I've been trying to dip my feet into using Unity and C# for the sake of developing games, however, I have barely any knowledge of how to use the coding language or Unity, and stuff like programming camera controls ends up being too hard for me.
I want to learn how to program video games but I don't know how to. Does anyone have any advice on how to start out or recommend any good courses on how to learn Unity and C#?
@toaderman I would suggest learning one thing at a time. So begin with learning C#, you shouldn't be messing with Unity yet, and definitely not bother with camera controls. Find some basic C# game tutorials.
You can start from its Unity Learn here: https://learn.unity.com/
It's quite a step-by-step for a complete beginner.
xrbtrx said:
You can start from its Unity Learn here: https://learn.unity.com/
It's quite a step-by-step for a complete beginner.
I agree with @xrbtrx . I just started the trainings 2 weeks ago on the Unity learn website and it's been good so far. Don't let the programming aspect stump you. If you are going to use any Game Engine like Unity or Unreal, you need to learn how to use the application. Unity has good learning material, so just use the learn website and start your journey.
toaderman said:
Does anyone have any advice on how to start out or recommend any good courses on how to learn Unity and C#?
This depends on your goals.
If your goal is to just make something, then it doesn't really matter much, get whatever you want to dive in to your learning journey. Unity's website has a ton of tutorials aimed at beginners. It should be enough to help you make “something”. They won't teach you what you need to be a top-tier programmer, but they will teach you enough to make things as a beginner.
m_waddams said:
So begin with learning C#, you shouldn't be messing with Unity yet
If the goal is to learn C# and become a top-tier programmer, I agree. However, if the goal is to just make games for fun and not give too much thought about actual programming, it doesn't really matter much.
If the goal is some organized learning to be a game programmer, I'd also recommend against starting with the engines. The C# programming done in Unity tutorials is often terrible programming. It is enough to get the demo concept across but usually not much more, and it's generally a terrible example of how to program. The same with Unreal, the tiny snippets of code are only focused on showing the concept, usually have terrible implementation flaws, and while they're okay for a starting place they are nowhere near what is needed for production code.
One book that is consistently recommended is the “Programming C#” series published by O'Reilly. The book has had lots of revisions over the decades, get a version corresponding to the age of Unity you're using, like “Programming C# 8” or “Programming C# 9”. Microsoft also has a lot of good references on how to learn the language, as well, although many of the application framework parts you won't use, since Unity already provides those. Even so, it's important to understand how they generally fit together as part of being a well-rounded programmer.
