I'm 13 and I need help please!

Ok so hello. I need help! I know about coding but I cant code I downloaded 3 apps to help me code and they are C#,Java Script and C++ which one is best to start with? Which one will have more advantages?
I downloaded Unity a few months back and I have no clue how to make a sprite or 3D sprites I dont know how to generate terrain!
I think you need some graphics engine but...I have no idea how to use this engine I dont know how to place a object in!
So in easier words if you dont understand what I mean heres what I'm trying to say:

1.Which language to use?
2.How to create the sprites
3.How to insert the objects in the terrain
4.how to create the terrain
5.Do you make the scripts using unity or visual studio?
6.where do I create the textures
7.best graphics engine if I need one!
8.How do I create the GUIs
9.Read number 10
10.Basicly everything I have no experience all I know is that every 13 year old probally just quit unity but I dont want to quit! I want to learn I love games and I want to know how to make them! I might be a game dev in the future so its best for me to learn now! Please help me and thank you everyone who took there time to read this post !

 

If you intend to learn and use Unity you won't be using C++. Additionally Unity's implementation of JavaScript (which is actually called UnityScript despite the official website saying otherwise) isn't truly JavaScript. That just leaves C# which is both very popular and the only language covered by the official tutorials.

Speaking of tutorials I highly recommend you start with the official tutorials in the Unity Learn section. Start with the Projects, then the Topics, and then the Live Training (which aren't actually live despite the name). They cover these topics you've mentioned and more.

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials
http://unity3d.com/learn/live-training

 

Hey Pro, welcome to the Unity community, and kudos for getting off to a great start! Here are some things you are already doing better than many newbies I've seen:

• You write in complete sentences, with capitalization and punctuation. Yes, it matters!
• You've learned to use the forum, and posted in the correct section.
• You wrote a clear, detailed question of an appropriate length.
• You pointed out your age and programming background, so we can reply at an appropriate level.
• You've found Unity, which is a great environment for noobs and pros alike.

So, well done on all that.

Definitely listen to @Ryiah; she's a very experienced and helpful developer and will never steer you wrong. But I'm going to go point by point because I'm on vacation and have a bit of extra time on my hands!

C# (as Ryiah said).

Don't. Go to OpenGameArt and download some free sprites, and just use those. Or, as an entirely separate use of your time, you can learn to draw (with pencil & paper), then get a paint program, learn to use that, and build up this skill in yourself. I think art skills are important and everybody should be able to do basic art/graphics. But it's a long, long road — easily as difficult as programming. They both take lots and lots of practice to get any good at it. But fortunately, you're young, so please do stretch yourself in as many directions as you can!

Terrain?!? What terrain?!? Flappy Birds doesn't have any terrain. Neither does Doodle Jump. Nor Space Invaders. Hardly any of the games you should be contemplating as a beginner would have anything resembling terrain in it. You need to scale your immediate goals way, way back.

When I was a yoot, my first game in any new programming environment was Cat & Mouse. It consisted of three sprites, cat, mouse, and cheese. Cheese is stationary, except that it jumps to a random location every time the mouse gets it. Mouse is controlled by the player; try to grab the cheese and avoid the cat. Cat chases the mouse. That's it. No scrolling, no terrain, no power-ups, just a simple food chain! This is the level you should be aiming at.

No, I make them using a Unity asset called Script Inspector 3. This is not free, but it's absolutely worth every penny. If you get an allowance, spend it on this. If you have a birthday coming up, put this at the top of your list (though since the Asset Store doesn't allow gifting, your folks will have to just buy it and install it for you on your computer). Script Inspector 3 lets you edit your scripts right within Unity, with syntax coloring and autocompletion and all sorts of great features. It makes Unity coding about a bazillion times better.

Until you get that, you will have to content yourself with an external editor, such as Visual Studio or MonoDevelop or whatever. It works. It's just not ideal.

You don't. See answer to question 2 above.

You've already found that: Unity! So, well done there too.

You add a Canvas to your scene, and then add UI objects (buttons, texts, etc.) to it. You'll know all this once you've gone through the UI tutorials.

