Recommend me a few things to start with.

Hello, guys.
I hope this section is appropriate for this kind of topic.

So, I'm finally set on learning C# for Unity. But I don't like just reading books. I like making a goal and achieving it, learning meanwhile.

And I wanted to make a roguelike type of game with action-combat system. It'll be 2d thing, maybe with 3d models - doesn't matter right now.

I wanted to ask you, can you recommend me some good tutorials on RPG-thingies? Like, how to create health/damage system (a simpleone), spells, enemies and so on - ou know, what makes RPG an RPG, but less complex, more roguelike-casual.

 

You could try the scripting section. http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/scripting.12/

Or the game design section http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/game-design.71/

:0)

 

http://unity3d.com/learn

 

A brain.

Also this should help

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxLNqnnCshwlE0UebbpV_v8M4kcLhXEz9

 

If you like to learn by glancing over existing examples, you could try a starter kit from the asset store. It would at least give you a functional system until you were at the point to replace it with your own solution.

 

Thank you for the answer without venomous sarcasm or the one that holds everyone asking basic things for complete morons.

 

It's a hassle but what you have to realise is the people who respond with such hatred really are in the minority (and not just on this forum (these people aren't representative of the majority of coders (which is easy to loose sight of and as such is extremely damaging to the industry and the profession as a whole), they're everywhere in life and on every forum, some of them just happen to code and some of them are here).

The majority of people on this forum (as with any other forum (all things being equal)) are normal people who could respond perfectly civilly in a perfectly helpful and congenial way, they just don't put information forward because they've already learned they're going to be attacked by the small hostile and vicious 3 to five percent.

The people who respond viciously with information that arguably is, at best, just not incorrect, do so in such a manner because they know the information would be forthcoming anyway (and probably more and better information) and so they try and get there first with the hostility the hatred and the vitriol, probably either because they're trying to discourage you (because they believe coding is a zero-sum game and they want you gone and out of their way) or because they just enjoy hurting people or get satisfaction from treating people in an abusive manner.

If the people holding the purse-strings that bank-roll forums (like this one specifically), eventually figure out that the healthier and more supportive the forum is the faster it will grow and thrive (I offer as an example Linus tech tips http://linustechtips.com/) something may actually be done about the problem, which would raise the boats for all of us. For instance, imagine what an incredible source of innovation, energy and creativity a forum such as this could be if floods of the next generation of programmers and coders arrived with their enthusiasm and their excitement and their fresh insights. Maybe it's fear of that that's part of the reason why at least some of the hostile and viscous people on this (and other forums) behave as they do.

What do I suggest we do? Please see my sig. A good place to get started is to identify the people on the forum who aren't going to try and make your life a misery for their own purposes.

And please...to the good, normal people out there, please also respond to the questions however briefly, so that we can add the savage and the vicious to our ignore lists without fear that no one else will respond (if those people respond to me, I don't see it, so I don't get the information and it just means I'm going to have to keep asking which just means more grist for their atrocious mill).

 

People behave as they do because they've seen this kind of threads for hundreds of times - the same type of people asking the same type of questions. People that don't bother googling or searching the forum first.
Why should someone spend their time giving a thorough reply when OP didn't spend even 5 minutes of his time searching for the info?
Learn to search! That's the only important skill you need to become a game developer.

P.S. Centigrade, stop being a drama queen in every thread you post.

 

People in the position of new arrivals don't know this. It's not their fault. They're looking for orientation and introduction. There's no sticky'd FAQ, there's no "Start Here" sticky and no introduce yourself thread. People are arriving here expecting to find a community. Please don't make all they find here a sickening play on the "Unity" name.

There's no justification for you to treat them in the way they're being treated and you are under absolutely no obligation to respond to their posts.

 

I always suggest that people learn basic programming (use C# for this in your case) first. Will help you A LOT in the end.
We are talking variables, if/else statements, loops, methods and classes.

There is a million tutorials on YouTube or around the internet, so finding one should not be a problem.

