Unity learning curve guide

News & General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I’m probably looking for something that doesn’t really exist (as everyone is different), but I’m sort of looking for any online help/guide/video/blog/graph/occult ritual/etc which helps gauge your progress through the first stages of using Unity? Nothing fancy of definitive, just something that will indicate whether or not you’re trying too much, too little for however long you’ve been using it - if you shouldn’t be disheartened or to keep plugging away.

Thanks everyone!

---------Context below, not really needed but…----------

So basically I got the UDK about 18 months ago, played about with it, really struggled with some elements and so put it down again. However, really wanting to be able to do something whole and creative that I can realistically finish, I bought Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials just before xmas. I worked through the book over the next month or so, tried to take on board as much as possible (as well as knowing I had a basic reference book to call on), and then set about timetabling a game development strategy with progressively more complexity thrown in…

…so that lasted until halfway through game 2. Problem was I was coming across bugs/knowledge gaps, and really having to work hard to overcome them. This is reasonably simple stuff like the mesh colliders, changing renderer properties in real time, and stopping weird things happening in the physics engine. Suddenly working through all this to make something functional seemed like a thankless task because, well, it felt like I was never going to be happy with the outcome.

Now I’m not an idiot - I know this is just typical negativity at play. However, I had no frame of reference to say I was still progressing and this was all just part of the learning curve. I had no way of knowing if I was actually picking up the code quickly, or making dumb structural errors. And so without any real feedback, or finding similar experiences online (Everyone seems so fricking amazing), I stopped in March.

Anyway - after spending a lot of time designing board games no one is ever going to play, I realised there’s still this need to work on it. But I know I’m going to hit this same problem in another few months. And so, going back, that’s why I was hoping for some sort of guise to know what skills I should be hitting/developing and over what sort of timeframe so I can feel a bit of hope…

…anything you can suggest would be most helpful.

2

I suggest you skip the curves and go straight to the fastballs:

Even the online courses Unity used to offer didn’t grade their work. As a beginning programmer you gage your progress by how many consecutive work minutes you’ve worked without looking at a book, help page, or via an answer or search site. Really, that’s the best way and the only why you’ll get there is to program in Unity. I always say new programmers, even those with no aspiration to really program, just make a game, should work completely through a beginning C# book and then do the Unity tutorials. Unity itself and others say go straight to the tutorials and that works will if you are just going to clone games and replace artwork.

3

Hi Goat, thanks for the reply.

I appreciate that knowledge growth is important, but for me that doesn’t feel like progress. I know there’s this vast sea of stuff to learn and I’m barely paddling in the shore at the moment - but without structure, I feel really, really lost. I’m making a game, fine, but am I missing vital skills. I mean, for example, when should I design my own character controller rather than using the inbuilt assets? Should I be concentrating on the physical aspects of gameplay, or right now should I be working on coding? Is where I’m at coding-wise enough to stick to simple things and now I ought to be thinking about UIs and multi-screen menus? Is the game I’m making too complex and I ought to stick to, say, a basic platformer?

Now I know all these questions are pretty unanswerable without essentially 1-to-1 tuition, but is there perhaps resources that indicate when a waypoint has been reached? Levelling up if you will. The book I have touches on a great many things, but really shallowly. Which of those is the next skill to master? What should a second game look like, quality wise, if you’re a total noob?

Like I said, I know there’s no magic bullet for all of this, but is there help out there to plan all this knowledge gathering? That’s all…

4

@Gigiwoo has a twelve step programme of something. I honestly don’t remember the details, but plenty of new users seem to find success with it.

5

I’ve been / am currently, where you are.

I know what you mean, the learnign process can feel very scatological at times and overcoming it all can be more than daunting.

My suggestion to you is “Make something”.

Seriously, that’s it.

Just make a freaking game, on your own, beginning to end and publish it.

And the smaller the better.

From banging my head over and over again trying to put everything together, I’ve found that I can easily and quickly gut out what I need from documents and tutorials without having to commit to doing everything in it. The truly difficult part is making a whole, complete, product.

Making a tiny game will help you figure out how to structure your project.

You can always make more pieces to add to a project, but getting down the core of it and how it all fits together is the REALLY hard part.

If you feel like you need more help getting it together try getting a complete project on the asset store and dissect it. Also, Playmaker makes things a lot easier with finite state machines. Those can be a real bastard.

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6

@hillsy7 - Looking for guidance? You might enjoy the Game Design Zen Podcast (link in sig). It covers introductory+advanced, it’s engaging, and it’s free. Maybe start with Ep6.

TL;DR - Try, improve, repeat.

Gigi

7

Well I don’t know how you can think there is a better measure at your efficiency of progress in game programming then to chart your minutes spent without looking up how-tos in reference materials and watch that time decrease.

It sounds as if from your reply you want to preach about what learning is rather than actually learn.

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BoredMormom: Cheers, I’ll check it out.

