My really bad review of toon tanks

Unreal Courses Talk
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#1

After finishing Toon Tanks section I feel like I just wasted my time, basically I learned nothing because the teacher doesn’t explain anything at all, I feel like I was just copying text, it could be a game or a russian text, just copying without understanding nothing at all.

I went from wanting to watch the next video in Bulls & Cows and Building Escape, being forced to stop because I needed to sleep, understanding every single line of code, to hate the course with Toon Tanks and just wanting to finish it and start Simple Shooter. The only reason I didn’t quit is because already did the blueprints course and I know the teacher is going to be good with Simple Shooter.

Instead a teacher you could simply use a Text2Speech that adds a “we know we need (read the code)”, “then we use (read the code)” before each line, because is the only thing the teacher does during the whole course. Plot twist, we didn’t know we need… because he didn’t explain anything.

I really encourage Gamedev.tv to remake Toon Tanks, but done with a real teacher, not a programmer with 0 idea about teaching. Speaking loud what you are doing, without any explanation of why or how isn’t teaching.

8 Likes
#2

I feel you. I really had to force myself through this project. I swear, if I hear the word “obviously” one more time…
This project is mostly a dictation. What I want to learn is the thought process behind it. Programming is almost like puzzle solving and that’s what I want to learn. Instead, this section just teaches how to spell.

5 Likes
#3

Hello guys,

Apologies it has taken a while to address and thank-you for your honest feedback.

We do intend to revisit this section and address these issues that are being raised.
Its on our to do list so we haven’t forgotten it or dismissed the feedback we received and we plan to get to this when we can.

Please do keep sending us this honest feedback as it is appreciated and taken on board as well.

Thank-you

2 Likes
#4

Thanks for your answer and I am glad to hear that the issues are going to be addressed. I would encourage you to explain long, deep and in detail casting in the future changes of Toon Tanks section.

Sorry if my first post was a bit aggressive, but in that moment I was really frustrated after finishing Toon Tanks section and feel like I learned nothing.

3 Likes
#5

No need to apologise :slight_smile:
Any feedback is better than no feedback and as a company we do take it very seriously and look to make improvements based on the feedback we recieve.
I cant promise a timescale on when we would look at it but it is on the radar.

Thanks again for your honesty :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#6

Going to use this thread as an information point for improving the section.
A number of students are reporting issues with the section on discord so its helpful to have this all in one place for when its looked into.

2 Likes
#7

My critique of the Toon Tanks course.
I understand the instructor has spent a lot of time making & producing & editing the course. So I don’t wanna be offensive or sound like he wasted his time. So take the following with a grain of salt.

Toon Tanks
However, there was a huge energy shift in the course productions, in the previous section of Building Escape, the instructor was very excited and seemed more passionate. But in Toon Tanks, it seems that the instructor was half-asleep. The monotonic courses was more a lullaby than learning Unreal. Content wise, I still think it is useful for that section to exist, however, like @Morderkainer mentioned was a “mere duplicate” of what was taught before, however, it is important to practice key concepts and drive them home, so I think it could still be useful. However, there also wasn’t that much new info, the only thing I learned in that section was how to string-refrence the UMG in c++.

In General
There were also a few inconsistencies here and there along the course. It is very minor but may trip up individuals whom possess less knowledge about programming. None of these are essential, and I may be knit-picking here, but you may wanna include a note where they use such.

I’m not sure where this happened, it could’ve been in Toon Tanks or Multiplayer Course, but the instructor was inconsistent with the use of declaring things as nullptr, as in Bull-Cow and Building Escape used
type variable = nullptr;
but it was inconsistent where the instructor used
type variable;
I think it does the same thing but you should definitely include a clarification note, especially when the instructor stressed the idea just a section prior.

Same thing goes with
ensure
we were taught to use
if (!object){return;}
but Sam uses something along the lines of
if (ensure(object) != null) {return;}

He did explain the basis of what it did, but should’ve also explained that it was the same as !object.

