I just can't learn Unity... help

Question

 

"learn unity" isn't a good goal.

Make a single player FPS shooter with ten levels and five bad guys and one boss with face paced movement and big explosions, and publish it to steam and charge a price of $2.99. That's a goal.

A lot of tutorials are put out by people who know how to do a technical thing but don't know how to teach. They are more focused on showing the world they know how to do a thing than they are with ensuring they are understood clearly. It's the same as when you meet some person and they cleverly talk about nothing but themselves, all while being very polite. How tiresome.

Some low-effort tutorial isn't enough to get a comprehensive education from. It's better than nothing and can give a headstart, but you got to realize its not "do tutorial" > "understand stuff".

Don't do tutorials expecting to "get it." Do them just to get a quick sense of what is possible to do. Once you know what is possible and the general approach to doing things, then set your actionable, precise goal and work through one single problem at a time until you get to it.




The first thing you have to learn is how to learn. That is individual thing. It means learn about yourself. The only way I know how to do it is trial and error. And persistence.

If you don't know like second nature, re-familiarize yourself with scientific method. How many people do I see wasting time fruitlessly for years making same mistakes over and over because they don't know how to troubleshoot via scientific method? Too many. So many game projects out there just spinning wheels because people guessing and noodling. No process whatsoever!

That's pretty much it to be honest. You can be dumber than a dog and still make consistent progress is you follow the tenets of the scientific method in your work. It takes rigor and discipline but if you apply it you instantly jump ahead towards success.

Listen, it's war out there. You either get serious and apply the only proven methodology for determining truth, or you flail around and wonder if things might ever go your way.


One last thing, you don't have to know how to do it all. In fact you only need to know how to do one thing well. Get good at just one single part of making games, and then you can find partners to help you fill in the rest.

 

You have to have a vision of what you want to create, then try to do it. Ask questions in the forums when you get stuck.

There are some fundamental things you need to know about such as the Unity lifecycle functions/events. These are the blocks that most of your code will be put inside. Especially these:

• Awake
• Start
• Update
• OnEnable/Disable
• OnTrigger...

If you want something to exist in your game, make a Class for it. If you want to be able to drag it onto a GameObject, inherit from MonoBehaviour. This also gives you access to the functions listed above.

The next part is just learning the Unity API. Look through the components by selecting a GameObject and click Add Component.

 

I have never seen a tutorial that says "it's not important, just copy-paste it." Most tutorials outright avoid doing that because then you're not actually learning anything from the tutorial.

 

I really hate to say this, but if your so frustrated that you would post here, then you do have a big problem. You need to stop, step back and think about what your doing or want to do (goals). Some here are hardcore coders in C#, some are non-coders that are resourceful. Unity does have a place for those wanting to take the time to learn:

Step#1 Learn the Unity engine and its functions (the editor, where things are, settings, etc.).
Step#2 Start with simple things at 1st, make a plane/terrain, placement of assets, skybox, etc., baby steps.
Step#3 Use the Asset Store to your advantage, pre-made assets help with progress/time.
Step#4 If you cant code, at least look at the code, and become what i call a Code Modder, you understand the basic functions of code, and adjust/modify.
Step#5 You CAN do what ever you want, dont let others tell you different. Its up to you, your will power/drive, willingness to learn, time and money to invest.

Understand your frustration, but you really just need to slow down, learn, and "pay your dues". As far as watching YouTube Tutorials....they are great, but dont just watch the 1st one on the list, be selective, as previously stated "not everyone can teach, they may have the knowledge, but cant teach/be understood.

Best of luck,
Warthos

 

Instead of merely following a tutorial, try building a very simple project completely from scratch. When you get stuck, then search for answers in docs, tutorials, and forums. For example, build a project where you press keys on the keyboard to move a cube around in the scene.

 

Also there is free and paid asset that allow you to dodge the c# learning ... but in the end after using them you would have learn c# by osmosis anyway, because you would have learn programming logic in a safe way.

 

Try a Udemy class. They are structured and you can ask the instructor questions. Choose one that teaches you unity while making simple games. They are inexpensive, 10-20 usd and worth the money. Udemy.com

 

How pessimistic, or realistic following my sound, true is, game dev is not for everyone. No formal education will make it otherwise. You may just entered biggest game industry scam, like game making education. People were able make games for decades, without a such.

You need to have passion to games.
You need be self thought and wiling to learn anything it requires, to achieve goals.
You need be technically minded.
You need strong logic understanding.
You need be patient.
And you need be persistent.

 

As a general rule, if a tutorial says this about the thing it's meant to be teaching you then it's a terrible tutorial and you should stop wasting your time with it.

Wait... what? It makes no sense to me that someone who's studying software engineering is hoping not to have to learn a programming language. That's like a carpenter hoping they don't have to use hammers and nails.

For what it's worth, learning a second programming language is much easier than learning your first. It'll be a fraction of the effort. Do that a handful of times and you'll be able to pick up new languages on the fly. It sounds daunting at first, but it's not that bad. (I think I learned C# while game jamming in a weekend.)

If you understand the fundamentals of programming then applying them in the C# language is pretty straightforward. If you want to be a successful software engineer then you want to learn a bunch of languages anyway. Since you're studying software engineering I'm going to leave that stuff aside and assume it's already being covered.

There are two other sets of stuff you want to learn:
1. Unity's basic architecture. The relationship between GameObjects, Components and Scenes, including general familiarity with the built-in components. Assuming you continue as a programmer most of your work in Unity will likely involve designing and implementing new Components for your project's specific needs.
2. The broad strokes of how game engines work. They're essentially a giant loop that gets input, updates a bunch of objects, and then draws the objects. There's a whole bunch of supporting stuff and detail that matters. You don't need to know all the details to begin with, but be open to learning it as you run into stuff and it becomes relevant.

And I'm just going to quote this from earlier threads. The first one is far more relevant to you than the second:

 

This may be a silly question but- did you read the manual?
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html

Just thought I'd mention it because I've seen a lot of posters over the years who skip it or were not aware of it. Unity's docs are not perfect but they're pretty good.