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

i started working on my game couch combat around two years ago but two years is a lot of time and unfortunately i probably wasted a relatively large amount of that time that's to be expected after all is this my first real game project but there are so so many things that could have been incredibly helpful to know a few years ago and if i had known these things i probably would have saved a ton of time this video will be split into a few parts and i'll use chapters to make it easy to navigate but basically i'm going to start with a few tips and tricks specific to unity game engine and then i'll branch out to cover more general game dev topics and finally i'll give a super specific advice that might not apply to everybody but if you somehow find yourself in a similar place to me i absolutely promise you that it will be super helpful trust me also yeah this video is sponsored by unity who are currently having a spring sale which is an awesome opportunity since plenty of the tools and assets i mentioned in this video are currently on sale so let's start with some unity specific tips first off scriptable objects you should use them scriptable objects are complicated but basically they are a great way to create everything from items to dialog systems and if you want more info on them then i'll link this great video on the subject by samyam in the description using scriptable objects will simplify your game and also make it much easier to expand it so i promise you it's worth the time investment to learn how to use it it's worth mentioning because i didn't realize this for years but you can actually make presets for import settings for audio and image files which is great if you have a pixel art game as it makes it so you don't have to turn off filtering for every sprite anymore and also it would have been helpful to know earlier that there are animation controller variants which are basically like pre-factory animation controllers this allows you to have the same structure for the animation controller but switch out the animations which is great for things like guns and fps's and here we go it's time to talk about what might just be the best part of unity other than the glorious particle system the asset store the asset store is full of great tools and assets that save me countless hours so what do i recommend well there are a few assets and tools i can center essentials for making games the first one is technically free and not actually on the asset store but go ahead and download easy camera shake off of github it's incredibly simple to use way to handle camera shake it works with multiple cameras and it's overall just something that i use in literally every game project this one is also free but on the unity asset store it's a must-have if you ever work with player preferences which are basically a built-in saving system that unity has that is designed for saving settings this asset is called player preferences viewer and it does just what it says it's super helpful and simple and also something that i use for just about every 2d game that i make is called all in one sprite shader shaders are super confusing so this tool is very nice to have as it allows you to create a ton of effects and all of them without having to use the shader editor which is a win in my book another great tool that is on sale right now is called behavior designer i only recently got it but it allows you to create complex ai using a visual interface i know the game dev youtuber pinnacle uses it for the ai in their game as well it's really flexible and allows you to create everything from rpg bosses to fps bots it's on sale for 50 off right now alongside a lot of other assets in the store these assets are all on sale because the spring sale is going on until april 29th and most of these deals that are happening now won't return until much later this year end was kind enough to sponsor this video so if you use a link in the description of this video then you can help support the channel but i'm not advertising these tools specifically because unity told me to these are genuinely things i use in everyday development and i think are very helpful for every unity developer and of course aside they asked the sword they haven't mentioned yet as well the assets there are 3d models skyboxes sound effects rights and all sorts of other things these are incredibly helpful for adding to your game personally i prefer to make most of my assets myself but i still use many assets all the time like particle effects and sky boxes to spice up my game i'm not very good at making particle effects or sky boxes so the accessor allows me to cover up holes in my development that would otherwise require me to hire new team members or something which would be much more expensive a few of these asset creating companies that i've used before and can personally recommend are synty studios who cover everything low poly pinwheel studio who have great shaders in sky boxes and sidearm studios who make tons of cheap high quality sound effects that i use okay and now moving from unity to the more general section of this video i figured i would cover the thing that everybody has to start off doing learning game development is complicated to say the least and even though game engines like unity simplify and speed up development they still have huge learning curves so what's my advice well it's pretty simple actually just make games personally i started my game development journey in game maker studio but i didn't really get anywhere for the first year or so just because i didn't really make stuff i felt like i needed to know more before i can make games and that's just not true so don't worry about the uniqueness or even really the quality of your games at first just make them and also i think the beginners place way too much importance on the choice of game engine while i do agree that it makes a difference for individual projects and you should look into all the options it was very easy for me to switch from game maker to unity and i've also made projects using godot and without the engine the workflow and all of them is pretty similar to unity i just found that unity was personally the one i liked most and best suited to my project so that's what i stuck with just remember that a game engine is ultimately just the tool and the quality of games comes down to the skill of the people making it the best place to learn game development is in game jams game jams are short competitions where you make a game in a short amount of time they are great for many things from learning a basic understanding of a game development to testing out gamer and mechanic ideas or learning a new tool or engine plus they are just a ton of fun and you end up with a nice little game to show for it so when starting to learn game development in a specific engine what i found works best for me was starting off by just following a longer video series that walks me through everything brackies has some of these and there are tons on unit me and you could just basically look around and choose whatever one has the genre of game that you'd like to make and after either finishing the tutorial series or just getting bored i'd recommend just jumping into whatever game projects you want to just keep the scope for this first project very small like something you could finish in a month or so anytime you come across something that you don't know how to do just look it up youtube tutorials and forum posts practically have the answers to any questions you could possibly have and although it takes a bit of time to learn the api of your engine has a gold mine of information that is absolutely critical to be able to use finally it's also worth mentioning that you will never stop learning game dev while i no longer need tutorials