I just need a quick answer here so i’ll lay out my question as detailed as possible. I want to know how complete the Swords & Shovels course on Pluralsight is? I’ve yet to take any courses on Pluralsight, and i understand that it’s more of a premium service/platform compared to Udemy. I’ve taken at least 3 courses on Udemy to date. However, from my experience, there’s one minor inconvenience I’ve found with Udemy. And that is the seemingly absent rule that prevents instructors from releasing 70-80% complete courses for prospective students to enroll in. This often led to me finishing all the content and waiting weeks (sometimes months) for the instructor to add more content, at which point I’ve already moved on to other learning resources.
Swords and Shovels was announced, November 5th or 6th, 10 basic & completely disconnected courses (20 hours) were published on PluralSight and has not had any additional content since. I was extremely (and still am) excited for the complete courseware, but I find this 3+ months of waiting to be absurd.
As far as the courses go they’re pretty good, I’ve watched Joshua Kinney’s courses before and liked his style, but like I said, I feel the courses are a little too disconnected and the broader Swords & Shovels game is never really discussed. Maybe they’ll come together once the next 80 hours is released. Hope it’s soon!
Joy Horvathis excellent too and she has an additional course on PluralSight, in the short course of hers Designing Game Puzzles in Unity you really get a sense that she’s all about the little extras and see that she’s definitely delivered on AAA quality.
There are some pretty good courses on Udemy:
Ben Tristem’s Learn C# Code by Making Games - Complete Unity Developer 2.0, if you’re looking for absolute beginner, his Learn C# Code by Making Games 1.0 is good, but the last 3 lessons REALLY fall short.
Ultimate Guide to Game Development with Unity is pretty good too, but short.
And, IMHO, if you want crazy advanced, on Unity, but also from their own site: Game Institute, is Build Your Own First Person Shooter / Survival Game in Unity. These guys use/purchase lots of assets from the store, get into Mixamo and changing up the assets to fit their Zombie Apocalypse FPS sort of thing. And they have moved from Unity 5 to 2017 too.
I have used Pluralsight for like, half a year now. I have referenced several of the courses from the Swords and Shovels series, but I haven’t done the whole thing through.
It is not a comprehensive game development course. It is a solid overview to give you some footing in the overall process of creating a game. After you finish the course, don’t expect to have all the knowledge to turn around and bang out a game – but you will have a solid idea of where to go and many beginner questions will have been answered.
Actually, at this moment, I am referencing one of the videos from that course about exporting animations to be used in Unity. The video covers just the bare bones basics of animation, and briefly shows you how to get them working in unity. No doubt, when you try on your own, things aren’t going to work out perfectly and you’ll be left scratching your head. But keep in mind, you have to just get started somewhere, and for me at least pluralsight is the most dependable resource for getting started.
I’m coming back around to mess with Unity after having not touched it in a good while. So I jumped on the 3 free months as well. I have gone through a few Udemy courses in the past but they really did feel lacking of something.
I’m starting with the Beginner courses (about 10 hours in) just to refresh my memory and they really are basic courses so far. However, in my opinion, the videos aren’t as ‘beginner’ as I expected because of how quickly he goes over concepts so it helps to already have an understanding of Unity. It’s also worth noting that the exercise files don’t exactly match up with each section of the Unity Fundamentals course. All of the assets and scripts are there but some components aren’t applied - but maintaining a single build as I followed through the videos mitigated that issue. Like BIGTIMEMASTER mentioned, the tutorial hasn’t been a cradle to grave game development tutorial but rather disconnected concepts using the same assets all geared toward the idea of making Swords and Shovels dungeon crawler.
I also read complaints about the requirement of additional software/tools 3ds Max and Maya which, so far, just isn’t accurate. Yes, some videos show how to prepare assets for import but the concepts carry over to any similar tool like Blender. Either way, all the assets are provided so I haven’t had to create anything.
I didn’t know that you need some familiarity with Unity before starting. I think i’ll just use the tutorials on Unity’s website for that. And on the use of paid tools, i think folks could just use Blender and lookup a Youtube video on how to do what’s done with Maya/3DSMax in the course. Thanks.
