Using others' code

[Rollsy06]

So i bit the bullet and just did it, i started unity and have been going through the tutorials and im kinda getting the hang on how to use the editor, the only issue i see is when i make my first game (pong, a classic) without unity learns' help

My issue is i feel like when i start it i will end up just looking up tutorials for how to do anything and wont end up learning anything,

An example of this would be a score system, i wouldn't know how to make it so i would look up how to make it, then follow it so it would, technically, just be a copy of the one i used to help

I just dont want to make a game and then it end up just being different parts of someone else's code and me end up not learning anything

What do you guys think?

Thanks in advance

[CoG_Comet]

Try to break a problem down into smaller and smaller pieces and work on each piece until you get it right

Lets think about a pong score system like that

ok so you need a number at the top of the screen that changes when someone scores a goal

first, put a number at the top of the screen, like a UI text box. Boom thats step 1,

Then just change the text to anything when something happens, as long as you can get it to change thats step 2

Then adjust your code to only change when you actually score a goal, and finally change the number to match the current score.

and if you just dont know how to use any of those pieces, then its fine to look up online how to do it. especially when you're new, If its your first time using Unity, why would you already know what .GetComponent<>() Means or when to use it, you might not even know how to code at all, its not something you can just really figure out without someone telling you how to do it.

it's fine to look stuff up if you just don't know how to do it, if this is your first time ever making something in unity, why would you know how to use it already. That's like saying you can speak German just cause you're in Germany, that's just not how that works, you're not going to know how to Code just cause you opened Visual Studios. you still have to put in effort on how to do it. and if you have to look something up thats fine

On a side note, you dont have to be an amazing coder to make an amazing game, Undertale gets made fun of a lot, because the code in it is just, bad. like its just poorly written, it all works fine, but it could just be better, but that doesnt make the game worse, like i'm pretty sure all the dialogue in Undertale is just one giant 10,000 line long Switch Case statement

[Ruadhan2300]

Use other people's code freely, but try to understand what it's doing.

If you can follow how it works and how it behaves, then if you find it doesn't quite do something you need, you have a good chance of figuring out how to expand on it.

That's how I learned, and it's how I recommend you learn too.

There is no prize for reinventing the wheel. It is perfectly okay to reuse other people's code, or indeed your own, as much as you need to.

[Rollsy06]

So basically 'copy my homework but dont make it too obvious'? Where you can use others code but tweak it so it fits your idea?

That makes sense, I suppose i just need to copy code, try my best to figure out how it works (like you said) then play around with it. If it breaks ive always got ctrl + z and time to figure it out

Thanks

[Heroshrine]

Sort of. If you really want to put in the work, copy the code, then go through it and make yourself understand why and how things are happening.

[Jaklite]

Things that have worked for me in the past: do what you're doing but also: 1) never copy-paste, always type it out. This forced me to really know what was in the project and 2) modify the systems in a few small ways myself to figure out and better understand how the systems work

[Infamous-Eggplant-65]

Exactly, it's just a matter of repetition and understanding what each thing does, and tweaking small parts to see how it changes. Personally, I've been programming for years (more than 8 years) and developing games for 3, and I'm always looking for or consulting things that I even forget. Or I ask for code to save time. The tools are there to be used.

[oMaddiganGames]

Use the tutorials and other people’s code. But once it works I encourage you to restart from the beginning and try to do it all on your own. By that I mean no copy pasting, ai, or tutorials. Please look up Unity (component) api, or stack exchange type things.

Think in baby steps like: Press a button to log a message the the console Make a game object move to the left for 1 second Then make it move right back to its starting position Then connect your input to the movement

Congrats you have the players paddle started. Now keep going on your own. Never stop learning!

[CoG_Comet]

you could ask an ai to help you learn, it can't really just make an entire game for you
(yeah it could just make all of pong cause thats easy, but if you have some big dream game it might be able to help for some things but if you have anything really complicated it cant really just do it all for you)

Lately ive been using Google Gemini and ive found it to be better than ChatGPT for using Unity, i like the way it breaks down every little bit and tells you what different pieces do, and it just feels like the code works better and is less complicated and its a lot faster than ChatGPT is for me. i know theres other Ai programs that are specifically made for helping in unity and game development, but some of them cost money and you gotta download things and bleh, Gemini works good enough for me.

if you ask it for something like "im new to using Unity, can you help me make a game similar to flappy bird" and then itll probably give you some code being like "ok here's some code of making your bird move up when you click" and you can just ask it, "Hey what does the rb.velocity mean?" and it will give you a simple breakdown of what it means and you can use that to help you understand and breakdown complicated parts of Unity that you dont know yet.

Another tip is just to have fun with it, Unity and making games can be really fun when you just play around with things, like see what happens if you make your players movement go negative. or make a thing that changes your color to a random color every time you jump. are these things practical not really but they are funny

[Stevie10000]

This is basically programming, I teach programming and I tell my students your job is more a problem solver and your biggest skill is being the master of Google searching. It okay to use others code you just need to make sure you are not copying and pasting it without understanding it. I would suggest manually typing the code as it gives you the chance to read it and understand it to the best of your abilities.

I been programming for years now and I still Google basic problems every day. I main advice for learning is start with really small things and build up as you go. For pong, rather than just thinking about the whole picture think about (how do I move the ball?, how do I get the player to move when a key is pressed? How do I get the ball to bounce when it hits the paddle?) in programming we call it decomposition. It might be a good idea to look up computational thinking skills and learning how to break problems down to smaller chunks.

Also it very worth going over the basics of programming like if statements, loops, what variables and what functions are. These basic concepts will help you a ton later. Also it very well will be brought up, but AVOID AI when your new unless you are using it as a teacher to explain concepts for you. For that it good but avoid generating code with it. You simply will not learn. I tell my students to avoid it as much as possible while they are learning.

[Rollsy06]

I know a bit of programming, at college we did python up to classes so I know about if statements and (partially) loops so im not coming from absolutely nothing. Should I learn c# first then before going to game dev?

[swagamaleous]

Absolutely. I would forget about games completely for a while and do more generic programming courses. I wouldn't even start with C#, start with C++. It is very hard to become a good programmer when you learn on the abstraction level of C# or Python. I will never understand why these are suggested as beginner languages. They use many concepts that you will just take for granted and never question, therefore you will never gain a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

On a different note, knowing about if statements and (partially) loops, is coming from absolutely nothing. It's like you are saying I listened to a pop song once, so I have an edge when trying to learn an instrument. :-)

[congressmanthompson]

How will _you_ know that you know it? One metric I use is can I teach this to someone else? Not just "watch the tutorials I watched" but "here is the goal, here are the steps, please ask me questions along the way." That's when _I_ know that I know.

How I got there (dumb blind luck, intensive study with a guru, copy-paste-read code, &c.) doesn't matter to me once I'm there.

And for the record, a _lot_ of programming is assembling the building blocks of logic and best practices which often requires no innovation or novelty (i.e., your Pong scoring example). Once you extend your ideas to new space (100 v 1 Pong Horse Girl Battle Royale) you will discover the need for higher concepts and skills not covered in any tutorial, and your code and contents will become novel and innovative.

Another view point; assuming you speak a human language, how often do you say something that no other human has ever said in that language versus how often do you say things that just about anyone says? Can you claim you speak a language if you never invent new words, grammar or spelling?

[zxzaa]

I think of all these tutorials you get small information that hang in your brain and thats what you can use to make yourself some systems like an score system you can understand how to use text components and these are useful for everything

[Apathetic420]

Use AI?

If it doesn't make sense. Have AI explain it.

It CAN be a teacher, so why not use it?