for everything i do whenever i'm doing game development i always end up with millions of open tabs to the pages of the api and forms and personally i don't think that's an issue at all one very important tip for learning game development and programming in general is to learn data abstraction that sounds fancy but it's really just organizing your code and saving time learn to use loops in order to avoid repeating segments of your code learn to use arrays instead of creating tons of numbered variables learn to create functions to simplify your code and make it more readable even if it takes a bit more time whenever you are programming if you ever have to come back to your code and expand it you will thank your past cell for making an actual good code that is easy to read and easy to expand if you go into a game of no plan it might be fine to start out but after a while you'll probably end up in an absolute mess of no idea what to work on next the obvious solution here is just planning but that's often easier said than done it can be hard to visualize the steps it takes to get to a completed game but programs like trello and millino make it much easier trello is a program for organizing tasks i've had it since day one of my current game project and is an absolute lifesaver i have my tasks separated into different group ranging from bugs after fix to ideas i have to overall roadmap for my projects it's honestly a lot of fun to organize task and plan for the future and trollo makes it super easy to make major changes and plan really quickly as well it's free and browser based and i'd recommend it for literally any project but it's basically perfect for making games millino is a program that i only recently started using and it's less about managing tasks and more about just planning out the future mill note is super flexible and allows you to create mood boards character charts gameplay systems and just about anything else you could possibly need for planning out your game i'm currently using it to secretly prototype my next game idea and that is where it really shines so i'd recommend trying it out honestly marketing might just be the hardest part of game development it's one thing to make a game another thing to get people to actually play it and it's even harder to actually make money off of it although i don't know for certain if my game will actually do well as i haven't released it yet i do have a channel that is largely dedicated to its development with just over 9 000 subscribers and i have around a thousand wishlists on steam so i think i have a pretty decent start but i get that most people don't want to have to upload videos and maintain a channel while making their game it definitely takes up a lot of time and effort on my part but i do really like doing it so it's worth it in my case but there are many other ways you can try to market your game and find the audience and most of them actually start right at the beginning of development first off make sure you are making a game that people actually want this means two things first off the game has to have appeal while very specific and niche games can be super successful if your game is something that is straight up unappealing like a game about filing taxes there's gonna be a thousand times harder to find audience you still might be able to but it's worth thinking about and the second thing is to make a game that hasn't been done a million other times there are way too many generic 2d platformers out there to count you can totally make a 2d platformer it just has to offer something that other games just don't so basically if you want to have a successful game then you need to find a niche that you enjoy creating in my case i personally love split screen multiplayer games so i decided to focus on the very empty niche of split screen fps games for the pc once again i don't know if my game will be a success but i'm taking all the steps i can to move it closer to being one and another thing that you can do to advertise your game is just posting it to twitter i honestly don't really like twitter but many people have been able to gather audiences by showcasing the development of their games this isn't easy though as it requires consistent posting uses of hashtags like screenshot saturday and actually having an interesting game idea but it's totally worth it if you can get people to buy your game also posting on reddit is totally an option motivation is an important part of game development but i believe that it kind of comes naturally if you do the other things i mentioned in this video if you plan out and have a clear idea of what you want your game to be and have an outline of the steps that you need to take to restock final game do you not only have a goal to strive for but you also have tasks you can always be working on if you post on youtube twitter or wherever about your game it makes it way easier to stay productive and motivated personally i end up working a lot more consistently on my game that way you have cool things to put my devlogs whenever i release them plus for me the feedback and the fake internet points make it a lot easier to stay motivated but other than what i've already mentioned sometimes you just have to create your own motivation you aren't always going to want to work on your game and while you shouldn't constantly force yourself to work the only real way to get out of a slump and development is to put the time in and well develop your game okay we're almost done i'm just going to finish a few specific quick tips tip number one is that input management is horrible at least that's the case for unity so you should just go ahead and not suffer through bug fixing and changing systems 10 times either just use the new input system that unity made or buy rewired from the asset store the built-in input system doesn't work with multiple controllers well the trigger buttons don't work with multiple controllers which is about the stupidest thing ever just trust me on this i know the new input system is confusing but it's worth it the other really big time sync for my game has been online multiplayer so here's what i'll say if you are considering adding online multiplayer to your unity game do it at the very beginning of development if you design your game from the ground up for multiplayer it'll be so much easier than trying to add multiplayer into a game two years into development and you can trust me on that it's it's not fun maybe other tools like unreal and photon are better at integrating into already made games but my personal experience was trying to add mirror into my project was an absolute nightmare that ended up in me losing over a month of work so just be wary of it so yeah i really hope this video helps save some people from possibly falling into the same pitfalls as i did if you want to support my channel the best freeway is the wishlist my game couch compounds team wish listing is free and it really helps me since i don't have any marketing budget the more people that wishlist my game the more steam will push it whenever i release it so every wishlist counts thank you to unity for sponsoring this video and be sure to check out the spring sale for plenty of great deals and thank you to my one and only patreon howard house he was unanimously voted as the best beatboxer in the world by everybody in the world bye

Channel: ButWhyLevin

Views: 773,059

Keywords: gamedev, devlog, indie game dev, butwhylevin, but why levin, indie devlog, devlog unity, couch combat, unity devlog, indie game devlog, game development, lowpoly, splitscreen game, local multiplayer, unity 2022, Unity tips, beginner game dev tips, 25 game dev tips, Unity tutorial, game dev retrospective, Game dev tips, how to make games, Unity tricks

Id: 286SGzpUx9o

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2022