What should a Unity Game programmer need to know ?

Hi
i`m a programmer, I never create a game but recently I`m interested in it and want to create an indie team for making games. I have read that indie team consists of programmer, designer and artist. I have a question about the programmer roles :
what should I, as a game programmer, need to known to create a game in unity ? should I only need to known writing C# scripts for the game or should I know working with Unity Editor? Scene, Prefabs, Cameras etc ? or working with unity editor is the designer`s task ?

Thank you and I will appreciate your answer and help.

 

For a small three man team you need to be able to do everything the other two can't.

In practice you need to know C# well. You need to understand the platforms you are targeting. You need to know the engine backwards. You should probably have a good understanding of asset pipelines. Understanding the rendering pipeline helps too. You'll need a passing familiararity with every skill on the art and design side too.

 

You will need to know a lot of how the Unity Editor works as the programmer.

For example, if they want the camera to work a certain way you will need to know how cameras work in Unity, Unity's coordinate system, etc.
Another example, you may not need to know how to create the animations, but you will need to know how Unity's animation system works so you can program the animation states.

Basically, you will need to be quite familiar with how most things work in the Unity Editor.

 

Thanks a lot.
So in this way, in a 3 man team there is a super heavy burden on programmer`s shoulder
One more question :
If i want to start getting familiar with unity and all its aspects step by step, what tutorial series do you suggest to me ? for example, a book title or YouTube video series or something else ?

 

Unity's official tutorials would be the place to start. Their "live" training videos are pretty good too.

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials
http://unity3d.com/learn/live-training

 

I briefly checked it. The tutorials and training are really well-organized and useful and somehow a perfect place to start from.
Thanks a lot

 

If you just want to fool around like many unity kidos, just follow tutorials and videos...

If you are serious and want a solid base to start, drop the engine aside and read some 'Mathematics for Game Developers' and some Algebra and some 'Linear Algebra' and some 'Intermediate Algebra' books then the C# Bible and C++ Bible then 'Maths for Graphics Programmers' only then read some Unity/UE4 tutorials and online docs.

The easier path is the harder one.

 

I dont think 3-man-teams will typically have a dedicated designer.

 

Actually you might want to look at multi-skilled developers/artists, or like a movie crew you might only want to have certain skills at certain stages of the games development. For instance the designer, writer and concept artist would probably be the key people to start on a game. Then you would being in the developers and artists to work on the game. And once a playable build is up QA and testing. Some time/iterations later you would move to delivery and polishing.

But it depends on the team size and the game 'size'.

You don't want to be the bottleneck making a Unity game, actually as a Unity developer it's your job to make it so easy that your designer/artists can build things and change things in the game easily. That's where the fun part of Unity is, when you can play within your game quickly changing, updating and testing things.

And that's just for building a game, you will also need to be running a business, dealing with money, accounts, legal and marketing issues.