Hey I am proficient in Java, and have been programming for a while but Unity is so cool and I have some cool Ideas for games but need to be proficient to complete them. I have 3 months until my school recommences and if I put 2-3 hours a day into it is that long enough to become proficient or do I need to put more hours a day? I don’t have a strong knowledge of C# apart from it’s similarities to Java. So far I have been doing a mix of unity game tutorials and editing them to personalize them for further learning and to add my own flair. I want to know so that I can appropriately divide up my time as I have other responsibilities and tasks as well. Thanks a lot for your input.
Sincerely,
BrownBoii333
I would recommend an “Agile” mindset and methodologies.
Like the others said, being fully proficient can take years, it all depends if you mean being really at ease with everything and lay down code at the speed of thought, or being able to complete a specific project.
Anyway, the best way to learn is always to do.
Here’s what I’d advise :
- List what you want to do (your 1st project minimum scope)
- Order the list by priorities, breaking it down to smaller things as much as possible
- List what you believe you need to know for every item on that list
- Regroup knowledge/skills by C#/Unity features, and re-order them to have an acceptable learning curve (don’t start with Animator State Machine, or Enemy AI coding), yet following the priorities of your project
- Every day, put 1 hour into watching a tutorial/video, and 2 hours into experimenting, asking questions around, working toward your project’s objectives
In 3 weeks, you’ll have already watched 15 hours of training material, and put nearly 30 hours into experimentation. Take a little break and look back on those 3 weeks. See how much you managed to learn. This will give you a fair idea of your progress, and you should be able to make yourself an idea as to how much more time you need to learn what is left on your slate.
Learning is just like development, you can never quite plan exactly how much time it will take.
But you can tell how much you handle, on an average, per week, and draw conclusions.
If you’d rather put 30 hours into a long tutorial to get you started, here’s a special coupon I share here, for my followers, on my introduction course to Unity and C#. It’s 10 hours of videos, and takes roughly 30 hours to complete.
You can learn C# and Unity in 3 months if you work around 7-8 hours a day. Maybe 2 months if you are already very familiar with OOP and C#, but unless you’re making short casual games, it’s going to take a while.
I think the answer would vary widely. First, it depends on what you mean by “proficient.” If by that you mean that you would have enough knowledge to put together a really basic game of some sort then I agree with the above post…probably about two to three months.
But, I’ve found that Unity has a very steep learning curve (and C# can be tough as well) and you could really spend three months…or more!..just becoming highly proficient in something like classes, lists, dictionaries, arrays and so forth.
Java should help a lot in the respect that you should already be familiar with computer logic so C# would, partly at least, be a function of learning new syntax…and I’ve found that computer “logic” can be a real bugger for many new programmers.
For me, it took three months just to be able to start figuring out things on my own without having to post a question or do a tremendous amount of research…and I was already somewhat familiar with c# and had a fairly extensive programming background in a couple other languages…especially visual basic. I’m an old guy though…so I’m probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I’m mostly retired and do it for fun…I get a lot of enjoyment out of it (programming). What’s the alternative? Watching TV? LoL. Have you seen what’s on lately? Computer games are fun to play…but sooner or later, if you’re a smart person, you’ll get the fire to start writing your own game code and building your own games.
Good luck, by the way. It will come and it will come at your own pace. DON’T WORRY about how long it takes…if you enjoy it…just do it!
4 years of 50 hours per week
that is, judging by your quote:
I am proficient in Java, and have been programming for a while but Unity is so cool and I have some cool Ideas for games but need to be proficient to complete them. I don’t have a strong knowledge of C# apart from it’s similarities to Java.