Me, I’m a 60 dayer. (jest alert)

News & General Discussion
1

OK so most are “30 dayers”, I can live with that. Me, I’m a “60 dayer”. I am not a coder. I have tried, many times. I have taken programming courses, (such as ForTran and COBAL around ’77). Tried C when it got going, gave it up quickly. Played with C++ on occasion. Felt most comfortable with assembly, go figure. Guess I’m more of a hardware man myself. If there is one thing I did learn, it is that I will not program for a living, which is a shame, I see such power and usefulness in it. “I believe” programming is quite “Left Directed Thinking”. I have come to categorize myself more “Right Directed Thinking”. (Anyone read Pink?) Which is strange, I would have sworn I was more LDT till about a year ago. So it takes me more time to pick these things up. Hence the extended time frame.

“But Unity is not programming!” I hear you say, “it is more graphical in nature”. True. But reality is, to be proficient with Unity, you have to script. And scripting IS programming. Not as hardcore as the real programming languages, but still programming. In that I do have hope, so I press on.

“I picked Unity up in a day.” Great, I bet you have many games out there, making tons of money and had to get the Pro license right away, right?

“I went through the 2D tutorial in an hour!” OK so it took me a day. No, wait, still trying to get that moving platform thing down, it’s a big part of what I’m working on. We just got an update today for the Tutorial, almost 3 weeks later. Not faulting Unity for releasing Unity early, glad they did, just pointing out time frame stuff.

“You could have just set the moving platform up in script.” See notes above.

“It’s been out for a long time.” Only recently for Windoze. I don’t have a Mac and could not justify the purchase for Unity. That might have been a strategic failure, who knows. I don’t dislike Apple, I bought an Apple II (integer) in ’79, oh the stories, the memories. But PCs took over long ago. I resisted for a time but eventually succumbed, oh if I could have only afforded that monster, LISA. (As an aside to all M$ detractors, I believe Bill gave Apple its start, ever hear of Applesoft?)

“It’s the best thing out there and better than sliced bread.” Seems to be so, that is what I aim to find out. Many say that other’s stuff is better than Unity. Does that make it so?

“It’s only $200 for the indie license.” Yes it is a bargain. TGB and TGE are cheaper, does that make them better.

“It’s cheap, just get it.” If the factory I worked in was not moving to Mexico and been laid off for more 6 months and trying to move out of MI looking for work (the economy and all that), I would have bought it by now. But funds are tight, I need to make sure it will be what I need. I have TGB, TGE, TGEA. They were “the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Kind of disappointed in them. I haven’t given up on them yet. But Unity may be better for me.

“If you’re so inept at everything, why even bother?” Not everything, just some things. I do have many good skills which I believe will help me to build a viable indie business. It just will take me more time than many of you out there.

(Disclaimer: take this lightheartedly. I am not badmouthing Unity, just sharing some thoughts with jest. I put this disclaimer for those that seem to feel they can share such jests but get so bent out of shape if others do likewise. They can dish it out but can not take it.)

2

No you don’t. :wink: Unity is definitely programming.

In any case, I don’t think the purpose of the trial is to achieve absolute mastery over Unity before buying. It’s to see whether you like using it or not, and to see if it suits your purposes or not. I have great difficulty in seeing how this can’t be done in a month. Generally the trial extension is for people who downloaded, installed, ran it once, then didn’t get back to it for a long time whatever reason, so they say “oops” as their trial expired before they really had a chance to do anything.

–Eric

3

I second Erich you need to know programing.
I deeply regret the fact you are unemployed I know how it is, I know also how it is to survive for long time with a salary no more than $100 monthly. It suck bit time. But hey, I am still here and planning to get Pro version after I will develop enough skills with Unity (so far 2 things kept me away from this: my cute little priest in World of Warcraft and my broken leg in the last 2 months :smile: ).
If you are really serious in making a viable indie business you should switch away from unity after expire date and try to build up your skills in other areas like: modeling, game design, music, do some javascript or get the free edition of Visual Studio and try to learn C#. The internet is stuffed with tutorials and free tools for everything.

