Why is the new Unity Learn page so terrible?

Visible and categorized! This would be SO MUCH BETTER than what they currently have!

 

Is there an official thread from Unity, where they ask for feedback from users about the design and structure of new learn section? Now it seems not user friendly to me, and even would say "user hostile". The feeling is like they trying to push away everyone who dare to learn there. (Apologies if you read bad spelling.)

About two years ago I did most of the complete projects and about half of the others tutorials. It was easy to follow and go back to check code or another matter while learning. After I get enough knowledge to feel confident, started 3 my own projects and even did vertical slice on one of them, it only needed to fill with content. But then decided to learn art skills until I can reach the desired appearance of my games. Now I'm back to continue my journey, and the logical step was to refresh my knowledge, and do again all tutorials I did before. And you know the rest of the story, it wasn't a nice surprise.

Here are some more specific details about my point of view (more like a total new user).
Unity main page, "Learn" button leads to new page, a big banner take almost all screen on 24" monitor. Scrolling down and another screen is filled with a promoting sentence and advertising paid training courses. I have noting against paid content, and will use it when I need. But for now still don't know what I will need, and need to try something simple. Continue scrolling and on 3th screen appears the actual learn options. So far it was "learn where is the learn".

Clicking on Unity Learn:
Another big banner with some suggestions to start with. I don't need these, I don't like racing games and will do this tutorial only to extend my knowledge and after I do all other tutorials I'm interested. What I need is to see list of all tutorials and pick what I want, and that was I did 2 years ago, when I was a noob, and will do it again. I'm sure the most of the newbies are driven by their interests too and want to see all choices at one compact place, where they can pick what they want, not what someone else want. Scrolling down and part (need to push button to open all) of categories appear with title encouraging to learn something new. Cool, I'm here exactly to learn something new, but have no (or vague) idea what these categories will offer to me and I want just to do my first complete simple game, not to dig in specific topics. Continue scrolling and "Eureka!!!", at last "Learn by doing, from start to finish", even though there are only 3 project thumbnails and need to push another button to open all. But not big deal, so far there was rich experience for scrolling and buttons pressing. Even the small text font on "Projects", the description and "View all" wont stop me to push the last button, which will give me what I'm looking for since I pressed "Learn" tab on the main Unity page.
And here we are, new page opens, the top half is a big banner with promoted projects, at the bottom half start to appear what I'm looking for. Scrolling down, the big thumbnails and even bigger white empty space around allows only 6 projects per screen, continue scrolling and press "Load more" button. Next 6 projects, "Load more" button. Next 6 projects, "Load more" button. Next 6, "Load more". Next 6, "Load more"... I counted 10 "Load more"s.
Okay, at last have all projects at one page! Right clicking on a nice looking for my needs projects, to open in new tabs and keep the page with all projects. Holy cows! There isn't such a option! Using multiple tabs speeds my workflow many times and I can't believe this option can be cut from any modern site. I feel like 20 years ago, hitting back button...

The fancy tutorial's titles and descriptions are confusing as well. I thought this is learning section, not entertaining one for little kids.

And tracking progress is pointless for me. The progress is on my computer (and in my head) and easily can see it by opening the project. In case it is an old unfinished project and forgot where I am, I will need to refresh the previous knowledge by reading or doing from earlier stage of the project anyway. Marking sections or whole projects as completed misleading the learners that they already know the matter. Instead, they should understand that learning is never ending process and they will go back many times to what they think was learnt already.

Log in should be only for paid content.

Project search options.
In main page is a option to select content tier. I thought I already picked the free one. No point to put paid content in free learn section and then sort it again.
"Best Match, Most Popular, Most Recent, Title A-Z, Title Z-A". These may make sense in over populated with content sites like youtube or social networks, but here will need only to know if new tutorial appears, because a serious learner, will go through all of them anyway.
Also, I doubt a serious learner will use mobile device to learn and do their projects. If you decide your page design and structure priority based on visitors by device, probably you are misleaded. Make this section to be comfortable for desktop computers or laptops, keep mobile version separate. Even before to buy a desktop computer, I used my laptop with additional monitor, keyboard and mouse. Maybe some users plug their mobile devices with external peripheral devices too?

