[Video Course] I spent 200 hours making 'Advanced Unity 3D Game Programming', I hope you like it

Advanced Unity 3D Game Programming is published on Lynda.com, which is a members site. However, you can have a 10 day free trial. So you can download the course materials and watch the entire course free. Make sure to make the most of it, since you get all of the courses in Lynda.com library.

If you're more into 2D game dev check out Unity 2D Essential Training. Not made by me, but I met the guy who made it while I was recording. He's got that cool New York accent and it'll make watching the videos that much more fun.

 

Looks interesting.
I took a look at it, and honestly i don't understand why you don't record while writing the whole scripts... Personally i (and i guess a lot more people) don't like when the teacher explains few lines of the code and then shows how the scripts work. How coud i understand it, if it's an area, that i don't understand, like the terrain generation for example...
Take note, from how Unity are making the tutorials. Every line is written and explained, while recording the video...
Anyway, wish you a success with the sellings

 

I certainly agree that's the way a lot of basic courses work. However, I don't think advanced courses should work that way, which is why this course doesn't explain everything line-by-line. For an advanced user, seeing each line explained can be very tedious, and they would just end up trying to skip ahead. I made the assumption that the student can read and understand code, so I don't need to explain every line to them. Instead, I cover how the algorithm works and explain any challenging details of the implementation. Beyond what's explained in the videos by me, the code is pretty well commented.

Additionally, if you look further into the course, you'll find that it has a considerable amount of code. Watching me write every line would take many, many hours. Students would lose interest pretty quickly.

 

Yep maybe you are right, don't know.. Anyway i just shared my opinion. I hope you don't get insulted..

 

I do appreciate you looking at it and giving your opinion. I'm not insulted at all. Thanks for the feedback! If you do have questions about how something in the course, feel free to ask! As I said, you can get a free trial and do the whole thing for free. Thanks.

 

I had high hope for this course. I'm sure the material is really good and well coded. But after running through a few lessons I found it quite frustrating. I understand your point above, not wanting to write out every line, but often you were discussing small segments of scripts while commenting and uncommenting them quickly. It felt more like you were catching up a colleague on stuff you both knew, not teaching a course, albeit an advanced course. Often you touched on methods and literally didn't scroll up to reveal the relevant variables, so following became challenging.

You're clearly a knowledgeable and professional coder, and your target audience was more seasoned coders. But I would imagine you shaved off folks below that target level of code familiarity. That might be okay, with you and Lynda, but I imagine capturing a larger audience is always a good thing. It was a big undertaking though, so congrats on the effort and hopefully it does well.

 

I haven't seen this course yet but I will be checking up on it. However being a teacher myself I strongly believe that the group of learners of Unity is very segmented, and that any course will appeal to and be appropriate for about 10% of the total number of potential students. As long as the target audience is clear I think it's good to be focused.

 

Thanks outtoplay. I do realize I cover some of the topics pretty quickly. I will keep what you've said in mind when creating future courses. This was my first attempt at creating a video course like this, so I'm still learning the best way to do it. I created the course thinking of developers similar to myself, when, as you say, I probably should have been trying to focus on a broader audience. Thanks for your comments.

 

Thanks christinanorwood. It is indeed difficult to please all the people, all the time. I'll be interested to hear what you think of the course!

 

Hey Robert,

Is your course gone from lynda.com now?

 

I'm not sure if you're talking to me (my name is Michael), but both courses are still available on Lynda.com, and you can still access both by using the links above.

I've also updated the post to include a 10-day free trial instead of a 7-day trial. Enjoy!

 

Is there a help section where questions can be asked?

 

You can ask your questions here if you like, or there's a reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/27yrnk/i_spent_200_hours_making_a_video_course_advanced/

Or if they're technical questions about the course, you can ask via the feedback links on Lynda.com.

 

Are you going to update this course with Unity 5 (UNet)?

 

Likely not. Much of the course is actually applicable to general game programming and not Unity specific. There are additional courses on Lynda.com that provide training for a number of the Unity 5 features. For example Unity 5 2D Essential Training should cover most of the things about Unity 5 that my course does not.