Beginner tips!

Hey guys, I’m a beginner to Unity and looking for some general tips and or advice on where i should start developing my skills.

 

Learn section is a good starting point.
Fallow examples with practical exercises.
Keep trying things, to get grip, how stuff work in Unity.

 

And once you learn the basics of Unity and feel confident enough to make your own games, my best advice would be to just start making stuff. Learn from your mistakes and apply that knowledge in your next game. You learn a lot by doing and I feel that a lot of programming/game design best practices don't make sense until you realize you have to use them.

Joining an online game jam is a great excuse to make something. They're low pressure environments that allow you to experiment with game design ideas and contribute to something from the comfort of your own home. The website Itch has a buncha online jams always going on that you can try joining: https://itch.io/jams

 

First, learn to use google.

Then, do every tutorial you can find. Do all of thtem. Not just one's you think will be useful. You only stunt yourself by not learning from everything available.

Then, remake simple classic games, using google search to find answers as you go along, and forums like this to ask questions when you can't find an answer.

Limit your distractions. Spend more time working than thinking, talking, or procrastinating. When in doubt, just do work.

And just don't quit.

That's all there is to it.

 

1) Have at least a basic competency with C# before taking on Unity
2) Don't be afraid of the official scripting reference and manual
3) Don't make your first project a multiplayer game
4) Disable automatic light map baking as the first thing you do when you create a new scene
https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/best-practices/auto-generate-and-generate-lighting
5) Even simple games take a lot of time create, plan accordingly

 

Here are my tips:

1. Before doing your game, work trough the practical unity tutorials!
Doing 2 weeks of tutorials seems long but i think it isnt't! You can't do too many tutorials at the beginning.
I really whished i would have done more tutorials before starting my game - it would have saved me a lot of time and bad solutions ...

2. Learn about Coroutines!
I rewrote almost my whole code after finding out about coroutines (*mega fail*)

3. If you can spend some money: Buy solutions in the asset store rather than trying from scratch yourself. You will learn a lot from the code and can adapt it for your needs.

 

Actually this is bad advise.
While learning abut them in general is good, but advising using them is rather bad.
When starter, is easy to start using them all over the place.

Firstly most games can be written without single coo routine.

Secondly they can become pain in back side, if you don't know how to proper utilize them.
For example debugging.

 

Handled properly, coroutines are brilliant. Sure its possible to get yourself into a lot of trouble. But its the same with any other programming technique.

Managing events over time is something that you will have to do in almost every single game. Which means either coroutines or writing your own system. Coroutines will save you a lot of boilerplate work.

 

I agree. To the beginner, it is not necessarily obvious what a coroutine is doing or under what circumstances it stops. For example, it is a common misconception that a coroutine runs as a separate thread (nope), or that when the script is disabled the coroutine will stop (again nope).

Almost anything you'd use a coroutine for can be done in Update, and in a way that is easier for a beginner to understand. At some point you'll encounter a situation that is not easy to implement in Update, and that is a good time to take on coroutines.

 

I love coroutines and so perhaps i cant't really be objective in this topic
But actually that what you described happened to me and i just wanted to prevent other people doing the same mistake as me. I did everything in "Update" resulting in really S***ty complicated code an had to rewrite almost everything. That wouldnt happen i would have learned earlier about coroutines.

But i am with you that coroutines should be used wisely and not blindly so again my tip:
"Learn about Coroutines"!

 

Sure, but as @Joe-Censored stated, we are talking about beginners level.

Hence I wouldn't be diverting starters in this direction at this stage.

 

Yeah but I think you writing S***ty complicated code in Update was an important lesson, that you can't get other than first hand. You learn what is appropriate for Update and what should best be moved to a coroutine (or even to another thread). But by the time you get there you're likely not a beginner anymore, so it is time to take on more advanced topics anyway.