Unity team should communicate about the need to know coding before jumping into it

News & General Discussion
1

Hello,

this is a somehow slippy subject, but I’m kind of fed up with seeing interesting topics in Scripting/iOS/Unity Support being completely drowned into ultra-generalistic/unanswerable questions. Not fed of those people, but of the mass effect.

Like :

  • “please I need a script for movement”
  • “how do we script a punch ?”
  • “here guys, I coded a 26378923789 lines class to let the player crouch, but it doesn’t work, where’s the error ?”

Unity doesn’t do any automagic. Unity needs to code things to make it work.
So we can say that coding is a prerequisite to use Unity properly.

—> The point is :
… I didn’t see anywhere in all the ads and promotional texts in the site, or even in the reference sections, a strong warning about how much knowing the basics of coding is needed to use Unity.

Unity being basicly free, this drives a truckload of people into the official (and fair) baiting campaign that says “Unity takes care of a lot of things, just do what you imagine !”.

for example, in the front page :

There, newcomers who heard about Unity’s powerful features are sold and will download it, already planning to spend the night on developing Crysis 3/WoW 2/Final Fantasy XX.
Then the reality hits. After building quick assets, they realize they have to code for it to work. The hell gates are opened, and a new “how do I code games ?” thread is born.

Seriously, the Scripting forums are now a pile of “how do I make [insert basic Unity thing here] now ?”, “can you give me the script for [stuff] ?”, etc. Before Unity went free, we could see a lot of interesting threads about sharing tips. But now … ? :confused:

Clearly, a lot of people who come here don’t have a clue about coding, and coders can’t explain in just a post how to “make a ball roll on my car”, how to “make that tree fall if I hit it with my soldier’s penis”, or whatever is ultra specific to that people’s game.

It’s not a rant against newbies, as they are fairly driven in this questioning vortex because they’re not warned, it’s not their fault.
But I’m sure that a bit of communication about this prerequisite would save us a lot of eye bleeding (and a lot of mmo threads, too ^^).

Am I wrong ?

2

I think it’s fine really, everyone was a n00b once, some people go one to make great things and some don’t but that’s fine, no need to try to alienate any potential game developer. The question is how to get everyone the best support possible to get them going and there’s already a huge supply of tutorials, videos and community support like unity answers or the IRC channel.

I think if those places were clearly sign posted with maybe a sticky with a list of good tutorials and tutors or a pop up when you first run the program with a couple tutorials would be nice. The stuff there now is already pretty awesome though.

Really I think it’s fine at the moment.

3

Please don’t make me wrong, I never accused code beginners to be code beginners :wink:
I repeat, it’s not really their fault as they are not warned ^^

Just asking for “maybe” a better clarification about Unity prerequisites in coding in the promotional section of the site.

Also, another solution could be to create a new forum called “Tips Techniques sharing”, where no question would be allowed, and rename “Scripting” to “Scripting related questions” (or even merge it with Unity support and create a “scripting” subsection into it).

Well basically, a better separation of support questions and general subjects (like scripting, modeling, etc)

4

All development tools, IDEs, etc… use the same marketing messages. Unity isn’t unique from that point of view. As with all marketing, there is a catch, or caveat at least :slight_smile:

Unity does more for you, provided you have a minimum amount of skills in a whole host of areas. Being free is a bonus (it’s better than paying to find out you don’t know the first thing you need to actually use a product).

I think the problem with most new to game development is they just don’t know enough to know what they don’t know… D*MN! A Rumsfeld paraphrase! Must cleanse mind… Ok, so yes, it’s that bad. Some people see games, think fun, think “hey I could do that” and then try. Modding isn’t easy, at least moders learn that without all the extra that Unity needs. Coding, is coding. There I said it! Heck, modeling is modeling! If you don’t feel up to applying to Time Warner, or re-making your favourite movie, then why, why, does it seem to danged easy to you to make a video game?!?

