There are just too many avenues of communication: books, forums, answers, the user manual, the reference manual, the scripting manual, the Unify wiki, #unity3d, the Unity3D subreddit, not to mention the enormous volume of video tutorials and blog posts out there. It’s hard to discern what’s important, and it’s even harder to get feedback on your work.
An example of a better community is the Python subreddit. There you have several benefits:
A single, centralized location for the Python user community. Want to see what other people are making? Go to /r/python. Want to ask a question? Post it on /r/python.
Upvote algorithms that separate the wheat from the chaff.
Due to Python’s open source nature, a lot of code is freely viewable on GitHub. This is great for learning and community building.
After reading a page’s worth of posts, it’s easy to assess the zeitgeist of the subreddit. Maybe a lot of people seem to be using a particular Python library, or maybe someone wrote a controversial blog post that’s getting some traction.
Of course, the Python subreddit isn’t perfect. Since reddit’s design downplays user profiles and since Python’s community is immense, you won’t know anyone by name unless that person happens to be the author of a well-known library, or a frequent and high quality poster. But the benefits above outweigh this flaw.
In contrast, since Unity’s community is so sprawling and overwhelming and there’s a lot to the engine that you have to learn, it’s simply easier to work alone and use Google for reference. And working alone is lonely.
I basically just look at the forum, you dont even need to look at the rest of it. But maybe some people prefer to watch vids so they can go to yotuube or whatever.
Comparing the Unity community as a whole to a single subreddit isn’t really valid. Python has all of the stuff you’ve cited Unity as having and a whole lot more.
Want to see what people are making? Go to the Showcase and WIP sections. Want to ask a question? We have Unity Answers and specific support subsections on the forums.
I think that the main difference is that you’re familiar with the Python community to the point where you’ve settled a little (eg: your “home” in that community is in the subreddit) where you’ve not reached that with the Unity community yet. There are plenty of cool people here, hang around and get to know us.
Come on now, I know for a fact of asking technical questions in these forums they mostly get ignored. If you can google past answers that works but the fact is Unity forums are overwhelmed by too many non-trained programmers and non-trained artists asking mostly the same questions again and again.
You best bet is to hook up with somebody interested and knowledgeable in what you are learning and ask questions when you get stuck after a reasonable amount of trying. A lot of questions in these forums it’s so obvious an attempt to do what is being asked hasn’t not only not been attempted but not even planned for. It’s like someone wants to win the lottery without even buying a ticket you’d think.
As far as the python community goes I think it’s a safe assumption most of those folk are professional programmers and it shows in the way they conduct themselves.
In short, community members are not your personal technical support staff. If you can post something that’s mutually beneficial (ie: is interesting, or a good challenge to solve, or is a common problem) then you’ll likely get attention. If you can’t, or you post something that demonstrates that you haven’t even bothered to try solving it for yourself…
You’ve got to keep in mind that when you post asking for assistance you’re asking for someone else to volunteer their spare time to give it to you. Ask yourself why they would do that and you’ll be pretty close to figuring out why some questions get answered and others don’t.
Anyway, I could be wrong but I really don’t think that’s what the OP is driving at here.
It’s not overwhelming. It’s how you’re consuming that data, that’s overwhelming.
When I look for unity solutions, I only use google. And it is perfect. Google catalogues and sorts all the information based on my keywords. Try it, prefix your question with Unity on google and off you go.
What a strange comparison; you compare a single source of python information to all possible sources of Unity information. There are many more python books, tutorials, forums, etc than there are Unity ones. Google tells me there are even more python tutorials than Unity tutorials on youtube (despite a game engine seeming much more suited to video tutorials).
Personally I do the same as Hippo (although occassionaly I’ll go directly the API reference). Have never had a problem finding anything.
Anything new to learn always seems daunting in the beginning . It seems this time it has rattled you to the point of finding fault with too much available information? I thought its only troublesome when there is not enough information
Start with small simple prototype projects or similar to facilitate and narrow down what you need to learn. When I get stuck I go to the Unity help file Documentation first , then to google and every so often I post a question here in the forums.
Nothing difficult about it once you are in the swing of things.
( except when you are bug hunting and the entire internet seems to have no solution for your errors … the dreadful hours )
But that is bound to happen to anyone using any programming language at some point unless you are Chuck Norris
Hmmm, I would find it bizarre that anyone would come to the forums to learn Unity rather than buy a competent C# book and work though umpteen Unity tutorials. Let’s hope there is no such forum for doctors to learn to doctor and such.
Sorry - won’t happen again It’s a good point though, there are so many tutorials scattered around the internet, and they’re always split between JS(US) and C#. It would make it hard to learn.
I’d suggest sticking to the forums though, or Unity Answers if you have a specific question - there’s plenty of help here, and as long as you’re not posting a “How do I make an MMO” question, you should be fine.
One thing that I think we do need is a central code-sharing repository - we have the wiki, but I’ve found that these scripts are often outdated or incomplete. There’s no place (that I know of) where you can easily find Unity script libraries/prefabs other than Asset Store.
Generally I would agree. However, the one thing I have seen with Unity is that everyone who ever touched the program seems to write tutorials for it. I have all but given up trying to search through tutorials for information. Mostly because they take a while to scan through (video) and all to often they are done by people who just started learning and for some reason I don’t understand, started recording tutorials. There are so many that are uber-noob, or wrong or just not a good approach. There are good ones, and some sources I will look at/trust, but often there is just a pile of nonsense.
Despite that minor annoyance, I totally agree, in the past there was virtually nothing, today it is available, though it might take a while parse through.
Although still a long way from perfect I would had loved to have something like Unity’s Learn section back when starting out. (In return I try to rub it in everyone’s faces. If it was up to me there would be a big flashing red arrow pointing at.) [quote=“goat_1, post:10, topic: 521619, username:goat_1”]
Hmmm, I would find it bizarre that anyone would come to the forums to learn Unity rather than buy a competent C# book and work though umpteen Unity tutorials. Let’s hope there is no such forum for doctors to learn to doctor and such.
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Well, I’m just a lowly not doctor but I used to read forums for nurses/paramedics. I would say I learned a lot more than from books. Might explain why I’m so crappy at my job, though. Just don’t tell the patients.
Wouldn’t mind though if there truly was a bible for Unity. I have such books for my real job. One I always carry in my pocket. But all Unity books out there seems like Sunday school stuff.
While I personally do not agree, this is evidently the primary complaint absolute beginners seem to have. Namely that the abundance of resources makes it more difficult to digest for whatever reason. Answers is generally a good choice but is usually also scattered with the EXACT same questions being repeated recursively and/or people who want to delegate their work to its community. Not that that fact has prevent you from asking your questions but It’s still kind of annoying nonetheless. I personally find /r/unity3D to be a MUCH MUCH MUUUUUUCH better community compared to unity answers. I try to be conservative with the amount of questions I ask there by generally only asking question that are less trivial in nature. Even so, they have been a freaking live saver.
