I can't learn Unity

[Flame2057]

[DELETED]

[Murgilod]

What, specifically, are you having trouble with? Your post just says you’re bad at art, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Unity.

[EternalAmbiguity]

Your first and second paragraphs are about two very different things.

For your first paragraph, I would say “don’t learn Unity. Use Unity.” That’s how you’ll learn it.

For your second I don’t really have an answer for you, because I’m in much the same place. You can use assets from the Asset Store to help out there - both in giving art, and in building yours from basic building blocks. Exhibit A, Archimatix.

[mysticfall]

In case you don’t want to entirely rely on Asset Store or hired designers for art resources, I’d suggest investing some time in learning modelling/animation/design tools like Blender, for example.

It’s free and there are tons of tutorials and examples available online, and it might help you to understand some core concepts which are also used in Unity as well.

[GarBenjamin]

Well Unity is different from most development and most information / tutorials on it seems to be beginner basics at best and just plain wacky at worst. Add on to that nearly every person seems to do things their own way and claim & explain why their way is the best and yeah… it can be challenging to really get into it.

I thought that was what you were talking about but then you mentioned art. You will need to ask yourself a question:

How important is the art to me?

If it is only “so-so” or less important then fantastic! Just knock out the most basic art assets you can and build your game with those.

If art is very important then you need to ask yourself this question:

Am I willing to create only games that can be made using free art assets from the Unity Asset Store?

If the answer is “yes!” then take a look for free art on the Asset Store and come up with game ideas to build around the art.

If the answer is “no” there is one more question to ask yourself:

Am I willing to invest money to get all of the high quality art needed to make the game I want to create?

If answer is “yes” then hire artists to create the art.

If the answer is “no” accept that your expectations are unrealistic. And you might be better off just turning off the computer and…

Going fishing!

Note: This should really be turned into a flowchart and stickied but I am on cell.

[GarBenjamin]

@""

The asset store should do fine for me then. But still, I cannot find any good learning material for Unity.

The leaning material you have tried… would you say it is too simple for your needs or too complex to understand?

[Eric5h5]

@Flame2057

I can’t make games if I can’t do art.

That’s not correct; you get it from elsewhere. That doesn’t have anything to do with learning Unity though. You do that largely by using it, and by using learning material. The fact that you label what’s available as “crap” suggests you expect to find material that’s 100% perfectly tailored to you specifically, which is of course not something that exists. Go through what’s out there and learn what you can from it. But you don’t just sit back and go through courses and then when you’re done you suddenly “know” Unity. Again, you largely learn from using it. Certainly a few years from now you’ll look over your early stuff and go “man, what was I thinking?” But that’s part of the process.

–Eric

[Rodolfo-Rubens]

@Flame2057

I’m an experienced programmer, proficient in JavaScript and I can write basic C# fine

Then, you have much more than you need to get started! Just consume all the learning materials you see and you will be fine!

[Ryiah]

@""

I cannot find any good learning material for Unity.

Have you tried the official learning section?

Unity Learn

@Flame2057

The courses I’ve watched are either too verbose, with 50+ hours of content that spends hours explaining basic stuff like how to use a code editor, and I’ve watched courses that only make one game all the way through, which quickly get’s very boring.

Just to be clear are you watching them? Or are you following along with them? Because the latter is the most effective way to retain the information you learn.

@Flame2057

how could I make that art in a real game? I can’t make games if I can’t do art.

Unless you’re among the relative few jack of all trade game developers you will not be able to create every aspect of the game yourself. Choose a field and become good at that. You’re a programmer and you’ve been spending this much time failing to pick up artwork so it’s a safe bet you’re simply not an artist.

Purchasing premade assets, commissioning custom artwork from an artist, hiring an artist as a team member, etc is how you go about getting the art for your game if you are not an artist. Same concept applies to acquiring code for those who are not coders, music for those who are not musicians, and so on.

[cdarklock]

@""

They spend 10+ hours just making the first game. I have little free time, so it takes me months to get through that much

You can expect an actual, finished game to take several hundred hours. So if ten hours of tutorials takes you months, writing a game is going to take you a decade.

