should Unity provide smaller official demo projects?

I've just came across a pretty interesting and detailed writeup on the UE4 vs. Unity discussion on reddit. While the discussion itself is nothing to get into again (seriously please don't - I linked the post as reference for my proposal, only and because I don't want to take credit for even just part of a well written and thought out ). there was one paragraph that stood out to me which I had actually never considered so far. And I really wondered why ...

This strikes me as true. Often times it's easier to get how a function is set up if it's not entangeld in a complete project. Sometimes it might even inspire only similiar ideas and implementations of your own by just looking at it and going: "Hey! Cool thing. Never thought of it like that! Maybe I could ...."

Don't get me wrong - I like the example scenes provideded by Unity very much. I think they are very helpful and I've used them quite a few times myself, already. Especially some assets like the character setups which work on their own very well. Yet sometimes - especially in the whole folder structure things feel entangled a lot if I know a scene has one thing I want to use or look up but can't figure out where it's plugged into in the whole picture. Trying singleing it out consequently does result in errors and warnings.

How do you guys feel: Is this something that could acompany the manual in certain places or would this mean things getting too spread out?
Is this something Unity could put more focus on some time in the future - or is it already in the works?

 

Yeah there's bags of small stuff in Learn section tho...

Is there anything in particular you'd like to see? The Learn team would be happy to have a look - would be nicer if it was a suggestion post though rather than just asking for small stuff, because you know, small stuff is endless.

 

Having assignments for each lesson with test questions. Kinda like homework. I like the explanation, but actually writing and doing some guess work will help learning and remembering.

 

Yes - I know small stuff is endless. And no I don't have anything particular in mind as I am using Unity long enough that I already found many of the things I needed. I didn't mean this as a thread for myself but rather meant that it might really be nice to have small encapsulated examples you can pick off from a demo file without breaking any more complicated interconnections. Also to see if others felt the same way.

You know - just small demos for functionality setup like the code examples in the scripting reference. Projectors, decals, particle systems to use for prototyping etc. ... single things to look at and say: "Whao! That is a cool idea to use it like this...".

In a way this is similar to what I proposed somewhere in a feedback thread months ago (can't even remember where exactly) and it's coming from other engines like Scirra's Construct2. They have so many easy building blocks available you can throw in simply to test or prototype a mechanic (or even use it as is if it suits your needs).
For example: I often used the 'Camera Orbit' script for model presentation files. In Unity 5 this script doesn't seem to be available any more or it is now filed under a different name in another package. I searched a good 10 minutes for it before I just pulled it from a Unity4.x project. Also by default it always needs to open a large package which does not specifically tell which scripts are interdependent.

 

Well if there's any clear suggestions, I'm sure the Learn team is eager to take these comments on board, so keep suggesting things you really need, and ears will hear

 

I had a similar idea but more along the lines of a basic startup kit of template items that get you up to speed faster.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/yay-unity-has-a-great-new-ui-but.288584/

I like your suggesting it has more of an educational theme and as long as the template projects are small they could be used as building blocks for larger projects.

As opposed to larger projects that can be daunting or make digging out the golden nuggets of reusability harder.

They would also be quicker and easier to make.

WIN WIN!

Good idea!

 

Well - do you have any suggestions?

 

I like the section in the Survival Shooter project about using Mechanim to animate a menu. I wouldn't normally have seen that, but I was helping students work their way through the project, so did the whole tutorial myself. It would get seen by a lot more people, especially experienced users, if it was a short standalone project.

There are probably lots of other things that I don't know about that would be useful, but I don't know about them, so cannot ask.

The full projects are useful when new to Unity, but experienced users are more likely to be interested in learning about a single feature to plug a gap in knowledge. A snack is more likely to be useful that a 3-course meal.

 

Yeah, that they carry on picking popular genres of games and make small starter projects. I think people have a pretty clear idea of the style of game they want to make, ie 3rd person, fps, driving, flying, minigore.

So from me it's a "carry on as usual".