Also, I am glad we have such a great community here at Gamedev.tv which actually listens to the consumers’ opinions! :slight_smile:

#8

I ended up posting this elsewhere in a random section, but now I see where it’s to be organized so I’ll post my feedback here too.

I share pretty much the same frustrations as OP. It’s one thing that this section is faster/heavier than the last, but I feel like most of the time I’m just hearing an explanation as to why we’re doing something sort of after we’ve written the code, while listening to the presenter essentially read out the line as he’s typing it.

Second, there’s many, many moments where he is explaining something while we’re just staring at random code and scrolling up and down flipping back and forth between headers and cpp files, while still explaining something new we’re about to do or just did. This is where we really need those slides, to arrest our attention to focus on the new information being laid out, showing matching text and visuals to go along with what’s being said, anything to solidify new concepts coming at us fast. The code in the background in this case is wildly distracting, especially when you still think you need to be watching the code to type what he’s about to type. There’s no indication or warning when we’re swapping between listening/taking in new info, and writing a new line of code.

Third, the challenges where I’m asked to figure out how to do what we’re about to do are very appreciated but few and far between. The last course section with Escape, by contrast, had a lot more moments where I was asked to try to do these things myself. Granted, the last section was a LOT simpler, but a more complex section needs a lot more practice challenges if anything to help solidify all the complexities.

Most importantly to me, and probably fundamental to all of the points above, the ToonTanks section and code structure was clearly planned out before it’s taught to us but we don’t get to see any of that brainstorming or organizing and planning of said code structure. We are only shown where to organize our code, but not why it was decided that way. This means we are going really fast because we’re having to guess and figure out why we’re even structuring the code and files and folders this way as we go, all while learning all of these new things in suboptimal fashion. Whereas in Escape, a lot of that planning and question asking was presented before we started writing and organizing code.
Granted, there are moments where the presenter started considering these things, especially towards the later parts of the section, but overall the lack of this through much of this project made most of the section very tough to follow without constant review.

Missing out on being able to see that planning and decision-making, made all of the coding decisions and structuring instructions really blind and confusing. In programming and especially in game development, I get the sense that planning out your designs before you actually implement them is incredibly important. Obviously this project is well structured and followed the same discipline. But through that same process it’s also important for understanding what we’re about to write when it comes to code, because then we have an idea of the classes and functions and things we’re about to be hunting down. The problem solving and solidifying of this content starts right away, rather than copying and pasting what the tutor is writing, then trying to decipher it after the lecture. That’s what was needed here, and probably in slide/presentation form before implementation in coding right after. We needed a lot of those sorts of breaks and setups. We don’t need a course in game design, but we do need to be shown the questions and problem solving that are involved with the code we’re about to write word for word. Previous sections did this, so I’m sure it can be done for this section too.

In the end, this section felt more like we’re being shown an end result step-by-step, rather than walking through a project together from start to finish. The former is still totally fine and extremely helpful, but it’s also something you can readily find for free on YouTube, or very cheap with a lot of Patreons lately (both with varying quality of talking/script and microphones of course lol). When I come to Udemy paying a decent price, I kind of expect the more involved teaching approach. This section has glimpses of it, but I think what would solidify that is addressing the points above. Just my feedback and advice. Overall this section still rocked though as I learned a lot. The speaking itself is very clear and concise, the audio is great, the project itself is superb. I’m just not sure how much of it will stick with me. I’m going to have to spend a lot of time re-reading this code and trying to recreate things.

2 Likes
#9

I do agree,
I felt like the teacher did not explain things well and was going way to fast. Sometimes I was even having to pause the video just to copy what he was typing. I felt like the “why” we were doing things was lost.
I’m glad to see others share my point of view, and am glad to see that GameDev is taking the feedback seriously!
I truly have had a wonderful time with the course, but I feel the ToonTanks section fell just a bit short.

