Hello, I have recently started learning Unity but am a bit overwhelmed by the shear number of tutorials available and don’t really know where to start.
I have done some game design before but mostly in game editors and blender. I have a lot of experience with 3d CAD but I don’t know how much help that will be besides the modelling aspect. I lack experience in coding so this is I think where I should begin however I would prefer to make apps without coding if possible.
I have an idea for an AR game but thats gonna take a back seat until I am proficient enough in Unity to work on it (I’ve made a simple animation in AR with Vuforia). For now I am working on a 2D game that I hope will be more simple to produce.
I don’t want to give much away as I know how easily these ideas can be stolen but my main question is what is the latency like now on mobile apps over wifi and data connections? Can you play for example an FPS or Racing game against other players comfortably on 4G?
The game I have in mind could be played live with other players or have a delayed start but live would undoubtedly be better.
The style of your question reminds me a lot on myself when I was starting with Unity and my primary field is game design too
In my opinion, you can’t really avoid at least some coding if you want your game to have that special aura/seal/ID of yours. If game is done purely inside construction kit, it always leave that feel that it isn’t entirely your authentic game, and will bear in more or less quantity seals of construction kit in question. Be it ancient construction kits since Commodore 64 days (like SEUCK), or even AMOS in days of Amiga which was far more serious developing platform than mere construction kits. Thus I suggest you get into coding at least a bit, right from the start.
Beside many online tutorials, this is Unity’s official 2D game tutorial that was of great help to me when I was in your place:
It might be useful to you too, to get the grip on general concept on game development in Unity, by experimenting and toying with it.
If you find it useful and want more, then you can also check my asset in the store, which is in line with this tutorial when it comes to the style of teaching:
It has many more features, some that are essential for complete rounded game, in my opinion. Basically I built this tutorial project with quite a few features that are standard in games, which I wished this Unity’s 2D tutorial had.
This is a good idea. Start with something simpler so that you are sure you will deliver it. Some believe that it is the most important to finish what you start, and I tend to agree with that. Oh and, while I suppose that depends on one’s temperament, be ready for… fun, boring, weird, frustrating, inspiring, concerning, etc. journey… but ultimately fascinating experience and good feel, once you finally bake your game
Yeah, coding can be quite intimidating at first, but Unity folk did quite a good job to streamline it. Use Unity answers whenever you need aid with the code, the folks there are quite helpful
I think going to mecanim system is the most optimal way here, yes. Particularly if collision of two sprites means, for example, crash of two cars. Then car sprites would need to change to their wreck-like frames from their sprite sheets.
Otherwise I like to do animation in code whenever that is possible. For example, animating a car or jet in 3D is rather simple, it’s mostly about the spinning wheels or banking which all can be done with simple rotations, but anything more complex, like human, and I suspect there’s no other sane way but mecanim.
Only learn coding if you’ve always secretly wanted to learn it. It’s a ton of work and not useful until you know quite a lot. Sure, you can quickly program some cool stuff, but that’s completely different from making a program according to your specific idea, and being able to tweak it the way you want.
In theory, learning a little coding would help in hiring - being able to tell a good programmer from a bad one. But not as much as you’d think. Learning 3D modelling gives you all the terms and concepts first. If you once took 3 hours to unwrap a box, at least you understand unwrapping. But programming is the opposite. You have to learn lots of easy stuff before the big-picture stuff makes any more sense.
Getting to know basics of object-based programming, isn’t hard to learn, but it’s true that getting into real coding is a hard in general. And not only that, it also requires a certain type of methodical, systematic, engineering mind, thus it definitely isn’t for everyone even if one has wish to learn it. In a way, I am talking here from close experience.
However…
There is something about Unity, that makes coding not so scary in its case. Is it due to examples around or because it’s streamlined or because it was built with games in mind or that everything really makes sense (to me)? I can’t say for sure. One Unity developer put it well, paraphrasing: coding of the game is not so scary as people think it is, great coding of the game is as scary as people think it is, fortunately for games often you don’t need great coding. Of course certain level of quality is required in order for game to not be buggy or terribly optimized but that level could also be just enough to allow you to shape your game according to your vision, too. This is why I put additional emphasis on code in my teaching asset and wrote very long manual to explain everything. I wanted closed construction so that it leads student through general concept on making the game from (usual) start (you know, title screen, game settings, etc), all the way to (usual) finish (return to title screen, game over, outro, etc). I can easily now (though it would be a long process) reshape whole asset into platformer, top down shooter, racer in Micro Machines style, Chaos Engine-like, and that’s just top of my head (doesn’t even matter if it would be 2D or 3D, although my past experience may be talking here). I dare to believe that others would be as well capable of this reshaping into something a lot different, but more importantly, make their own game based on the amount of gathered standard concepts. I am kinda certain that along the way, a student would get plenty of his own ideas how to expend/change the code as it gets acquainted with it (thanks to documentation), out of pure imaginative curiosity if nothing else. Also I know some essential game elements can often be quite difficult to code, but fortunately, some of it has to be made only once, then it can be almost just copy pasted to any other game, regardless of game type (like saving data). Number of these essential elements I shovelled in into this closed construction of mine, to serve as part of whole, but often there are various rich stand-alone assets available for that kind of universal stuff in asset store. Thus, if one really wants, one could avoid dealing with some of it, as those are elements of supporting structure and not necessarily part of the game idea itself.
It’s important that there are plenty of examples around which one can immediately google out and that one can ask people if stuck. Fortunately, Unity has both of these things checked due to its wide community. If google doesn’t help, you proceed to Unity answers/forum if that fail too, you can try Unity Discord and if you are that unlucky that neither of these help, you can hopefully make a (little) change in your idea.
Programming isn’t my primary field, so I don’t wish to push myself too far in this discussion. All I am saying is that one should definitely try coding in Unity, right from the start, no matter how intimidating it may seem at first, or how sour one’s past journey into coding may have been. You might get surprised (I sure as hell was :)).