Absolutely right! My boys are 11 and 15 years old right now, so I have a pretty good idea what modern middle-school life is like. There are an awful lot of distractions competing for your attention. If you can sit down and focus every day on trying to make something, and level up your skills — whether that's programming, writing, art, or anything else that's actually useful — then you will be far ahead of your peers. You could be creating real games before you graduate from high school. Hang in there, work hard, and ask lots of questions!

 

Great post and I'll second @JoeStrout about the complete sentences. It is refreshing to see that some of our youth aren't restricted to leet speak (I'm so old I'm not sure how that is even supposed to be spelled.. l337 or something like that?!?) lol

Dig in and explore. There are a lot of free assets on the asset store that you can use in addition to the site Joe shared. There are also a lot of tutorials and free sample projects that you can dig into to see how things work. Play with them all.

I also wholeheartedly agree with Joe as far as the language. Learn C#. The C# in Unity is standard C#. You can use Unity tutorials to help with the C# library that comes from Unity, but the base C# tutorials you can use tutorials from the Unity community or any other C# tutorials that are just plain C#.

I have some memory issues related to health and I'm actually trying to refresh my C#. I have just restarted going through the season 3 tutorial from @GTGD and he has included a lot of core C# stuff in chapter 1 of the video series. If you don't have a good handle on programming basics, you will probably want to find a good course for beginner C#.. But once you have that down, I would definitely recommend Gamer to Game Developer's S3 FPS video series he is currently working on. It is helping me remember a bunch of stuff I forgot and is also teaching me a lot of new stuff. I'll edit this post with some links as soon as I can grab them.

 

Here is a link to a response I did a while back. One thing that you will want to check with tutorials is that they are for Unity 5 and not really old versions. I haven't looked at the Bergzerg Arcade ones for a while. At one point he was going to redo the series using Unity 5 but not sure if he fully did yet or not. The newer stuff I looked at a couple of months ago were Unity 5.

But all of the folks in the list are ones I have watched videos from and found useful.

 

Wow! Unity's community is amazing! Thanks for the great help!
You all have helped me alot especially @Ryiah and @JoeStrout thank you very much!
I have started learning C# and I shall begin using unity from this day!

 

@Shawn67
Thank you so much! I have diseccted assets before and read some of the scripts!

 

As always, Ryiah and Joe have given great advice. I'll just add my bit of advice on top of that.

1. DO. NOT. QUIT. - Nobody starts something intending to give up on it, but it happens all the time nonetheless. Game development is often difficult, frustrating, overwhelming, under-rewarding, and downright exhausting. Keep a hold of your passion and stick through these times, and you'll amaze yourself at how much you can accomplish.
2. Start small. No, smaller. - You've got an awesome idea and want to make it before someone can beat you to the punch. But you'll only run into headache and heartbreak if you start that chase before you're ready. Put in the time with tutorials and microprojects to build up that experience. Like Joe said, being young is a fantastic advantage for you. Learn good habits and you'll be set up for long-term success.
3. Finish it! - When you do start on your first (small, remember) game, see it all the way through to the end. Including publishing it somewhere, even if it's on a free browser game site. You'll learn the important lesson that the last 20% of making a game can be the most important part with the most gotchas to trip you up. Better to figure this stuff out on a small project you've spent a few months on than a big one you've invested years into.

Welcome to our community, and best of luck with your journey!

 

@Schneider21 Thank you very much for the inspiration! But I have a noob question: how do you change how the sprite looks like thanks!

 

OK, I know I said "ask lots of questions," but we also said "do the tutorials." That's a very basic question that you couldn't possibly have gotten through any sprite-based tutorial without knowing the answer to.

Start with the "Learn" link at the top of this page. Plan to spend several weeks going through the tutorials. That means actually doing them, not just watching them — follow along, pause the video frequently, and reproduce what you're seeing on your own computer. This is by far the fastest and most effective way to learn.

 

@JoeStrout oh sorry! I'm currently working on a flappy bird game (I know it's already made but I'm just getting around the curve of using unity!) I know how to create the animations (I think!) and insert the scripts inside the sprites.
I opened up some assets and inspected there scripts and thankfully they helped! Again thank you very much!

