A Mentor

Hey everyone.
I've been having trouble learning how to use unity. i have looked at the tutorials and watched some of the videos, but it doesn't seem to click with me. Personally I've always been a hands on learner, i cant really learn with hands on here because i don't know what i am doing when i open unity haha. So long story short i'm looking for someone who can show me and teach me in a one on one call or chat. if someone could that would be amazing.
i know a decent amount about code. but im always learning and always love to learn more. if my future mentor could also teach me more code on top of what i already know, that would be awesome as well.
so many thanks for reading this long paragraph and many thanks if you decide to help me!

 

http://www.digitaltutors.com/software/Unity-tutorials
Getting a mentor is going to be tough. The link above is for Digital Tutors and I have followed a few of their dvds which were very good. They are fairly plodding, but often that is exactly what you need.

Hope this helps.

 

Sounds like you have a lack of focus/direction, not sure what it is you want to do. Having a real problem to solve is the best thing out there for gaining focus and learning quickly.

You don't learn new stuff quickly if you approach it as I just want to learn this general thing, but have no actual use case for it. Personally I don't even relate to that, like why even?? Life is too short

One on one tutoring is also a horrible way to learn the basics of something. So are videos for the most part. That is if you are looking for a fast track. Fastest way to learn is overwhelm yourself and dive in head first. Jump into something that literally makes your head swim and you feel lost, and stick with it until it starts to gel. The part you are missing is the 'stick with it' part. You are at the "it's uncomfortable" phase and wanting to quit/make excuses. The whole I can't learn because I don't know the subject matter is an excuse, has no basis in anything. You are just frustrated. That's fine, but just push through it and it WILL start to gel at some point. This whole process also gets easier the more times you go through it, because you start to recognize it for what it is, part of a process.

The above only applies though if you have something specific to accomplish. You need to find that first if you don't already have it.

 

You could try formal learning, some colleges etc use unity as a part of their programming courses. The structured learning provides focus

 

If you must have a mentor, you'll want to be forking out cash for one on an hourly basis.

I'd suggest posting in the Commercial Work forum with more information.

 

It takes a lot of time and energy to mentor someone, for little gain, so unless your willing to fork out cash for it, you wont get far I'm afraid

 

Thank you everybody for all your replies! I think i'm gonna do what Snacktime said and just stick with it and try to learn on my own. i'm going to look for something specific to learn and learn little bits at a time. so as snacktime said i can find a specific direction and learning will be much easier since i know where i'm going and what i want to accomplish! Thank you all once again!

 

YellowCanine, try Udemy. https://www.udemy.com/ Sign up and don't buy anything. Wait for a coupon in your email box and then go try one of the Unity classes. There are several for Unity 5 and I would pick those since it is the latest version and different from Unity 4 in many ways. We have never paid morethan $15 for the class and you have them for a lifetime. If the one you want is not on sale, then wait..it will be. Even the ones that are listed for over $100 go on sale for huge discounts. They give out a lot of coupons.

My son took a C# class at Udemy and went on to impress his college professor. So they are pretty good classes if you stick with them. You will have an instructor who will answer questions for you so pretty close to a mentor.

 

I've got the "feeling lost and overwhelmed" part down just fine. I also have a pretty clear idea of what I want to accomplish (isometric 3D mech shooter with retro graphics and semi-procedurally generated levels). Do you have any more advice on how to make the "sticking with it" part happen? It's not that I don't know the standard list of things to tell noobs to get started, it's that I pretty much feel like I'm "drowning" once I sit down to actually do anything. I don't know how to deal with that feeling and it keeps me from making progress. Somehow I feel it was easier to dive into stuff while being more ignorant of the full scope of what I am getting myself into.

 

Honestly, don't make your ultimate game the first thing you do as a) you won't have the skills to make it as good as you want it & b) it will be so difficult that you will get frustrated & give up.

Document the idea, create a GDD (game design document) & include samples of art styles etc.

Start working through the unity learn tutorials from the very beginning, even if you don't want to make a shmup, or fps etc, as you will still learn skills you will need. You may also see things that will prompt new ideas to add to/modify your GDD. Hold off on making that dream game for a few years (it sounds like a complex build) because building a bad version of your dream game is heart breaking.

