Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

What are essential coding goals and milestones?

Discussion in 'Getting Started' started by Gibbons, Apr 19, 2017.

  1. Gibbons

    Gibbons

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2013
    Posts:
    8
    This is a rather broad question but I've been meaning to ask it, probably as a result of over-thinking things.

    Messing about with Unity has been an on-and-off hobby for me as a young man maintaining a day job that has nothing to do with computers, and I haven't had any formal education in the subject either. No college, university, or course of any kind.
    By using the oft-recommended tutorials provided by Unity and Microsoft regarding the engine and C#, I've finally reached a point where (I think) I've gained a good handle on the basic concepts and features of C#, as well as how to make tiny quasi-games in Unity.

    Now, I want to start taking it very seriously, however I've hit a bit of a wall.

    Lacking a structured and consistent learning plan that a paid education may offer, I've had a hard time maintaining a context to apply and test what I've learned, as well as trying to find what to learn next. It is harder when much of what there is to know about the practise concerns language-agnostic concepts and paradigms.

    TL;DR
    Assuming you can scratch off the most basic scripting knowledge and Unity functionality, what should someone study or practise afterwards? What books or resources would you recommend to them?
     
  2. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2011
    Posts:
    9,859
    Honestly, I think you're over-thinking it.

    It sounds like you've gone through a fair number of tutorials and have a grasp of the basics. Now is the time to pick a project and try to actually do it.

    Keep it simple and small in scope, of course... maybe recreate your favorite (er, or your parents' favorite?) arcade game from the 80s, or take some simple mobile game you like and put your own twist on it.

    Then just dig in, and see how far you can get. Use all the resources of the internet to help you, including asking for help in these forums when you get stuck.

    One tip: keep a progress log in your favorite text editor or word processor. Every day you sit down to even _think_ about working on your project, re-read the last couple of entries, and then make a new entry for today. Write down what you're working on, what problems you're facing, and what you're thinking about doing about them. And then when you call it quits for the day, write a few more words about what you did, what worked and didn't work, and what might be next.

    Working part-time around other things in your life, this will really help you stay on target and not waste too much time always trying to remember where you left off.
     
    Gibbons likes this.
  3. Schneider21

    Schneider21

    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2014
    Posts:
    3,512
    I think the most important thing for you at the stage it appears you're at is to just build stuff. Build lots of stuff. Set yourself goals that are related to things you know a full game needs to do (I need to be able to save and load data, I need a customizable player character, I need to generate a random map), and then create those little projects that focus on learning how to do that task.

    Chances are, you're going to make a mess of it. But along the way, you'll realize what would make it better, and you can use that information to refit everything or start over from scratch.

    It's hard to give you a more specific answer because not only are there so many different things you could be doing depending on what you want to do, but stylistically there's a number of ways you can approach those tasks depending on your preference. For example, while I prefer singleton-style managers to communicate across my apps, others prefer static classes, and others like the Component swarm / Event system.

    Never get rid of anything you make. Even if your ambitious Modular UI System doesn't work at all, you may someday have an epiphany and come back to it with the knowledge needed to get it working. And then you'll have another tool in your toolbox you can bring in to new projects. Do this enough, and you've got your own game framework!

    But do your best to start something and see it through to the end. Setting short, attainable goals will help with this.
     
    Gibbons and JoeStrout like this.
  4. Gibbons

    Gibbons

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2013
    Posts:
    8
    That's sound advice from both of you, thanks a lot guys. I'll see about making some little things that I may someday share on here!
     
    JoeStrout likes this.