone.
Unity Hub → Add → pick the cloned cs-curriculum-main folder and open it. The first open takes a while — Unity is importing every sprite and sound in the project.
Project window → Assets/_Scenes. Three scenes, already wired to load one another: Start (the title screen), Overworld (where you play) and Platformer (the cave).
Hierarchy → open Overworld and select the Player. Scene view → that is your character, standing in the middle of the map.
Game view → press Play and hold WASD or the arrow keys. The idle animation plays and the character does not move an inch — everything you can see is drawn, and nothing is wired up.
GitHub Desktop → commit with the message "1.1: cloned the starter", then push. Every class this year ends here, and your commit history becomes the record of what you built.

In the Code~15 min

No code to write today. Go and read the tree you just forked — that third column is what you are starting from.

Folder	What lives there	Current state
`Assets/Scripts`	PlayerController, EnemyController, TurretController, Projectile, StatManager, Lever	Shells. One line of behaviour in the whole folder: PlayerController switches the walking animation on once, at the start. Nothing in the project reacts to anything.
`Assets/Scripts/Package Scripts`	CameraController, SceneSwitch, TopDown_EnemyAnimator	The only working code you inherit. The camera follows you and a cave door loads a scene. That is all of it.
`Assets/Prefabs`	Player, Coin, Spikes, MobileEnemy, Turret, AxeItem, Switch	Pictures with tags. No physics, no behaviour.
`Assets/_Scenes`	`Start` (title screen), `Overworld`, `Platformer`	Built, saved, and wired to load each other.
`Assets/Artwork`	Top-down tiles, cave tilesets, characters, weapons	Finished art, ready to use.

Socratic

Your character plays an idle animation without a single line of your code. Who or what is driving that animation right now?Your answer
Why is building a game system yourself from documentation more useful for learning computer science than reading a finished project and answering questions about what each line does?Your answer
Every script you just forked is a class with blank methods. What does that tell you about the difference between a file that exists and a program that runs?Your answer

Checkpoint — before moving on, you must be able to:

Explain the difference between a fork and a clone
Open the Overworld scene in Unity and enter Play mode
Say what your character does on Play, and confirm it cannot move yet
Find Assets/Scripts/PlayerController.cs in the Project window, and say what it currently does
Commit and push your work to your own GitHub repository

Reference Docs

Need a deeper explanation? These pages cover the foundational tools:

Unit 1: Setup & Movement — the editor tour, scripts, input, and vectors
Unity + C# Quick Reference — every API this course uses

Next: 1.2 — The Unity Editor Tour, where you learn to read the tool that runs all of this.

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