Best Tutorials for beginners? And continuous motivation advice?

Hi all, was just thinking this might be helpful to me and others, in finding appropriate tutorials for myself or others etc, that we are hoping to find.

Also, I am like most people, finding it difficult to find methods to just "Get on with it". I have found that "blender guru" said that "just do one line" is somewhat helpful, as one line of code ends up being at least 5+ etc.

Though getting sidetracked is obviously a problem too. Especially with an online computer ...

So as for tutorials, I have found most series to be quite long and designed to build full game modes that are un-necessarily complex for beginners; such as FPS game on "brackeys" in C#, though the C# tutorials are helpful.

Charger games is mostly Java, and I'm focusing on C#, but the C# is ok there too.

I'm sort of missing tutorials that are basically doing "nano games" of sorts. That just build games using basic blocks and spheres etc, using a few different pieces of code. Obviously, there may not be any I find, but "Catlike coding" is ok, except it's webpage only I think... But a little "mathy" & "jumpy" from doing alterations back and forth...

I was hoping from people's experiences, they could reference some decent tutorials and/or basic motivation practices, other than "find out why you want to do it" etc...

Thanks for reading...

 

Have you tried the ones found here?

 

I mentioned these to someone who advised them to me, but found that they have issues that slow me down because of the issues etc. Plus a few of them are ok in length, but get longer and longer. The survival shooter takes ages for minimal information. Because the videos take ages waffling on for the audience, rather than an actual tutorial etc...

Looking for tutorials the size of roll-a-ball, and type, because assets are require for all others etc. Also, focusing on 3D just for posts sake...

Currently going to get back to space shooter at some point...? But catlike coding is more helpful at present (maybe? )...

 

I'm curious how do you feel you've progressed in the x number of days you've been at it, based on your posting?
Do you feel comfortable with Unity and C# at all?

If you have managed to feel somewhat comfortable (or when you soon do*), you should try taking a small game (either one from the tutorial(s), or some similar like game ) and modify/add-on to it, in order to apply what you've learned and see how you do ~ also to "finish" a project, something sort of your own.

I think smaller projects are a lot more useful for beginners. Better to know 1 or 2 things very well than 20 things really lousily** (and build from there, of course..)

 

You'll never find a perfect tutorial. You'll always find minor inconsistencies and you'll always have to deal with them. This is simply a fact of life for a developer and will continue on beyond the tutorials. If you can't deal with this you'll then you may find that game development is not for you.

 

Just don't quit.


Take breaks. Take breathers. Take a weekend off. Take a week off.

Make excuses. Whine. Bitch. Cry. Moan. Rage. Scream. Yell. Blame the tutorials. Blame your parents. Blame society.

But don't quit. Just don't do it.

Computer work is by nature complex and frustrating. Making games takes an immense scope of knowledge. You wouldn't expect to become an engineer overnight. Game development, while seemingly frivolous contrasted to engineering, is not much less complicated (depends on levels of game design, and type of engineering. Nobody shoot me.)

In the low times, when you feel like it's all completely useless, it helps to view things from a longer perspective. And it helps to talk to others. But ultimately, it's so simple. Just don't quit.

 

One more piece of advice: show off! You make something: you show it someone. Or even everyone. Even here. Don't be a chicken and don't be shy. Because your first games (probably) won't be genius, won't be even good. But you can train yourself to get the critics and you can learn from other people's opinion. A lot. And after all, usually you don't create games just for yourself, so show it off. Even if you think it is not ready. Does it move and looks like it does something? It is ready.

 

The problem is, I get side tracked like today at work. I was thinking about an entirely different game with a new character every few thoughts in a game design for combat fighting, but just don't think it's "morally decent to encourage" Fighting games, even if that's what I mostly know. But I can't currently code for that.

I'm currently getting distracted because my current level of coding is a bit lame.

I can add on to my current tutorial games, some new features, but very very little, as little sticks. Other than a bit of extra player movement. That's about it. I don't find the tutorials on unity useful hardly at all, unless you already know C# and can just wing it yourself. I can't at present.
And anyway, I don't really feel like building a mortal kombat style game, as it will also take forever on my own etc...

Maybe the book I pre-ordered may help when it gets delivered (snow at moment though ). Typical...

I don't really find any tutorials that just create a short series. Mostly there all 20+ videos long or have one video 3hours long etc. Or they are time-lapse, like lizard mage / blender.

Think i'm probably going to just end up doing some blender characters i'll never use like "Nutty Bolt" (copyright )... But probably never use or show them because the game I'm looking to make is actually something somewhat useful and not just a waste of time etc, or gold digging like shady phone app games charging for nothing etc...

It's annoying, I only got into this because I couldn't find the games I was looking for. And thought I could make one. But I'm starting to think that most people who make games are pretty useless at it as they only make mini-mobile games or similar etc, and buy pre-made assets and more...Seems like only a few people who are too busy to post proper tutorials actually make "big solo games". Maybe i'm way off, just seems that way.

