A New Hope

Are you a new game developer interested in Unity? Our latest blog post explores game development in Unity for beginners. Learn how to get started and gain valuable insight about what to stay mindful of along the way. Whether you're a new developer or just curious about game creation, this post will provide key knowledge for the start of your journey.

Getting Started with Unity Game Development for Beginners

So you're eager to dive deeper into the world of game creation. Whether you're a budding game developer or just someone with a passion for understanding the magic behind your favourite games, Unity is an incredible platform through which to explore the art of game development. There are a few points that it’s worth focusing on as you start out.

Less is more

It’s good to just get started. Go for it. You’ll hear a lot about the horrors of the ‘scope of a public field’ and the dark corruption lurking in the warmth of a tightly coupled system - “Oh, beware, code pilgrim, you who would tempt the night…” But honestly, understanding all that mystical foo can come in time. Really, your biggest problem in starting out with Unity is staying clear and staying motivated. That’s it. If you can stay clear on where you need to go, and just keep on going till you finish your project, you’ll be fine: there’s no need to complicate things with worrying about the scope of a method, or the spaghetti that links your logic. All that good stuff will come.

And it is good stuff. Please don’t misunderstand me: keeping variables only ‘visible’ to that code that really needs them is good practice for a reason. And loosely coupled systems are a joy, once the laboured breathing of your larger projects begins to become unpleasant. But that is the point: you’ll not reach the place where the guidance of the esoteric ideal will matter if you die in the underbrush before you get there, your mind crushed and cluttered with bitter confusion. The key to becoming successful as a developer, imho, is to stay motivated; and to do that, you need to finish.

So just ignore any officious, winey voices that delight to cry, ‘Ooo, that’s wrong! That’s bad praaactiiice, you’ll have a giiiiant security hole in your software and probably die horribly if you type that into Visual Studio.’

They’re just jealous of their grumpy position, longing for meaningful relationship, and stuffing the emptiness with cold superiority, as the broken often do [*cough].

You, however, are destined for greater things: so go forth and conquer. Let not the fears of the fool slow your noble step. Just move forward.

Keep your projects small, your features few, and finish.

Failure is temporary, not timeless

At the Sorbonne in Paris, way back at the turn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt delivered an electrifying address. In one part, he delivered these wise and immortal words:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, 1910

Needless to say, he was right. It’s so true, but also so hard to remember and hold onto. When you fail, and you will, you’ll want to say, “I am a failure; why bother.” But freedom from this insidious thought lies, not in focusing on what the critic says, or in how you compare to others, but in focusing on what you can learn from the mistake, and in choosing to think of yourself as separate from your endeavour.

I’m a failure vs. That failed; I’ll learn from it.

Understanding this is central to success. You’ll see that this same sentiment is baked into the vision that Roosevelt paints - you can see that ‘the man who is actually in the arena’ never actually says, ‘I’m a failure,’ and instead only ever perhaps admits to failing before climbing again to their feet and starting once more. It really is okay to make mistakes and to need to try again.

Setting Realistic Goals

Starting out with game dev is exciting, but don’t let that feeling carry you into little projects - little projects are far too big - you need to start smaller. I can’t really overstress this. If you can make your first project the code equivalent of a paperclip, you’re thinking at about the right level. It’s almost worth having an anti-goal, where you are explicit with yourself, saying something like, ‘I’m not making a game; I’m just making a feature.’ The temptation to imagine the captivating product that will surely leap from your heart and mind, into the neon core of that next indi classic, crackling with style and ‘cool’, … well, it can be overwhelming. But chill your heals, friend: we’ve all got a long way to go, so just let’s try to get to the next village before the night falls - we don’t need to conquer the world on day one.