This is just type what I type. And I may quit the course, right here.
Four games deep, and only in this teacher’s hands do I suddenly feel as though Unreal Engine must just be a nightmare-mess of nested, obfuscated nonsense you can’t possibly intuit, or understand hierarchically. Toon Tanks has left me seeing UE as an inelegant hellscape of ambiguously nested classes and function calls that you just have to know are there… somehow. And, apparently, the way you know is to be read to from bad documentation, and then told to type this, here, now.
This is sad. I’m sad now. And in pain.
I have a chronic condition called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. 80% of those syllables mean ‘inflammation of the brain.’ It’s neurological. And I would never say such a terrible thing just to be mean… But the Toon Tanks part of this course is so bad, it has exacerbated my symptoms. I am in neurological pain right now, because of the first 14 minutes of this 20 minute long chapter of the Toon Tanks course.
The instruction now amounts to being told “there’s a method, hidden under this object, that’s hidden under this class, that does this thing, and we’ll want that thing to happen later, (trust me) so you should type these words now.”
It’s frustrating. insulting, and incredibly discouraging. And I’m sorry to the instructor to be so blunt, but this is miserable! These last chapters of this course have inspired me… to NOT make games. That’s how bad this is. It accomplishes the opposite of what the platform espouses to do.
I may just bounce off, here. And if I do, it will be this instructor’s doing. Sorry to say. But it needs be said.
My dissatisfaction well-established, I’m going to attempt to provide something more than just negative criticism, here: Teaching isn’t just talking slow and repeating yourself frequently. Real teaching provides overviews that give perspective on why things are, as they are. It doesn’t just say, “Use this thing to do that. We keep it in cupboard #652. Here’s the manual. The manual sucks, btw.” Real teaching explains WHY this does that, and HOW the cupboards are numbered, so you might be able to find this again, when you inevitably need it for that.
Real teaching doesn’t shove bShowMouseCursor in as a one off, to avoid a problem later. It lets the problem emerge, so the student can see why it’s wanted; It seizes the opportunity to explain why this variable starts with a lowercase ‘b,’ so they’ve learned something that’s applicable elsewhere; It illustrates the pack of booleans its a part of, so to present it as part of a collection, instead of a needle in a haystack.
Again, that the student might ever be able to remember, or find that needle, after today. Which is precisely how this part of the course has left me feeling… Like I will never be able to hold onto so many disjointed, unrelated parts, each hiding in a library that has nothing to do with the other, but is absolutely necessary for the other. And that hopeless feeling has everything to do with the instructor’s presentation of the material. It’s what happens when a poor instructor tutors a complex subject. They make it impenetrable.
After all, we’ve just made it so the bullet can talk to the health component, which can talk to the tank, which can talk to the game mode, through a series of page-width delegate registrations though a global registrar… Mainly for the purpose of subtracting 50 from 100. No, really. We could’ve been done with this and spawning the particle effects 12 chapters ago through public functions. But there’s been no meaningful attempt to convey why we should do it this convoluted way, that uses all the inside-baseball.
And there ARE reasons, no doubt! So where are they IN THE COURSE?!
I’m so put-off after today that I would seriously advise redacting this entire project from the site. I mean, maybe you can fix it by re-planning and re-recording the whole last third of it… I don’t know. But, what’s it all worth, if the students are so disgusted, they never finish… or walk away from development entirely?
And, again, I’m sorry. A lot of effort has been made, I’m sure. But this is beyond the kind of bad you just smile and walk passed. Those responsible need to know, to be held accountable, and to improve.
