New to Unity, need guidance on where to start for my project.

Hi all. Totally new to Unity and mobile app development. I've 20+ years of programming experience in various languages, none of my experience has ever touched on anything graphical other than designing HTML forms/menus/etc. Database connections, web apps, arduino/pi robotics, bluetooth connected gadgets, comfortable with all of that. Making a menu appear on an iPhone when you click an icon? Absolutely no idea.

I'm working on an app thats tied into a live/real world game. The exact details aren't super important, but what the app needs to do is mostly display information. Multiple screens/tabs of textual data, with links that when clicked/tapped activate scripts/functions. Open the menu, pull up your character info. From there, click the skills tab and get a list of skills. Maybe click a skill to "activate" it, and a function is called.

Why an app instead of a webpage? Because two of the more advanced options the app will perform deal with location based mapping in real-time, and an AR system. I could get away with a web app for the location stuff, but for actual AR, thats out of the question.

Why Unity? Because I need something that will run on both iOS and Android, and I've heard great things on Unity's ability to be a code once, deploy anywhere solution. I've also seen some great Unity plugins for dealing with location, mapping, and AR, which should really cut down on the learning curve.

So why this post? I've no idea where to start. I've got Unity installed, I played with the 2D platformer a bit. I went to learn.unity.com and searched for text and menu in the help system and didn't see much. I poked around the asset store and found some stuff that looks great, but the best looking menu systems I've found cost more than I'm willing to spend just to try it out. Once I've got a handle on it all and am ready to develop in earnest, the budget is there for the tools I need. I just don't want to drop $100 on a UI system when I'm not even sure how to use it.

So, any help or direction would be appreciated. While jumping into modding a pre-made platformer gave me some info, and I see a lot of "getting started" tutorials... what I need to "get started" with isn't standard. I'm not making a side scrolling game, or a 3D shooter... I'm making a menuing/information system that can launch some higher functions once I get that far down the road.

Am I better off buying a menu system asset and starting there? Problem is, many don't have great documentation - they assume you know what you're doing already. I don't know what I'm doing yet.

Where should I start? Even though I'm not using sprites and game objects and collision detection and the typical things used in a game, should I still start with those tutorials? Is there somewhere better I should start? Is there a UI system someone can recommend that is customizable and flexible and is a good place to get started?

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum - "General" seems to be the safe spot for these sorts of questions.

Any assistance would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

Hello and welcome to unity. As I am new myself you can check the starter projects in my signature.

I would recommend something like text based game first, which is what I am doing.

Maybe you can jump right into something like rpg. All you have to do is follow tutorials, there is an example of menu system in rpg by the way from brackeys.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/wip-low-poly-top-down-crafting-game.886840/

 

You will also need to follow this tutorial.

https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/building-for-mobile#5c7f8528edbc2a002053b4a1

make sure you have correct gradle version for android studio, this can be deployed on linux or windows. For mac make sure you have latest xcode applications. You will also need developer liscense for mac if you want to deploy to actual device.

And one last thing, for menu to avoid headache with layouts is best to centralize menu, that way u won't have to worry about responsive forms, if you come from bootstrap or flexbox backgrounds.

 

On the contrary what you need to "get started" is standard because there is a large degree of overlap in the systems found in a game engine. Creating a menu is not that different than creating a 2D game. Both involve rendering images, both with and without animations applied to them, and manipulating them based on keyboard and mouse inputs.

A 3D shooter typically has a HUD (heads-up display) which involves rendering images, both with and without animations applied to them, and manipulating it based on keyboard and mouse inputs. See where I'm going with this?

My recommendation to getting started to an experienced programmer is to read through the official manual focusing your attention on the sections regarding navigating the editor, creating and adding content to scenes, importing assets, creating prefabs, etc. This is largely the way I learned Unity since I had a similar background.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html

For any learning courses I highly recommend ones that step you through the entire process of creating a game starting at the beginning rather than one that starts you somewhere in the middle as you will better memorize the editor. Below is a series for creating a 2D platformer which should have a good amount of overlap with your app's needs.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPV2KyIb3jR42oVBU6K2DIL6Y22Ry9J1c

 

With 20+ years of experience you need to skim through manual and script reference. Script reference will give you an API, while manual will give you overview of the software.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/

 

For mobile devices most likely to use something called 'touch gestures' I feel.

 

Yes, but that's completely irrelevant to my point. You could swap out "keyboard and mouse" for "touch gestures" and my post would be perfectly fine. In fact you don't even have to do that because Unity goes one step further in its overlap of similar functionality by simulating the mouse on touch devices.

 

Thanks for the tips all. After posting this, I did some more searching and found some UI tutorials which got me moving in the right direction. Man, programming a UI in this is a lot more complicated than doing something similar on a website. Probably not... I'm just used to building things differently. Looking over the manual and tutorials I've found and that you've all posted.

Any other newbie hints and tips? Is there a good thread for that somewhere? "Wish I knew this when I started Unity programming?" sort of thing?

 

Only other tip would be use something called 'anchors' for different screen sizes, and have various physical devices for actual testing and if possible buy mac so can test both environment.

 

Speaking of which there is an asset to assist with checking out how things will look across multiple devices without having to try them one at a time.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/universal-device-preview-82015

 

Bought a macbook air years ago when I was hacking some ios games... pulled it out and booted it up fir the first time in ages tonight. It opened up some imessages coversations from 2016 - I guess I havent used it in forever! Unfortunately it wont update xcode past version 8.0 so it looks like I'll need to do something about that.

Thanks @Ryiah for the asset assist. Once I get this thing going beyond "How do I do basic screens of text" I'll give it a look.

I found this youtube series,

, and I've been following it to try and learn how to build a menuing system.