Broken tutorial projects

The first two tutorial projects I tried were broken. The first one, 2D Game Kit, gave a lot of compile errors.

The second, 2D Roguelike, seemed like an empty project - nothing happened when I pressed play.

 

You'll need a bit more persistence if you want to become a game developer. When there are errors, probably due to minor changes from version to version, then fixing them presents a learning opportunity.

And if nothing happens when you press Play, it's probably because you are in the wrong scene. Do some of the more basic Unity tutorials where you learn about scenes and the Unity editor UI, so you can confidently find and open the correct scene when poking around in other people's projects.

But, I also recommend you don't even look at the tutorial projects. The point of a tutorial is to teach you how to make your _own_ project. So start with an empty one, and actually follow the tutorial to build it up step by step. And again, if/when you run into errors, these will be either because you made a mistake in following the tutorial, or because Unity has changed slightly since it was written — in either case, a learning opportunity.

 

The tutorial projects are really not for beginner level (I don't know what they are marked as, but they by their nature are not). They are for implementing more advanced functionality into your games, and assume you've already mastered the basics.

Part of the basics is understanding and dealing with compile errors, understanding scenes, etc. So if you were really ready for these, you would have just resolved your issues quickly and moved on.

Also, you should always run tutorials in the same version of Unity the tutorial was created for. This virtually eliminates issues where things have moved, or the API changed causing compile errors in example code.

 

i've got to agree with this. I remember what a frikin headache trying to get started with them was. They seem to assume that you have some knowledge of programming already and know the basics of doing work on a computer. If you don't... you are going to have a reallly rough time. Technically it is a place you could start, but it won't be the smoothest start.

I'd recommend getting started with the "c# for absolute beginners course" from microsoft.

 

What a load of nonsense! I've been a game developer for over 15 years. I use many different platforms, and wanted to give Unity another try this week. And guess what, even the very first tutorial is not working.

If you want to become a successful game developer, you should know when to try troubleshooting something yourself, and when to actually go to the forums and see if there is something wrong with the software before assuming the problem is on your end.

 

I've been a game developer for zero years and I managed to make them work....

 

If you're already an experienced developer chances are the tutorials will just end up being a waste of time for you. While I recommend the tutorials to new developers, the fact of the matter is I completely skipped them. I briefly watched a series of videos on how to make use of the editor but everything else was learned through the manual and scripting reference.

 

Sorry to hear the "very first tutorial" is not working. (and I can't resist..) As it appears you are talking about the first Unity tutorial ever made, it was likely created with a very old version of Unity. What about the very last tutorial?

 

well i am trying to run the " John Lemon's Haunted Jaunt" tutorial on 2019.1.1 as recomended
in section where write as movement script
i got no errors but the turn control would only work once
ie press w it moves forward
press s it turns press s again it moves forward
w turns and so on
from the demo this is not how it is supposed to work
i finally cut and paste the example script and got the exact same thing.

frustrating for a noob

 

start very basic, start with silly 2d projects, thats what im doing and im making progress every day, its a long hard slog, if you want to make quick games use construct or gdevelop even though you will spend a lot of time on them to make something half decent

 

FYI - Good luck... As you said: it will be a long, hard slog

It's actually not your fault for having difficulties with Unity's tutorials (or 'the evangelists' tutorials')
- most C# codes provided will NOT function 100% with Unity 2019.1... there's always compile errors (even the 2018.3 will fail).

You'll rarely find tutorials that actually work 100% complete... even 2 months from the previous Unity complete version

- most of the Youtube tutorial content is from 2014-2018 (vastly out-dated... read the NEWEST comments FIRST)
- even Udemy content (like Unity's own tutorials) are several years out of date and will cause severe confusion
- different menus and functionalities in almost every Inspector item (drop-down lists, etc.)
- different UnityEngine tweaks will cause you to be unable [to both edit and write code due to deprecations which aren't documented in any coherent fashion in The Unity Manual]

It is pretty amusing that the Unity team basically 'tests your perseverance' by uploading tutorials like the very first tutorial, "Create Your First Unity Project" in which you cannot honestly mark step #5 as 'complete' because there is no way to actually use UnityHub to start from a Template.

It's almost like the WANT you to use Unreal or Godot...