What is the #1 thing you want to learn about Unity?

Quick question! What is the #1 thing that you want to learn about Unity?

 

Everything.

 

Yeah that's pretty much me as well.

 

How to print money.

I kid. What I want is to be nimble and be able to create things as fast as I can come up with them.

 

Where the "Make MMO" button is. I keep seeing people mention it, but I just can't find it, and it's not in the docs.

--Eric

 

If this question was asked a few days ago I would say UNET. But like most things unity related, a combination of the docs, forums and experimentation got me a sufficient understanding of it within a few hours.

I can't even come up with a topic to suggest because I can't think of anything that wouldn't be resolved the same way.

 

This is how it has become for me as well. The most recent topic I wanted to learn was the new Unity UI, but it only took a few hours with the forums, answers and documentation along with some experimentation to pick up the basics.

At this point I'm focused more on getting as much experience with Unity as I can rather than learning any specific topic.

 

How to style an input field in the editor and still maintain the little numeric draggy thing on the label.

 

Online multiplayer networking. Something I've always wanted to play around with but never get to it. It confuses me.

 

How to become MLG unity user with doritos and mountain dew.

 

Shaders. For some reason I have this weird mental block when it comes to writing code to do art. I'll overcome this eventually, but at the moment it seems like too much mental gymnastics to convince myself.

 

If you place any value in your mental well-being, try to avoid it
(Or better yet, get someone else to do it for you)

 

I think it is hidden near the button that sucks the game idea out of my head & puts it on the screen ready to play.

As a beginner it's all about coding for me at the moment. I'm happy to build concepts using primitives & placeholder art just so I can see if what I'm thinking will work, is fun etc. hopefully I then end up with some games that I can then start learning other stuff to improve them.

 

Seriously, every time I sit down to try to figure it out, I end up figuring out a glass of wine instead. Screw it.

 

Try a cigar as well, that elevates it to looking like you're already successful

 

I generally get close enough... but no... wait for it...

Bu dum tsss.... Thank you, I'll be here all week.

 

Find a shader guru, and have them explain it to you in very simple terms. That finally did the trick for me. Docs, tits and articles usually explain how to write shaders, not how they work. John, our shader master, mentored me for a couple weeks and explained it in great detail, with little drawings and everything! It made all the difference. They are odd, having someone translate it into the familiar broke that wall for me.

 

Must...not...comment...on.....tit...shading......

 

Why not pick up a copy of Shader Forge? I don't know how it is in all situations, but it certainly beat trying to learn the code while simultaneously trying to learn about shaders themselves.

 

That's a good idea. The whole concept has been slippery to me. Once I find an analogue to something I know, it should fit in more simply. Or even just a general starting point to sink my teeth into.

Not a silly idea. Does Shader Forge follow the same sort of internal logic that code shaders do?

Either way every time I get started on it I end up deciding there is something else more productive to do.

 

Hmm... I'll have to check into that.

 

Basically Shader Forge provides an editor similar in nature to the UE4 Material Editor. Shaders are actually stored in the form of Unity shader code (with some additional data specifically meant for Shader Forge in a comment near the top).

Here's one of the examples shipped with Shader Forge in both editor form and code form.

http://pastebin.com/RXBZrcdf

 

"trust me, I'm an artist. This is purely for research purposes."

 

Shaders would definitely have to be on top of my list, I've been digging deeper into OpenGL lately to try to get the basics but it is surprisingly difficult to find good material on it.

 

Lmao! I read the release notes whenever I update, to see if there's anything concerning my problems/wishes but I was too excited about 5.0 to read anything before installing.

 

@Ony do you want to learn networking via RPCs and do it all manually or are you interested in UNET? I have these two ideas semi-figured out. And they're designed to be played between desktop and mobile! Or rather, your controller changes based on which you connect from. Dumb ideas but was trying to figure out UNET.

The first one is 2D and you just kinda move left and right on the screen and lift up a sign when you stop moving stating which kind of device you're on. The second one is first person for desktop systems and top down for mobile systems. I made a mistake and decided not to fix it regarding movement for the mobile system You'll see for clients that mobile stutters a bit while moving.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9b5rsaXNB-KWmNpSHRXTUp4WjA/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9b5rsaXNB-Kd0pVeVB5V0JXZmM/view?usp=sharing

 

Oh snap. Now I have to go back to Unity 4.

