So I decided to do something useful with my spare time, and I’ve decided to download Unity. But I have absolutely no experience with making games.
I’m willing to do the hard work and actually learn, but I was wondering how hard it will be for someone like me “get into” Unity. All I’m worried about right now is basic prototyping and making shapes move around on my screen.
Unity’s extensive tutorials and documentation probably make it the second easiest engine I’ve ever used out of the fifteen or so I’m experienced with, so I’d say pretty accessible.
You have to “get” that game-development IS hard. Once you understand that, it will be ironacially easier, because you KNOW what you’re up against.
That being said, it’s a user-specific thing.
Watch/do this: Learn
Try the tutorials. Build the examples and so on. You’ll experience for yourself if Unity suits you well.
You will probably have objects moving around on your screen within the first 5-10 minutes of watching a Unity tutorial. The hard part is learning all of the components and what they do. Then, the even-harder part is learning the API and every function/class within it. Once you have learned that, then you will start brainstorming about which methods to use to be most efficient, or gives your players the best FPS.
The link below was pretty much the first ever tutorial I went through using Unity. Once you’re done with the tutorial, you’ll feel a lot more confident in your code, and understand that scripting in Unity is only as hard as you make it. There are very easy ways to do things, and very complex ways to do things.
http://www.3dbuzz.com/training/view/unity-standard/simple-2d-shooter
You don’t need to do this, ever. The API should be used as a reference and not compulsory learning before writing your first game. As you get more familiar with Unity you’ll find what you want in the reference to suit your current need.
Do a few weeks of tutorials, get familiar with the toolset, chedck out www.unity3dstudent.com and do all the short scripting tutorials, then you’re well on your way to making your first simple game. Make another 2 or 3 simple games after that, with each increasing slightly in difficulty, and then you should be ok to start looking for work or working on something you’d like to sell.
The more tutorials you do up front and spend time learning how things work the easier it will be in the long run.