How to get started with my 2D Unity Project

Hello, everyone! I'm very new to Unity, be it in a 2D or 3D sense, and I had a few questions as to how to start making my game. I've only dabbled in 3D Unity for a school project, but other than that I'm clueless.

First of all, I want to implement some pixel art in my game, as well as some flat, "3D", cartoony art (going in-between those art forms from time to time, during gameplay). I'm hoping this would be possible in Unity (I don't see why it wouldn't be). So far, the only I've done for my game is draw reference images of some of my characters, and also some of the art of my main character, and for now, I just want to focus on drawing (characters, backgrounds, enemies, etc.) until I'm ready to actually develop my game. But here are some of my questions:

1. Is it possible to have pixel art and more modern, 3D-ish art in the same Unity project, especially since Unity would be compressing my sprites and other things into a specific resolution? (like 256 x 256 would work for pixel art, but how would the 1024 x 1024 art fit into some tiles? What are tiles really for?)

2. What's the difference between a sprite sheet and a sprite atlas? I'm making sprite sheets of my main character, when she's standing still or walking, and I'm making those separate PNG files. But should I put all the actions she'll ever make onto one sprite sheet (besides whatever movement she makes during a cutscene)?

3. Besides allowing the player to move or jump, how much C# do I need to know to build a 2D game (given that my character would probably have fighting moves and animations to go with those, and many other things will need Colliders and variables and other code)?

4. If I'm going to be using pixel art and higher-resolution art in the same project, will a 2D Unity project work for this? Do I need to be in 3D instead?
5. Besides checking out the "Getting Started" docs for Unity (which I will do), where can I find some free tutorials to learn the basics of Unity (just for 2D, because I don't think I'll be using 3D for now)?

BTW, I'm going to be using Blender for some of my modern art (not Blender with 3D, just the 2D section), which I know Unity can integrate with. But as far as animating my characters, is that something I would do in specific .blend files, which I could import to Unity, or do I need to animate my characters within Unity? I also plan to have cutscenes, which would be .blend files, but I would just need a way to trigger those cutscenes in Unity, rather than animate them in Unity itself.

I know this isn't a very specific post, and it is my first one (I still have more questions), but I just wanted to get an idea of what direction I need to head towards first. I have a lot of ambitions for this game, but my mind is kind of hazy as to how to get started. That's why I just want to focus on drawing for now, until I get my head together.

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

Start with tutorials... LOTS of tutorials.

When doing tutorials, MAKE SURE you are not wasting your time. Do them properly. Here's how:

Tutorials and example code are great, but keep this in mind to maximize your success and minimize your frustration:

How to do tutorials properly, two (2) simple steps to success:

Step 1. Follow the tutorial and do every single step of the tutorial 100% precisely the way it is shown. Even the slightest deviation (even a single character!) generally ends in disaster. That's how software engineering works. Every step must be taken, every single letter must be spelled, capitalized, punctuated and spaced (or not spaced) properly, literally NOTHING can be omitted or skipped.

Fortunately this is the easiest part to get right: Be a robot. Don't make any mistakes.
BE PERFECT IN EVERYTHING YOU DO HERE!!

If you get any errors, learn how to read the error code and fix your error. Google is your friend here. Do NOT continue until you fix your error. Your error will probably be somewhere near the parenthesis numbers (line and character position) in the file. It is almost CERTAINLY your typo causing the error, so look again and fix it.

Step 2. Go back and work through every part of the tutorial again, and this time explain it to your doggie. See how I am doing that in my avatar picture? If you have no dog, explain it to your house plant. If you are unable to explain any part of it, STOP. DO NOT PROCEED. Now go learn how that part works. Read the documentation on the functions involved. Go back to the tutorial and try to figure out WHY they did that. This is the part that takes a LOT of time when you are new. It might take days or weeks to work through a single 5-minute tutorial. Stick with it. You will learn.

