My initial thoughts about Unity as a brand new user/programmer with a Pro gaming background

I would like to start by saying I think that everyone has a unique way of thinking that has things tied to why like interest, upbringing etc. That being said, I tend to be an artistic/visual learner and I lean more towards spacial awareness activities and physical movement (Sports, Paintball, Esports etc.) I have played in the top %1 in many games in the past as well as having a extensive history with single player games growing up although, I am quite behind due to my former years being my competitive years and not having the luxury to play them as often as I'd like. I am Sage, this is my background.

The way I think is relevant to my initial thoughts on Unity and what brought me here with some mixed feelings. In school I found subjects like Math, History and Geography boring because they seemed very tight and required some type of elephant-like memory that I did not posses. I loved to feel things. I needed to use my other senses to visualize something and I loved to use my imagination. This is why coding - in any form, has been an absolute nightmare for me growing up and honestly has caused me great pain to the extent where I feel I am disabled in some way when it comes to things that resemble Math. I watched some videos on Visual Scripting (An award winning wolf game) I could not find any official Unity resources for this. I was disappointed but not discouraged. I completed some of the micro games and although I felt overwhelmed at first at everything going on in the inspector tab in combination with all of the component adds and the positioning and functioning of the camera relative to the player in scene space and how everything interacted with each other. To my great surprise, Unity has managed to teach me some basics that I once thought impossible. Still, I feel as if my eyeballs are being scratched every time I see Brackey's cut into a segment with code. - Much love Brackey's for the support and dapper attitude.

Now I have moved on from micro games and I have embraced the new kits created by Unity. You have to remember that as someone who has absolutely no idea who is who and what is what, Official Unity resources are the only ones I can trust and thus, why the in - engine tutorials taught me the most and the outside resources that contained more text documents - left me with headaches. I don't want to get into a negative tone though because to be honest I had a great time completing the FPS and 3D Platform project so I'd like to give my feedback on that and how I got to the mixed feelings part. I finished them with surprising speed as I skipped most of the level design to focus on the fundamentals like how the collision capsules functioned and how to see the effects of my stat changes in game like health and movement speed.

I played with gravity and gun power. I felt like a kid. I could feel a small tear forming in the back of my eye as I saw the possibilities. Perhaps I didn't believe in myself? Perhaps I'm a boomer and I'm out of touch with what has become possible in the hands of person. I can spawn characters now. I can get a health pack. I can program dialogue into my 2d characters and complete quests. This left me wanting so much more and as I was thrown out of the nest of Unity's in-engine tutorial system, I became lost and I hit the concrete hard. I thought perhaps I was just studying too hard but a hunger brought me back and it was as if I was eating cardboard as my meal and it left me feeling sick. Where was this 5 star meal that I had yesterday with that wonderful tutorial system? It was so appealing for someone who is a visual learner because each minute detail was highlighted for me in blue so my eyes would not get lost in all of these foreign words I had no idea what meant.

I would not give up. Morpheus had given me the red pill and I was saying good F***ing bye to Kansas, mother F***er. Yippy Kay yay and all that S*** because I''m on a quest to make my first game and I'm a boomer so you know I've been thinking about this for far too long with my procrastinating-ass. I had this strange thought about vampires because I felt like one after dwelling in my basement, binge watching Brackey's videos and smiling along with him as he awkwardly stared at me. I had this idea about recreating a game that I onced loved as a child that was related to vampires - Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. I went through the video's and thought to myself "Compared to what Unity is capable of, this is like asking a Ferrari to deliver a pizza." It seemed all too easy with all these micro games I just slayed like the OG I am. My brain felt this all too familar fog that I felt in math class as my math teacher tried to distract me from her cleavage so I can understand 97-37 without using my fingers - in grade 9.

"How in the hell am I going to animate the bodies? Sure, they gave me a gun and showed me how to change the values but how do I import a skin and match the animations? Wait a second... I'm a vampire! I'm supposed to attack people with my grubby-ass finger nails! How do I melee attack? How do I get the hit detection on a melee attack? Does the kit even know what a melee attack is? Most of this game is dialogue... Ok, np. I learned from 2d how to do dialogue but how in the hell am I going to handle animating the face?" 6 hours have passed and someone who has no idea what programming or game dev was last week has has seen the future. 3D scanning. Mocap in 4 different forms! Thank God I found out what Desktop Mocap was the one I needed earlier on because it was becoming a little bit much but after I couldn't find a proper app for it or official support from Unity in regards to how Mocap and Facial Animation work in the Engine, I became very sad. Was I biting more than I could chew? Hear me out... I thought that perhaps I would be nifty and take advantage of these creator kits. I mean, why learn code when I could just copy+paste a script and work with assets that others created? The issue with this is there is no clear guidance in terms of how to get to the creative process of a game after you get past the Microgame/Creator Kit stage.

Thank you for your time and I hope this feedback helps create a better engine and community.