Considering taking it? Here is my experience/feedback to you and Unity. :)

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I attended the Chicago test exam, and quite gladly I passed. I remember feeling apprehensive about what to expect, so I wanted to share my experiences. (Sorry, no answers to the questions)

  1. read the faq of what to expect on the Certification Site. It covers a lot of bases.
  1. read the course objectives.
  • Game Design & Development Certifications | Unity
  • Look at the main topics. Notice that one topic is larger than the others, has more detailed areas? That is because the section of the test devoted to that is larger or smaller. I.e. some sections only had a couple questions, where others sections had 10+.
  1. How does it start?
  • You setup your laptop. having the mouse was really helpful. Faster/easier than the touch pad.
  • Connect to the WIFI of the facility. Its normal internet access.
  • When ready, the organizer will give you a URL, and tell you your login information.
  • Each person has 90 minutes from when they start, not 90 minutes from the exam start. I.e. if you have trouble logging in, you won’t lose 10 minutes of your time while this is being resolved.
  • The organizer will be able to see over your shoulders, to make sure you don’t open documentation or Unity. As that can get you kicked out (and I assume banned.)
  1. The test is broken into sections.
  • You can FAIL a section. That is ok. I missed a couple sections, where I didn’t get enough points to pass it. The first time I saw that, I internally freaked out a bit. I thought it was telling me At question 10 or 20, the “sorry, you have already failed” but it didn’t. Its good to know that you need to work on the areas. And then scoring higher in later parts will allow you to pass anyway.
  • The number of questions in each section vary. I think business had somewhere between 2 and 4, while animation seemed like 12-20? Animation seemed like a major priority.
  1. The style of questions:
  • I found that most of the questions seemed to be based on exact phrasing, and will try to trip you up with things you might actually tell another developer, but understand what to do anyway. I didn’t see any question about importing a package, so I’m using this as an example to be safe.
    • How would you import a new package?
      • A) From the Menu Bar, Select Componencts → Import Package
      • B) From the Menu Bar, Select Assets → Import Package
  • The answer here is (B), Even though another developer would probably figure it out, and we may be used to just right clicking on Assets from the Project, and never really touch the menu, that is a considerable number of the questions. When looking through the objectives to figure out what you need to work on, even things you are already comfortable with should be checked for making sure you know the exact right terms.
  • Additionally there wer
    e ones where you needed to identify by clicking on a picture, where something was. and also match up these things, where you would have column A and B and you would have to line up the items in B to the corresponding part in A.
  1. The speed.
  • I was really worried about time initially. but it only took my 43 minutes to complete, though some others may have taken the full 90.
  • The test does have a timer in the top corner to say how much time you have left. HOWEVER it does not tell you how many questions you have remaining.
    @ Please add this to the test: [remaining questions]/[Total Questions] I.e. 44/100 questions, or a percentage to give us an idea, or at least [section #/section count], so we can better track how to spend our time. Thanks!
  1. Immediate Feed Back
  • Every time you complete a section (about 20ish), it immediately tells you how many questions you got right/wrong. You cannot see which ones. but you can probably guess based on what you felt unsure about.
  • Additionally, as soon as you are done with the exam, your computer tells you right away if you passed or not. You don’t need to wait till the end, or a few days later or anything. You get a PDF right away. DOWNLOAD IT.
  • NOTE: Your validation link is not instant/automated. It will take a couple days for them to make sure your ID shows up, should someone run a verification on your certificate. They had it done the next day for me, but there is a chance it could take a little longer
  • Additionally, Stick around until everyone’s done. They like to take group photos, and people will stand around and talk for a while. Which is excellent networking with other game devs, and Unity people.
  1. BROKEN portions.
  • DO NOT CLICK BACK while taking the test. It doesn’t work. You can recover, but you are losing time during this.
  • The test claims you can click previous to go back and edit questions. said something like something along the lines of You can review and change your answers. YOU CANNOT. It appearantly doesn’t let you.
    @ PLEASE either fix this bug, or remove the text saying you can change your answers. :slight_smile:
    - Assuming this might not be a glitch, but a miss-explanation. You can click back, but not change answers. Make sure you take the appropriate time to answer.
  • Also, it only lets you look back in the section of the exam you are in. I.e. Once you complete the Animation section, it tells you how many you got right/wrong in that section. You cannot then go back and change answers to get things right. :slight_smile:
  1. No SWAG. :frowning:
  • Was really hoping for something with a Unity logo on it. (aside from the certification) I want to boldly say I work with Unity. :smile:
  • I’ve heard differently from others experiences, but our event didn’t carry it.
  1. General Idea if you are ready or not:

  • if you’ve been using Unity regularly for at least a year, and have built some proof touching each area in the Exam Objectives, you should have a good chance of passing.

  • Prior to the test, I hadn’t touched Animations. I always used code to animate things. In preparation, I built an animation PoC. Just something to walk through the area and try things.

