Feedback on this course so far

Unity Courses Talk
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#1

Hi,

I’ve completed both 2d and 3d beginner course and I found them very easy to follow.
I’m now into this intermediate course and I don’t find the concepts to be too much complicated or the code to be too difficult
its just… hard to follow, in the way it is presented.
I think you are doing a fantastic job with this kind of product, which is much much better than any course out there! BUT I’m honestly having some trouble to follow Sam step by step: he type some code, then he stops, get back and do things in a different way.
So I pause, get at the same spot, and then again.
So I stop type, but eventually he came up with some challenge which are bad explained, I mean its not clear what the challenge is in a matter of “what is written on the slide”. Like “are we doing this?”, “remember that”. What sort of challenge is that? Im used to rick’s ones where he asks for fixing o adding stuff he have done in previous lectures.

another problem I’m facing is that I don’t “trust” him when he says “we’ll fix this later on”.
in a couple of lectures I got stuck for a bug that he didn’t tell anyone and I spent 30min looking for a solution: “just wait for the next lecture”. The next lecture started but he faced the issue halfway through. So I had to go back to previous videos, fix the stuff, go back to the current one and starting over.
a 6min video took me 25 mins to complete and I don’t think what I’m learning right know is much more complicated than coroutine and stuff that I’ve never seen before.
I was expecting to have some difficult to understand how things works, not to follow the course itself.
last thing: extracting methods. I get it, its for better reading, but he is doing it like sometimes it matters, sometimes who cares? it doesn’t help to focus on the concepts if you are typing along his explanations.

Still pushing hard and hopefully I’m just a ranting noob :smiley:

don’t take it as an offense, Im just asking what’s the best way to follow the course.

3 Likes
#2

+1

#3

spoiler: it didn’t get any better :frowning:

#4

How far along are you in the course?

I get that in game dev. you often come back and change things, scrap some code even!
It could have some educational value if well presented but so far, it feels like the opposite.
For some reason I expected the course to be more polished then this…

#5

Section 6.
I’m over the “coding part”, which was my main focus, but sadly it’s pretty bad explained.
I honestly feel like there’s a huge gap between Rick’s lectures and Sam’s.
I also skipped ahead for a while to “inventory course” to see if its better and it is.
They probably got so many feedback they decide to keep rick around, to ask questions and such.

my suggestion is: do not follow step by step. You get headache… Just try to understand what Sam does, than pull update on GitHub, and move forward.
Its not worth to stop for every change to keep your code updated: he’s gonna modify it in a minute or two lol.

background: 2D and 3D beginner course completed (on Udemy), I put almost 100h in their courses!

1 Like
#6

Interesting :stuck_out_tongue:!
I also did that but with the quest course…

Will try what you are suggesting.

Thanks

#7

I really want to add to this because I’m extremely frustrated with this course.

Background: I’ve done the entire 2d and 3d course.

In the 3D course there was a block called Realm Rush which Rick didn’t do but instead it was Gary. The biggest problem then was the disconnect from how Rick taught and the speed which he moved through the course to Gary changing it, it was still fine and I learned a lot. That being said the difference between that and what I’m now facing can’t even compare.

If you’re making a course please try to keep the same momentum. First block of this with Rick I was very excited and moved quickly but now as mentioned above I just skip it instead and will instead go for youtube tutorials.

What needs to be ALOT better:

  1. The challenges should be directly connected with what we have learned which I don’t feel they are (but used to be). Usually I can figure it out but that is because it’s close to what have been taught, now when we go through the challenge it’s not even remotely close to what I’ve been learning.

  2. The jumping around in the code. I actually would love this precise course since I want to structure it in the way we currently are but please help me understand the path there. I feel that the current methods and extractions are more confusing than anything even though I get the importance of doing it I’m kind of losing context of the project while keeping up. I really loved the explanation of namespaces though!

  3. Agree with previous speaker about “fix it later”

To summarize:

When I did the earlier courses and we had challenges I often felt that I had a chance to solve them and even though I didn’t solve them perfectly I would just wait to have it explained how to do it. That meant I could not only understand how I solved it but also the steps to making it better. Now I’m just shooting in the dark and waiting for an answer to a question that I FELT that I had no real chance to manage.

In the previous courses, after a lesson I felt that Rick made a beautiful cake but god damn if I didn’t come out of every lesson with at least a donut (and proud of it).

Now I feel like I come out of every lesson with the International Space Station having been built while I can’t put together a paper airplane.

Off to YouTube instead, in this thread, please if you have any good idea for youtube tutorials hit me up and I will add here as well.

image

4 Likes
#8

I’m not going to look for another YT tutorial, it would be like I wasted 20 hours.
I mean, we still have part 2 and 3 and for what I can say, as long as Rick’s in there, Im fine.
Only problem is Sam, not the course itself!

in the inventory course Rick is around asking tons of questions and guess what… they are the same questions I would make! Just to point out how good rick is.