Starting with the freely available resources on Unity’s website and on YouTube is the smart approach. You don’t need to pay for your learning materials to have good learning materials. Many of the most recommended learning materials out there are free.
Just as an example the C# Yellow Book is a highly recommended college text book for beginners. It’s been a staple book for the University of Hull for first year programmers and they have never charged for it. Just keep in mind it’s C# only and won’t cover Unity at all. It’s still highly recommended for teaching the basics in a complete way.
Here are some examples of complete game project tutorials available on YouTube. Some of these may not have been fully completed at this point in time, but they all have the majority of their content by now and the developer is constantly adding new videos to them.
you don’t get all the courses BTW
I bought a Plus account and got this for free but not all the courses are free! There are 4 new courses out now and I need to upgrade my pluralsight license to watch them! Not nice Pluralsight!! and Unity!!
You should have access to all the content in the Swords and Shovels course. Other courses outside that may require different plans. if you are not able to view all the Swords and Shovels content that is part of the Unity Dev Course, you should contact Pluralsight to have them help you out. (if that fails, I would then contact Unity sales).
I have already contacted Pluralsight but have not heard anything so far…
These courses have been published this month and are not in my account:
Pluralsight - Swords and Shovels: Loot System
Pluralsight - Swords and Shovels: Character Stat System
Pluralsight - Swords and Shovels Character Controller and AI
Pluralsight - Swords and Shovels: Character Inventory System
When I click on one of them I need to update my license
see screenshots
I have already contacted Unity but have not received a reply yet.
I noticed the 5 new courses today, the earliest from May 10th: Swords and Shovels: Game Managers, Loaders, and the Game Loop, but also noticed these 5 new courses are not with the original 10 which are part of the Plural Sight Path : Unity Game Dev Courses: Fundamentals. Maybe suggest to Plural Sight to update the Path?
When this was first introduced, in Nov '17, think Unity was giving a 3 month subscription, then eventually a 6 and now a year, but the way this content is being released any one with a year maybe missing out in the end.
no update… still no reply from Unity or Pluralsight, both are very bad in support! I already knew about Unity, and Pluralsight is not that good either! But they like to take your money…
Unity support is currently very heavily swamped thanks to the latest Windows update from Microsoft breaking the license system resulting in a large number of people getting deactivated. I don’t know how long you’ve been waiting (no one ever mentions that when they’re complaining about support) but it will likely be longer than past support requests.
like I say you don’t get all the course material from Swords and Shovels that is displayed on the Unity website, just got a mail back from Pluralsight:
Thank you for reaching out to us. The account under this email [***********] is showing that you have a subscription that gives you access to certain courses. I am not showing that you have a full subscription with us. Due to this, you are only able to view the courses that are shown on the list that can be found on your home page.
If you are trying to view courses that are not on that list, then you will receive the error message to upgrade.
these are the courses that are released last week:
Pluralsight – Swords and Shovels: Loot System
Pluralsight – Swords and Shovels: Character Stat System
Pluralsight – Swords and Shovels Character Controller and AI
Pluralsight – Swords and Shovels: Character Inventory System
Swords and Shovels: Game Managers, Loaders, and the Game Loop
and they are all listed on the unity website… so a little misleading to say the least!
Well not sure you can call it misleading but false advertising which can result in lawsuits. All the courses means ALL the courses. Not 3, 6, 12, not 15 but all. So can we just get one basic page explaining:
Where are all the assets, in part two “Unity Game development Pipeline” there is a Dwarf and a Barrel that appear out of the MIST.
What courses are included, I though a subscription = complete Swords and Shovels course start to end. Why a subscription that goes nowhere and leaves out KEY COURSES? Sounds like bait and switch.
One landing page somewhere that puts it all out there would be nice.
I had sent Pluralsight another email because I did not agree with this and now I have received a message from the Support Manager: **** Thank you for contacting us! I have reached out to our technical team and have been informed that we are adding those courses to your subscription type. They should be ready by June 1st if not sooner. Please let me know if you have any additional questions. ****
So check your accounts guys and let me know if it has been added to your account…