All above is a try for constructive critique, I appreciate the work of all Unity developers, thanks a lot for your effort! Hope the development is till in progress and you will make the learning section very handy and pleasing to use, as one true learning place should be.

 

Honestly I think maybe people railing against being able to have a site track their progress is kinda ridiculous. That's a handy organizational tool. It's not bad to remove that burden from the user just because some specific people might not use it.

 

I just link people directly to a relevant tutorial now, as linking to the learn site isnt useful anymore. The content is still there, you just have to dig hard and deep with a pneumatic drill to find it.

 

I tend to do the same, where I'm not tired digging...

 

But do you warn them? If they like that one video, they're going to naturally look through the Learn navigation. The benefit of Learn was, say you've got someone so totally flustered by game design, coding, terms, some guy telling them to use ECS ... . The User Manual isn't getting the job done for that person. You're not sure what they're asking, but you can write "go to Learn" and they'll probably find something that helps un-confuse them, or at least calms them down.

But now I'm thinking the funny organization isn't too bad. Someone who wants to learn OnTriggerEnter is already ahead of things -- they know it exists and probably what it does. They're done with Learn -- they can Search. For everyone else who doesn't know what they don't know, maybe Learn's randomized presentation order is fine.

 

I don't link to any learning tutorial(s) when someone says they want to be a game dev. I just tell 'em to run for the hills while they still have their sanity.

 

Max dittos. Unity has always been sort of terrible (by comparison) at the collateral stuff. Hell, the docs are still a bit of a mess. But I’ll take that any day over a hyper polished web presence and a mediocre or bs product.

Though... it could be all part of a cunning plan. Game development requires a developer be creative and resourceful. A hard to navigate learn section could just be setting a bar for resourcefulness. The first challenge, so to speak.

 

Compared to what? I remember working with people who'd used UnReal and Torque who had just started using the old Unity. They were impressed by the combination of the docs and the early UnityAnswers.

Consumer products -- things just anyone will start using -- need to be very easy to use and decently documented (but often aren't all that well. It's tough finding features on a tablet sometimes). Professional products, used by people with ore and more specialized skills, tend to be more of a "is it possibly to figure out out?"

I think that's part of the confusion with Learn. It feels like selling someone a carburetor from your junkyard and having them ask what tools they'll need to install it.

 

Microsoft. At least that's the company that I always think of when I think of good and helpful docs. It's almost always better for me to read an MSDN entry than it is to read just about any other source available. My memories of XNA are hazy but I seem to recall that it was well documented too.

Back then it might have been great but the ratio of helpful to non-helpful has slowly progressed over the years as new APIs have been released with little to no documentation and barely any examples at all. We're told to look at the sample projects for a reason. It's often the only examples available for new features and sometimes the only documentation.

 

Compared to the engine itself. For example, the Asset store is pretty terrible compared to the Unity Editor/Engine.

 

That is true. the MSDN docs are pretty much the gold standard.

 

I really like tensorflow and flutter's api except they never seem to have the full e.g I'm looking for.

https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf
https://api.flutter.dev/

That's why I spend hours on Stack Overflow and Youtube.

 

I miss the old Unity Tutorials page. It was broken into clear categories and sections and I could hunker down and plow through them in order. Everything was clearly listed so I didn't miss anything.

The new Unity Learn page is chaos. I have no idea where to start, how to get back to where I was, or whether there's important tutorials I'm missing because its organized so strangely.

I like that you can mark steps as completed now.

Also it seems like half of the content is now locked behind a paywall, including a lot of stuff I'm pretty sure was free before..

 

Show off!

 

in the old page linked in via webarchive everything was better. now i can't even find the old tutorials i was watching

 

Some tutorials have just disappeared. Could you post your links here in case I can help?

 

I have suspected this more than once for multiple products. I'm not super familiar with the new Unity Learn material, but before then I never would have suspected this of Unity.

 

Considering Unity has got to its current dominant position by being the most accessible engine for learners and beginners, this would strike me as a very bad move.

Unity is big enough that they probably could just rest on their laurels for a few years with regards to new users. But eventually they will run out of experienced users.

