I am thinking of employing unity to make a game for my final year project. However i am concerned with the learning curve as i only have 11 months to complete the project.
Currently my only experience is with C# for around 6-7 months. Apart from that i know nothing about unity or game programming concepts in general.
While i know that it is entirely dependent upon one’s skill set,i would like to get a rough estimate on how much estimated hours would i have to put in to get started or even how much time it took you to get started. I can devout around 4-5 hours daily and upto 6-8 hours on weekends. Will that be enough for me to do something sizeable in the matter of a year.
Please i require your guidance on the learning curve of unity, and before i forget for the final year project i would be the only member of my group.
Welcome to the forums, gamer999. To answer your question, Unity should not take you long to dive get into, but you can spend a while learning all the small details.
The workflow is quite simple. If you are familiar with C# already you should be able to jump right in. C# is one of the three languages you can use in Unity (the others being Boo (like Python) and UnityScript (similar syntax to JavaScript)).
It’s easy enough to learn by just exploring the interface of the software, but if you like learning through direction, there are plenty of great “Getting Started” tutorials out there (see my signature).
You should also look through the documentation and scripting reference. They are a huge help and will help guide you along with examples (the scripting reference in all three languages) whenever you get stuck.
Thank you for the welcome and the guidance on where to start.
As i said before that this is my final year project for the university so its really essential that i get a very rough estimate on how much hours would be required to learn and then employ myself to make a really really basic bare bones 3d game(Like sort of how much it took you get started with unity).
Otherwise,if you have time, a link to a game made with unity on youtube with the estimated develop time would be really appreciated that is of course if you have time. I don’t wanna sound lazy but i really have no idea on how much time a bare bones 3d game would take and whether i would be able to finish it within 600-700 hours.
Take a look at ‘Tornado Twins’ or ‘Unity Tips and Tricks’ tutorials on youtube. Unity is used by over 1 Million developers, and there’s no way to estimate how hard it will be for you. It’s solid and relatively easy to use, and yet… it’s a game engine. Your mileage may very.
The amount of time it would require is influenced by so many variables, there’s almost no way to give an accurate prediction, I mean you could set up a 3d first person game on a island in under 10 minutes just by using the default unity tools/prefabs, but we need more info, does the game have complex interactions or physics? Does it need ai? Do you know how to create 3d models?
And unity would be an excellent candidate to create your final project, using it would be much faster then rolling your own engine out, to start just search some tutorials on YouTube and get to know the interface, it is quiet intuitive once you the hang of it.
Well i only have 6-7 months experience with C#. Other than that neither do i know 3d modeling nor do i know making textures or generating terrains. That’s why i wanted to know whether a really bare bones game with original art work but very little AI would be possible in 800 hours(including the learning curve).
Look up some tutorials. There is a lot about going from nothing to something you can walk around. Plenty of examples of people who took Unity and made a basic game in a month. Now it is nothing special but you can do it. Also google is your friend when trying to script. No one can tell you it will take x amount of hours. Way to many variables. Only way is to jump in and go.
Also I took a game programming class. We did a whole unity book in 12 weeks, which I sure if do e outside of class, you can do it much shorter time frame.
Could you tell us the game you want to make? If we know that, we can give you a better estimate, but we can’t give you any hard numbers. The time it takes is entirely dependent on your workflow and the speed at which you learn and work. A barebones game can take just a few hours to make. A decent barebones game can take about 48 hours. I know somebody who has been working on a game – the game should have taken only a couple of years – for 15 years. He still hasn’t started the art or gameplay yet. He just keeps adding planned features and never actually implements anything. If you work fast and hard, a simple game could take you anywhere from a few hours to a few days to a few months or even a few years.
Question: How much of the final product do you have to divulge at the end? I ask because with Unity, you can buy some assets and packages to make the game to save time, and add in the stuff you need to add in to show off your work. Unity(game development in general) is going to take you longer than 11 months to become really good at it(especially if you’re new), but that’s time you can spend after the projects complete.