Complete Newbie Question

Unity Engine
1

Hey everyone,

I am completely new to Unity and I am trying to following along with this tutorial Make a Top Down Shooter

Everything is fine until I enter the script writing portion of it. I can’t seem to figure out why, but when I type Public CharacterController, I cannot seem to pull the class CharacterController. It just doesn’t exist for some reason. I’m almost embarrassed to ask this question as it seems so simple… but thanks in advance.

EDIT: I went ahead and just completely copy and pasted his code and ran it and it works fine… But my question is why was the CharacterController class popping up for him as a selection as he typed it but not me?

The code looks as such:

using System.Collections;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerMovement : MonoBehaviour

{

Public CharacterController <— this is where I am having the issue. In the video when he types this it automatically shows up on a drop down list in the classes

// Start is called before the first frame update

void Start()

{

}

// Update is called once per frame

void Update()

{

}

}

2

Hey, this might increase your chances to get help from others. :slight_smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84kaypWK1bM

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the video

1 Like
4

Assuming what you’ve written is exactly as you’ve written in the code you were actually using, it is because you used “Public” instead of “public”.

Also yes, scripting requires that level of specificity. Intellisense helps, but this will still be something to get used to.

5

If you are going to be monkey-hammer-banging code in, let me save you a LOT of time.

How to do tutorials properly:

Tutorials are a GREAT idea. Tutorials should be used this way:

Step 1. Follow the tutorial and do every single step of the tutorial 100% precisely the way it is shown. Even the slightest deviation (even a single character!) generally ends in disaster. That’s how software engineering works. Every single letter must be spelled, capitalized, punctuated and spaced (or not spaced) properly. Fortunately this is the easiest part to get right.

As @Laperen points out, be a robot. Don’t make any mistakes. BE PERFECT IN EVERYTHING YOU DO HERE.

If you get any errors, learn how to read the error code and fix it. Google is your friend here. Do NOT continue until you fix the error. The error will probably be somewhere near the parenthesis numbers (line and character position) in the file. It is almost CERTAINLY your typo causing the error, so look again and fix it.

Step 2. Go back and work through every part of the tutorial again, and this time explain it to your doggie. See how I am doing that in my avatar picture? If you have no dog, explain it to your house plant. If you are unable to explain any part of it, STOP. DO NOT PROCEED. Now go learn how that part works. Read the documentation on the functions involved. Go back to the tutorial and try to figure out WHY they did that. This is the part that takes a LOT of time when you are new. It might take days or weeks to work through a single 5-minute tutorial. Stick with it. You will learn.

Step 2 is the part everybody seems to miss. Without Step 2 you are simply a code-typing monkey and outside of the specific tutorial you did, you will be completely lost.

Of course, all this presupposes no errors in the tutorial. For certain tutorial makers (like Unity, Brackeys, Imphenzia, Sebastian Lague) this is usually the case. For some other less-well-known content creators, this is less true. Read the comments on the video: did anyone have issues like you did? If there’s an error, you will NEVER be the first guy to find it.

Beyond that, Step 3, 4, 5 and 6 become easy because you already understand!

Finally, when you have errors…

Remember: NOBODY memorizes error codes. The error code is absolutely the least useful part of the error. It serves no purpose at all. Forget the error code. Put it out of your mind.

The complete error message contains everything you need to know to fix the error yourself.

Always start with the FIRST error in the console window, as sometimes that error causes or compounds some or all of the subsequent errors.

The important parts of the error message are:

  • the description of the error itself (google this; you are NEVER the first one!)
  • the file it occurred in (critical!)
  • the line number and character position (the two numbers in parentheses)
  • also possibly useful is the stack trace (all the lines of text in the lower console window)

All of that information is in the actual error message and you must pay attention to it. Learn how to identify it instantly so you don’t have to stop your progress and fiddle around with the forum.