I Wish I Had Known This Before I Started Unity Game Development...

In this video I cover several tips for beginners and skilled developers alike! I wish I had known many of these unity skills before making my game Couch Combat…

The Unity Spring Sale is going on now:

Samyam’s Scriptable Object Video:

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:49 Unity Tips
3:46 General Tips
9:45 Quick Specific Tips

[GameDevNerd]

Been in game development at least 14yrs now, I literally lost track. Greatest advice given here is to target a niche and do something special: platformers and zombie games are a dime a dozen. Pick out something unique that's cool, maybe something that no one has done in many years. That's how Stardew Valley blew up on Steam.

[Thenineoh]

Tip #1 can’t be stressed enough, I spent my first year learning courses on coursera and udemy, thinking I’d get into game design once I’m “ready”. That day never came, no matter what I learned I never felt ready yet. Then one day I just started working on my project and said I’d learn new things where I needed to. Honestly doing things this way made me progress faster than any course ever has

[jadefae]

The tip I see missing from all of these videos is: Take inspiration from *wide* sources. Not just your favorite games. What's the GOOD in the game you otherwise hate? What do you like about that book you just read? How can you incorporate colour like they do in that movie you watched?

This is what they mean when they say "Good artists copy, great artists steal". When you steal something you *make it your own*, and if you steal from a diverse set of inspirations, it becomes truly yours.

[codahighland]

I have to agree: There is no shame in having the docs open all the time. Memorizing everything isn't what gives you skill. The important skill is knowing where to find the details when you need them.

[lcppproductions]

Imo something that's Extremely underrated, especially for programmers is learning to use programming design patterns early on. Observer pattern is a MUST for game dev with larger projects. Having objects that fire events and other objects that subscribe to them is a much more sustainable way to do things than having a million references in each class to other objects, and it makes your code more modular (each class/game object is its own self contained thing). Singleton and Factory patterns, as well as SOLID principles are also good to look into. Factory less so for Unity since you can use GetComponent to retrieve references for things. If you're using Unity, learn to use Unity events/C# events and you will make your code a lot cleaner and save time on large projects.

[mrworldwide]

Not sure if it's mentioned in this video, but something I feel should be said in every tips video like this:

DON'T DO YOUR DREAM PROJECT FIRST

You will ruin it, if you don't give up first

[kristianthaler]

I can vouch for Brackeys, man makes every topic fun and interesting. Also, the part about making really small games is so true. People always start with a huge idea without realizing the amount of hours, then give up on it. Just pick something really simple and make a clone of it, nothing helps you learn faster.

[codahighland]

If you're new to making games, don't let the marketing section distract you from the first steps. People who start learning game development to make money are going to be disappointed for a long time. Your first few games should be something that you'd like to play yourself. It doesn't have to be unique. It doesn't have to be something anyone else will like. If you enjoy making it, that's all that matters. (EDIT: The video even said this itself earlier on. I'm only talking about the marketing section, so really this is a reminder to people getting started not to forget that this advice isn't meant for you )

Turning game dev into a career is hard. Don't overlap learning how to make a game with learning how to make money on a game. You will only stress yourself out. Find out if you're even going to enjoy the process before you start looking for commercial success.

[astrahcat]

1) Create a folder.
2) Call it ‘Standard Assets’.
3) Put all your asset store assets in it.
4) DONT use a ‘Resources’ folder (load assets externally)
5) DONT use Unity scenes (load levels as prefabs externally)

Wham. Watch your game playtest at lightning speed, and your game folders go from 30GB to 1GB.

Unity’s got problems, yeah 🎉

[desawwww]

Damn it has already been 2 years. I remember watching the first devlog like it was last week. I wish you good luck on your future journey

[dibbieknight]

This is almost like a mirrored reflection of my first project, great advice! - one tip id like to mention on organizing your project in general, both code and assets (as I found this a major problem later in development), add assembly definition files (which can also speed up compile times when you make script changes - GameDevGuide and Infallible Code have great videos on setting them up), then group your code into systems and build a centralized "manager" for each system, this way everything can work independently of eachother, and you can more easily offload Update logic to an event and have your systems talk to eachother through their "manager", which can give you a performance boost, and make it easier to track down bugs in your code

[shannenmr]

Yes if you think you might want to add multiplayer / co-op you really should do it from the start, suddenly you have to validate everything your players are saying they are doing along with replicating all the right properties without flooding the network and your animations and simulation has to be on point since players will be doing crazy things that AI just wouldn't / we would give AI a pass on

[thedudeguy]

It's also worth noting for the more intermediate creators that if you're serious about a project, then a lot of the default unity systems are going to need to be rewritten, wrapped, or replaced with other assets that are more tailored for your project. Specifically things like LOD, navmesh, networking (I believe they don't really actually have a networking system atm), character controllers, camera controllers, UI, and the input system.

[guitarbuddha]

I definitely didn't realize if I had like sprite import settings I could just click on the little sliders icon in the inspector and save the current preset. Then when you import something else you can just go in the same place and select your saved preset. Thanks for mentioning that.

[KamranWali]

These are some really good tips. Marketing is the one that I need to focus on the most. Keep it up! :)

[QvsTheWorld]

I haven't thought about splitscreen local multiplayer in a while. Kinda make me think there could be a cool game concept about single player FPS using splitscreen to see the AI perspective.

1. You are being hunted by AI and you can see from their perspective when they notice footprints, broken branch etc.

2. Your character could be psychic and use nearby enemy to see what is around them, listen to their thoughts or conversation, take control of them to activate switches.

3. Bring back good old fashion screen peeking in online multiplayer game lol.

[pitifulrock]

cant wait to play your game with my friends, it looks really fun :)

[timithius]

Awesome advice, I've just started out learning Unity and love it. My goal is to turn pro Indie game dev and people like you make me realize how possible it it is. The advice is a seriously great motivation to do things right. Oh, and yeah Brackeys is awesome. And a big thumbs up for the Polygon authors, their stuff is fantastic

[NirajArts]

I guess you made a very good point here about developing game and at the same time, Handling YouTube channel. I’ve been developing for 3years now as a hobbyist game developer an 2years into YouTube, and sometimes find it tempting to work on develogs. But what I learned is that you don’t need motivation to work, working on what you love in the first place is the motivation for you! Great video!:D

[connoisseurofcookies]

Given how most people don't know how to file taxes and accounting is probably the no.1 general startup skill a game about filing taxes may actually find a niche in the learning space 🤔