I’ve always wanted to get into making games and some light research led me to the very approachable Unity3D engine.
I’ve started working through Will Goldstone’s excellent and very helpful Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials, which helps a lot in learning the features of Unity 3. But I’ve just now discovered that Unity 4 is out or will be soon (first time visiting this site).
Does this mean Unity 3 is obsolete now? How huge of a difference is there between the two? Should I stop trying to learn Unity 3 and start with Unity 4? I don’t really have a problem with that but there’s definitely not as many resources for Unity 4 as there is for 3.
One more off topic question…does scripting become less of a complete nightmare over time?
Welcome to the community. Most of what you learn about Unity 3 is still helpful in Unity 4, which is out now. I am still using 3, but that’s because I haven’t found a reason to upgrade yet. Starting new, you would probably want to start in Unity 4. The layout is a bit different and there are new features, but the skills and programming you learn will work for the current and future versions of Unity.
Most of what you’d learn in Unity 3 applies to Unity 4.
Scripting in Unity is very nice. If you’re talking about learning to program, that depends on you. Everything gets easier over time, but if you consider it a complete nightmare, maybe that’s not the best thing you could be doing.
Thanks for the input. I think I’ll continue working through the 3.x resources, as I know nothing about the technical side of game development. I don’t think learning the new features and layout of 4.x will be difficult.
Very true lol.
As much as I’d love to hire a team of codemonkeys to do my bidding, I’m just a young guy working in his bedroom when I can. So I have to get my own hands dirty. It’s not a nightmare (it can be, at times) just a lot to learn. Does anyone have any recommended reading or online tutorials for learning the basics and beyond of scripting in regards to game development? In my limited experience, I prefer C# so far.
IMHO if you have at least a basic knowledge of C#, the best way to learn is to start with simple, but real tasks. This way you will not only encounter problems, and learn how to overcome them in realistic environment. You will also memorize better and you will better understand how the system works as a whole. In my opinion this is much more useful than reading a book with some abstract, taken out of context, examples.
And once again, assuming you know a bit of C# and basic coding techniques, I’d recommend starting with the Unity Scripting Overview .
Then, when you have the basics, load up an empty scene and try, for example, to implement your own FPS Character Controller. Unity has it’s own Character Controller Package, so if you have a hard time starting, you can always check how Unity does it. To get more advanced, you can try to smooth out the Camera rotation, add head bobbing while walking, add crouching, and so on. This way you’ll be solving realistic problems and hopefully learn and memorize the basic unity class structure and frequently used methods.
One point of view on it.
Out of my view the new EULA just clarifies what applied before already as all those cases where the changes in the EULA have an impact legally and contractually required Unity source licenses in the past anyway (especially the gambling and cloud gaming part) with source licenses always only having been available on a per project negotiation base.
As such the EULA should not scare away anyway, should there be doubts on one of the points, get in touch with the Unity team and they will clear up the doubts for sure.
I found “Unity 3.x Game Development by Example” by Ryan Henson Creighton to be great for learning Unity 4 for the first time. It’s all tutorial projects, and very funny too. Lots of real-world gaming advise too. Well worth the $15 I paid. It’s in JavaScript however.
Yes, if you stick to it. When I started a couple of years ago, my code-fu was 20 years out of date and consisted of BASIC and C (no ++ or #, just C). Just looking at code made my head hurt. Now I can pretty much write a fairly complex code with ease.
Here’s a question, I got lucky and managed to get the android and iPad extras for unity 3.5 when they had that special on last year if i switch to the free version of unity 4 will they come over as well or are they 3.5 only?
The free licenses are only for Unity 3.5. The upside, though, is you don’t need to pay full price to upgrade to a 4.0 license, only the upgrade price.For iOS and Android that price is $150, versus the regular $400 price if you buy the license for the first time.
Hi all - and hey Lefty, welcome to the community, glad you’re enjoying my book. I’d start off by pointing you at the Unity forums Teaching section, and also at this blogpost that we’ve written about the learning area we’re working on -
Everything gets easier over time, but if you consider it a complete nightmare, maybe that’s not the best thing you could be doing.