I’m new to C# and going through a few video tutorials.
What’s bugging me is some concepts are explained well but are explained so abstractly that I can’t see how I would use them so lose interest etc… etc…
Did anyone else have this problem?
I could give examples but I don’t need explanations, just wondering if anyone ran into the same hurdles while learning.
For me this seems to be a issue with a lot of free YouTube tutorials they will give you a explanation of say cases, give you a simple example of how to use them and I’m left wondering great but you already showed me a conditional statement… Then he will go on to show like 4 other conditional statements. Am I expected to remember all of them?
I don’t think I explained it well so another example is he will explain Enums and Arrays then never give a practicable example of when to use them.
My thinking is I should just plow on until I actually run into them again and see how they are used in a meaningful way not in a short code snippet of a console i/o program.
PS.
Just read this and its a bit of a mess… went on a bit of a tangent…
Basically my question is Did you master all the basic c# syntax before creating games or did you just learn what felt relevant then come back to bits when needed…
If you’re new to programming, you should just be patient and have fun. Think about the wonder of even those little console I/O programs! Here is a machine that, if you think clearly and speak its language, will do your bidding. That’s pretty freaking awesome, even if all you’re currently bidding it to do is sum up the numbers in an array or whatever.
When your mind starts to wander, switch to something else. Do some Unity tutorials; those have more flash and bang and may hold your interest for a while longer. At some point you will run into code you don’t understand; then switch back to the code tutorials, now motivated by whatever was troubling you in the game. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually things will begin to click into place, and you’ll see how to use these things in your own work. Picture it like building a house. You’ll have tutorials that jump right into house-building, which is good fun, except you can’t understand all the fancy tools they’re using and the terminology around them. Then you have tutorials that show you how to use a hammer, a circular saw, a planer, a router, etc. You learn a lot of important stuff from these, even if you don’t understand why you would ever need them. Then start trying to build your own house… and you’ll quickly discover where those tools come in really handy!
Practice what you learn. Try to make a new modifications or merge 2 topics together, and see if you get it work. That will help you to absorb what you’ve learned. Sometimes, I can imagine, if you read (or watch) a lot, without doing, or practicing it, you can get overwhelmed at the intake of information without application.
Writing small console applications can be a good way to go over what you learn for C#, without the need for Unity.
The more people I work with, I get the idea that 90% of the time people hold themselves back because they are afraid of screwing up and feeling like an idiot.
No, nobody except a genius is going to get it all in one go. You’ve got to start practicing. That’s the only way to start really learning. Just don’t be reluctant to totally screw things up.
for me, it’s all 80-20… I spent 80% of my time using only 20% of the tool… be it Maya, Photoshop, etc (so I end up only knowing what I need to know… for instacnce… since I made art for games, I’ve never used Maya’s rendering and raytracing stuff, since I didn’t use it)
It’s like kung fu, you learn to punch and kick. Practgice them for weeks, then you get a new belt and learn a block and a kick, then another belt
Honestly I did some basic engineering courses and have done a little bit in various areas for making circuits or cutting/welding things, so measurements and applications are grown with using them.
I am finding it useful to do 2 things as I am new to coding, but finding it is best to do a tiny amount of actual game design and learning of Unity menu’s etc, and use a C# book for visual studio or similar/ and when i’m stuck I go through brackeys C# like today, also did a few of Charger games C#, but brackeys fits the book better or my thinking better
Just go over the same subject with a different person in not too difficult tutorials and it may give you more idea’s on the uses because each person may use them for different purposes. But a tutorial on Unity application of “Raycasts” or other etc, is useful too.
Put it this way, last week I couldn’t understand Console.WriteLine, this week i’m finding it difficult to understand how to effectively use Switch/return/ but I’ll plug on into book or youtube etc. Tv + lappy is best for me.
Don’t wait until you master anything before trying it in practice. Just start making some small projects - like real small - and see how you can apply things you’re learning. When you’re done with that little project you can just shelf it and move on to the next thing where you’ll have a refined understanding of the things you applied.
I only found a couple of those useful, roll-a-ball, I finished, but the others had errors/flaws because of out of date videos or missing /new tech alterations or different menus etc. Couldn’t get the space shooter collider to be visible in mesh collider. Couldn’t get Roguelike even barely started before i had , i think it was camera issues and had to go through menu’s to change the view + more etc. Think they should re-visit these tutorials using unity 5 to get the bugs out. I find if you can find block/ball based game tutorials like brackeys etc, it progresses a lot quicker than messing with glitches of someone else’s items. Though I’m using unity 5 so others may not have had an issue previously etc. I haven’t found many decent no-error/flaw game making tutorials that are not 30 videos long etc, would be nice. Hopefully i’ll find some for arrays, switch, raycast, but simple not full mmorpg or fps etc
Put it this way, if I can make a better video tutorial than the engine tutorial creators for beginners, for the same subject in another month or two of using unity on that tutorial subject, i’m sure someone is being unhelpful somewhere or has just forgotten something. If I have to learn how to troubleshoot the easiest tutorials in a medium tutorial level error finding way, what chance is there for learning this stuff in the next 10 years trying to fix tutorial bugs. How many people will give up before then out of thinking they’re stupid and not knowing it’s the tutorial & not them? Not nice for people, especially young impressionable people. Though yes error finding/solving is part of game development,but most often it’s something that takes more programming knowledge, that I haven’t got, mainly because I can find my errors, mostly, but not errors I know nothing about because I haven’t learned the information as it is not covered etc. I get your point though. I am trying to find the errors, just don’t have the skill yet
Well what? I’m not working for unity. I’m busy learning C# and don’t have the program or processing power to run the recording and tutorial of unity at the same time. I also don’t have permission and would probably get sued for using the unity engine in a video for copyright issues. I live in the UK, everything is not allowed. Also, uploading videos to youtube takes ages compared to streaming for learning.
