Beginner's help...

Unity Engine
1

Hey guys,

Looking for very general advice at this stage. Wanting to make my first 3D game.

I want to approach making a game from a different angle than most would. I’m most interested in design and story, and want to focus on creating a sense of immersion. My game plan is to create a small setting where a cast of characters will reside, the player will play free-roam/sandbox style.

I want to make sure I’m not being too ambitious before I begin. I do have training in Maya (modelling and animation), so that should help with the learning curve. Would a map of, say, 15-20 buildings and a cast of 30 characters, be complete-able for someone with time on their hands?

How user friendly is the scripting in Unity. Never scripted before. I’m envisioning my characters mulling about their town, following paths, stopping when passing things of interest, interacting with each other…will I be able to pull that off?

Also, what kind of physics are achievable? I’d like to have most objects movable, bump-able.

…Okay, as you can see, I’m a little scattered. I was thinking I would begin by creating the beginnings of a map, and a character to move around through it, and start expanding from there. What info would be essential at this point? What tutorials would be most recommended? I’d like to avoid any major screw ups as far as importing and incompatibilities…where I tend to get confused.

2

If you’re new to scripting, I would STRONGLY recommend that you do a very small but complete game. Something like a puzzle game, rubiks cube or tetris clone. There’s a lot to scripting and what you want to do seems like a big chunk of work involving different systems all working together.

The docs are a good intro to scripting.

3

I am guessing by your moniker that you are 31 years old and have been around the block a few times in Maya, possibly even some commercial work if you are formally trained in it. Imagine if someone walked up to you and stated they wanted to create this utterly awesome 3D movie using all of the latest dazzling stuff, with a swathe of characters, each individually modeled, and the movie was to show them carrying out their lives in a village. But this chap who is stating he wants to do this, he has no training in Maya or any 3D package, has never modeled anything in his entire life in fact. You would be thinking “Yeah, okay, like that will ever happen.” You’d gently advise him, “Why not start smaller, perhaps with a few hard surface objects, get used to working with Maya and then move on to a single character and rig and animate that.”

I won’t dismiss you out of hand because you are actually capable of forming a complete English sentence and don’t come across as an overly-ambitious fourteen year old. Yes, with enough time on your hands, anyone of capability should be able to get to grips with Unity and start creating a decent virtual world. As you are a Maya user, and probably artistically inclined, I am sure it will look pretty awesome from the get-go. But what I think you will find is you tying yourself up in logistical knots if you have no experience programming or scripting before now.

My recommendation, and as a guessed at 31 yr old person you might take it to heart more than someone half your age, and I am not saying this to discourage you, I say “start smaller. Way smaller.” Don’t try and build your magnum opus straight out of the door. It’ll still be there when you are ready. Don’t pick the 7th dan black belt as your sparring partner on your first day at the dojo. You won’t learn anything other than how to make yourself frustrated.

With regards the characters following paths, going about their business, yes, it’s doable, but you are picked something that is reasonably hard to do. Sure, there are drop-in plugins and add-ons for Unity that will do lots of the hard stuff for you. Unity is a great little tool, it makes the easy things easier, but the hard things are just as hard as they ever were.

I’ve done 33 years of commercial software development shipping computer and video games and some of the proposed projects posted on the Unity forums I would hesitate to tackle with a professional team.

Your proposal is plausible, but I would recommend against taking it on as your first project.

4

Zyxil, thanks! Good advice, already brainstorming ways of turning a single aspect of my idea into a mini game. Will check out the docs.

Justin, thanks for the candid reply. That’s what I was looking or. You’re right, I should try at least a few shorter projects first. As I said above, I’ll try making small games that will have reusable aspects for my larger idea. That will give me the chance to screw up a few times and learn the hard way. Always happens in the beginning…

I’m thinking of trying a simply driving game with a twist. It would include my main character model, walk animated, a car with physics, and a mini game script involving exiting the car and carrying objects around…simple enough for a first go?

Before I start modelling, can you recommend any particularly good tutorials for game modelling? Particular tips for Unity? I have been mulling through google; found some good stuff, but would be happy with suggestions.

Good guess on the age! Oh, to be 31 and only able to find part time work. I guess I should be happy with anything. Hence the free time, may as well use it to learn something new.

EDIT: Wanted to add, any drag-and-drop visual scripting plug-ins available for Unity? I actually did use Adventure Game Studio back in the day. I used a simple visual script, I found that easy to understand.

5

hehe, yea, me too here :slight_smile: i’m new to unity and gpp, and i was at first tempted to learn to program some AI and just let these guys interact with each other in “interesting ways”. it’s… doable but… very complicated in fact, compared to simple waypoint-based AI, or turrets that only have to detect you and shoot :wink:
so yeah, the idea of creating a living, breathing, immersive world… is something we all hope for, but the reality is that intelligent AIs that can do more than just walk around and shoot on detection… are hard to script and expensive to compute (from what I’ve seen in my extremely limited experience with AIs.)

6

Chris Crawford many years ago has done some interesting work in various social chatter sandbox like games. As Chris is a long-time (25+ years) game designer and game developer that has created several seminal works in this area and others, you may want to read up on his various ideas and snag some of his books, a review of “Chris Crawford on Game Design” you can find on the links at the bottom of this post. Erasmatron AKA Storytron was used in the development of various ideas for “people games.” It is worth looking in to if are interested in pursuing your initial idea of multiple characters interacting. However, be warned, the solutions are often brittle and you are effectively developing a chaotic system that can quickly exceed the inherent complexity limitation of even the most seasoned game designers and developers.

There a couple of drag drop scripting systems, check the asset store. I cannot recommend any of them because I don’t use them, other people may be able to shed some light on which ones are good. Make sure you take the recommendation from someone who has actually produced something with the tool, not someone who just says “this ones good” based on the fact they liked the pretty boxes and lines they could draw.

http://www.otakunozoku.com/chris-crawford-on-game-design/