Step 2 is the part everybody seems to miss. Without Step 2 you are simply a code-typing monkey and outside of the specific tutorial you did, you will be completely lost. If you want to learn, you MUST do Step 2.

Of course, all this presupposes no errors in the tutorial. For certain tutorial makers (like Unity, Brackeys, Imphenzia, Sebastian Lague) this is usually the case. For some other less-well-known content creators, this is less true. Read the comments on the video: did anyone have issues like you did? If there's an error, you will NEVER be the first guy to find it.

Beyond that, Step 3, 4, 5 and 6 become easy because you already understand!

Finally, when you have errors...

Remember: NOBODY here memorizes error codes. That's not a thing. The error code is absolutely the least useful part of the error. It serves no purpose at all. Forget the error code. Put it out of your mind.

The complete error message contains everything you need to know to fix the error yourself.

The important parts of the error message are:

- the description of the error itself (google this; you are NEVER the first one!)
- the file it occurred in (critical!)
- the line number and character position (the two numbers in parentheses)
- also possibly useful is the stack trace (all the lines of text in the lower console window)

Always start with the FIRST error in the console window, as sometimes that error causes or compounds some or all of the subsequent errors. Often the error will be immediately prior to the indicated line, so make sure to check there as well.

All of that information is in the actual error message and you must pay attention to it. Learn how to identify it instantly so you don't have to stop your progress and fiddle around with the forum.

Here are some great starting points, or you can go find your own.

Imphenzia / imphenzia - super-basic Unity tutorial:

Jason Weimann:

Brackeys super-basic Unity Tutorial series:

Sebastian Lague Intro to Game Development with Unity and C#:

Imphenzia: How Did I Learn To Make Games:

 

Thanks for the tips, Kurt-Dekker! However, could you send me those YouTube links as text, because I can't see video previews on my computer (YouTube is blocked, so it's just white space instead of a video). But if I have the links, I can download them and watch them that way.

About code errors: I'm definitely not new to how to handle code errors, because I've worked with Solidity and Python before, and a bit of JS. So I know how it is to be frustrated over seemingly meaningless errors for days, especially when those errors change and I can't find any answers on StackOverflow or GitHub or something. But I will definitely take your advice to heart, and I appreciate your reply.

 

go to youtube and check how to do each thing step by step

for example if you want to know how to create a game object write in youtube

: unity how to create game object

 

I can't go to YouTube (I would if it wasn't blocked). I can only ask my mom to download the YouTube videos for me. But thanks anyway, rarac.

 

In 2022 you are going to have an EXTREMELY hard time ramping up on something as visual as Unity without the benefit of Youtube and tutorials. All the Unity Learning section is powered by Youtube.

Good luck.

 

I know YouTube would be super useful, but my parents won't unblock it on my computer. I would just have to have some videos downloaded for me, like I said. Thanks for the help, though!

 

if you cant access youtube you will never be able to make a game

wish u luck in the future to get youtube unblocked

 

Sorry rarac, but that isn't true at all. YT will help the most, but there are plenty of other resources that can get you started. You can use Udemy, PluralSight, LinkedInLearning and others that have complete tutorials for Unity and i know they all dont use YT for their video platform.

Here is a simple page that walks through some of the basics of getting started. Unity Tutorial for Beginners: How to Make a Game (create-learn.us)

As for learning C#, I definitely recommend it, but you can get by with visual scripting from tools like Bolt. You'd never have to do C# for your first few games.

To help answer some of your questions on your original post, tiles are best if they are definitely square, but you dont have to use them at all. I've imported my landscapes and then just added custom colliders that way. Technically, Unity is a 3D tool that can do 2D. There are many games that look 2D but use 3D assets. Your flat "3D" art will be just fine in Unity.

It is common practice to put an entire animation into a single sprite sheet as you can slice them apart in the editor. But it is not required.