How many people, who look at game dev, drop over to the Microsoft forums and tell them they’re going to remake MS Office? Or pop on over to Apple and let them know their OS is in trouble, 'cause they’re going to remake OSX using Linux, only online, with better graphics, and cooler features “they” (Apple) have obviously never thought of (Dreamora… you stay out of this :wink: ).

So why then download Unity and let us know “I’ve been looking at c# for a week” so naturally "i’m going to make a Halo 3 MMO, and “you guys don’t know, we’re got what it takes to finish”…

No, Unity is marketing to their customer base. And the message is true, for them. The general public reads that message and jumps in, that’s fine… even if it is often misguided.

Cheers,

Galen

FYI, nothing will stop MMO threads :slight_smile:

5

@galent : LOL you resumed it so well :stuck_out_tongue:

6

The thing is, unity isn’t that hard to use, even someone how’s never touched a single line of code in their life can start making playable games in less than a month. There are countless examples here and on the web in general (Rock Paper Shotgun for example)

Short of drag and drop scripting it couldn’t be any easier and even engines that feature dragging and dropping delve into actual typing to get more complicated functions working. e.g. game maker, RPG maker

The showcase area seems to be the place where people show cool scripts and packages they’ve made splitting scripting into more categories would just confuse people, better to keep it as it is and direct obvious questions to some collective knowledge base as they’re bound to have been answered already. Either a list of basic concept tutorials or unity answers or the wiki.

7

I have one drum I love to beat and that is the: make separate forums for Pro users. If somebody has been hired by a company who uses Unity or has $1500 lying around to spend on it, they probably feel comfortable enough with scripting to either have spent that money or landed that job.

Before the canned replies of, “Well, lots of people have Unity Free and know what they are doing” to which I reply, “Good for them.” I shudder to think of how much junk must be in the support mailbox from people who not actually customers which delays actual customers from getting help they need.

8

I think UT’s advertising is fine. Their not going to advertise how hard it is to make a game. How would that help sales?

“BUY UNITY! It requires years of programming, modeling, animation and audio production skills to make anything interesting! It requires a large team of developers, lots of money, and years of development time to make an MMO! What are you waiting for?! BUY NOW and begin your long journey of hard work!”

It just doesn’t quite have that ring to it. Their niche is that they make game development much easier and faster. Which I believe Unity does do. They could organize these forums better to alleviate some of the issues around here, but they seem to be dead set against any changes, aside from aesthetics that is.

9

Segregation might to current Pro users benefit, but it’s not in Unity Technologies interest and would be bad for the community in the long term. Tomorrows Unity Pros are todays Unity free users, discriminating against them would make Unity less attractive, meaning less Pro customers in the future.

I think even if every page of the Unity website had a huge UNITY REQUIRES ACTUAL SCRIPTING TO MAKE GAMES WORK banner across it there would still be “how do I make script?” threads. Maybe UT should have some scriptnoob focused documentation, as Spinaljack said it’s not really that hard for a coding virgin to get up and running if they have their head about them. Or maybe we need a repository of basic scripts for common things that people could drag and drop into their projects. Some kind of gui based scripting option would probably cut down on those questions too.

10

Well I’m another one thats for the separation in the forums.

Think of the separation not as we are better than you, but as a quite place, where the adults can go to get away form the children…:slight_smile:

Much love to the hardworking non Pro users though. I was there too.

What gets me is all these lazy people asking easily answerable questions. If they would roll up their sleeves, put their minds to work and actually go through the mass of tutorials that are out there and search the F/N forums, they might actually learn something. I think people are just lazy and the first road block they come to they go running to daddy saying “Help Me”. Part of “Learning” is getting your hands dirty and figuring things out yourself. I’ve spent days figuring things out. If answers are just handed to you then you really haven’t learned anything. For me, every time I hit a road block and powered through it for days, I ended up figuring it out and also learned 10 other things that I wouldn’t have if I was just handed the answer.
My advice to people new to game Dev is: If you hit a road block, before posting it and chancing a flamefest, Take a week and follow these steps:
1.Search
2.Read
3.Test
4.Repeat steps 1-4
This worked for me and it can work for you to…

11

If you are going to state that it is not in UT’s interest, you should at least back that position up. How would it be bad for the community? It wouldn’t, everybody knows it. It would provide a place for Pro users to exchange ideas without the constant pollution of dumb questions. The users could put their questions in one forum, which is where the lazy folks’ questions go, and the customers can put their questions in a forum for customers.

