Learning Game Development in 24 hours versus Reality
My adventure with Unity game engine started some time ago. It wasn't easy for a complete rookie to learn anything. I experimented with standard assets and tried reverse engineering of other people free assets. I also purchased a book that contained good advices but skipped some important elements like scripting.
Then I found another book available in stores in Polish language. This book was in original titled: "Unity Game Development in 24 Hours" by Mike Geig. I purchased it and... put it on the shelf for some months. I decided that I want to stick to my own project and I will use books only as a sort of emergency dictionary when I run into more complicated issues.
Now I know that it was a mistake.
By now I learned that when you want to create something and you are not yet good at it then you should start by doing smaller projects and prototypes. In Polish this projects are called rubbish projects because when you start them you agree that they might fail and you don't care about it. From each of them you learn something and you are not limited by your ego. So kind of projects are simple and have small amount of goals just to learn and practice new skills - one at a time.
"Unity Game Development in 24 Hours" is a handbook that teaches you basics of Unity while creating 4 small projects. Each project is somehow different and explores different aspect of Unity skills.
In first you learn how to create terrain and build simple First Person Perspective game using scripts and controllers delivered by book's author.
In second project you learn about using physics and you design your first game rules.
In third you create 2D shooter and in the same time you learn scripting and particles. This project also teaches you that you can perform tricks to make game look bigger than it is (like the size of cosmic world in this game).
Last project teaches you about character animations.
Final chapters of book gives you solution on how to convert your games to work on smartphones.
What is great in those projects is that all 4 are quite playable. And their design is so simplistic that if you want you can develop them further by adding more stuff - which I actually did.
Unity is a system that is still developed by its creators and because of this it changes with time. This means that some old scripts may not work properly or even not work at all in newer versions of Unity. It happened also here in character controller script for first project. But this obstacle can be solved and they do not lower experience that you can gain by learning from this book (which is by the way, frequently updated in English version).
So, by doing something not connected to my own project I have learned more than by sticking to my project and pretending that there is nothing more out there interesting to learn.
I honestly recommend this book. It is well written and beside some possible problems with old versions of scripts it is very easy to work with. (Actually this book is available in English version in updated edition for which I bet script errors were solved).
You can find short movies of my projects created using this handbook on this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLupMc1pX3bnKsSaRBq8CODjD08AEV0ihn
And do what is your experience in learning stuff? Do prefer handbooks or you like to learn alone?
Then I found another book available in stores in Polish language. This book was in original titled: "Unity Game Development in 24 Hours" by Mike Geig. I purchased it and... put it on the shelf for some months. I decided that I want to stick to my own project and I will use books only as a sort of emergency dictionary when I run into more complicated issues.
Now I know that it was a mistake.
By now I learned that when you want to create something and you are not yet good at it then you should start by doing smaller projects and prototypes. In Polish this projects are called rubbish projects because when you start them you agree that they might fail and you don't care about it. From each of them you learn something and you are not limited by your ego. So kind of projects are simple and have small amount of goals just to learn and practice new skills - one at a time.
"Unity Game Development in 24 Hours" is a handbook that teaches you basics of Unity while creating 4 small projects. Each project is somehow different and explores different aspect of Unity skills.
In first you learn how to create terrain and build simple First Person Perspective game using scripts and controllers delivered by book's author.
Last project teaches you about character animations.
Final chapters of book gives you solution on how to convert your games to work on smartphones.
What is great in those projects is that all 4 are quite playable. And their design is so simplistic that if you want you can develop them further by adding more stuff - which I actually did.
Unity is a system that is still developed by its creators and because of this it changes with time. This means that some old scripts may not work properly or even not work at all in newer versions of Unity. It happened also here in character controller script for first project. But this obstacle can be solved and they do not lower experience that you can gain by learning from this book (which is by the way, frequently updated in English version).
So, by doing something not connected to my own project I have learned more than by sticking to my project and pretending that there is nothing more out there interesting to learn.
I honestly recommend this book. It is well written and beside some possible problems with old versions of scripts it is very easy to work with. (Actually this book is available in English version in updated edition for which I bet script errors were solved).
You can find short movies of my projects created using this handbook on this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLupMc1pX3bnKsSaRBq8CODjD08AEV0ihn
And do what is your experience in learning stuff? Do prefer handbooks or you like to learn alone?
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