I’m still trying to gather information to help push for the use of Unity in my future projects. I’m trying to get an idea of the amount of time it might take to get set up familiar with unity, through to getting the first game out the door.
I know that to ask how long it would take me is like, ‘how long is a piece of string’, but it would help if I could hear some of your experiences (and whether you moved from another technology prior to unity, whether you had many finished games in other technologies etc).
Eg, how long did you spend playing around, testing, trying things out, following tutorials etc before starting your first ‘finished’ game? How long did the finished game take? How big a production was your first finished game?
If you are a proficient programmer (meaning you aren’t learning how to program, but just learning to use Unity), I would say you could have a game “out the door” in a week. I’m talking about a game that is very simple. Something small like a widget or flash game.
But then, you would continue to learn and “master” Unity for years. There is a lot of artistry to learn that can only come from doing, game development (actually any type of development) is a craft and real craftsmanship only comes with experience.
Another thing I’ll say is, creating a game (indie-games, a single man operation) is like writing a book (a novel). Learning to use the tools is only a small part of it. Thinking up good ideas, then carrying them out to actual completion is hard. Unity makes it much easier, but carrying out a good idea is 100% human (if that makes any sense).