--Eric

 

Uhm... No habla Españetworking.

 

Sounds like UNET is right for you, young dabbler. Ever try networking in unreal? It's almost that simple in unity now! UNET is the built in simplified networking stuff. I posted a project that's in 2D and just has you move left and right on the screen... over a network!

@Ryiah the two project links I posted also make use of the unity ui. I even use a coroutine with waitforseconds to switch the loading screen to force it to appear for a moment

 

Ok I'll take a look-see, thanks!

 

Dont give up @Ony, even though networking can be challenging.

Thats nice Tomnn lol, Im syncing voxel data over network, and now im relying on network messages a lot

 

How to write native extensions for Android.

It's the next thing on my "To (Re-)Learn" list as I return to Unity after a long time away.

And, hey, if anyone can suggest any good "How-To" tutorials ... I'm all ears

 

Thank YOU for the icon. I'm taking it with me even if I move to another engine some day.

Whoa now, I'm just syncing inputs and data in synchronized controllers. What you're talking about is an actual idea. It'll be a few more days before I can comprehend the statement you're making.

 

So would you all say that the best way to totally learn Unity is with the Learn tutorials on the Unity website? Or are there some areas of Unity that are not so well covered by these tutorials that you would be interested in learning about?

 

All of the basics are in learn. Once you have that down you can move on.

 

What I really need to learn (instead of want) is some not-Unity. Just about every job description I've seen runs like this:

• Unity xxx
• Unity yyy
• This other thing in Unity
• Not-Unity
• Not-Unity

I consider myself reasonably competent in Unity, an an make it or fake it on every Unity task. But I haven't the slightest frame of reference in Not-Unity land.

 

Sort of like tutorials etc on how to use & integrate the popular non-unity things that are commonly used with unity?

 

Not quite, more along the lines of "what are the popular not-unity things". Once I discover something and figure out its use case then learning it is trivial.

My degree and work experience are in chemical engineering. It's a strong foundation of mathematics and logic, and a healthy dose of arrogance (if you can learn thermofluids you can learn anything). I've picked up Unity and the associated systems well.

But there are also holes in my knowledge that any first year computer science student could run rings through. It's a classic case of "you don't know what you don't know"

 

Ah, the unknown unknowns

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one anti-talented in networking. But luckily people are of a lot of help in multiplayer section of forums, and my multiplayer guinea pig game is almost playable.

@Thread, I'd like to learn how to implement modding in my games. Various file I/O like Xml and binary serialization (I got started on it but didn't stick with it after basics). Along with marching cubes, and procedural generation of levels, but I see there's a community tutorial for that in the learn section, so I'm hoping I understand it.

 

I challenge you to understand Weyl Fermions. Their physics is so strange that the scientists searching for them for the past 85 years (and who discovered them recently, yay!) cannot even fathom what they are capable of.

 

This will probably end the same way my attempt to understand quaternions did.

 

Quaternions are defined, they're math. Weyl Fermions are massless quasi-particles that carry charge, they're terrifying physics.

 

Most of physics at that level is just math. There is very little to be done in terms of empirical observations.

Quantum physics isn't that rough to conceptualise, especially for computer programmers. Think of it as the universe running hacks to simplify things.

Consider the uncertainty principle to be the universes version of floating point precision error.

If you consider waves to be a simpler form of particle, and the universe is simplifying itself by delaying complex calculations then you have a decent concept for wave-particle duality, quantum entanglement and the observer effect.

 

@BoredMormon words!

Good luck then. If you can figure it out the current estimate is 1000x efficiency in electrical devices.

 

lol @BoredMormon, modded universe now on the steam workshop!

 

non-einsteinian physics engine included (quantum foam simulator additional $20)

 

flat world mod and geocentric mod now available.

 

Laugh. But that was the first game I set out to create. I didn't go through the typical noob MMO phase. I started off trying to build an accurate simulation of the entire universe.

http://mormonwriter.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/mind-blowing-images-from-other-dimension.html?m=1