Lastly, it appears you are more interested in the visuals of your game, which is fine. But if you end up enjoying making games, you will want to get good at prototyping. You are doing the opposite of prototyping, which is fine for your first project since you are still figuring out if you will enjoy this or not. But after your first project, look into rapid prototyping more. If those links work and you need more, just message me. Happy to help in any way possible.

 

Thank you, Cornysam! To reply to some of your responses:

1. I do have a Udemy course for Blender, but I haven't got one for Unity yet (I'm trying to stay with free tutorials as much as possible). LinkedIn is probably blocked on my laptop, but I'll need to check out PluralSight.

2. Thanks for the "how to make a game" link, I will definitely look at it.

3. At some point, I probably will learn some C#, just because I've always been interested in code, since I was little. But what is visual scripting (and Bolt), and can I get by with not using C# when I plan to have this project on the Switch (one day)?

4. Since you said tiles aren't completely necessary (and even with my 2D art, I doubt that a good chunk of it will be squarish), would it be alright to just draw my landscapes as giant pictures (this will be a side-scroller), and import them to Unity and add colliders? I plan on drawing background art; some "sorta" background art that the player could interact with; and then the platforms and doors, as separate layers of my game (like the Ori games). So I don't know how Unity would deal with those layers. And I don't think I'll be using any 3D objects at all (or very little), if I can help it.

5. Right now, I'm drawing my main character's sprite sheet in Blender, with her walking, blinking, and fighting animations (with more to come). Is it alright to include every single action my character's ever gonna make on one sprite sheet, or should I split up specific animations onto specific sprite sheets (or will Unity make that happen anyway, and I don't have to worry about that for now, since I'm drawing on one big canvas)?

And lastly, 6. What is prototyping? Does that have to do with my art, or code, or what? I'm focusing on my visuals right now, because I feel like it will save me time down the road, when it comes to me making my actual game, and my cutscenes as well. I feel like I'll be quicker with loading my game world, my enemies, and everything because I'd have already drew it out, and I'd just have to attach code to it. But tell me if I'm wrong.

I really appreciate your help, Cornysam.

(P.S. rarac: I'm pretty sure I'm not getting YouTube unblocked anytime soon. All I can try to do is ask to have some videos downloaded onto my computer, like I said, or just use my mom's laptop to watch some stuff. But don't worry, I'll figure it out, and this forum is definitely a huge help.)

 

In response to the above:

3. Visual scripting is node-based programming instead of text. It is becoming more and more popular since a lot of people don't want to touch the code side. Here is a basic image of what it looks like. You can google visual scripting to learn more. Bolt is brand of visual scripting that works with Unity.

4. So i definitely recommend having a foreground, mid, background, etc. (all the layers you need) and then looking up Parallaxing. Parallaxing will give your scene depth. By adding colliders, you can do all the doors, chests, and other interactables you want.

5. It doesnt matter if you do all the animations on one big sheet or separate them into smaller sheets that contain each animation. If i was to do it, I would do a smaller sheet per animation for organization in my Unity folders.

6. Prototyping is a concept. It is highly, highly recommended that you prototype before you add art, story, sounds, animations, other flair, etc. Reason being: You can spend days, weeks, months, and more on art and story. Then when you go to make the mechanics of the game, you realize that your core concept is boring after 5 minutes of playing and all that art and design was for naught. When i prototype, I use free art from the Asset Store or just even built-in sprite shapes like squares and circles to represent enemies, items, traps, etc. I am trying to find the most enjoyable gameplay before spending any time at all on graphics and story.

There is another concept that goes hand-in-hand with prototyping, and that is Rapid Iteration. Successful games are all about iteration. The more iterations you can do, the better the game will be. The faster you can do each iteration, the more you can do before you have to release. Every game you have played and enjoyed (Ori and the Blind Forest for example) started out as a very simple prototype, and was iterated upon many, many times before they gave it graphics and flair. Chances are the gameplay was almost unrecognizable from the first few prototype iterations compared to what is out now.