Maybe when all these bases are covered, then I’d put a tutorial up, but i’m currently using a laptop without much power. Gonna be a while before I splash out on a big powerful Desktop so I wouldn’t hold your breathe. Also, i’m trying to avoid certain games /fps and others and don’t need the hassle of people asking for tutorials I don’t want to do (in the future if able to etc). It takes too many hours and days to do when i’ve got learning to do.
But, someone who works for Unity who gets paid for this stuff and has a super expensive computer and lightspeed broadband should sort this out in a few hours, why are beginners dealing with this? Seems rediculous that every new unity engine doesn’t have a reboot of tutorials as required (as they do at present even in small ways). But it doesn’t matter, just have to go the long way round I suppose, until things get / if they get, updated.
You don’t need permissions to make a video recording of a program. If Unity were to try to put a stop to it they would only end up hurting themselves because they would be eliminating a large source of learning materials.
Because there are no easy solutions that will completely eliminate incompatibilities between the engine and the learning materials. Definitely nothing that could be completed in a few hours and nothing that would be permenant. Unity simply evolves far too quickly.
This is why professionals will stick with a specific release of an engine for the life of the game and only upgrade if they feel the benefits outweight the time and effort it would take to update their game to the newer release and fix the bugs it introduces.
My recommendation if you can’t stand it is to grab multiple releases of Unity and use the one each tutorial was made for.
I completed almost all of the Unity tutorials, and I have absolutely zero computer-anything background. And, believe me, I’m not that smart compared to most people interested in programming.
Instead of getting upset and complaining, start thinking. It’s not Unity’s job to dish out flawless tutorials for their free software so that impatient learners don’t have any inconveniences. And just what is griping on the community forum going to accomplish? Nothing. You have to start thinking not, “Oh, all these obstacles in my way”, and start thinking, “My goal is this, and I’ll continue solving whatever problems arise to get to my goal.” There is no time to be wasted!
Guys we are talking about tutorials; “ENRTY LEVEL”!
If a person knows how to troubleshoot a tutorial that person do not need that tutorial.
I am a beginner. I am learning most things through youtube videos and I do not even touch tutorials. Last year I tried that and after working hard and going nowhere with tutorials I quit! It took nearly a year to start again.
Tutorials have the purpose of letting new users to adapt a software. They gives a momentum for start so people will get encouraged to continue using that program and learn it. When people fail at tutorials they will think that they are not capable of anything.
And yes; Unity might be free but not so free. They earn from people who buy licences and they get their share from asset sales. More WORKING tutorials are more people using Unity; more people using Unity more money. So please do not act like Unity gives everything free like a humanitarian aid. Yes, releasing tutorials are their job too. At least if they want more people to use Unity.
Every tutorial is marked with the release of Unity that it was last tested against. A tutorial that teaches you to download the appropriate release for the tutorial might be beneficial but there are only so many things you can make tutorials for before it’s time to wonder if it’s not just the user.
Game development is a very challenging task. Very few people are truly naturals at it. Most of us had to work very hard to reach the point we’re at now and we had to be very passionate to do that. It’s completely understandable if you find that you simply weren’t enjoying it.
My recommendation if you still want to become a developer is to determine the aspect (art, programming, music, etc) you most enjoy and focus solely on that. Once you’ve gone beyond the beginner stages with that you might find picking up Unity to be easier. This was the approach I took (by learning C# before learning Unity).
True, every version of unity could be downloaded and used for each tutorial, but a beginner who needs to do that will just go to gamemaker studio or godot or something else that doesn’t have that issue. A beginner would see that and think “why bother with all this release nonsense, other engines for 2d don’t have this issue? i’ll use that instead, unity tutorials are messed up anyway!”. That’s what most people think like. Or they just use someone elses youtube lessons. And to someone else saying why am I griping here,I wasn’t,I was just commenting that advising unity tutorials for a beginner is a bad idea, that someone advised…And yes I already use brackey’s, but the tutorials are quite long (28 videos etc) compared to roll a ball (9 vids). or more. Some people have loads of vids for giant long term year long projects. Not really helpful. But hopefully after completing Brackeys C# , I can move onto another set of vids/tutorial, but the fps goes into blender also. Anyway, this whole thread was for someone else. Hope they get what is useful and not useful
The only reason something else wouldn’t have that issue is if it hasn’t been updated in years.
Choosing a tool that hasn’t been updated in years, over one that is active and updated frequently, would be… trying to think of a way to put this nicely… how about “ill-advised.”
Though I suppose it depends on your goals. If you only want to learn something for fun or as a hobby, then sure, use Scratch or Gamemaker or whatever seems easiest to you. People come to Unity because they want to make and
publish commercial games (or at least, to have the option to do so) that could run on any modern platform, whether it’s the Switch, PSVR, whatever. Thus the tool itself must be updated frequently, and in addition to new platforms, other things are also improved. This is a Good Thing. We want and need a tool that keeps getting better.
If that’s what it takes for them to step into the world of game development then there is nothing wrong with them choosing an engine that is aimed at beginners. After all it’s important to remember that despite the efforts Unity has put towards making the engine friendly for beginners it really isn’t an engine aimed at beginners. It’s aimed at professionals.
