General Question: Some Guidance

[solideserenade]

Good morning everyone!

So here goes! I have been following this course and the Combat one, which is all well and good but what are in your opinion, some ways I can practice what we learn?

Some might say"well…practice!" but how. What are the ways that helped(or are helping) YOU ?

How do I effectively go from noob to master?
I want to be as comfortable with coding as Sam and Rick are. I want to get to the point where I can quickly put an idea in code.

What are some practice routines you recommand?

Thank you for your advice(s)

[heckadactyl]

Hey there,

For me what has been helping has been doing gamejams. I’ve been doing ones that have quick turnaround times - like 3 days, so it forces me to make a quick game in a different genre. I’ve learned so much doing this.

https://itch.io/jams

Alongside that I practice by trying out new mechanics and concepts - like making a tiny little ‘test’ game with something I’ve been wanting to try. For example I recently made a little field of view enemy script and experimented with making enemies and a detection system, trying stuff out with just drawing rays in the editor. I also make a lot of tests to try out things I’ve been learning with vectors and maths, angles, etc.

Tutorials and courses are good - but don’t rely on them. Always spend time making your own stuff and experimenting in between and you’ll learn a huge amount!

[solideserenade]

Hey there thanks for your reply!
I know about game jams but I never dared jump into one before. I give myself a couple months to be confident enough and jump in !
It is really daunting to learn on your own and get a good routine but I’ll persevere

[heckadactyl]

Totally understand that. I guess it depends on where you’re at. For me it’s been quite a journey…originally I tried to learn Unity & C# at the same time, but I was finding that I was getting quite stuck on my own…what helped me ultimately, was stepping back from Unity, I spent 3-4 months doing nothing but console apps in C#. I made my own games in there once I got the hang of things (just text/console), like tic tac toe, snake, and blackjack. I also did some challenges on code wars and sites like that.

Then, I came back to Unity and things made 100x more sense to me, because I understood the basics of c#, OOP, classes, functions, etc. It was just way clearer. I feel like learning C# alongside Unity can work for some, but I wasn’t one of those people…I’m a rather slow learner and I come from an arts background so a lot of the basic stuff wasn’t that intuitive to me (it is now!).

Then I spent a bunch of time on Khan Academy brushing up on high school maths (its been a while, lol)…and learning about vectors, trig, algebra etc really made a big difference in my overall understanding also. That was the extra puzzle piece I needed to be able to work out a lot of stuff on my own.

I definitely recommend doing a gamejam, lots of people make really simple games, you can submit anything and even if its just something bouncing around on the screen its huge progress. Don’t wait too long - just dive in. I’m playing all the games from the recent jam I entered and there are lots of really simple games people made in a few hours or as their very first game, and people are really encouraging.

[solideserenade]

About that I had the exact intuition a couple of days ago about learning (hipefully mastering) the language first.
I don’t like the idea of not really knowing the tools I am working with so what is a good place or book for learning C# in your opinion?

And I will definitely try the exercise sites you mentionned!

Also i can from a litterary background myself but never have I been so motivated to learn haha!

[heckadactyl]

Cool. Yeah you don’t need to become too much of an expert but I feel like the basics of C# and some intermediate concepts will set you up really well for Unity.

In my mind the absolute best, most approachable but also detailed book is The C# Players Guide which just released its 4th edition. It has challenges and doesn’t do too much handholding, but it’s written in layman’s terms so its not overly wordy etc.

Following that, I highly recommend Tim Corey’s OOP courses from his website. That will really help reinforce a lot of the stuff you will apply to Unity especially in regards to setting up your projects, methods, and how to structure things. He also has beginners C# material in case you don’t feel like using a book. And there are some good courses on YouTube for free as well, by him, and others. Giraffe Academy and Jesse Dietrichson have really good explanations for beginners IMO.

[solideserenade]

This is awesome ! Thank you very much for the tip I will absolutely check them out!

I heard of the book but I take it a sign that you mention it too!
I’ll have some fun with it then!

Cheers !