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

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.

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

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.

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 🎉

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.

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.

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

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.

Shaders were super intimidating, but I spent a weekend learning them, and am so glad I did it. I feel pretty fluent in them not even a week later, and have been using them nonstop. I needed to use them for one effect, but the applications where shaders are useful keep appearing. It’s definitely a tool worth having in your arsenal. And like visual scripting vs actual coding, being able to write your own shaders allows you to do performance things you wouldn’t be able to do with visual scripting a shader.

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.

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

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

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

Thanks for all the great videos! I can't wait for Couch Combat to come out!😁

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

Love the Unity Tips section! Thanks for including my video on behavior trees :)

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

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

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.

I guess you made a very good point here about developing game and at the same time, Handling RU-vid channel. I’ve been developing for 3years now as a hobbyist game developer an 2years into RU-vid, 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

Great insight mate! Look forward to the multiplayer DevLog, hope development goes well!

100% agreed on the input and multiplayer suggestion at the end. good tips! And the official unity docs are invaluable!

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.

Thanks a lot bro. You're saved my years with this video.

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.

Easy camera shake! 🔥🔥🔥🍻 I'll be going back through everything in this tutorial thanks man

super helpful, wishlisted several of those assets. thanks man

My tip would be that when you want to implement something in your game make that your whole project a for while. For example I wanted an object pooling manager for one of my games so I make a new project then spend ages "perfecting" the system before implementing into my game including things that I may not even need in this game but might in others as you never know. I find it makes it more interesting and you end up with a better overall project basically decomposition.

Thanks for sharing your experience 👍

Really nice tips! I don't love Twitter also but I can def see how useful it is

One thing i can say is that you are a walking W for adding splitscreen most devs dont do that since mostly everyone plays with friend online mowadays so its cool you went out of your way to add that to your game

Great advices, thanks for sharing :)

I accidentally found your channel and you are awesome !!

Great tip on just making games, it is certainly the best way to begin

Neat tips here! I definitely think marketing on twitter and youtube is such a big element to get your games out there.

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 🤔

i am a brand new game dev i just started 3 weeks ago and ive been struggling to grasp certain things so im glad to see theres people out there still helping all the discords i join the poeple are toxic cuz they "know everything"

Great advices. Thanks for posting this video. I'm making a game now in Godot but I'm taking a step back after the first prototype to write a game design document. I think that will be a great help for the future and that will help me list out some of the skills and stuff.

already uploaded and i feel soo good

Awesome video!! Game looks great And thanks for the shoutout 😁

Have watched many videos of this type and a key thing I don't see people saying if they select Unity, is to go through the pathways within Unity for learning. I've been doing this for a few weeks now and my understanding of the application, C# and various key features in the tool are expanding at exponential rates. Each one includes functional projects to grow your skills, not just pure video observations without practical application. Would highly recommend for anyone interested in learning unity.

Nothing is wasted. You have gained lots of important experience that will help you in the future.

this was really insightfull

Thanks for the tips

How many ads can you fit into one video? Levin: Yes. Still got very valuable take-aways for new gamedevs, I appreciate it.

9:00 Didn't expect the Zelda: Spirit Tracks soundtrack here but this is awesome!

That body boarding game looks like a lot of fun!

Great Video!

10/10 video as always

This is helping alot

nice video. learned a lot from this. I have an idea of a simple game, and i'd like to get started with unity (i spend 80% of my waking hours coding anyways for work).. this video helped me make my decision

What A great video, thank you so much for sharing this! One comment - I had a hard time understanding the apps you used for Planning "trello" and "milanote". Trello I had heard of, but after come google searching a few minutes later I discovered you were saying the name "milanote". What I heard was "muknow" ("moo"-"Know", maybe my ears need cleaning, ). Again, a great video, I am going over tkaing lots of notes to help on my beginner Unity JourneY! Yes, I am also using GameMake Studio and starting to use Unity more! :)

That last point about multiplayer is the most important. I joined a unity discord server and asked about multiplayer thinking “ok I’ll add it at the end since it will probably e the hardest thing to implement” thankfully someone set me straight before I had done too much with my game and I was able to add netcode. Apparently multiplayer will change the way you have to code your game. So you’d probably have to scrap years of code and rewrite it if you save it till the end. Plus if you plan to release a multiplayer game on consoles they require different code per their specifications to run.🥶 TLDR: if your game will age multiplayer and you want to release on consoles…ADD IT FIRST!

not a game dev but a programmer and i fully agree with the part about neat code, as i write very messy code that just barely works and is constantly on the edge of collapsing

Thanks a lot.

Epic Asset Store segment (and tips) tbh 😳 all of those products look really useful

The Unity forum is everything!

awesome video

I would not say wasted, but upgraded to a new you. I love the All in One Shader btw for 2d sprites. Really cool stuff thanks for the tips

I recommend figuring out how and what you are going to save from the get go makes it easier for you to structure your stuff from the get go instead of having to retrofit a bunch of behaviors later.

Very interesting.

I just got used to use the Scriptable Objects. Indeed very useful. I can even avoid using enums with them, if I want.

Probably a bit advance for complete beginners but learning to create structs it very useful. Being able to store and access data in a format that you've created for a specific purpose makes a lot of things much faster and easier. I personally always use it for storing inputs and every input is named how I want it and relevant to the game I'm making. Also instead of trello, Hack n plan is really good and I would say its better suited to game development.