I know everyone just want to jump into programming some game from the get go. But understanding the basics will help you so much when you start!!!

 

Exactly. They didn't bother searching their question first. It's entirely their fault.

This is not your premium support line. This is a community of developers that help you for free in their spare time. If you don't bother searching your questions first, and you're expecting that everyone here will treat you like a princess and just make your game for you, then wake up! That's not how real life works!

 

I do agree with your statement for the most part, but I do believe a small part of the blame lies with Unity. We were told they had plans for a "Getting Started" section for the forums and they have yet to deliver on it.

I try to answer these questions when I do know the answer, but while the wording was similar I don't feel like the OP was asking the exact same type of question. I think they simply wanted a tutorial recommendation. Which is why I suggested starter kits on the asset store.

 

Well, there is a 'Learn' selectable option right at the top of the Unity Homepage (And any Unity webpage) which would take new Unity users to the tutorials section.

 

I haven't watched them myself. I saw that they were video tutorials and closed the page. A lot of people, myself included, have commented on these forums multiple times that we do not like video tutorials.

I don't think this is exactly why people are skipping over the 'Learn' section, but it may very well be one contributing factor. I think people are generally more used to asking questions than doing their own research. Especially if they don't really have any experience using search engines.

 

I agree with his sentiment that many beginner questions could have been answered with a search. We have actually had days where a "getting started" type of question is asked more than once with the thread being relatively close to the top. Yet the new person still puts up their own thread only to receive the exact same answers.

Once again though I don't think the OP fits into that group based on their past threads. Their choice of wording could use some work as it does give the impression otherwise, but this is why I check thread history for those who post. To ensure my assistance is actually beneficial. Linking the Learn section is only useful to a point.

You have to click the "Community" link in order to access the forums. The "Learn" link is right next to it. So either they are finding the forums through a search, in which case they should be capable of finding the answer to their question, or they are purposefully ignoring the "Learn" section.

Which is why having a "Getting Started" section would be nice. People may ignore the "Learn" section, but I doubt they would ignore the forum section dedicated to newcomers. It was supposed to have been positioned right next to the "Announcements" at the top of the forum.

 

You should try watching them! There are both bite-size tutorials in the form of 5/10 minute descriptions of features and elements in Unity and there are also longer video tutorials that take new users through the process of making a simple game from scratch.

Out of interest, why don't you like video tutorials? Can you link to a thread where forum-users are asking for official non-video Unity tutorials?

Not having any experience in using search engines or navigating web-pages doesn't make sense; they clearly have experience of searching for the Unity website, downloading the engine, choosing the community tab, choosing the forums, logging in, then making a thread asking for help. The majority of questions such as 'How do I make Minecraft in Unity?' or 'How do I make a FPS in Unity?' or other similar questions can be solved by posting that exact question into Google. The same goes for most specific questions such as 'how do I set the length of a raycast in unity?' which will yield useful links to relevant Unity Documentation, Unity Answers, Unity Forums, Unity Learn Section and tutorials/guides hosted on the community's own websites and blogs. The tools, and results, are there for new users to find out what they want.

Of course, people will ask the forums "how do I make X in unity?' threads if they opt not to use Google. I have just messaged Aurore about a 'Getting Started' section and we will see what happens.

 

It isn't in a dedicated thread. Usually the discussion about video vs non-video tutorials is brought up whenever someone asks what type of tutorials people would be interested in seeing.

There are situations where I will use video tutorials, such as the ones made by 3D Buzz for Unity, but generally I dislike them for learning anything beyond the very basics. It is simply much easier for me to find what I am interested in using text with images than having to search through a video.

This is why I believe they are purposefully ignoring the "Learn" section of the site.

 

Sorry but I think the OP's avatar was supposed to inspire us to help. Of course this ain't the interstate and the OP doesn't have a flat tire.

Plus, I've only heard the term 'thingies' used by programmers explaining something without actually reading back lines of code and bespoke hardware constructs.

