Written/Text Tutorials Please

I know that typical Game developers are visual, but for those of us coming from a Computer Science and Engineering background it would be great to at least have some of the core tutorials be written with images if needed.

I have just spent 30 minutes to an hour trying to find the text tutorials that was mentioned on the tutorial site to no avail. Any help for those who want the text and code avenue to get into Unity.

Please advise.

 

Hi @tawalke. This topic has already been discussed on e.g. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/recommend-me-a-few-things-to-start-with.287793, and as you probably are aware, there are pros and cons for written vs. video tutorials. One reason for producing the recorded tutorials, is that it's easier to convey many topics using this format.

Generally we think we have a fair balance between written and recorded documentation/learning material for Unity.

Do you have link to "the text tutorials that was mentioned on the tutorial site"?

Best regards, Rasmus

 

This is a criticism, but I don't mean to put anyone down by writing it, because the video tutorials are not inherently bad or wrong. Just food for thought that hopefully will get to the right person to make stuff work better for me. Greedy, yes.

Video tutorials are impossible for me to learn from. They're always at the wrong pace, and skip information I need, and add information I don't, whereas a text tutorial, even if it skips something, provides the words to search for to find what it skips. If the text includes information I don't need or care about, I can skip it 'instantly'. The text also proceeds at my rate of learning. I think this page: (http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/04/video-tutorials-are-the-bane-of-my-existence/) covers a lot of my concerns with better words.

As an example, this page (http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-ScrollRect.html) gave me the information I needed to understand scroll bars & rects in thirty seconds, while this page (http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/ui/ui-scroll-rect) was a waste of time (for me). Not only was the video five minutes long (all I needed to see was a hierarchy image!), but it linked and relinked around to other related videos (great for someone who needs video), so it was actually the third video page I'd been linked to; the others (Scrollbar and something else) didn't look like they had what I needed, and skimming videos is harder and more error-prone than skimming text.

 

@Rasmus Selsmark : I went back through that post and months later now in May there still are no text tutorials on the Learn site that I can see.

@Loius : You hit the nail on the head.

 

I agree completely and can relate to Louis' comments. Written tutorials (and transcripts), would be great to see, especially for intermediate and advanced level scripting topics. I've watched a lot of the Learn videos lately. Live training videos on anything more complex tends to get into a lot of wasted time doing the coding itself and fixing things; this is just what happens in any video where someone is coding on the spot. Sitting or scrubbing a video for 1 hour to find the 2 minutes where something is explained? Without text to skim or search through, it's hard to find what you're looking for, like Louis mentions.

Videos are probably most effective for a lot of the editor-heavy work, such as working wit the new UI. Some of the more advanced scripting needs more in-depth written information.

 

There are hearing-impaired people who can't watch video tutorials that don't have good captioning.

 

Yeah, I agree. The documentation for Unity is not good. If you look up 'Fog' in the Unity manual, you'll see it talk about the fog, but NOTHING about how to turn it on, or where it is in the menu items, or how to add it, or anything! Most topics I've looked up are that way. Plus there's no walkthroughs for fog.

You need to at least state how to add it to your scene. Which menu items to take, where to put it, etc. It's not at all obvious that 'GlobalFog' has to be added to the 'Camera'. And it's also not obvious where it is located in the Standard Assets folder.

It doesn't help that the standard assets aren't installed by default, either. You have to go looking for it on the Internet and download it separately, and install it, and find it in the Editor, which is all nearly impossible for newbies to do without documentation or video tutorials.

 

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-GlobalFog.html

"As with the other image effects, you must have the Standard Assets Effects package installed before it becomes available."
You don't have to know where it is. You just have to add a component and type in fog, you will get it automatically as a result.