Visual Scripting is for me?

Hi there!

I have been playing around with Unity for quite some time already (2 years or so), and managed to learn what I would call an intermediate level of c# and unity scripting. I do it mainly as a hobby, love to prototype ideas alone or in a team (especially gamejams), and bring to markets the best projects.

I know how to handle GOs, communicate between scripts, instancing, basic navmesh, cross-scene stuff, IAP, etc. What I suffer a lot is in pure math scripts, like world generation, even on a simple 2d level (imagine a 2d dungeon).

Life has moved me to and from many places, and I feel that I've capped what I can learn in terms of coding (I find it very difficult for me to learn "complex" things like the mentioned world and mesh generation, or shaders), so someone pointed out I should try visual scripting, like PlayMaker.

I have a few questions about this, and would love to hear you out.

1. Considering I have some knowledge of scripting, wouldn't it be better to keep trying to learn what I don't know, instead of learning another tool?

2. I presume visual scripting like the aforementioned asset is more for prototyping, so what happens when I want to add code post-prototype? Do I need to export everything or do I haphazardly plaster my own code on top?

3. Any other assets I should be aware of?

4. Maybe Unity is not the solution and Unreal's Blueprinting is the way to go for me?

Many thanks for your help!

 

1) IMO, If you're serious about making i game by yourself I think you should buy a book on c# development and read that to get you started on programming.

2) with playmaker you can integrate your own code as well but It my experience that playmaker mostly just for fun and playing around and not serious projects that needs to be complete at a point. I knew someone working at a company where they used playmaker in a project. He said it was a nightmare for a fullygrown projekt using PM.

3) There is a bunch of visual scripting tools they all essentially do the same thing. Playmaker is the best. IMO.

4) Blueprinting is the same as prefabs, Unreal IMO feels like a more oldschool engine made for shooters which is trying to emulate the Unity business model and growing into something more like Unity. The tech is more limited and more non-standard than what can be used with Unity. IMO the Unity community and amount of info you can find on Unity is greater than Unreal.

 

You didn't reach a "limit" in terms of what you can learn. Some things just take more time and effort to learn than other things.

I don't recommend visual scripting, as you lose a lot of control over what's happening (including performance). That doesn't mean it doesn't have its place, but I certainly wouldn't use it as the main tool to make a game with.

Note that if you understand the C# syntax, you won't gain a lot by using visual scripting. You still have to understand the concepts, algorithms, etc. Visual scripting is just a change to the syntax.

 

Many thanks. After talking with man other developers, I seem to have tackled the issue the wrong way. It matters not if it's via manual or visual scripting, if the problem is how to apply logic. One example of something that I can't grasp is Cellular Automata, or Mesh Generation. It involves some heavy math that I haven't touched in decades.

PlayMaker will not help me with that, so I need to study the algorythms, make sense, and apply them to my own code.

Thanks for your time