Hello Ben et al, and greetings from the West corner of Canada.
I pulled the trigger on the full Bundle, and have hit an impasse before I’ve even begun.
Is there a rough sequence to view the courses? (Are there ones I don’t need initially, or ever, if my interests don’t coincide with a couple of the offered courses?)
Feel free to skip the bio to the asterisks below. I won’t be offended.
I’ll provide a brief history, and desired outcome, if that helps:
I took a couple of years of Basic/Pascal, and was average at it (C+/B student), got my MCSE, did some HTML/CSS. Worked in analog/digital electronics, built guitars and amps, have decent math(s) skills, can do technical drawing/drafting, but am kind of poor at drawing freehand. I’ve done some very simple stuff with the Pi, Arduino, and recently assembled/troubleshot a 3D printer kit.
IDK if that gives any hints for my starting point.
I’m mature enough to totally understand there’s tonnes of incremental steps, but would love a bit of steering for the first few of them.
Where I’d like to end up
If there were a few dream projects for me to aspire to, they’d be:
done as a small indie solo/team
Creating or modifying a Cyberpunk/Deus Ex style fps/rpg
(level building first, gameplay later)
A ‘simpler’ Space Engineers clone
A rework of Rocksmith, with a different tangent for learning guitar.
There’s a bunch more, but I’ve already been more verbose than usual.
Thx.
Generally, I would say, it’s rarely a good idea just to learn what you need to realise a specific project. If you simply copy other games and their solutions, you can certainly do that, but not if you want to implement your own ideas. Maybe you have heard about the law of the instrument. Own ideas mean own problems which might need individual solutions.
In my personal opinion, completing the Unity 2D or 3D course is sufficient to gain solid basic knowledge on the subject, which you can use to do research by yourself and to learn more by reading the API, the manual, forums and watching tutorials on Youtube. However, if you prefer to learn more by creating a game with an instructor, the RPG course could also be interesting.
The following is an overview based on my personal opinion.
The relevant courses for making games with Unity are:
Unity 2D and/or Unity 3D (for beginners)
Unity RPG (for intermediate students)
To make your life easier as a game developer but not crucial for the game itself:
Git Smart: Learn Git The Fun Way With Unity Games
If you want to create your own assets:
Blender
The other courses are nice if you are interested in the topics but you won’t miss anything important for your games if you focus on other courses first. You can always watch the skipped videos at a later juncture.
Hi Nina,
Thanks for the input.
I guess that with the examples I used they could sound like copying. I’ve got different ideas for what I want the games to become, but the ones I’ve listed are more representative of the styles I’m interested in without getting bogged down it giving full descriptions of where they’re similar and where they’re different.
I am familiar with the concept of Maslow’s Hammer, but I tend towards having the polar opposite problem. Usually I’ll get so involved in learning everything about a subject, and putting together the most complete toolkit possible to cover every eventuality, that by the time I’m done, I’m too tired to get started. I figured with revisiting game development I could ‘force’ myself to use a bit more of a JIT process, and use my time more wisely making stuff.
I guess part of what I was curious about was if it would be wise to omit (for now) the 2D course, and follow something like: (I’m also unsure if I should start with course 1 or 2)
Complete C# Unity Developer 3D
Learn Unity 3D Game Kit - Make Games Without Coding
And don’t worry. I don’t expect anybody to share my opinion. Everybody is an individual learner. My way of learning is not necessarily suitable for other people, and that’s fine. There is nothing wrong with learning by copying. The real learning starts when you are trying to solve your own problems, but for that, you need some fundamentals.