 

That's the most rare and surprising opinion I've heard for awhile. And I can tell you that you're definitely in the EXTREME minority. Most people are begging for video tutorials over any other kind.

Case in point: we have 40-50 page reference manuals for our plugins and most people can't be bothered to read them or even refer to them as a reference. They want videos for EVERYTHING and they ask all the time. This is the MTV generation - most people won't sit down and read long tutorial stuff. So it's more effective for authors to cater to the largest audience and just make the videos. I think it's time for you to accept the reality instead of waiting for it to change.

Also, screen shot tutorials (blog-style) won't really do the trick for Unity, it would need way too many of them and be super long, for most things. Video is simpler. The trick may be finding short enough and focused video tutorials, so you don't have to fast forward through it. I try to keep the videos for our plugins pretty short. They range from 2 to 8 minutes. That way I can keep cranking them out without a lot of effort and it's easier to find what you're looking for based on the titles.

The 3D buzz stuff is top notch. It's also pretty long. If everyone made that high quality of video tutorials, this community would be twice as useful for learning.

 

Putting in a vote here also as someone who absolutely can not stand video tutorials. There have been a few threads here where people have expressed the same thing. I avoid them unless they are the last resort. Horrible, horrible things.

Using long, drawn out, unsearchable video to explain everything doesn't make sense. The only reason I can think of as to why it's so "popular" now is because it's much easier to hem and haw one's way through recording a video than it is to sit down and write proper documentation. Then because video tutorials are pretty much all there is, of course that's what people get used to. Doesn't mean they're a good idea, it just means they're the most popular way of doing tutorials these days.

I have Master Audio and I have been through the manual several times, as a good manual is meant for. I started to watch the videos and quit after two minutes. It's impossible to search through a video for what one needs, and I'm not going to watch it through several times over every time I need to look up a small piece of information.

Video tutorials are fine for crafts, musical instruction, and... uhm, I guess there are other uses? They most certainly do not lend themselves well to programming and serious development.

That is just my "old lady, get off my lawn you young whippersnappers" opinion, of course.

PS. If I had to choose one developer who does video tutorials "right" it would be @SpookyCat with the "Mega" videos. Short, to the point, no annoying voice, large text on the screen at each step, and they each cover one simple thing. I'll give an exception to my opinion above for those.

 

I know exactly what you mean about (paraphrasing here) meandering LONG videos. I watched many of those (well actually I couldn't finish watching them and noted their mistakes then shut them off due to boredom) before I made any of the Master Audio or Core GameKit videos.

I do concede the point about videos not being searchable. But don't you dare put us in that "long, drawn out" category. I made it a point to avoid anything resembling those adjectives in particular. Our videos are short (2-8 minutes, most are under 5), where I cover a single (or related) focused area(s), and I talk fast and with a plan. There's a sense of pace so as to not waste time or bore people.

"No annoying voice"? To that point, several people on my videos placed comments with things like "I like your voice, it's soothing", but there definitely is speaking. Annoying is subjective, but it appears I'm not too bad.

Basically, most of the things you're complaining about were not done in our videos, and yet you still couldn't watch them. Care to elaborate?

But yeah I do both. Reference manual for the minority and videos for the vast majority that can't be bothered to read a huge manual.

I also think that for plugins with custom screens (like Playmaker), or heavily custom Inspectors (our plugins) video tutorials are more useful than they are for other sorts of plugins. I couldn't imagine learning Playmaker without the vids.

 

Sure. I really don't want you to think I was referencing your videos in particular here, but rather the point you made that people who dislike tutorials are in the extreme minority. Your videos, for the most part, seem done well enough, but because I just simply do not like video tutorials unless they are absolutely necessary, I avoid them. I was able to get some useful info from your videos, but there's a big manual so there's no real need for me to watch more. I will add though, that as far as I recall from the two minutes I watched, you do have a good voice.

Final thoughts: Video tutorials put me to sleep, quite literally. I don't know what it is, but it happens almost every time. I can be wide awake and if I start watching a video tutorial I'm ready for a nap a minute into it. Maybe it's ASMR or something, haha. I try to avoid them, whatever the reason.

