OK, so I have a Free Coupon from the Black Friday sale - This will either be for the Unity 3D or RPG courses (I’m doing the 2D course atm)
I had a problem with one of my projects, that I think was down to there being three or four different versions of Unity whilst I was doing it, with the result that the project threw out a bunch of errors when I tried to Build and Run at the end.
I’ve restarted the project (I keep detailed notes whilst I’m going through, so it’s not that long a process) and done a Build and Run after each Lesson.
Upshot is, I’m working with Unity 2018.2 so I’d like to do a course geared to that - Which of the two courses would be suitable? (I’d rather do the RPG one, but it only mentions 2015, so there’s obviously stuff that will be done differently in the new Unities.) Certainly changing to modern Unity halfway through the 2D course was a bit of an upheaval.
The course material will always be behind whatever the current version of Unity is at the time of writing, this has always been the case and will always be the case.
If you want a smooth ride through the course material then the easiest approach would be to use the same version of Unity that the course was developed using, for the Unity 3D course this was Unity 2017, I can’t remember to be honest for the RPG…
/runs off to check
Ok, so having had a look at the ProjectVersion.txt file on the GitHub repository it states Unity 5.5.
There were significant API changes between Unity 4.x and Unity 5 and again between Unity 5 and 2017, but I would suggest less so in the latter, but this is going to be the case, with each new version of Unity some old things might be deprecated, some older things may become obsolete, new things will be added.
Whilst you are learning you don’t necessarily have to be at the forefront of Unity versions - who other than yourself would really know anyway? I would suggest that unless there is a really great feature only available in a newer version, a must have, you’ll get a smoother ride using the version which the course was created in.
However…
Accepting the above, and, as many people do like to use the latest version of Unity you could just accept that there will be some differences, some subtle, some perhaps less so. Part of your learning experience could/can be to experience (read: endure) this, to roll with the punches as it were. I doubt you’ll find many game studios upgrading to a newer, perhaps less table, version of a Game Engine mid-project though, so really this is going to come down to personal choice.
If you do decide to use the most recent version, perhaps consider then using that for the entirety of the course, or at least a section, before upgrading again to the next release - again, it’s only you that will really know and if it’s bringing you headaches you don’t want/need why bother?
Remember, there’s lots of people both here and on the Discord channel who will be willing to help you, this is in addition to the Q&A on Udemy so if you do run into a problem you can always post and ask for help
On a related note about the Unity 3D and RPG courses - the Unity 3D course is shorter, similar approach to the Unity 2D (remastered) version with regards to teaching style, it has an end in sight so to speak.
The RPG course is a lot of run, it’s dedicated to the one game as opposed to several, you’ll learn some more advanced topics - but - it is a bit chaotic in places. The team have stated that this was deliberate, to take you through what an experience of putting a game together like this could be like from the outset. It was also the first course that Rick and Ben worked together on - some of their differences in how they work do come across in this course. Be prepared to import assets, move things around, undo lots of changes, re-import assets and so on. It is a fun course and you do get some instant results, but perhaps have a little stress ball or something handy for those late nights when it goes less smoothly
On a related note, Ben has handed over the second part of the RPG course to Sam, so Sam and Rick will be working together on that - you may have already seen some of Sam’s YouTube videos for the prototyping of this section - looks to be some good stuff coming.
This should be the play list, if you’ve not seen them;
Cheers Rob,
that’s pretty much what I was thinking
The thing is:
"I would suggest that unless there is a really great feature only available in a newer version, a must have, you’ll get a smoother ride using the version which the course was created in. "
One of the biggest changes in the 2D course was using [Serialize Field] and Scriptable Objects. These are obviously how we will write most of our code from now on (well, the Serialize Field thing isn’t much, but scriptable Objects certainly are), so if the RPG course doesn’t take this route it may be best going with the 3D course I guess. (Although there’s a nice little course in Game Narrative design that looks super-cool )
Thanks for the link - I’ll give that a look this afteroon - there’s also a whole bunch on the gamedev.tv website that I haven’t really explored yet, so going to be busy for a while
One of the biggest changes in the 2D course was using [Serialize Field] and Scriptable Objects.
That wasn’t related to a Unity version upgrade though, that was just about the remastered course and doing things in a better way.
so if the RPG course doesn’t take this route it may be best going with the 3D course I guess
From memory I believe it does use ScriptableObjects, from memory, and it’s going back a bit, you use them for the various weapons the player can hold. When part 2 drops I would imagine this will be implemented for the inventory system also - that’s just a guess but would make sense.
There is no reason why you couldn’t implement these things even if they were not part of the course, now you know about them etc. You could, for example, run one project which is just inline with the course, so you replicate what they do with some minor aesthetic changes in the scenes perhaps, but then you could also run a secondary project, your own - so if you then spot an area which you feel can be improved by using a specific approach you could give it a whirl. If it doesn’t quite work out, it doesn’t matter, you still have your pure course version to follow along with. Jus a suggestion but you might find that handy.
If you take a look under the Official Wikis category you’ll see two topics I created a little while ago, one lists all of the GitHub repositories for the courses, current and those which reached end of life, the other has a list of all (I think) of the various URLs related to GameDev.tv’s sites/services - hopefully something there of use for you
Well, blow me down - I hadn’t heard of scriptable objects until 2017 hit, so I thought they were a new thing. Damn - my Text101 project was a lot more basic in the new format as I couldn’t see how to get S.O’s to do conditional exits and room descriptions depending on inventory. I could’ve just skipped over it and started the remastered course with the breakout thing
Anyway - Cheers again Rob, definitely prowling round gamedev.tv in the next few days.