 

Is that true? My impression, from when I first started seeing Unity 10(?) years ago, was it appealed to game designers. We got Q's like how to make an UnReal deathZone. I know a small studio that switched to Unity. Places that were tired of using a 2D engine, and a racing engine, and ... were interested in using a slightly-harder-to-use but more versatile engine. Meanwhile, beginners could learn on a simpler custom engine. I feel like the glut of completely inexperienced users came several years after Unity Answers had been busy with questions that clearly came from game designers.

Then it comes to money. Sure, some hobbyists are buying things off the Asset store (of which Unity gets a cut) or maybe getting a Pro license as a christmass gift? In theory UnityLearn is making some money from hobbyists. But more pros than ever are making games -- that's got to be more money.

 

Possibly not. I've only seen anecdotal stuff rather than hard data. And I started with the engine more recently.

When I started around six years ago, Unity was the only real engine around that was both free and usable by beginners. The learn section was a key part of that.

The thing is today's beginners are tomorrows professionals. The kid trying to make an MMO on his own today goes on to join an established studio. And they take their skills and preferences with them. A professional studio is much more likely to switch to Unity if half their staff already know how to use it.

Being accessible to beginners and hobbyists isn't really important to Unity's revenue stream today. They could ditch the free tier and the learn section and not notice a blip on the account books. But its really important to Unity's revenue stream in ten years time.

 

I suspect that was a big factor in Unreal's mid-term success, too. People could get an introduction to a lot of game dev by making mods, and Unreal came with tools to do that with a commercially established engine.

 

i had deleted them since they don't work anymore. but for example i couldn't find this video or equivalent : https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/live-training-archive/state-machine-interface

 

It probably is, however, "accessible" does not mean "easy to learn".

For example, you mention Unity Answers, while in my experience chances of getting anything answered there are zero. Same applies to Unreal Answers to, though, and in general it is a result of low populace (that hangs out on answers resources). 10 years ago, as far as I know (I wasn't around back then), it WAS a useful resource, but it no longer is.

So, basically. In case of trouble, you'll be on your own, but it is the same thing with every other piece of software and documentation is good and api is relatively clean, which is exactly what makes the engine "the most accessible".

So, it is a matter of the beginner is expecting. If they expect an easy sailing and making their dream right off the bat, that won't be happening. HOwever, if they have some previous background and can learn things from docs, they'll have a good time.

 

Isn't it that one?

And here is the latest capture of the full tutorial page: https://web.archive.org/web/2016082...ipting/using-interfaces-make-state-machine-ai

The live training archive can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2vGYjWbI0QvLHla7C_Z_s3q1Oi461o4

As for the links you deleted, do you remember the names of the projects/tutorials or what they were about. Our memory is about all we can relate to these days...

 

For all people interested, here is the whole old Learn section on Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160820134355/http://unity3d.com/learn

 

https://learn.unity.com/project/procedural-cave-generation-tutorial

even though i can find the tutorials the pages are like these one, 3 video out of 8 is here yet you can watch the other videos on youtube. some of the tutorials have been splitted or mix-matched too, which i don't understand why.
there was advanced reading topics about lighting-lightmapping, assetbundles, memory management nowhere to be found now
and thanks for the links

 

I remember using Unity tutorials years ago when I first started with the engine. They were great, easy to use, organized, etc.

Now I am in a position where I work with a lot of people who do not know Unity well. They arrive in the Atavism discord channels ready to make an MMO, but with absolutely no knowledge of Unity.

I do not want to teach them everything and many want hand-holding. At first, I would send them to Unity Learn and they would come back to me...I cannot find anything.

Shaking my head and rolling my eyes (fortunately, they cannot see me) I head off to the Unity website and what do I find? Most behind a paywall. And what is not, is poorly organized and very difficult to find. Like that really good UI tutorial set? What happened to it? Where is it? When I search for UI tutorial I get little bits of stuff that do not go together.

Please, for the sake of my sanity, change Unity Learn into something that is actually useful.

By the way, a great alternative..Udemy classes. I have had great luck with those and most are up to date, easy to tell which version of Unity is used. Yes, there is a cost but it is much less than Unity's paywall. Still cannot get most of the guys to slow down and take the time to use one of the classes...but you cannot lead a horse to water, right?