I’ve lost some motivation for sure, but I’m trying to not quit.

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#9

I’ve been trying to reserve judgement until completing more of this course. But here’s my 2p as of now…

In my case I skipped the basic 3D course and went straight to this one as I’d completed the 2D course and found it excellent but very basic on the programming side (absolutely understandable given that it is a beginner course).

I’m a professional C# developer, and have no trouble smashing together solutions to the challenges, however I agree that most of the time that a) the student hasn’t quite been given a path to the answer and b) Sam’s challenges are often a bit too ‘open ended’ - Rick’s challenges are more straightforward and to the point.

I don’t mind the method extraction, as I’m comfortable in my own coding style. In previous lectures it does seem an unnecessary distraction. BUT TO BE FAIR - in this lecture, the extraction is important. What the code is doing may be obvious, but six months down the line, you’ll appreciate being able to read a method name rather than trying to decipher chunks of code.

What I’m hoping gets addressed later is the tight coupling between all these classes. I know that Unity’s component model makes it harder to decouple things, but I’m hoping for more reusabability of components with interfaces and ‘behaviours’.

Overall I think Sam is doing a decent job of presenting a progression in each lecture. I’m enjoying the course. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by Rick’s long experience as a gamedev teacher and coach. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#10

As we progress through the course(s), we’ll be decoupling several of these classes, both through the observer pattern, and more importantly through interfaces like IAction and IRaycastHandler. Not as quickly as I would have preferred, and probably not as deep, but enough to get everybody’s feet wet and give you the building blocks to create as close to a S.O.L.I.D. structure as is possible in an environment like Unity (where, unfortunately, some things really are difficult to decouple).

2 Likes
#11

İ’ve just finished the 30th lecture , but i got headache where Sam starts to explain things(Basic Combat).Untill this time i really liked this course very helpful. Just the thing is he explains not clear at least for me. İ’ve just seen every single line of code existing about methods maybe its better way for readeble but everything goes to mix in time to time for me as a student. Even now i miss the Rick’s lectures he were doing same things with %100 easier and clear way.

2 Likes
#12

Well, I got to say, I am glad I am not the only one having trouble with the presentation of this material. This is my second time thru and I can see a couple of changes already so I know gameDev cares.

Sam needs coaching on how to teach people, many times i feel as tho he hasn’t taught people how to fish… if you know the saying, teach a man to fish and he will eat for life.

I believe he will get better with our help, but At the same time I wonder if this is what Sam wants.

I am going to continue to see the rest of it but just to be clear… How many people know which coarse is 1, then 2, then 3, is there a 4?

That is a simple thing but in any multi part class using numbers to define the order IS crystal clear as NUMBERS do not lie… lol

I suggest adding RPG part 1, RPG part 2, RPG part 3… is there a part 4

I also suggest better planning of the data! I can see that each object in my scene has properties, LOTS of properties.

So that said what data do I want to track for a Questing RPG game?
Seems like a basic question.
I look forward to being able to derive that list because for a guy like me knowing what data I want to track is key to the development process.

Having the end result in mind helps me determine how what data will come from who (which objects) where and why?

Good luck and again I am glad i was not the only one…

3 Likes
#13

We’ll try to make that order of courses clearer. While the courses can technically be taken in any order, I find students get the most out of it in the order they were created:

  1. Core Combat
  2. Inventory
  3. Dialogues and Quests
  4. Shops and Abilities
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#14

Dudes! Thanks for all of your kind and positive words (well, for me anyways). I feel your pain regarding the more complex code that Sam gets into. It’s really difficult to teach the more advanced coding concepts and still keep it accessible for everyone. We’re super blessed to have Sam’s mighty programming knowledge to tap into. He writes truly wonderful code and even if it takes you a couple of watch-throughs for it to stick, its worth the investment in the long run. He truly is saving you years of hacking and slashing through YouTube tutorials to try to find coding best practices for the more advanced coding.

Of course, we all have plenty of ways to improve. Myself, Sam and indeed all of the instructors on the team are far from perfect and constantly working on improving our instructing. Your honest feedback goes a long way to helping us connect with how to improve our courses.

8 Likes
#15

In my experience, I was used to writing down (with pen and paper !) some of the lines with explanations on the side.
This section with Sam was hard for me to follow but it got better when I decided to watch all the lectures between quizzes (sometimes once or twice if it gets complicated) before taking notes. And I am actually
having an easier time getting the full picture of some concepts!
Everyone has their learning style, I hope my experience helps

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