Swords and Shovels: Unity3D vs. Pluralsight

Would anyone happen to know the difference between subscribing to the Swords and Shovels course with Unity versus Pluralsight? Unity $144 for 2 years of access with their current promotion while Pluralsight is $200 for a basic membership and $300 for premium for one year with their promotion. I don't have much money, so I'd like to get the most out of it (assuming that it's worth it to subscribe to either of these services instead of finding free resources online).

 

Welcome back! When you were here back in September, some of our members recommended the official tutorials to you. I believe this is still the best advice given your current situation.

First, I'm obligated to direct you to my Getting Started FAQ.

Next, let's talk about something that is intended to be nothing but encouragement: game development is hard.

You may be familiar with games from a consumer point of view, but how they work under the hood is still a new concept to you. It takes a lot of time for that to become second nature, and there's no shortcut I'm aware of. You just put in the time working with this stuff, and work with it before you even fully understand it, and eventually, it all starts to click.

Think about some of the major things you learned how to do, like learning to speak, read, and write. Walking, running, and jumping. When you started any of those things, you were terrible at them. The more you did it, the better you got. Initially, you could only communicate simple ideas like being hungry or having to poop. You could get across the room, but were likely to crash into any obstacles along the way.

Game development is no different. You'll fail for a long time before you succeed, but if you stick with it, you will succeed. At first, you'll just be able to get simple things to happen, like getting a ball to roll around a scene. You'll be able to write basic scripts, but will be totally lost any time an unexpected console error pops up. The same way babies can't enter spelling bees or marathons, you shouldn't expect to be making AAA-class games yet, either. The longer you work with it, the clearer it'll become. When you get to the point where you look at something you wrote before and recognize how bad it is, that's a good sign you're growing and improving.

With that said, I don't recommend purchasing any kind of lessons at this point. There are a ton of great learning resources available for free, and I wouldn't consider paying for materials until you've exhausted those.

Go through the tutorials. Go through them again. Experiment on your own. Try reading the manual and documentation at times. Sometimes it won't make sense, or will only confuse you more. But other times, it'll help one small piece of the puzzle fall into place for you, and if that happens enough, you'll get the whole thing finished in the end.

Keep at it! And remember to have fun with it!

 

Thanks! I'm pretty bad at searching forums Apologies for that. I appreciate the reply and helpful tips. It's good to know that I shouldn't be spending money so early on. I've gone through quite a few tutorials (everything on Unity and a lot on YouTube that I'm still sifting through). I suppose I'm looking for ways to get some of the fundamentals committed to memory. I'm having trouble with applying the concepts that I've learned without going through the same tutorials over and over again.

 

This is very important skill. It will help you avoid time loss and a lot frustration. Also, you may learn new tricks.

In fact, I don't think you need spend at any time. Specially, if you short on money and you not making leaving from it.
As have been said, there is tons of stuff available on forum, website, and int the web generally.

'Going Through' is not enough. You need practicing. You need to replicate, try add own stuff, modify, experiment. See what can and can not be done. Only by practicing you will learn programming.
At some point, you probably will ditch watching youtube tutorials, and you will just go on with things, as you will know, how to get results effectively.

Good luck.

 

What's all these triple digit numbers?

I use plural sight on a month to month basis and its like $30 each month. I never bought any big subscription... I would recommend just doing that -- not buying anything from Unity -- because all you need is the videos and by purchasing monthly memberships to pluralsight you get access to a lot more than just the swords and shovels series.