Everyone learns differently, and I know some people like videos. Some people like text. Some people like someone sitting there with them walking them through it all. It's all good.

 

Allright, thanks for the clarification. I kind of agree with you. A lot of video tutorials put me to sleep (Unity 4.6 GUI vids anyone?), but when done really well, I like them. 3D Buzz videos, the first ones I watched 3 years ago, made me wish I had such an entertaining teacher somewhere in my life before that. Those were different because he was actually teaching someone and recording the video at the same time. Lots of interplay between the 2 talking.

 

I like man pages and nothing else. Not PDFs, not videos, not audio, not HTML, and not help or chm files. Sorry if you don't know what man pages are. They are simple and terse. Unity's help pages come close in man page style if not in presentation software.

Oh, I need an addendum: to learn the Unity Editor UI or Blender makes no sense except with video tutorials unless you are prepared to pay $25 - $50 for a quickly outdated book that will take you twice as long to go through.

 

@devcor, As you've already noted, RPGs are complex beasts made up of many small subsystems. Even if you simplify these to the absolute bare minimum, you'd still be looking at several nontrivial subsystems. You don't want that many trees hiding the forest when you're first starting out. I think the best thing you can do is start with a game with simpler mechanics like, say, a platformer.

 

This is why I suggested a starter kit for RPGs. The OP can start off learning the basics while the more complex aspects are handled for them. Once they progress further they can either choose to keep the pre-made systems or put in their own solutions.

We even had a discussion started up in the past month dealing with various starter kits.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/best-current-rpg-kit-in-as.285162/

 

You make a good point and this is likely why Unity is focusing on video tutorials. Their documentation is already acceptable for the job. At least I've had no real problems understanding it.

 

No, not at all. Plenty of people dislike video tutorials and won't use them, since they have severe drawbacks (can't search, difficult to skip around to find the stuff you actually want, etc.). But it also depends on the subject matter. If it's highly visual, then video tutorials are a natural. For technical stuff, not so much.

I also have reference manuals, and have gotten many positive comments on their quality. I spend a lot of time trying to make them as short as possible while still covering the necessary info, and include visual stuff that can illustrate points more easily than a bunch of text. I've had very few requests for video tutorials. I'm considering doing some anyway, but the demand hasn't really been there.

--Eric

 

I prefer printed matter myself. It would be great if they had transcripts of the videos available to make searching easier.
This website https://www.speechpad.com does have some relatively inexpensive options.

I like your reference manuals.

 

I agree. I find video tutorials useful... sometimes... if it is something like modeling or drawing graphics. Perhaps animation. Just depends on the video itself really.

Overall videos just do not engage me the way a good written tutorial with screenshots does. However, I have went through a couple tutorials that were awesome using video. They were basically just written out tutorials but instead of images they had videos. I found those the most effective of all. The video clips themselves were tiny. Maybe 5 seconds to 20 seconds.

I think the issue with videos (for me anyway) is they are such a spectator activity. At least my mind goes into spectator mode as I listen to someone drone on and watch them drag a mouse around the screen or type code. That is especially mind numbing. But a well written tutorial with images for added clarity (or micro video clips) are much more engaging and easier to work with. It is just more efficient to find what I need.

 

I thought I remember that part of the Asset Store guidelines was that you MUST have a readme explaining things? So I'm not sure what reality this question is in. No point to answer it. Or I'm remembering wrong?

 

My biggest complaint with video tutorials is when they start showing code in the video and use a font that is barely readable even with a high quality setting. Likewise written tutorials can sometimes be vague with how they explain things.

I don't understand why more of them don't mix the two. Written words for code and easily explained aspects with video segments for the more easily shown aspects.

 

Yeah, our plugins have extensive custom inspectors, so I think ours need tutorials on video.

Believe it or not, the 50 page Master Audio manual is as short as possible, with minimal visuals. If I added more visuals it would be another 20 pages. There's just THAT MUCH functionality. But the manual is well organized into 20-some-odd sections.