2 Likes
#11

Any feedback is great. Thanks. There are plans to remaster and this feedback will help.

1 Like
#12

thanks for sharing your experience, now I know it’s a waste of time

#13

There’s an updated version now. Worth having a look if you’ve not done it before.

1 Like
#14

Well, after finishing the new version, I must say the expecienre is a lot better, I would give a 10 unless for DELEGATES section (“Hit Events” and “Applying Damage” videos), that make the same mistakes as previous version of the course, just talking what is writing without real explanation about DELEGATES.

But overall, great improvement, now I feel like I really learned new stuff instead just copy what the teacher says.

1 Like
#23

Yeah. I’m a 2/3rds in, at Handling Pawn Death… The 20-minute ‘type after me because I can’t be asked to even pretend anymore,’ chapter. And I’m done. Taking my ball, and going home. Whatever was coming up in this project, I’m sure I’ll get out of the next course.

I’m not going to finish the most boring (and ugly) game imaginable, taught by an automaton… in the hopes I’ll pick something up by sheer “emersion in the language.”

I’ve noted Stephan Ulibarri’s name, so I can avoid it, in future.

#24

He is actually generally quite good and he does really know his stuff. This was a remaster of the original toon tanks section that was way more complicated and a lot harder to follow.

Sometimes, no matter who is teaching, they need to go through something step by step like the first time you use animation blueprints, blend spaces and niagara for example. It has been a while since I last went through this course (at least 2 years anyway) but I didn’t think this section was bad at all. It was done before UE5 was released so is maybe now showing its age.

#25

It’s funny you’d invoke the idea of an instructor going step-by-step through what they’re teaching – as though I’ve been put off by the thoroughness of what’s here. Haha. Quite the opposite. It is Stephen and Toon Tanks’ frequent failure to lay the ground work for its concepts, before thrusting them upon the student as a mindless exercise of “type what I type,” that has landed this project in my recycle bin, with just 90 minutes of course left to go.

I encourage you to revisit the chapter I cited above… the one that finally, fully, off-boarded me. My guess is, that chapter is lifted straight from the original incarnation of Toon Tanks. I can’t imagine it having been worse, or that this is somehow a “fixed” version of it! There is NO teaching in that third of an hour. It’s “type what I type,” front to back.

And just to make sure we all agree: Reading aloud from a two-line summary in the documentation, before having the student follow along in their IDE, is NOT teaching. Proper instruction gives context and explanation, not just usage. It builds up to complexity, by establishing conceptual groundwork. A proper lesson plan, in fact, is built from its end, to its beginning. You know what you will teach on the first day, by knowing what it is you want to BE ABLE to teach on the last day.

There is nothing so thoughtful to be found in Toon Tanks – even the v2.

That said, I can at least acknowledge the first half as… passable. Not great. But, you get by. Though I don’t give Stephan much credit for that! The early material being easy and familiar is doing most of the lifting, there, I think.

You don’t get a sense for just how bad the instruction is, until you hit the complex stuff, later… Like delegates and the damage network. It’s the stuff that REALLY needs a good overview and groundwork, before you just start cramming it in there, that - in Toon Tanks - just gets crammed in there.

Acknowledging it as passable, even the first half suffers wherever a shade of complexity enters. That section on Forward Declarations, right at the beginning, foreshadowed how bad the instruction would get. And the TSubClassOf chapter was as illegible.

Basically, if the concepts are complex enough that they truly require a clear explanation, or if they need groundwork to have been laid previously – the course just doesn’t work, at that spot. Stephan reads from the documentation, and then we all type what he types.

The nearer to the end you get, the more of this you butt heads with. Until, at last, you’re 14 minutes into a 20 minute chapter that’s nothing but “type what I type,” and you’ve had enough.

#26

Perhaps my knowledge coloured my opinion of this section and like I said, it was a couple of years back and it is a big improvement 9ver the original.

I do appreciate opinion and will share with the team.

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