I have a month to make a game and little time for lenghty tutorials - any help?

Greetings, name's Mike and I want to enroll in a university, where I've passed the initial admission process, but hit a brick wall on the entry assignment - which is to create a game.

They gave us tips to use Unity or Unreal (and they prefer Unreal, because that's what most of the courses are gonna be in) and set some requirements for it. They are pretty basic! The problem is; I've never tried to make a game and I expected to LEARN THAT AT THE UNIVERSITY - especially, when they said at the Online Open day, that we shouldn't worry about having no portfolio or experience in making game, but F me I guess. Another fun fact is, that if you've sent your admission in february you have 2,5 months to make the game, but if you've sent the admission at the beginning of April, you have a month and a half. The last day to send the admission is 4th May and you'd basically find-out you have to make a game in TEN DAYS if you sent it last-minute because they have never mentioned an assignment of this size anywhere...

My experience comes from making simple mods for Bethseda games using some textures I've modified in GIMP and NifSkope to attach said textures and building maps in WorldBuilder (which runs on AutoDesk) for Company of Heroes 2, one of which is quite good quality-wise, in my opinion. I can't code at all, but I learn fast-enough on my own provided I know what I want to do.

The problem is; I don't know where to begin. Most of the tutorials I can find are either extremely specific, extremely long and cluttered, or paid-for. I have like 200€ left after buying a higher-end laptop, which I desperately needed and that is to cover food and such, while I work a factory job.


TLR;

So I've wanted to make a simplistic singleplayer 2D top-down space game in unity.
A ship is moving forward, which the player doesen't control directly, but it flies forward on it's own and the player would control a single turret and a tractor beam. You are moving through an asteroid field and have to shoot asteroids coming at you from the front (you're actually the one coming at them), while shooting those at the sides to gain more points. After a set ammount of time, if you don't get hit three times, the game ends and you can see your score. That's it.

I need to know what I need to get done, to have a functioning game. What to code, where, how to insert downloaded assets without Unity getting stuck on adding simple space backgrounds for 7 hours...

I would learn things on my own and look up tutorials, but I don't know which, because I don't know what I want to get done - NOT HOW I want to do it.

This tutorial seems OK-ish at explaining how to do an infinitely-scrolling plane:

But half of the things he's doing I don't know why he's doing them. I have no time to learn through Unity's minigames and 3-months long tutorials, when I have to send the game with documentation on 15th of May.

Like, this; https://learn.unity.com/mission/real-time-creation-essentials?pathwayId=5f7bcab4edbc2a0023e9c38f is pointless, because there's no way for me to find the info I need immediately, but I'd have to complete the entire months-long course.

I need to know the following things:
- what to do first. Background? Player model? Camera?
- how to set-up the camera for a 2D, Top-down space game. Couldn't find any tutorial specifically on this, just scraps here-and-there on how to code the camera to follow the player, which will come in handy, but first I have to know why I'm coding it this way.
- how to download FREE assets, so Unity won't get stuck on adding them and I have to shut-it-down through closing like 4 processes in tskmngr and then create an entirely new project, because I'm afraid I've just corrupted this one. Every time. Did I mention it takes 10+ minutes for my old rig to create an empty project?
Also the button for "Open asset in Unity" in Google Chrome does nothing, but then they appear in
"My assets", so IDFK what is happening.
- where to find to-the-point tutorials, that explain things well while I'm making my game at the same time.
I need a non-specific step-by-step guide on how to do certain things, not messing-around with a premade minigame for months

Any help here?

I've already asked on Reddit, which deleted my post, because it's a question "Too common" and linked me to lenghty Unity tutorials. I understand why, but no help there.
I asked on UnrealForums, when I was deciding which engine to use. People there were helpful and I've decided to go with Unity instead of Godot or Unreal, because Godot won't be of any help to me in the future and Unreal seemed too complex for what I want to make and better-suited to 3D.

Can anyone give me links to the basic tutorials, that won't take me months to find-out one thing I want to do? I have watched tutorials on how to code a lamp, or how to make a top-down 2D moving sprite with free assets from the Unity store, but they never explained how they made the background and the world.

I am panicking. Help me.

 

Have a look at Udemy.com or Zenva.com, lifetime access for a fixed fee, although Zenva's considerably cheaper than Udemy IMO.

 

Well, you're probably not going to find that. That's much too specific. Nobody's going to have a tutorial that exactly matches your vision, and teaches you the things you specifically need to know without using (you would probably say "wasting") your time teaching you other things too.

Your best bet is to forget about your game idea; pick some other tutorial for a simple game, and then do it again, this time using your own artwork and making whatever minor tweaks to the game logic you can without getting stuck. Going through the tutorial the first time should take an afternoon. That leaves you most of a month to make it your own.

If that turns out to be not good enough to get you into this university, then either go to a different one, or take a year off, and spend that time really learning your tools (either Unity or Unreal — it sounds like Unreal might be a better choice in that case), and then reapply next year, this time armed with foreknowledge.

Good luck!

 

In my opinion you only have two paths available to you.

Your first path would be to set aside getting into the university for one to two years and teach yourself the basics of game development while building up more funds. I have two reasons for recommending this.

First, many professional game developers don't have a degree and the ones that do have degrees only rarely have game development degrees. It's simply not that important in this industry for you to have one. Instead we use portfolios of release games.