The overwhelmed feeling is largely caused by your lack of knowledge & the scope of the game you want to make (I know, I'm still at that point). The best way to overcome it is to make a roadmap with that as the ultimate goal & a lot of smaller things/projects leading to it. List the tutorials in order, then go back to each in order & add 3 new things to each, one at a time, to see if it is easy to do, you are able to do it, & most importantly what difference did it make to gameplay & enjoyment? Sometimes small changes alter the game hugely, sometimes huge changes don't change the game as much as you thought it would. This is all useful stuff to learn.

Most importantly, keep it simple. Kids aren't chucked into the deep end of the pool & told to swim, they are introduced to it slowly, 1 skill at a time, & they practice that skill over & over as they continue to learn new ones. Treat this the same way & you will get there. Don't give up

 

This isn't what you're asking for, but I think my book Unity in Action is perfect for you:
http://www.amazon.com/Unity-Action-Multiplatform-Game-Development/dp/161729232X/

My book assumes you already know how to program, but it starts literally fom knowing nothing about Unity. For example, here's a sample of chapter 1, where I step you through launching Unity and creating your first script:
http://www.manning.com/hocking/UnityinAction_SampleChapter-01.pdf

 

Thanks a lot for your comment! It's good advice but I feel the problem lies elsewhere. I can't really describe it properly...
I worked on an iOS game a few years ago and sunk somewhat between 700 and 1000 hours of coding time into that. I used Cocos2D as a graphics framework and wrote many things myself like a collision manager with performance optimizations, object pooling for almost everything, procedural generation of background images via rendertexture and sprites, basic AI, shooting mechanics, UI and so on. I had the systems finished, everything polished, stable and optimized and the only thing missing was making more levels and streamlining the menus around the "campaign mode". But I just couldn't bear working on it any longer. I've handed the project off to someone else in the hope that he can get it actually finished because I just can't.

I'm not stuck on anything specifically and what I'm trying to do now in Unity is actually already the MVP cut down version of the game that I actually wanted to make which itself again is far from "my dream game". As a gamer I'd want to see a super polished and immersive multiplayer deathmatch game with bows and arrows, parcour and AAA production values... but I know that is not a 1-man project and not even a small-team project.

I even made a list a while back to go along step by step like you suggested. But none of that helps me focus. A "game" is just such a scarily broad thing that I struggle even to start working on it. I can take isolated small challenges just fine, like the pixelation retro-shader that I tried to do and I just try & error my way through it till I have what I wanted or know why it's not possible. But I haven't found a way to have such focus at will and not only on isolated tasks and challenges. The war of Art by Steven Pressfield is a book on pretty much this exact problem and the essence is that the things we struggle with the most are the most important ones for our development as artists. Except for the relief not to be the only one who ever felt that way it doesn't do much for me though. I'm somehow immune against inspiring and motivational speeches.
I don't even know if there IS anything that could help me to get things done, I'm just still hoping for some enlightening truth that someone might be able to share on that matter. And it could be possible that I'm just not suited to be a game dev...

 

Have you tried really really small games, maybe with only one mechanic? I read about a woman that challenged herself to make & release a game a week for a year. They were really basic but because she'd said she'd do it she had people expecting the output

 

No, I'm hesitant to try anything that small because I see myself being utterly frustrated with something so barebones and simple. As a gamer I don't really enjoy simple games. Path of Exile and generic AAA shooters are pretty much the most casual games I play.
I did see the thread about "dream game" vs "3 month game" (or 1 month or something like that) though and yeah, I know I need to aim lower than I'd like to. I don't have the link at hand, but I mean the thread where people made the commitment to start something simple and finish in a certain time and report back. I just didn't post there because I have so much else going on at the moment that I barely have time to work on a game.
But I think I know now how I will approach it. I'll focus on isolated systems and see how self contained I can make them. I'll start with a simple thing like a rocket prefab, then a weapon controller and work my way up to the semi-procedural generation part and fill that with placeholder cubes. And once I have a bunch of those building blocks I can start thinking about connecting those to a game from a more high-level perspective without the confusing thoughts of "how am I going to implement this and this and this" in my head because I'll hopefully have a lot of those things already figured out and I'll become more comfortable with C# and the API along the way.

 

good plan. If it is modular, simple & can be connected easily it will be reusable for most things you want later on. If it worked really well you could try it on the asset store as a simple starter kit.