I relate HARD to the last two general tips. Multiplayer I added early enough or so I thought - whew that was a painful few months. And input is just a never ending source of pain but that's flight sims for you

I switched from GameMaker 1 to Godot and I don't regret it. I spent like hours watching a tutorial on how to make a main menu that takes like 5 mins in godot lol. My productivity in Godot immediately increased from like, slow paced sluggish lol-he-hasnt-even-made-an-intro-yet to OH-MY-GOD-IM-ACTUALLY-MAKING-LEVELS-IN-MY-GAME-NOW-AND-NOT-CODING-OBJECTS-FOR-A-ROOM-SYSTEM-THAT-SUCKS-ASS!!!!!!! THANK YOU GODOT!!!!

I'm on the same boat as you except I dont have a youtube channel. Great tip on the Behavior Design Asset. I just wish I had known it 2 days earlier when there was still a discount.. Rewired looks complicated... i'm using the new input system, should I stick with it or switch to rewired? is there any other asset package you recommend?

I think my next mobile game will be about filing taxes 😏 have you seen what's on trending on the app store?? Games like filling a fridge or scooping ice cream. I think I'll make a fortune with this one 😂 great video btw really helpful tips in here!

Programming is just so damn cool! I’m new to it but am fascinated with it

Why is this video is just an ad with content sprinkled in between?

Great video and very helpful! what did you use for multiplayer?

10:00 The built in system works just fine with multiple controllers. I used indexing to differentiate the type of controller by pulling its hard coded name form the device then selecting the proper input map and setting that as the current default. It eliminated conflicts and made it accessible to even basic cheap controllers that are mapped as "generic". It really was only a switch statement with the string of the name and the " i " set to its index. And it even works just fine with multiple players. Edit: also multiple controllers triggers not working IS NOT UNITY'S FAULT. its the default map setting its triggers vs sticks to its 3rd/4th axis. The new unity system auto pulls some of the triple a controller maps but not generic ones and auto assigns them. Adding generic input is still on you.

Another hint: Use chatgpt to create some code to test out stuff as well as for ideas and plans what to start with and of course fixing your not working code.

finally a channel that goes over some of the essential assets to make a game. whenever i see a gamedev channel not talk about this, it's an immediate red flag.

About the multiplayer quick tip, do you mean start coding the game for multi-player right away, or just make sure the basis of the game can be set up for multi-player without having to rebuild levels and such

wow, need to watch it on 0.5x speed thank u for the vid

ENUNCIATION e·nun′ci·a′tion To pronounce; articulate.

hey, i've also wanted to get into game dwvelopment for quite some time now but always drop it due to difficulties in learning the programming lnaguage(gdscript) do you think i should just start making games like you said(by following tutorials) or is it smth i absolutely must learn befoee diving in. thanks!

Had pretty much the same, Started with the simplest stuff like RPG maker. I tried game maker and it was tons of fun, though I heard good things about godot then tried godot and it was also pretty fun though it felt off and limited? For some reason. Then I tried Unity and gotta say I'm in love with it. Currently working on a game and just learned about scriptable objects myself. Will probably rewrite some stuff into scriptable objects.

Woo go Howard!

Good video

Great video, thanks! Could you tip me what networking system should I add in my game at these days?

I only started using Unity recently but I find the newer input system a lot more intuitive and it doesn't make me cringe in pain like the idea of a check for every single input used every single frame does. (Even if that may in fact be how it works under the hood.)

I couldn't figure out how to start the game. Do you have to have more than one player to start it?

When it comes to online multiplayer games (one that does not run peer to peer and require Co-op mode), I would heavily recommend Fishnet. They are a free alternative. I know a couple of people who have heavily saved a ton switching over to it.

Hi jus wondering if Unity version 2022 can change the setup look to a older version look?

Levin, what Moodboard do you use? May you share, please?

Does making mods for a game or something help on learning game dev?

An interesting video and I learned something, but not as much as I possibly could have. Does this guy have some kind of aversion to consonants while talking?

I was so focused on finals that I missed the Spring sale... at least I am graduated now and can start working on my games full sale.

Did you happen to do the GameDevTv's Blender course? Asking because that well looks awfully familiar (I built one like that too!).

thanks

The problem with Unity starting out is that it was so easy it created over confidence. My game was half done with no apparent bugs, then a few months later I was several features and most planned enemies because more and more bugs cropped that I just couldn't fix or even figure out where to look for the problem. By that time working on it had taken over my life as a miserable and self-destructive exercise in futility. Since I'd already forked out money to put it on Steam during the over-confidence phase this meant my sucky first Unity game was simultaneously launched and abandoned.

Thanks for also spearhead some concepts. We had some few and interesting side projects to deal with the lack of Multiplayer on Unity. I guess the fishnet was the easiest and best. But Unity gave us a native Multiplayer back. Could you try and report your impressions, please?

You listen to Hopes and Dreams in a GameDev video. You are filled with Determination.

What's the name of the program after trello? I can't seem to find it. The one with the moodboards and game design. It would be great to have a tool to help me plan for the future.

Great, useful, informative - thank you for sharing, I definitely 100% agree with all your suggestions. It took me years to discover, learn and incorporate things like scriptable objects into my projects and now I can't imagine working without them. If only I'd seen your video when I was staring out :) If I may, as tactfully as possible, offer a small suggestion - I think it would greatly widen your potential target audience if you tried talking a bit slower. There are a lot of people who generally understand English quite well, but struggle with fast speech and I am positive it would make it infinitely easier for them if you spoke even a little bit slower :) Anyways thank you again for the great video! I've just discovered your channel but I am already certain I'll visit more often :) Cheers!

2:50 its been less than 2 seconds and already recognise this song

Hey, what's the game at 0:19? I really liked the look of it. You made it?

Good!. I've only been a month, you save me.

I used photon for a small project and it worked pretty well, but yeah if i had started adding it later i would probably had just given up on it. On the bright side though, steam lets you play co-op games online so even if you cant add online features now there is still that way out