I was browsing through the asset store and notice there are full game templates out there. What are your thoughts on them?
I would say I am still learning and would it be a good way to see how these games are made? I am pretty tired of tutorials at this point and feel it can only take you so far.
I’ll assume you’re a beginner, given that you’ve said “still learning”
A much better idea would be to try to make something by yourself without a tutorial. For example, a clone of classic arcade game. Program by yourself, then you’ll learn something.
That’s because a “template” might not be a good learning material. It could be made simply or it could be more complex than what you can handle at your level. Although it is possible that templates with exceptionally well documented code exist. Those could be more useful.
Thanks for the reply and feedback. I’ve tried to learn Unity awhile back and then dropped off as I focused more on web development. Now, I really want to get back into it.
I have a few projects in the works, but seems to be bigger than what I can accomplish at the moment. I think I’ll start focusing on more simple games such as asteroid or brick breaker.
While that’s a fair assumption to make, I’m well over two decades in with plenty of professional experience in there and am also “still learning”. I wouldn’t trust anyone who isn’t!
It’s going to vary wildly from asset to asset. Some stuff is great. Other stuff… isn’t.
Yes, you can pick up stuff from them. What you can’t do is assume that the solutions you’re seeing are good solutions, so at the very least you’ll need to evaluate them for yourself.
The absolute honest truth is that it really depends much more on how you learn than the method specifically. People learn differently. I tend to learn much better by taking working things apart. Others learn better from documents than videos and some are quite adept at taking in lessons from video content. Try to recall what learning method has been most effective for you in past, then maybe try that for games/unity.
This super important, not just for projects, but for videos and other learning content. I would recommend just sticking to Unity official stuff at first, and once you get your footing a bit better, seek out other trusted resources.
This is great feedback. I was hoping all assets would be well documented an easy to follow, but sounds like it’s similar to web that not everyone follows the same standard and can vary.
Yeah, I’ve been doing all the Unity Learning tutorials and just seeing what else is out there.
I usually try to read the Unity documentation first on certain methods, but feel I get even more confused just by reading it and have to google to see how it’s being used to really understand it.
Yeah in both editors Unreal & Unity you must be careful of these so called full game templates, in most cases they are cheesy quick jobs that you’ll need to completely rebuild for one reason or another. I would stick to controllers for certain types of games rather than a whole framework for a few reasons.
I haven’t found a good template yet i could just create off like you would modify an already complete game, See even if you bought a full template to say one of the Bethesda games like Skyrim or Fallout it wouldn’t be the same by the time you shipped the product due to the changes you would make on the template, so even tho it started out as one thing you may have added completely new functions and options to make it entirely different to the original template, for that you still need extensive knowledge of that particular program itself and how to add new changes that effect & alter the entire code of the original structure.
The purpose of full game templates is or at least should be that you dissect them an then learn from them. It can be hard to judge which ones are good however. Think if I’d want to go for that approach, I’d more likely do it with an open source project from Github since that has been “publicly reviewed”.
If you want to actually kickstart your game project (at slight cost of some flexibility), don’t look for a template asset - look for a framework asset. There are ones with many dozens of good reviews for RPGs, FPS and for Jump’n’Run platformers. If possible, make sure it’s one that is still being maintained by the dev.