No comprehensive program

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So I’m getting pretty heavy into this Unity stuff, I’m just wondering why there doesn’t seem to be a “school” of sorts. It’s obviously quite a popular development tool, but there’s no real substantive learning tools for someone new to the concepts of 3D graphics and math. Kind of feels like an up hill battle. I mean, I’ve written whole programs… conceptually, programming is not an issue. Everything is just new to me. I still don’t know what a Quaternion is. I feel as though learning the concepts for using the environment are going to take just as long as developing any kind of game.

Why do you think it is that 3D concepts are so inaccessible to a new, interested person? Perhaps there’s a gap between what you need to understand about 3D graphics period to begin programming in 3D and the concepts of coding, entirely. I don’t see a filler in that gap.

It almost makes me wonder if it’s by design, since obviously game programming is a highly competitive business and there are obviously no benefits to producing a huge number of amateur builders. I suppose if you went to a school for game programming much of these concepts would be illuminated.

Then there’s the issue of productive use of your time… knowing how to build games, would you spend your time going back and teaching people what you so painstakingly learned or would you invest in your ambitions? I think the question answers itself.

Still, I can’t help but think there could be some kind of free resource for learning that isn’t filled with misinformation. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Have you had a chance to look through out learn section

Here you can find easy access to our tutorials, documentation and live training.

There are also quite number of 3rd party online training sites (none of which I have had any experience with). You could search through these with a google search.

Lastly, many colleges and universities now teach game development courses, and many of these use Unity. A look throughout the curriculum of your local colleges and universities might be a good idea! Also look at schools that teach film-making, as many of these schools also teach game development - for example the Nation Film Television School in the UK:
http://nfts.co.uk/our-courses/masters/games-design-development

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I feel a bit stupid, because I’ve seen your learn section before but I did not see all of the categorized videos below on all of the different subjects. When I did visit the page before, it was all a bit too new to me to understand what I was looking at, as well. Now I see and it makes perfect sense, and I’ll probably want to go through a few of those. Still, I think that for an absolute beginner, it’s a lot to digest. Even with the information available its just difficult to process what all of the different parts of Unity do and how they work together. I have no doubt that I’ll master it given time, so I suppose it’s up to each person to put forth that effort. And if a person can’t put in the work to understand such a streamlined environment as Unity then perhaps there’s really no hope of them building anything significant, anyway.

Thanks for the information, I appreciate it!

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Check my signature for some relevant links.

Best,

Jon

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Point taken re: the absolute new user.

Perhaps we need a “start here” playlist to get people up and running.

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I followed your advice and went over to the learn section, and spending about 1-2 hours a night watching videos I am more confident about the completeness of my understanding of how Unity operates and I have a lot of ideas of how to accomplish what’s in my head with the tools available. A playlist of some sort would be helpful, but there is something that is hard to define that I understand now but I couldn’t comprehend when I first started in the environment. That said… I must understand something completely to feel as though I am using it effectively, and I still have many areas of confusion or ambiguity.

I think up front, people should be told how Unity’s makers intended for us to think about using the tool. What’s the intent of their design… like when I pick up a wrench, someone can say, “The idea is to use leverage to turn something your hand can’t turn–” and so on. They can go over the grip, the part that actually turns things and it’s very succinct.

I haven’t seen that so far for Unity, though admittedly I may have not been looking in the right location

Here are some questions I would like clear answers to:
-When I press “Play” in my game, what happens code-wise? Is there a main “Start” function/method somewhere?
-What IS a gameobject?
-What is a monoobject, and how is it different than a gameobject?
-For a script on a gameobject, what is the first, second, third… etc. methods that are called?
-Does a gameobject have a default script, or is there no script at all unless I attach one?
-What’s the difference between Awake() and Start()? Is anything before Awake()?
-What is a Scene, fundamentally/conceptually? Can there be more than one Scene running at the same time?
-Can scripts be executed without being attached to GameObjects?
-Why or why not?
-Are there any features of C# that Unity specifically does not support?
-Do I have access to all standard C# libraries?
-I want to sell my game. Will I be able to integrate Steam with my game so I can sell my game on the steam service?
-Realistically, will I have to learn any other languages other than C# to complete my game for sale?
-Does unity have libraries for online play? Or will I have to supply that myself from scratch?

And then, that’s just the first wave of questions.

After that I think you can start getting into spinning rectangles, etc. Collision should be explained first thing, in some depth. Raycasting should be covered earlier on too.

Then I still have some confusion on LocalRotation, Rotation, etc… but I will look into myself.

Hopefully my rambling list assists someone in making a really good resource for newbies (and me hehe ;-D)

I think these questions seem a bit absurdly simple, something clearly written in documentation someplace. But realistically, these are some pretty fundamental things. Basic stuff. Maybe I’m just griping.

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Unity - Manual: Order of execution for event functions ← Found it after all