[GarBenjamin]

@""

It’s just that most of them start off with too large of a project. They spend 10+ hours just making the first game. I have little free time, so it takes me months to get through that much, and by that point I give up because I feel like I’m going nowhere with that tutorial.

Although I can relate that I don’t have the patience to go through 10 hours of video on make a very simple game… I notice two things here.

First, your time seems more limited than even mine! If you are saying you only have 10 hours or so of free time in 2 or more months then I think you just need to expect it will take you maybe 6 months to 1 year to start to grasp the basics of things.

Second, if you feel the 10+ hour video training is making games that are too complex that may mean there is hope. This implies low / realistic expectations. So the first thing to do might be to look on YT for tutorial on making an ultra simple super tiny game in Unity. There might be some where the entire game is made in 1 hour or less.

You may also find it useful to check out the Unity project sources for LudumDare. Although the implementations will vary wildly many of the games should be ultra simple. You might be able to find one coded in a style that you connect with.

[Kiwasi]

@Flame2057

Any advice?

Give up and move on. If you can’t grasp a concept after three years of study, you probably aren’t going to get it.

Not everyone needs to be a game developer. There are plenty of other legitimate careers that pay better out there.

[RichardKain]

Giving up is an option. I don’t necessarily want to encourage someone to quit, but there is a point where cutting your losses and moving on is the best approach.

This is especially true if your free time is sharply limited. Game development is a discipline that requires a LOT of time to learn. Like, seriously, crazy amounts of time. You say you’ve spent 3 years, I can assure you that you will still be learning new things after working at this for decades. It’s an incredibly broad field, that incorporates all sorts of different skills. Devoting a few hours a month isn’t going to get you very far. You should ideally be devoting multiple hours a day to this. Even if it’s just one hour a day, that is the kind of time commitment we’re talking about, at a bare minimum.

There’s also the issue that games are multi-discipline. You can’t expect to just start off and expect to be great at every aspect of them. Being a programmer does not make you a game developer. It’s a good place to start from, and will provide you with some valuable skills. But there’s also art, music, sound design, writing, and every other part of game design to consider. In order to make a decent game all on your own, you have to at least be decent at ALL OF THOSE THINGS! This is not common. Most people tend to favor one or two of these skills, but very few are able to tackle all of them all by themselves. And any one of these skills can also take years and years to polish and perfect. Artists don’t just roll up and start creating game art. Even talented artists have to learn the tools for game art, and practice using them. And if you don’t have a lot of natural artistic talent, you will need to start off with much lower art expectations, or buy art from someone who does.

[Kiwasi]

@""

When I said I’ve been trying to learn it for 3 years, I meant on and off. I’ve wanted to learn it for 3 years, but I’ve only spent a few months in total trying to actually learn it. Sorry I should have specified this.

That tells a different story.

In the interests of further clarification, where are you at in your learning journey?

• Can you make a cube bounce up and down?
• Can you make and build a simple clone of flappy birds or space invaders?
• Can you figure out how to put together the basic mechanics for a platformer?
• What about an RTS?

Knowing where you are is important for knowing where to go next.

[Billy4184]

@""

I can make a cube bounce up and down through coding, but I don’t know if there’s a better way to do it with physics. I could probably make a flappy bird or space invader game, but not with any animations or good art (basic blocks and cubes only). I could maybe put together a platformer, but that’s a definite maybe. That’s as much as I can do.

I don’t understand, if you can’t buy some art off the store, and have fun coding the mechanics (which presumably is not a problem given your programming skills) then simply this vocation is not interesting for you. Even after reading all your posts, I’m still in the dark as to what exactly it is that you’re incapable of - besides the art, and that can be fixed by using asset store stuff or making friends with an artist.

Also, I’m baffled by some of your remarks, such as that you’re bored by a tutorial simply because it focuses on creating one game all the way through, or that you could not do it because it spent too long trying to tell you how to use a code editor (is there not a way to skip this part?).

Maybe you just aren’t motivated to do this stuff, which is perfectly fine, there are many other interesting things to do in life.