 

Cool, a flappy-bird clone is a great place to start. Good luck with it, do those tutorials, and do let us know when you get stuck!

 

@JoeStrout Thank you very much for all the help and fast feedback! Unity is simply the best!

 

@ProKillaV12 There's some really great advice in the other posts, not much for me to add. I think you're off to a good start and if you ever get stuck, the forum is a great place to ask for help. Age never stops anyone from learning and if you don't give up, you'll be making great games in no time.

I would like to recommend this tutorial as well, for C#:

The guy (Derek Banas) makes some great tutorials for getting started in programming that is easy to understand and follow. I recommend his channel all the time.

@JoeStrout Hope I don't derail the thread but was wondering what your favorite things about Script Inspector 3 are? Looks interesting, I primarily use Visual Studio but am curious to hear more about SI3.

 

I was curious about that as well. I wish listed it when I saw it recommended but I'm still on the fence of why we would need instead of just using VS.

 

@xjjon and @Shawn67 Thank you guys alot for all the tutorials and help!

 

@ProKillaV12, your enthusiasm is so inspiring! It reminds me of myself when I was at your age - I loved games so much that I decided to learn how to make them and I did everything to reach that goal. Now 30 years later, I still love and enjoy making games - I work on AAA games played by millions of people around the World.

Just don't give up! Keep learning and soon you will be doing the same

@xjjon and @Shawn67, you can check @JoeStrout's first reaction after trying Si3 here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/sc...-upgrade-from-si2.138329/page-22#post-2358430

The main benefit of using Si3 is the convenience and comfort, I'd say. And the difference is so huge that working with Unity instantly becomes something you'll enjoy doing, a lot! In fact, so much that you'll wonder how you could work without Si3 by now?

Si3 is nicely integrated inside Unity Editor to provide you with the best possible programming experience. Check its promo video here:

It's lightweight and fast, but still packed with features. Check out the list of keyboard shortcuts to get an idea of what Si3 can do for you:
Windows - https://www.cheatography.com/sarper/cheat-sheets/script-inspector-3-windows/
OS X - https://www.cheatography.com/flipbookee/cheat-sheets/script-inspector-3-os-x/

Want to try it before you buy it? Let me know in a private message

@ProKillaV12, I'll send you a copy as well

 

Yep, not to derail the thread any further, but I just want to confirm that everything @Flipbookee has said is true. No gimmicks — it really is that amazing. I fell in love with Si3 the moment I tried it, and my love for it has only grown deeper since. And those initial socks on the floor (first post after the one @Flipbookee referenced above)? Yeah, he fixed that within like a week. That's the other thing to love about it — it's not just an amazing tool; it's also the best-supported tool I have ever seen. (Not to mention the fact that he's a truly nice guy, as also evidenced above.)

 

Played with it a little this morning. The quick access to the scripts without having to wait for VS to sync and the back and forth, waiting for compiles after switching back to Unity when using VS (which seems to go much smoother in SI3) has made me move it up to top priority when my budget gives me that much to spend. I'll miss my Resharper, but I think the benefits with SI3 may outweigh things enough to make it worth it. Thanks for the opportunity to evaluate it @Flipbookee!

 

@GarBenjamin was trying to find a way to largely eliminate the compiling delay that occurs. This sounds like what he needs.

 

I haven't played around with it a huge amount, but since I edited in Unity with SI3 it seemed like it was instantly ready to go. When I use VS, Unity seems to take up to a minute to see and compile the changes. I'm getting ready to play around with it a little bit more but at this point, I wouldn't think twice about recommending it - especially to new users who are just now starting to create their workflow and are just starting to learn C#.

 

Unity not in front of me atm but in Unity Editor there is a config under Preferences (IIRC) for Auto Refresh (or something along those lines). Uncheck it. Now you will need to right click and import to update graphics etc assets or press Ctrl + r and it will refresh pulling in script changes and compiling. You just have to remember to manually refresh if you use this approach. I like it much better.