 

These one? https://web.archive.org/web/2016081....com/learn/tutorials/topics/user-interface-ui

 

YOu know, after reading this, I checked the resource again... and yeah, its quality has degraded. I remember there being things like roguelike tutorial, animation system tutorial. Not that I was ever a fan of video tutorials, but it looks like a lot of old stuff is gone, and the resource is very hard to navigate now.

 

https://learn.unity.com/project/2d-roguelike-tutorial

 

Did you learn to program, or whatever else, from Learn? I've found people say they learned from Unity Learn, but when you ask for details they eventually remember "huh -- I guess the stuff I would recommend is what I found through googling".

That's a thing, like with Cisco networking classes in high school, but I don't think it applies to game design. Programing, modeling, texturing, level-design ... there are so many fully transferable game design skills. I don't think anyone who knows only Unity would bat an eye applying for a job at a studio using some other engine. Someone who learned on 2D-platformer engine would switch to Unity to make a card-game and racing-game. A studio with an off-beat engine wouldn't worry "but everyone knows Unity". Especially since Unity is so generic.

 

I have learnt a lot about everything by using Unity Learn, even the new, unmanageable, one. I also found useful stuff on the web. In fact, both complement each other: what you cannot find in Learn, you'll find it elsewhere.

Like the stuff that is behind pay walls here now...

 

When someone with no experiences asks me a Unity question and want him to learn from the experience, googling a lot of tutorials is not helpful. And asking him to do means he probably will not do it. Too much work. lol

Unity Learn should be set up as the first introduction to Unity.

 

I literally learned C# by watching the scripting tutorials from start to end a few times over.

After that I went googling, diving into the docs and MSDN. But without the learn section foundation I wouldn't have had the context to start searching on my own.

 

And too much rubbish. It's a minefield out there. There are indeed good resources, but there are also junk resources, and people who need entry level learning materials are in no position to tell one from the other.

And, honestly, Unity are one of relatively few groups of people who are in a position to help with that. A newbie can't easily compare my advice to some other internet random's advice, but they can easily see whether or not something has Unity's own seal of approval.

 

I personally did start learning Unity by modding game. However, I had previous experience in various programming languages, but not much in C#. Certainly back then, 0 background in Unity API.

 

I had a decent amount of experience in Java, so I knew 95% of C# from the start.
In 2009-2010 Unity had that tutorial with the weird looking alien and a spaceship and a wall of text.
I read the text and followed along and learned the basics of Unity.
I thought it was a good tutorial.
Of course I also read the Manual several times and skimmed the Scripting Ref.
Since then MSDN is awesome.

I just went to the learn.unity.com page and there is no link to the Manual and Script Ref.

 

The documentation is hidden on the "Support & Services" page; there is a link to it on the top of this page. Go figure why.

 

They did give something the "Seal of Approval", but were ignored. In 2010(?) there was no Learn section. The Forums Teaching section had a sticky for resources (gone now) which suggested you learn programming by reading a book. They recommended several, but mostly the "Yellow Book" from some english university ("C# Yellow book" gives links).

For years people wasted our time with "Reading a book would take days!! Can't I watch a video?"

 

(-_-)
...And watching videos for everything in the book would take weeks. Or months.

 

Probably designed by the same team that built Unity Connect that was supposed to be a solution for finding/offering Commercial work opportunities.

Enough said.

 

They've given many things their seal of approval. I wasn't saying otherwise.

And yes, there will always be people who ignore that and ask for something else. I don't take that alone as evidence of it being ignored, because there are always people who want more or different things.

I personally don't think that spending much time on those people is worth it. Having a preference for a video over a book isn't the issue to me, it's the impatience. There's a heck of a lot to learn, no shortcuts to learning it, and an endless onslaught of problem solving to be done. If someone isn't keen on spending time on that then that's 100%, absolutely ok. They should go do something they are interested in, and figuring that out quickly is a good thing.

 

I don't agree with that. Using videos is like getting back to how we all learnt at school: we had a teacher who taught things to us by talking to us. Leaning with books was a complement to that teaching.

I also prefer videos to texts as it comes to learning.