Lastly, you mention wanting to release your game on Switch. I love the ambition, but you will need to reign in your expectations a lot. You are so new to game design and Unity, and not having YT doesnt help. Try building blocks towards that goal. Try to create something playable in 3 months that has very very simple mechanics like, platformer movement, attack enemies, collect points, and complete the level. Add in basic UI and sound. Then create like 3-5 levels. Once you have finished that little project. Start over with another similar, but slightly different game and give yourself 3-6 months. An obtainable goal is one that is broken down into bite sized chunks. You can't eat that pizza in one whole bite, and i doubt you can eat even an entire slice in one bite.

 

Thanks again for your advice, Cornysam!

I will definitely check out Bolt when it comes time for me to start using Unity. I'll also learn a bit more about visual scripting itself, because it looks similar to the node system used in Blender, so I'm curious.

I'd heard of parallaxing before, but I still don't really know what it is, so I'll research that as well.

About prototyping: would it be OK for me to draw out some prototypes of my game (like, if I wanted to draw pictures of my character jumping, or finding some treasure or something), rather than worry about coding the prototype? So, I guess I'd be doing a video game version of a storyboard (like movie producers do), or something? Or perhaps I could even try to write a part of my prototype (literally, as text). Otherwise, I may try to make a super simple game as a prototype, like you suggested.

About my ambitions: I know that I'm definitely trying to swallow more than I can chew at the moment, but I'm not rushing myself at all. I've broken down some of my goals, and those can be broken down further (my first goal is to just make my character walk). My mom is also encouraging me to take smaller bites of my pizza, which I understand, being a newbie. I know I have a learning curve ahead of me, and I know it may take years (hopefully not too long) before I get my game just right. I've understood that ever since I started dreaming about being a game designer, when I was 7 and 8 (and onward). Having my game end up on Switch is just a dream right now, and definitely not my priority. I'm going to test, and test, and test the tester before I worry about fulfilling my dream. ESPECIALLY since I'm making a game for typical gamers, and also, for a more unusual audience: partially or totally blind and deaf/HOH players.

But I appreciate your help, Cornysam, I mean that. Whenever I need help, I will come to this forum or this particular post and ask away, and I'll also ask for help from you specifically.

Good luck on whatever project you're doing.

 

Happy to help, and good luck on your learning journey. I am currently 4.5 years into mine. I didnt know how to code or Unity, and i wish i could go back and start at your age (Im assuming you are much younger than me if you have parental permissions lol). Just keep in mind, whenever you are probably finished with your dream game in a few years, there will be a new Nintendo console out

 

you just also try to have a serious conversation with your parents about your dreams and hope to achieve in the future, promise them you wont use youtube for looking up content you arent supposed to, and let them check your internet history regularily to prove it, and be very open with them about why you need it to be unblocd. If you maintain this strained relationship with your parents wanted to protect you from something your potential is being lost by the day as cornysam pointed out and you would surpass us in the end if you were'nt already starting with you feet locked in chains.

in the end it might be that your parents are not ok with you making games and thats just your unluck. These conversations are impotant to have early on just so at least you know where you stand an you dont have to go against the grain at all cost.

If all the aboe failed, you have the last ditch effort to try to steal the passwords for parental controls, this is in the end how far will you go to follow your dreams

 

To rarac: I think asking about unblocking YouTube is out of the question for now, because I've messed up in the past. But I think I'll ask to use my parents' devices more often for YouTube, perhaps scheduling time to use YouTube. It's not that they don't want me making games, not at all. They've encouraged me, actually. But I still need to build some trust, so I'll have to get to YouTube another way. I'll work something out.

To Cornysam: I hope the Switch will still be a thing by the time I'm ready! Otherwise, Unity will have to help me out with the new console. Thanks for your help, and your offer to continue helping, I will take advantage of it. And yes, I'm a teen, so I'm very young in this space. But I won't let that stop me.