Not_Sure: I don’t have much of a problem with the project side of thing - maybe it’s because I build a lot of spreadsheets at work to solve problems. I can work out what needs to be done, in what order, where the gaps are, etc etc. I have made some things, and I can continue to make things in the future, but I don’t know if I’m making the right things to progress properly.

Gigiwoo: I’ll have a listen later - can’t access at work (boo hiss web security!!!)

Goat: Firstly, if you aren’t learning anything, you’re not looking things up, which can easily be achieved by using only a fraction of the programming language and only making simple things/overengineer…so while it’s an ok measure, it’s not the be all and end all. I hardly ever look up things in Excel, I do my job very well, but I’d never get a job with people who know the 80% of Excel I don’t…

I don’t want to preach, god no. But I am trying to find something beyond just the standard “Just create” answer that I can understand. What should I be making? Because I don’t know what I don’t know, and I don’t really know the worth of what I do know. Which I find intensely frustrating…

All: I’m trying not to moan - it’s just that I can easily imagine there’s something out there where someone’s taken a sort of macroscale view of learning something like unity (e.g. I saw a youtube video for a 3 minute game. If someone said “after a few months you should be able to make something in under 5 minutes, something as simple as this!”, that is a clear marker of progress). I just didn’t know if people had come across something like this…?

9

So you’re asking what to make in Unity not how to program? You’re still going to need to learn to program and in Unity too. So my advice is still valid but you seem to want some YouTube channel or something. There was some guys called the Walker Brothers a lot of people like but I think their tutorials are behind the times now. The most up to date place to learn is with a C# learning book and the Unity Learn section of the Unity3d.com site. And even more current then those is the Unity Help pages but you need to learn C# and Unity to a basic level before those are much help.

I can’t change that those are the most up-to-date way to learn Unity and program in Unity. I was a beginning programmer once in college way before Unity and was the fact that I was in college studying computer science that made me learn o program and be somewhat good at it? No, of course not. Plenty of others were there and flunked out or graduated, not being very good programmers. What made me a proficient programmer was actually spending hours and hours of free time programming when I was in college. Which was mighty fortuitous seeing as to that’s what my degree is in.

When making games and seeking ideals for games it also helps to be reasonably proficient in language, math, physics, and other school subjects so you have material and knowledge to base your games on; which you are, at least in language, from what I can tell. I realize their are people that want to skip all that and make some socially obnoxious game and hope that notoriety of the obnoxiousness earns them early retirement, however it’s not a very likely proposition.

Then after you are ‘OK’ proficient, if you want to challenge yourself take some activity you do/did as a child or grownup and enjoy(ed) and make a game of it in Unity.

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10

Goat: Sorry, didn’t want to sound like I was dismissing your advice - I wasn’t. I know I need to learn programming, and I’ve made a start on C++ in the past, and I’m OK at VBA (excel side of things) So in that at least I sort of know what I don’t know (if that makes sense). I expect to sort of learn as I go - If I think I should be able to do something, I’ll check to see how it’s done and try and learn that part of it. So yes I know coding is vital, and that I’ve got a lot to learn. I won’t shirk that, dont worry…hehe

Anyways, it’s not so much ‘what’ to program, but sort of what level I should be taking on considering where I am in development. A loose roadmap so to speak. Like a syllabus for a degree, but with vague headings. I appreciate probably no one’s written one, but there might be something that sort of has the same information.

So I’ll deffo check out that Walker Brothers thing you mentioned - I’m not after specifics, so hopefully the fact it’s slightly out of date won’t matter.

Thanks again.

11

The Walker Brother site is arranged as a syllabus style somewhat but so if the Unity Learn site and the Unity Learn Site grows all the time. You shouldn’t expect some multiple choice test of your efficiency when using technologies that are discarded so rapidly. The C# and Java should remain stable for a long time if you have interests in programming only. Unity’s API will change but remain mostly stable. If you look at all the calls in Unity’s API you’ll know it’s not even practical you’ll ever use more than a small subset of the API like we all mostly only use subsets of the traditional human languages we use or subjects like mathematics. If you go into this with the ideal you must be an expert in all things Unity you will flail and fail.

12

Here is my syllabus. Primarily from a coders view point.

  • Clone flappy bird
  • Make a basic platformer
  • Build an open field 3D tower defence game. Make or source some actual models
  • Build and release a simple original game (Kongregate)
  • Build some basic reusable frame work stuff, like a sound manager, configurable input manager, pause menu, save manager and the like
  • Integrate a social media platform. Include automatic login, sharing with friends and persistent, cloud based game state
  • Become a useful contributor to the forums and answers
  • By now you should confident that with enough time and a decent connection to google you can solve any coding problem in unity
  • Pick up some freelance work from the forums (mileage will vary)
  • Stay on top of your game by keeping up with the latest feature releases from unity
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13

Been nosing about with everything listed - thanks for everything chaps…plenty to think on and work through.

Cheers

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