12

One problem is that most of the basic stuff is quite thoroughly covered by now, so anyone with functioning search skills finds the information without having to ask. So it gets harder to come up with interesting questions about things that don’t require a ton of work to answer. This leaves an increasing number of questions coming from people who don’t know how to type stuff into Google.

–Eric

13

Nice Idea…I like it…

14

Much of the problem appears to stem from many new users not understanding even the most basic principles of programming.

A repository of scripts sounds great until the forums are flooded with people asking for slightly different versions of those scripts or scripts which are clearly not generic enough to be in there.

15

there is already a place where they can get all sorts of scripts, not all up to date maybe but theres alot :http://unity3d.com/redirect.php?url=http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki

16

I did. Perceived discrimination against free users will drive people away, those people will never buy Unity Pro. Less users in the long term = diminished community, and Unity Technologies with lowered sales has less resources to improve the product.

17

I can see your point of view but I don’t think it will solve people’s problems, as those who can answer beginners’ questions obviously don’t tend to be other beginners. @ wadoman, separating “children” from “adults” only will cause more chaos imo, since there are “teenagers” inbetween who will need help with basic stuff but no beginners will be able to help and they won’t be taken seriously in the “adults’s” section. And thos in the “children” section will simply slaughter each other because they don’t learn from “adults” how to search for information, how to reply, how to behave etc.

I think it’s really a great thing that users feel safe enough to post about any problems/issues in the forum, it’s an indication that it’s a great and caring community. And for the road blocks you could spend days to solve - I agree with you, but I don’t think beginners are aware of how long things tend to take to solve. I remember my first Hello World in Java - after half an hour I thought it was ridiculous that it still didn’t work and went to the teacher and told him “this is impossible to do!”
But now I’m aware of the facts the you could spend days or weeks just to solve one thing - the process itself has become the main joy, so you’re okay with it. Beginners only have a clue of the result, not the process. That’s why separating them from those who actually know more about the process will only make a huge gap in the community users’ communication and UT would be less popular. Patience, dude!

18

@JRavey - I want to say up front, i’m not picking on you in the following, I just keep seeing this come up and want to drag it out into the open for a moment. My appologies n0mad for continuing this hijack of the thread topic.

What is the proposed criteria for the creation and maintenance of a “licensed pro-only community”? I bought my “free” version of 2.0, then licensed pro 2.0 and 3.0, plus basic iPhone. Are you proposing that only people with “skin in the game” be included in this “pro” community, or just people with a current 3.1 pro license? What about those people with 15-30K invested into one or more console versions? They trump your investment 10-20 to one. Perhaps a “real game studio” community, where verfied studios with revenue over the $100K indie cut off would be better?

Now, as to “we keep answering stupid questions” … ok let me net this out (assuming the Unity forum server isn’t lying to me :slight_smile:

Dreamora (16, 948 posts) and Eric5h5 (12, 126 posts) are responsible for 6.4% of all forum posts to date (5 years in existance)! Just over 1 in 20 posts here is from one of those two. Both have over double the posts from HiggyB!! Based on posts from each that I read, I believe both have Unity Pro, neither have a console license. so… perhaps we can give those two their own community so the rest of us can stop bugging them! To get into their community you need to 1) exceed 10,000 posts in the regular forum and 2) hold current paid licenses at or above the lowest licensed person.

Does that sound fair? At least it would reflect some measurable effort in community involvement within the community’s 5 year existance. And not be bias toward money (which I will note, more teens have the ability to buy Pro than adults with an interest, regardless of skills).

Just my thougths.