 

Videos are okay, but written documentation is more detailed...and books give us insight into why and how and who is this person who is teaching me new stuff. Videos are quick and fast, and sometimes far too long and you end up spending so much time going through them, scrubbing back and forth. Short videos that are about one point in the problem are great, but most are far too long. I definitely do not see videos as my teacher talking to me...where is the interaction? The ability to ask the teacher to clarify or give me more information? No, videos are someone giving you a person's opinion on what you should know. That video has no ability to know what you understand or do not understand. As one who taught college classes at one time, I could look at the sea of faces and know when people were confused.

Realize that each of us learns differently. I am definitely a visual person but I am not an audio person. In college, I was able to take notes, which fed the audio (professor lecturing) through my visual and onto my paper. During exams I could perfectly recall the page in my notebook where the information was written and did pretty well.

Even now, when I buy a game development book and I read through it, I often take notes. I write down notes from the book into a document..usually type, but whatever. It has helped me especially with writing stories and adapting them to a game.

I even take notes for asset tutorial videos.

The other issues with videos....sometimes the person does not speak your language well. It is difficult for you to understand. I completely applaud those who make the effort to create videos that are not in their first language. But many of the guys I help in Discord simply cannot understand. And some have hearing issues which is another issue....accessibility. I have dry eyes which make it tough for me to see small text and many times videos done in the Unity editor are simply too small for me to see. I get the audio..but that is useless to me without a visual context.

So.....there are many different media that can be used for learning. We all learn differently. Therefore, Unity and anyone trying to teach to another, including asset developers, should be giving us multiple media types to learn from.

Also...books are your friend. I have learned a lot from books and I agree with @angrypenguin. If one really wants to learn something and they are serious...and do not have that information from a degree (which I do not since I was a geology major), then using every means necessary is important. I have read many books on game design and on world-building and other game development subjects. I have watched videos and I have taken notes, and I have talked to others who know more than I do. I have also listened to talks and given talks myself. Teaching is also a wonderful way to learn.

So..saying this is the best way, this is what I like, this works the best, is not really fair to the entire community of people out there who might learn differently from you. Ask a teacher you know, your friend, your spouse...if they teach they know this. It is why in school we did not just watch videos, or listen to lectures. We also read the book, and we did papers and even in my case, went out in the field.

 

That's what I said when I said that books were a complement to teaching.

 

But they are not always only a complement to teaching.

Books can also be a means to learn. I said above that I read books on game development. I never was taught...I am entirely self-taught when it comes to game development. And I bet that many if not the majority of people here are self-taught. Many of us have not had the experience of having a professor lecture to us about game development in a classroom.

So teaching one's self a new skill through reading a book is valid. In fact, unlike separate individual videos, it gives you the whole picture. You get it all in one package. You miss nothing. I would say that videos are a compliment to books actually. Might be why some books give you a link to videos. Not to replace the book, but to enhance the experience.

Of course...as in everything we learn, I did have to eventually design a game and I had to build a world. Because one can read or be lectured to by others, but the best way to learn is to jump in and try to use what you learned in a real-world scenario.

 

Videos are at best introductionary to the subjects. How to move cube, how to use some asset, How to do certain effect in Shader Graph, how to use some editor function, etc. Anything beyond that, need to be learned via other means.

Making bouncing moving cube, experiment and read docs.Modyfing shader effect, play with nodes and lookup for certain methods. Then combine. Building up some algorithm, most likely is not there, need read about math etc., etc.

 

You know, the difference is with an instructor, you can ask questions, and the instructor can adapt to you. However, a video tutorial has no such capabilitiy, what's more video lessons usually are done unprofessionally. As a result it is a waste of time, most of the time. People ramble, stutter, talk about unrelated topic, and do not cut unnecessary information from the video.

A well done teaching book is condensed knowledge for everything you might want to know. A video cannot cover that amount of material in any sane way.

There are, of course, some scenarios where videos are useful. Those are situations when the person you're learning from is using intuitive knowledge they would have hard time putting into words. That usually belongs to drawing skill, modeling, artistic skills and so on. Those areas often seem to lack structured approach of, say computer programming, so you'd be watching hours of material in hopes to catch that one "thing" you aren't aware of that the other guy is doing, but totally forgot to mention. This is terribly inefficient, but given how chaotic information regarding such fields can be, there's no other way.

 

Maybe you should have mentioned that first.