On the subject of outdated tutorials (solved)

Hello everyone and thank you for taking the time to read this/reply.
I hope this thread helps others in their endeavors as well.

I'm in school have decent experience in programming. I've worked in C# programming windows forms and console applications alongside quite a bit of experience in game maker. I've been meaning to move to unity for a while now and despite my efforts I can't find any extensive tutorials that are properly up to date.

Can anyone recommend a series of tutorials in the comments. It would be much appreciated.
Thanks you for your time. R.d.Costa

 

Start here: https://unity3d.com/learn

 

It's common to see people dismiss the official tutorials because they're "out of date." The issue I take with this is that having small inconsistencies doesn't make the lesson obsolete. In older versions of Unity, you could access certain components directly like:

Code (CSharp):

1. Rigidbody rb = rigidbody;

That's since been updated to require accessing the component more explicitly, as:

Code (CSharp):

1. Rigidbody rb = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();

That doesn't mean that the rest of the code from that tutorial is useless! It just means you have to patch your knowledge with an update you can find elsewhere.

The reason I dislike this way of thinking is that (in my opinion) a tutorial shouldn't have to be an exact set of instructions to do something you want to do. The point is to learn, and if you run into an obstacle while learning that requires you put in additional work to achieve the objective, you're actually more likely to learn something!

Even when following along with a tutorial video, it's easy to flip on the cruise control and not really absorb the material. You just type out what the person on the screen is doing, click Play, and call it a day. But when you run into trouble and have to use Google to see why one thing is happening instead of something else, you're using your skills of investigation and troubleshooting, which are invaluable to have.

I still say the official tutorials (combined with the manual, API reference, and recorded training sessions) are the best set of resources for learning Unity, hands down.

 

Thanks for the replies. I actually didn't know that that was all they changed. I ran into that roadblock recently and figured it out on my own. It just made me think there would be many more than just that.
As for learning for yourself I learnt that a long time ago. I made that mistake when I started with gamemaker and python. It's a good lesson for any programmer to be reminded of.
If you can spare the time is there anything else they changed besides the component accessing? A simple no will suffice if that's all.
Thank you both for your time. I'll update the thread name to better fit searches for other users.

 

That's the biggest one that trips people up. There's occasionally other changes, but nothing major that I've noticed, anyway. Another great developer skill is being able to find the class you're using in the API reference and see for yourself how the data expects to be used or find alternative ways to doing what you want.

 

One big one that throws people off, especially in the space shooter tutorial, is the change to scene management. But it's not too hard to figure out with a small amount of research and trial.

But as Schneider21 points out, having to think about what the tutorial is doing versus just doing it and having it work the first time does make you learn more. I have often said you really don't know something until you can mess it up beyond all recognition, and still get it back to where it should be. (without starting over).

 

If there are multiple problems with a tutorial they normally take the tutorial down. The Stealth project tutorial series was given the axe a while back because of the problems it had. So if it's up there it's usually just minor problems but worst case you can create a thread and we can assist with it.