4

Guilty as charged. The system works! :smile:

Nah, I was just impressed at how quickly I was able to get something happening on-screen. Since then, it’s been mostly studying at how to actually make something worth looking at, on the screen. 8)

5

Its more of a “Programming Lite” :slight_smile: because you dont have to go through the hassle of programming the actual engine and go through all the nitty-gritty of engine dev.

6

That’s true, but I mean it’s programming in the sense of having to write code to do anything interesting, as opposed to “construction kit” environments where you click icons and drag stuff around, which are generally simpler to get into, but are far more limiting. (Although, there’s nothing stopping an ambitious person from implementing a construction kit environment within Unity using the editor functions.)

–Eric

7

Nope, its just regular programming. Unity offers a great abstraction layer that makes the programmer more efficient; allowing the programmer to spend less time on the very low level parts of the game and more time on the good parts, the parts that really make the game.
For instance, in the Java world, programmers write programs that run on top of the JVM, which is an abstraction layer that makes them more efficient… Java programmers spend time designing and coding memory management routines or database access routines, that type of low level code is taken for granted and “just works”. All programming, to some degree, relies on an abstraction layer… Unity’s API is an abstraction layer that allows programmers to get more work done in less time.
IMO, calling it “Programming Lite” is to not understand what programming really is.

8

Et voila! :slight_smile:

–Eric

9

Well, theoretically someone can come in, without knowing any programming, start using Unity, get a pretty good understanding of some basic concepts with regards to programming, and make a simple game quite quickly.

They may not fully and absolutely grasp everything about the language they used, but it would definitely be a fun way of learning, and a pretty good stepping stone to go further.

10

agreed.

11

Unity requires programming? I get by just fine with voodoo dolls and prayer.

12

I never thought Unity was actually being marketed as a Point and Click game making tool. But there is enough code floating around and example projects that even with no skills anyone can cut and paste together a game. For example that Paper Pilot game for the iPhone. They cut and pasted two of the Unity Demos together. Then added some very basic code for menus and scoring and presto a top selling game in the appstore.

Heh… What would you consider a real programming language? Last I checked, C# was still considered a real programming language.

It’s all pretty much the same. Little bit different syntax, but the same concept of control structures and data structures. It’s not the language that makes it difficult, it’s the subject matter. It really depends on your game engine as to whether or not it’s going to be a painful process. Writing a game engine from scratch probably isn’t going to happen for an independent game developer. Either you write engines or you write games. It might happen in the academic setting (writing both), but not for someone trying to get into the business. With a lot of game engines you wind up writing a lot of code just to get everything setup and initialized with the engine itself. Then you’re writing a lot of code to manage and setup your assets. This is where Unity saves you the headaches.

With the editor, a lot of things are snapped together visually that with other engines you would have to write a lot of extra code to handle. On top of that, you’d be going back and forth between many different tools to prepare your assets. This is something that Unity handles seamlessly. I always find myself reorganizing assets and reorganizing/refactoring code. Unity makes it effortless, rather than having to wade through a tangle of code (code that is non existent in unity) just to make a few changes. The editor makes a lot of things quicker; it’s a very effective tool. But it doesn’t do too much (ie game makers) to the point where it it becomes limiting. It’s really the ideal setup for someone who wants to actually make games. I spent a lot of time making projects with irrlicht and never actually completed anything because it just takes so much time to accomplish anything. I bought Unity at the end of October and now I’m finishing up my 5th game. And I didn’t even have to cut and paste the Unity demo projects to do it :).

13

Last I checked, C# was still considered a real programming language.

True, it is.

Edit: Well, I think it is, though there are those that would argue the point.

14

They shouldn’t be taken seriously :roll:

15

I don’t think the purpose of the trial is to achieve absolute mastery over Unity

I agree with that. I guess what I am looking for right now is if it would better serve me over XXX which I already have. XXX is OK, but after working with it for a while, I find small things with it that are driving me crazy. Things that I believe I could not have known about till using it for a time, things that are a part of the engine and should be different. Granted I got it in the EA time and could not have tried it out, so I chalk it up to experience.

I have had it for about 3 weeks now. I am getting to know it better. The timeline editor has been an issue for me. I just got the moving platforms to work yesterday. That was a major need and stumbling block for me. Now I can move on. Will I feel justified in a week? Time will tell.