Maybe I'should just stay off unity and learn coding for a year + blender. Then maybe a game may get made, as no-one has mentioned tutorials yet except UNITY's.

 

No offense, but it sounds like you need to work on focusing. Just in general.

Have you actually completed any tutorials? Start to finish?

It may help you to just forget about making a game, and instead focus on learning. Complete all the Unity tutorials, whether the games interest you or not. Don't stress over whether or not you are "getting" it all either. Just keep moving forward. When the tutorials are outdated and you have to pause and spend a day or two to figure out some annoying thing, just do it. That is the work you have to learn how to do.

Honestly, your post are like 80% lengthy excuses as to why you can't do this or that. Eventually, people will write you off as somebody who won't help themselves, so why should they bother helping you?

You have to do the work. No getting around that.


Note : With any new endeavor, you will have to adapt your way of thinking. Me, personally -- I had an extremely frustrating time in the beginning as I was unaccustomed to working with computers. Every job I've ever done has always been "dirty hands" type of work. The type of work that you see immediate results from, and usually you don't have to just stop and think on something for a long time to figure out a solution.

So getting into 3d has been very trying for me, but I just haven't quit yet. Somehow, I slowly keep moving on, despite many days spent smashing my head against brick walls over the dumbest non-issues, but today my work is at least 1,500% better than it was a few months ago.

So don't feel like an idiot. Everybody is an idiot -- just learn to be a persistent idiot.

 

Yes, I did the C# brackeys series, the roll-a-ball, charger games C# about 13 videos, Roguelike I couldn't get to work, i'm on space shooter again after re-installing unity to get the web build for the tutorial and had to find out version alterations (convex mesh, then manual inspector application etc), at video 5 on this, Did 2d UFO top-down but that failed also, so will go back to that after I figure out what the version issue change is? Did half of brackeys tower defence but unity crashed with catlike coding "graph" when applying shader (crashed, windows closed it ,every time), finished "clock" on catlike, now doing fractal (just a bit left). Skipped the graph ... Had to re-install unity twice and a full computer reset since Christmas so far.... Great going so far ...Done about that much with also 80 pages of C# visual studio this Februrary, and blender tree making/shading tutorials, had issues with asset store assets so got rid of them. Did a mini-brackeys cube movement tutorial. Also other sykoo videos looked up etc.

But there isn't much in them. Though will probably go back to tower defence after I finish fractal and space shooter.

 

Software development is a beast. It's hard. You only learn if you practice, if you leave it alone, you forget and you will fall out.
So if you think you want to do it, just do it! Practice.
If you stuck somewhere, post here in the Scripting thread. Post your code piece and ask for help. If you want to work on it, we have a couple of people (humble myself included), who will help you out, guide you, explain shortly.

But you have to do the hard work. And you know it's doable, because we are here, we have done it. You can do it too.

 

So, you want a tutorial that builds a complete game?

Check out Gamer to Game Developer on youtube. Also a thread here about it.

 

Your current approach seems a little unfocused and this has ideas on dealing with that. Don't give up if you can't get a tutorial working, post about your specific problems and someone will be able to help. This video is about 2D art, but is easily adopted to learning other aspects of game dev.

 

Just finished "fractal", moving back to space shooter. And the video above is basically what blender guru said in "motivation" blender conference (youtube etc). If I don't find seperate tutorials, I think i'll have to start doing "like game" tutorials (puzzles and quiz's maybe more suitable to look for?).

 

I'm sure this has been said, but you should practice and try your own adaptations. Not only is a good exercise for learning, but will also help/let you gauge your own progress.

 

Just finding a smaller ship than normal in space shooter for some reason? Cosmetic so I'll plough through.

 

Sure, a tilt is an addition you could add.

You could try adding special asteroids that give you some "bonus time/reward" .. lasts for x seconds.
You could try adding some collectables that give you shields..

I have no idea, I won't go on about possibilities, but that's just one notion -- to take the work, and build on it.
This way you practice what you've learned, from different sources.

 

Yeah I saw the tilt later on, but I got a wierd action happening? The ship edges don't show in game mode, the ship is above the quad, but when the ship tilts, the edges show again, then dissapear again?

Is there a camera issue somehow? as the ship is at 1, camera is top view, quad is 0? Ship fades into quad image? even after more raising?

I think videos of this from dropbox don't work, so what's another better route to show this?

 

Make a new thread for technical questions.

I second the suggestion that you should start working on coming up with your own variations of things you've learned. You've done a ton of learning -- why not start putting it to use? Learning how to troubleshoot and figure things out on your own is going to be where you really learn.

 

Maybe your right, I will probably try to look at the docs a bit more soon for particular words etc...

 

Your equals you're

 

You just reminded me of the following comic strip. I stumble over at least one of them from time to time.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

 

hmm, 2x comma around soon also