[Kiwasi]

@""

I can make a cube bounce up and down through coding, but I don’t know if there’s a better way to do it with physics. I could probably make a flappy bird or space invader game, but not with any animations or good art (basic blocks and cubes only). I could maybe put together a platformer, but that’s a definite maybe. That’s as much as I can do.

So you are probably beyond the point where there is much use to video tutorials. I would suggest starting to make games. Run with clones of existing games. Dive into the documentation to do this. Practice, practice, practice.

You’d probably also benefit from participating in sections like the scripting forum. Helping other people out will solidify concepts for you.

@""

but not with any animations or good art (basic blocks and cubes only).

Art is an entirely seperate discipline. If you want to learn to do art on your own, leave off Unity and go learn Blender or similar.

[Billy4184]

@Kiwasi

So you are probably beyond the point where there is much use to video tutorials. I would suggest starting to make games. Run with clones of existing games. Dive into the documentation to do this. Practice, practice, practice.

Agreed. I think if you want to make games, first of all you have to enjoy it. You have to enjoy making stuff move around, making the game world do what you want it to, even the simple things. It just has to be fun, otherwise why would you do it? And the best way to do this is just to do stuff, rather than worrying about advanced tutorials and art.

I started off with the space shooter tutorial which I think is about as good an introduction as you can get, after which I could hardly wait to just do random stuff in the editor. At that point I didn’t even know how to make art and my programmer art looked like ****, but it sure was fun.

Games are all about fun, in fact the biggest problem I have is working consistently on a game when I’m thinking of something I want to try out. If I didn’t feel that way I would have left a long time ago.

[GarBenjamin]

@Billy4184

Agreed. I think if you want to make games, first of all you have to enjoy it. You have to enjoy making stuff move around, making the game world do what you want it to, even the simple things. It just has to be fun, otherwise why would you do it? And the best way to do this is just to do stuff, rather than worrying about advanced tutorials and art.

I started off with the space shooter tutorial which I think is about as good an introduction as you can get, after which I could hardly wait to just do random stuff in the editor. At that point I didn’t even know how to make art and my programmer art looked like ****, but it sure was fun.

Games are all about fun, in fact the biggest problem I have is working consistently on a game when I’m thinking of something I want to try out. If I didn’t feel that way I would have left a long time ago.

Find some of your old programmer art and post it please. Particularly the stuff you now think is very bad.

[Schneider21]

If you feel like you’re roadblocked by art, of all things, then why not try making a game with no art? Whether that’s a text-based adventure like Zork, a UI-driven game of menus, or using ASCII characters a la Dwarf Fortress. Seriously… DF has absolutely zero art, and nobody would dare say Tarn Adams is not an amazing game developer.

I don’t think you’re not cut out for game development. I think you’re using roadblocks as excuses. When you run into a wall, you have 4 options.

• Go through it.
• Go over it.
• Go around it.
• Go back.

It’s as simple as that. Either (1) brute force it until you make it through, (2) put in the effort to figure out how to solve the issue, (3) figure out a way to bypass the issue altogether, or (4) give up. I prefer option 3, myself.

[ChazBass]

I think you shouldn’t conflate the art with developing games. Yes, there are game developers who are also good artists. But being a good artist takes talent and years and years of practice. And if you don’t have the former, no amount of time will get you there. Forget digital art. Can you draw? The guy that can sit down with a napkin and a pencil and whip out a fantastic line drawing of the next boss creature in his game got there by probably spending years and years learning how to draw. And for everyone of those people there are untold masses that could never be able to do that no matter how much effort they put into it. Because the talent isn’t there. Having said that, learning to be able to do basic art, whether its creating and texturing simple 3D models, or doing basic pixel art is definitely achievable in a reasonable amount of time given the right amount of effort. And that will be sufficient to create games at least to the point that you can then find an artist to redo the art.

Regarding game development itself, if your willing to put the art aside to start, then it sounds like you know enough to start creating some games. Don’t worry about the right way to do it, just focus on figuring out one way to do it. Yes, what you create to start will most likely be ugly. But then you can go and, through all the learning resources mentioned, figured out better ways to do things. Then go back to your games, or start a new one, and do things in that better way. It is in all this doing that you will ultimately learn what you need to know to be basically proficient using Unity. And then you can go from there.