Cheers,

Galen

19

The proposed criteria is quite simple, you own the pro version of that software.

Nobody bought the “free” version of 2.0. Some people, myself included, bought the Indie version, then they released a free version. Bummer for those that bought it right before, but it wasn’t exactly expensive.

I would say only a 3.x Pro license. Sure, people paid for 2.x and no longer have Pro. 2.x is the past, Unity cannot provide free support for it eternally. What about the 1.x licensees? What are they to do? Software and hardware gets EOL’ed all the time. Last year, we spent over $300,000 on some software for my day job, this year it is not supported without a $60,000 per year service contract. When 4.x is released, Unity will owe nothing to the 3.x users. If they wish to buy it, great. Unity can offer discounts, but it’s up to them.

Console users probably have their own support channel, which they should. It’s a funny thing, when you spend more on a product, you have better service. When you spend no money on a product, that you even have service is unusual. Should I get upset at that? No, it would be childish and egocentric to assume I deserve the same level of support as a console licensee just as it is childish to think that a Unity Free user,(not customer) should have the same level of service as a Unity Pro customer (not just user).

I understand why Unity has a free version, it’s to push Unity towards that critical mass where it becomes an accepted plugin like Flash and a common technology found on resumes. It is just business, there is nothing unethical about it, it’s a good move.

So we can say how it really makes new users feel great that they can ask any question that has already been asked several times, good for them. It has a potential inverse of potential customers looking at the Unity product as being something for people who are just dabbling and will probably do nothing. By having a Pro-only section and possibly even a Studio-only for large purchasers, Unity can show that they take their customers seriously. Is it fair that some people would get less from Unity Technologies than others? Absolutely. If one considers large customers being treated better than small customers, and small customers being treated better than non-paying users as an injustice, they should stop worrying about such things and be damned happy that their life must be pretty good if that is what keeps that awake at night.

“Discrimination”, really? Oh Lord, help me against the evil gatekeeper at the cinema, he discriminates against me for having no ticket. Many people bought Unity Indie 2.x, it was a whole $200. A trivial cost for what it was and would have been a bargain at twice the price. Yes, back then Unity was discriminating against people by not providing a service in exchange for money. This is a veritable human rights issue, I am dialing the UN this very moment.

20

Separating forums isn’t the answer we are all looking for. It may solve the “problem” for the paying customers, but the problem would still remain. (EDIT: Problem Definition: -Currently a situation where data is repeatedly or redundantly posted on the Unity servers using excess bandwidth and causing users to view multiple similar threads)

The answer to the solution would be to create a basic walk through that is prompted at start up when Unity is run. More than just look at the docs or check out the reference manual. A full fledged Quick Start guide to Unity. In this guide it would explain the common topics and could even pull much of its contents straight from the Docs or manual. However, the thing that it would be required to do is show the users how to learn how to do certain things and where/how to obtain new knowledge in that area. A guide that says this is how scripting works, you will need to know the basics of coding before beginning. Please check out these tutorials for an introduction: item1 item2 item3

Know the basics? Check out these more advanced tutorials! Lerpz, etc, etc

Think you know your stuff? Use the Docs to harness the power of Unity Scripting! Docs_Link

This is something that would divert users from directly posting on the forum for help and flooding everyone with similar requests. It seems to me that this could be a simple PDF doc with internal and external links, perhaps compiled by the community? And then publicized on the main unity page as a beginners guide. This slight prod should be all it takes to get more people to investigate things themselves if they are told: “Oh hey? Got a question? I have your answer right here! clickable_link_to_content!” I think the problem is that the users are not looking hard enough for current documentation. If we bring it closer to them and have it more readily available, they should be better satisfied. And you might think, it IS readily available! Well if it was, then we wouldn’t have this kind of problem would we? I don’t know.

Anyone like this idea? I think its the most viable solution. Anyone want to create a Unity Community User’s Guide? I know I would want to help out in that endeavor. Even just a basic one that we could give out to the new developers who want to design games but do not know exactly what it entails?