  • When/if you do this, take a close look at what things are actually called. The exact terms matter on the exam.

  • Animation, Scripting, audio and images seemed to be large portions of the exam. Focus on these. I might be over looking a section, (I.e. if I was really comfortable with it, I might have just sped through it, and didn’t note the size)

  • I hope this is helpful to others taking the exams, or interested.

Feel free to connect to me on LinkedIn :slight_smile:

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One more thing I forgot to add, “Participants”. In the exam outline, it says “Participants”. When I tried searching for this, it came up with lots of Sport Participants, and the people watching others play video games, and I had no idea what they were talking about. I’ve grown up with the terminology of Characters. Particularly PCs/NPCs. I know the term Non-Playable Character inside and out, but I think Participant’s in Unity’s test refer to all characters in the game. I’m assuming “Participant” is a term used more outside the US? Or perhaps I was isolated to the games, books and training that referred to it as PCs/NPCs.

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The thing you raise in point 5 is interesting. Obviously you need to know where things are and how to do them, but it’s one of those things that would become muscle memory more than anything else. Unless you were training newbies I can’t imagine why you’d have to explicitly remember the menu structure to get what you want.

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So does this mean that a laptop is required to attend? Do they have any devices there that someone without their own laptop can use?

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At least at the event I attended, they required laptops. Typically the person running it may have flown in to a remote city, and its not that feasible to bring a collection of laptops with. Try borrowing from someone else, or buy one from a place with a good return policy. A tablet could work, or even a smart phone (maybe) You’ll have wifi, so if you can use a smart phone or tablet to remote desktop/vpn into a desktop somewhere, you can still take the test that way. Not that it would be convenient.

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I think the exam uses Flash, so make sure that whatever device you bring can play flash. e.g. if you’re on a Mac and you don’t have Flash installed on Safari (not uncommon, given that Flash ads can blast your battery), make sure you have Chrome available. I think that a smartphone would probably not work for this exam.

Make sure you use every area covered by the exam. I haven’t yet used 5.0’s audio mixer, and bombed that section. I also haven’t used a lot of the services, but that section seemed pretty easy.

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@StarManta is correct. I did some research on the requirements. They are using Docebo for the test platform running via DoceboSaas. According to page 17 of Docebo’s technical “wiki”:

The minimum supported resolution is : 1024 x 768
Courses developed by Docebo are based on Adobe Flash technology with the following requirements: Adobe Flash Player 9.0 or greater.

@ You should update requirements to make it clear we need a machine that can run flash.

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Interesting. Thank you both for that info. I’m sure I can get my hands on a device, but it’s nice to know how I should prepare.

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Thank you for sharing hpdvs2. You’ve really left me more confident and calm about it. I’m going to take the certification in about two weeks and i feel pretty confident on the unity development front but the industry awareness, gamedesign and art design principles and other business topics leave me really unnerved. Any tips on where to get decent info about it. Personally i think that is a bit beyond what i would expect is a requirement for a unity developer.

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The sections you are worried about are short. If you fail them, you still have a good chance of passing anyway. C#, Animations, Audio and materials/effects are the big things. If you feel comfortable with those, you should be fine. Also, the Scripting section isn’t focused on C# knowledge nearly as much as it is focused on Unity Specific things, like the order of events being fired. If I recall right, the exam objectives actually covered the shorter sections really well. If you do google searches for the right column on the areas you are worried about, the answers should be pretty easy. Just make sure you’ve got a general idea of what those are. Its the animations, scripting, audio and effects that they get into really high resolution detail.

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Thanks for sharing this info, @DanVioletSagmiller1 ! All the info you posted was really helpful. If anyone’s planning to take the exam, read the first post thoroughly.

hpdvs2 mentioned using a mouse. Definitely bring a good mouse. The exam is all click or click-and-drag. You won’t need to type anything. Speaking of clicking, when you click the Next button, be patient. If the exam lags a bit and you’re impatient and click again, you might accidentally click past a question, leaving it unanswered.

You’ll notice in the objectives document that there’s a section on Services such as Collaborate and Cloud Build, and a small section on the Asset Store, so questions aren’t restricted to just the engine. Make sure you’re familiar with the whole Unity ecosystem, as well as basic general industry stuff. There are some fairly specific questions on the editor interface, too, such as keyboard shortcuts.

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i want to take the unity certified programmer exam as well and some thread in 2018 linked to this one.
how up to date is this thread if i want to prepare for the exam?

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    • How would you import a new package?
      • A) From the Menu Bar, Select Componencts → Import Package
      • B) From the Menu Bar, Select Assets → Import Package

Personally, I find questions like this to be moronic. Who cares? Who remembers exact menu choices? In real life if I click components I will then figure out it’s wrong and to select assets
.
Anyway, I think no employers gives a f if someone is ‘certified’.