Second, if they are expecting you to build them a game before joining it's a safe bet that they may require you to have a basic understanding of game development starting the course and if that's true the last thing you want to do is to handicap yourself by joining with little to no knowledge.

Your second path is to choose a tutorial, template, or framework to make the game through rather than start from nothing. Brackeys and quill the ones I'm most familiar with when it comes to tutorial series.

https://www.youtube.com/c/Brackeys/playlists
https://www.youtube.com/c/quill18creates/playlists

If you can find a way to dig up additional funding (anyone need a lawn mowed in your area?) Unity's Asset Store has a ton of templates and frameworks. Some are complete games that you replace the assets for and call it done but you do have to be careful with which ones you buy here. If you decide to go this route I recommend asking us for opinions before buying them.

 

As stated, you will not find anything that specific. However, if you look on you tube, for jason weinmann, he has MANY tutorials and explains everything as he goes. Search for Unity 2d top down shooter, you will find many examples, again, not EVERYTHING you will need, but you will start moving in the right direction. Also, look here, Unity - Game Development.

 

Nvm, wrong thread.

 

What did you actually expect?

I mean that as a sincere question. What outcome did you hope for? Someone to do the work for you? Someone to post a magical link to a "how to make a game in one month or less" blog post that you didn't find when you already researched this issue?

I'm genuinely baffled as to how you expected this thread to go, or what you thought you might actually get out of it.

 

Are you sure you are replying to the right thread? I don't see anything about "generating the field" in the previous posts.

 

Oh, yes. Wrong thread. Someone decided to reply to a thread that's almost a month old, just as I posted another one. My bad - I'm sorry. I thought the same people are replying the same things on my new post, which is an entire different case. I now only have three days, but I have something done already in Unity and I'm trying to generate an asteroid field, but have problems getting it to show-up, because the tutorial I'm following is set in 3D, not 2D.

 

@Graephen I don't normally do this, but I'm gonna recommend you consider a different career path. The astonishing lack of patience you've demonstrated in your mere two posts here makes it clear to me that you have no interest in becoming a developer. You just want to reach the goal of having made a game with as little effort as possible.

Game development, and programming at large, is all about the struggle. It's about identifying issues, determining the correct course of action, and working to solve that problem. I've been doing it for a decade now and still run into problems every day that other people can't solve for me. Yeah, that can be stressful, but if my problems were solvable by other people, what value would I even be providing?

You asked for input from this community, and you got it from two of our most respected members. It's not because they both post a lot (though, yes, they do), but because they've demonstrated time and again their knowledge and capability. It seems that because the answers they provided were not to your liking, you've chosen to not only entirely discount their advice, but actually insult them for providing it! I'm not sure how you expected that kind of response to be received... maybe that people would get scared into giving you the answer you were looking for because of how tough you sounded with your angry response?

I just don't understand how you could feel that you know more on this subject than the experts you're communicating with here. You seem to think we're being unhelpful, when in reality you're being given very helpful information. Just because it's not what you wanted to hear doesn't mean it isn't useful.

 

@Schneider21 I guess I've ninja'd, but I am sorry for the previous post. I've mistakenly thought I'm getting the same replies as a month ago on my new post, which would just be rude, but my new one really is just about getting an asteroid field to spawn in 2D, so I can continue working with the tutorial I'm watching. My bad, I am sorry.

On a side note - it is weird to recieve replies on a month-old post and people were not really helpful or nice in this thread, giving such advice as "give up on your idea", when it was as simple as I could make it, so that I would have enough time, or telling me they'd reply, but it would be "wasting my time". I know what programming is about, but It is difficult to learn it in just a month - however, I am learning despite no advice on anything I have asked on this thread. Ryiah was the only helpful one, for recommending the YouTube channels and I'm grateful for that.

And no, I am not considering a different career path.

 

I have asked on Unity Questions, not on the forums themselves.

 

@Graephen I appreciate you acknowledging the misunderstanding, and I want to clarify that most responses on these forums -- even my post (which, looking at it now, does sound harsh) -- is intended to be helpful even when it doesn't immediately appear as such. You singled Joe out for being unhelpful, but if you go back and re-read his response, with the understanding that he knows what he's talking about, consider that your perception of responses is colored by your expectations and adjust accordingly.

It's also worth noting that Unity Answers has nothing to do with Unity Answers. They're entirely separate sites, and I'm not convinced that they have that big of an overlap in active users. The forums are generally considered a great resource, while Unity Answers... well... less so.

In any case, the attitude that was clear in your post is uncalled for, and entirely counterproductive, even if you were responding to the correct question. You'll get much better assistance from this entirely volunteer group of people if you express appreciation and consideration for the responses you receive, rather than being combative and accusatory. I mean, that just applies to everything in life, but giving you general life advice is beyond the scope of this thread.

 

Ah, I am sorry. Didn't realise they were not connected, altough Answers was quite helpful, if a bit unresponsive.
I am sorry if I offended anyone, but it was a misunderstanding. I am used to most forums being generally very toxic places.

 

No worries. This forum is such a great place simply because we have such a low tolerance for toxic behavior. I don't imagine anyone was offended, per se, but simply letting you know what we identified as problems and offering up potential solutions. It's that programmer mentality at work.

Hopefully you're on track with your project and things are moving better now than they were before. If not, feel free to ask here (maaaaybe make a new post to avoid any direct responses to items in this thread) and you'll find we're very helpful when given a specific situation we can speak directly to.

Take care!