 

I've had probably a couple dozen requests for videos. But we already had a couple videos as well (they were a little outdated). I'd say we get far more questions via email or the support forum than requests for further video. But that makes sense though - no one can instantly produce a tutorial video right? A response to an email would always be getting a faster response.

So our products are probably not the best plugin to answer the question haha. I prefer something well written to read myself, but of course a lot of asset store plugins don't come with that.

 

If you've got coding in your video you need a written document linked to the video timeline. It's pretty easy to do in YouTube but I don't know of an offline system to do that for those that must download a tutorial to get readable fonts in a YouTube video of a code editor IDE.

 

goat, I've read the Blender manual and I'm quite decent at modelling now, but that's a diff topic... modo and Blender are my preferred tools atm. (Use Steam sales to not pay the 1000+).

Unity, it may be somewhat inferred here but I don't think you've noticed. The reason people who want video tutorials outweigh us, is because the ones who enjoy reading manuals have already used Google after staring at the translation video and been like "It takes 6 minutes to teach me the syntax of transform and translate!? No Way!, I'm googling this example." Or, what I normally do is literally skip the video in chunks until I see code, look at how it's written, listen for quirks if there are any, then skip. I would watch your 6 minute video in about 1 minute total of viewing time.

I do like the coroutine video, although to me, coroutines are spaghetti. Spaghetti is not to be written, just eaten. However the timer add-on, that's awesome. But that's a side point.

Assume a percentage of us are being quiet simply because we won't need to beg for a video tutorial. It's just a case of the squeaky wheel getting noticed vs the silent crowd of search-inclined.

We're not complaining, we're all grateful you give this info out, even if we prefer another way. It's more like, we're programmers, and you've given a funnel that social people enjoy, which is good, since it means you've attracted a wider audience, but us non-socialites are quirky, and we like our manpages or raw code, and unnecessary extra seconds just irk us a lot, possibly because we recognize when there are unnecessary extra seconds. Like finding the reply button in Outlook's new website. I spend 5 minutes every time looking for its toolbar, only to realize it's buried inside the email window, the same color as my last line of text. As you know, I have many gripes about the new UI everyone's trying.

Which brings me to my point, I'm "modding" your docs, grouping related things. It took me hours to find out I needed to literally have a "Resources" folder for one project, not just add the resources, and another 30 minutes just to figure out how to load an XML file for a simple read operation. I'd much enjoy to spend the couple days I need to to rewrite the documentation, because it will save me more time at this rate. Try to convert a 3D object's 2D space from world to screen... there's about 3 different answers and I had to guess, successfully, about how to modify/change/simplify what I could find. I don't understand how such common things are so hard to find, so I immediately think about the strife I'm going to go through, instead of the game I'm going to make, when considering Unity instead of writing the code in Cocos or another C-based language.

That said, this doesn't excuse us from needing to learn basic design patterns before trying to build a game, and Unity really does save a lot of time compared to writing straight OpenGL and learning Linear Algebra, gfx rendering, physics, etc. I just wanted you to know the strife I went through because you say we are not complaining about the videos so much, but what's really going on is we're not loud. We have these hiccups and spend hours looking for simple things, and you never know, then you turn around and say "Most of you don't want written guides". The truth is we just spent 5 hours trying to convert a rectangle but, since we're not social, all you see are multitudes of questions on your answer site with nobody whining, since we're logical, we'd rather find a solution than complain.

So please, write a transcript. I'll handle some of your load on the documentation side, but I'd like permission or approval or something to upload them here lest I write my own CSS.

PS. I moved the "next" arrow to be next to the previous one since it's the most clicked button yet the hardest one to reach after you've moved the mouse from another link.

I have no issues doing this, you're working hard with your resources, so am I. And like I said, I'm not complaining, I'm doing something about it. The above is just so you know, and can sit back and go "Oh, I wonder how many others have to dig like this..." The Unity Answers questions and their view counts might help.

Feiting.

 

Amen.