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I'm trying to learn unity and game development as well. My day job is salesforce integrations, and wow I'm finding game development mindbogglingly hard. I thou

I'm trying to learn unity and game development as well. My day job is salesforce integrations, and wow I'm finding game development mindbogglingly hard. I thought it would a cute fun thing to with my kids since they love minecraft but . . . I'm not finding tutorials or books that work for me. Tons of documentation, tutorials, books are out of date, and I find the unity official tutorials not that great, they seem to be focused on super specialized tracks. Anyone have any good tutorials, books, videos they'd recommend ? I'd really like something concise and focused on 3d game development in unity without too much frills just to get handle on the basics.

gameswithgo 5y ago
One thing that can help is to step back and do some very very basic game programming from scratch first. Make a simple 2d game like pong first. This will give you some basic understanding of how to draw pixels on the screen, how to collect input, how to track game states and do a game loop. Once these basic ideas are better understood, you can hop into a game engine and have some context for what the heck is going on. It will make more sense. Get familiar with the fundamentals before hopping into a huge game engine. Also avoid 3d for a while, the introduces so many complications and its hard enough just making a 2d game. A simpler game framework that unity can be used as well, like MonoGame, or Godot, or one of the Python game frameworks.
bcrosby95 5y ago
I've had to kinda bootstrap myself into this process as our company decided they wanted to try their hand at making a game and have me help with the process. The books, tutorials, and videos out there are okay. They will more often than not get things working. But the problem is they don't really go beyond that. They kinda assume you're a solo game dev working on a solo indie project and that's that. To go to the next step requires a mix of game dev knowledge (I've obtained a bit over the years), lots of software design sensibilities (to recognize when something doesn't feel right), and lots of digging on the internet (to try to find out how professionals are solving the problem you just ran across).
hedgewitch 5y ago
> I'm trying to learn unity and game development as well. My day job is salesforce integrations, and wow I'm finding game development mindbogglingly hard. What are you finding difficult? It's hard to make recommendations without a good idea of where you're stuck. My general advice, however, would be to just make things. Figure out a mechanic you want to implement, find any resource that describes how to implement it, implement that mechanic, and then move to the next thing. It's much more valuable to just build things and figure out how the systems interact as you go than it is to try and get a bunch of theory out of the gate, especially if you're not building your own engine.
- stuckinhell 5y ago
  It seems like there are a lot of ways to do things which seems overwhelming to a new user. Everyone has different opinions on how to approach things in the books, videos, and tutorials I've gone through. For example some people like to code custom components heavily in c# including animation transitions, but others highly recommend not doing that. Also many tutorials and examples are too toyish and are missing practical concerns like cross controller compatibility, and other real world concerns. I've got some very simple 3d games working, but I'm missing how to take them further feature wise and make them closer to "real games". I'd really like a resource that's very opinionated and pragmatic for independent game development.
  - hedgewitch 5y ago
    > Also many tutorials and examples are too toyish and are missing practical concerns like cross controller compatibility, and other real world concerns. Don't worry about "real world concerns" until you have stuff that works at all. You're not building a winning product on your first try. > I'd really like a resource that's very opinionated and pragmatic for independent game development. Sounds like you're finding a lot of very opinionated resources. :) However, there is no one "pragmatic" resource in game development. The pragmatic solutions are scattered about. Not to mention that, as you are already aware, there are lots of ways to do things. You just have to pick one and run with it.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Try doing something SUPER simple in Roblox. Really. Don’t get out off by the fact that all the YouTube tutorials for Roblox programming are made by 13-year-olds! It’s a good start. Then go back to Unity if you feel like you’re running into Roblox’s limits.

gameswithgo 5y ago

One thing that can help is to step back and do some very very basic game programming from scratch first. Make a simple 2d game like pong first. This will give you some basic understanding of how to draw pixels on the screen, how to collect input, how to track game states and do a game loop. Once these basic ideas are better understood, you can hop into a game engine and have some context for what the heck is going on. It will make more sense. Get familiar with the fundamentals before hopping into a huge game engine. Also avoid 3d for a while, the introduces so many complications and its hard enough just making a 2d game. A simpler game framework that unity can be used as well, like MonoGame, or Godot, or one of the Python game frameworks.

bcrosby95 5y ago

I've had to kinda bootstrap myself into this process as our company decided they wanted to try their hand at making a game and have me help with the process. The books, tutorials, and videos out there are okay. They will more often than not get things working. But the problem is they don't really go beyond that. They kinda assume you're a solo game dev working on a solo indie project and that's that. To go to the next step requires a mix of game dev knowledge (I've obtained a bit over the years), lots of software design sensibilities (to recognize when something doesn't feel right), and lots of digging on the internet (to try to find out how professionals are solving the problem you just ran across).

hedgewitch 5y ago

> I'm trying to learn unity and game development as well. My day job is salesforce integrations, and wow I'm finding game development mindbogglingly hard. What are you finding difficult? It's hard to make recommendations without a good idea of where you're stuck. My general advice, however, would be to just make things. Figure out a mechanic you want to implement, find any resource that describes how to implement it, implement that mechanic, and then move to the next thing. It's much more valuable to just build things and figure out how the systems interact as you go than it is to try and get a bunch of theory out of the gate, especially if you're not building your own engine.

stuckinhell 5y ago
It seems like there are a lot of ways to do things which seems overwhelming to a new user. Everyone has different opinions on how to approach things in the books, videos, and tutorials I've gone through. For example some people like to code custom components heavily in c# including animation transitions, but others highly recommend not doing that. Also many tutorials and examples are too toyish and are missing practical concerns like cross controller compatibility, and other real world concerns. I've got some very simple 3d games working, but I'm missing how to take them further feature wise and make them closer to "real games". I'd really like a resource that's very opinionated and pragmatic for independent game development.
- hedgewitch 5y ago
  > Also many tutorials and examples are too toyish and are missing practical concerns like cross controller compatibility, and other real world concerns. Don't worry about "real world concerns" until you have stuff that works at all. You're not building a winning product on your first try. > I'd really like a resource that's very opinionated and pragmatic for independent game development. Sounds like you're finding a lot of very opinionated resources. :) However, there is no one "pragmatic" resource in game development. The pragmatic solutions are scattered about. Not to mention that, as you are already aware, there are lots of ways to do things. You just have to pick one and run with it.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Try doing something SUPER simple in Roblox. Really. Don’t get out off by the fact that all the YouTube tutorials for Roblox programming are made by 13-year-olds! It’s a good start. Then go back to Unity if you feel like you’re running into Roblox’s limits.