Feeling overwhelmed: Correcting animatior mistakes

Unity Engine
1

Hey all. I’ve been working on my game in Unity (part-time) for nearly a year now. For the most part, it’s gone quite smoothly, but it’s all a big learning experience. One thing that I’m almost certain I’ve screwed up immensely is my animator-- specifically my player animator (as it’s the only one currently with any significant complexity).

I think things started to get out of control when I implemented the melee attack animations because timing is so essential. I haven’t really messed around with my player’s animator for quite a while because as hacky as it is, my method worked. But today I decided to add a new feature (a “run” button) which means I have to re-thread the tangled spiderweb that is my player animator.

Unlike scripts which I can easily copy/paste to word documents as back-ups in case a significant change screws everything up, animators are a little more finicky. It’s things like this that I think people rely on proper project back-ups for, but I don’t know how to do that. I remember looking into it months ago, but it just seemed complicated. I don’t really understand how to manage a project properly, I guess. I suppose that’s the first part of my question here: What’s a good and simple way to back-up a project? I’m always a little hesitant to go too crazy with changes or new features because I don’t want to screw everything up. I occasionally back back-ups to a USB drive, but that’s not good enough.

The other thing is what is a better way to set up my animator? I’ve looked into using the layer system, but I haven’t had any success when I attempted to use it.

Sorry for the vague topic. I’m a little frustrated with my self and I don’t know what I should do next. :confused:

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2

Sorry I can’t offer help for your main problem, but backing up is SOOO IMPORTANT I really have to talk about it.

When programming, backups are mandatory; if you don’t have back-ups, you WILL encounter problems that could potentially ruin your entire project.

What you want is “source control”, which is basically software that takes snapshots in time that you can revert to. This allows you to make dangerous changes knowing that you can quickly and easily undo them. There are many types of source control, but I recommend “git”, which is probably the most commonly used source control out there. Git is usually command line, but you can find some good UI out there like SourceTree or TortoiseGit.

Back up your project now or I promise you’ll regret it!

1 Like
3

Thanks! I know it’s super important, but I’ve looked at Git and I find it super intimidating for some reason. I guess it’s time to get over it and try to figure it out.

4

I’ve been there, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you get used to it, especially if you’re the only one working on the project. There are plenty of advanced features, but you can easily just use one of the UI and stick to the simple functions (staging and committing files).

I also recommend looking up a good “.gitignore” for Unity. You don’t want to commit computer-specific files like the ones in the Library folder of your project, so a “.gitignore” file lets you filter those out.