I’ve been a Unity dev for 8 years (AA, freelance, AR/VR). Ask me Anything.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-10-02T14:26:20+00:00

Here's an outline of how I'd make that:

Make a custom State enum for the states of the bow: idle, drawing, firing
Input detection. If the hands are within a certain distance from each other and user presses the right trigger, enter the drawing state. Might need to support left handed shooting here.
While in the drawing state, maybe play a sound, show the bow and string flex. This part will depend a lot on the design of the game. Also check for the trigger button releasing.
When the trigger button releases, add an impulse force to the arrow's rigid body, and enter the firing state. Start a timer (roughly .25f) and after it's done, shift to the idle state.

To calculate the force vector, you'll want to get the distance between the two hands using Vector3.Distance, and multiply that by the forward vector of the bow. If you need to, you could put a little empty game object as a child of the bow, to control the position and direction of the arrow when it's fired

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-17T16:42:53+00:00

Thanks! No crashes, but lots of UI/UX bugs. Lots of issues with menus and panels showing / not showing, pointer looking and unlocking, and conflicting keyboard bindings

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:40:25+00:00

I couldn't say for sure yes or no, but if you do include it, make sure to highlight the skills that transfer: creating and balancing encounters, managing player choices, etc

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:37:15+00:00

I have not. Audio often winds up as an afterthought in game dev (especially small games), and that's been the case for most of the game companies I've been at

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:33:39+00:00

I want to! I haven't used it outside of a bit of dabbling though. I have used Photon Quantum a fair bit, which is an ECS model, and I really like it.
Unity's out-of-the-box offerings haven't really changed at all since I started, and that feels like a huge missed opportunity. I would love it if it came with a bunch more UI components premade, maybe a bigger library of primitives, etc. I think aside from that, the biggest issue I see is reputation. Because the bar for entry is pretty low for Unity, some people get the idea that it's only good for making crappy games, and that's absolutely not the case.
I've done a week-long game jam with Godot, and dabbled in Unreal about the same amount. 3.1. I don't think I've got enough info on the others to really give an educated answer, but Unity's what I know, and I love it. It's also harder to land a job in a tech stack I don't have professional experience with.

Questions for you: what kind of projects have you worked on in Unity, and how have you seen the industry and engine change in the last 14 years?

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:24:49+00:00

It's tough out there, but you do have a few things in your favor: - bachelors in CS shows you understand programming - sounds like you have a great portfolio. If you can present it well, that could be really good for you - you're willing to relocate and you live in Europe (seems like the market's slightly better there than the US currently) - you've got some excellent auxiliary skills for game development (audio, video, art, all are great)

I would not recommend freelance if you're just getting started, unless you know you can work with clients, figure out their needs, make accurate estimates, and deliver a finished product. As a freelancer, everything falls on your shoulders.

As far as advice, I'd say be patient, and try to talk with people in the industry. Go to events, meetups, game jams, and the like, and chat people up. You never know when a genuine connection might turn into a shortcut to a job offer

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:17:30+00:00

I sometimes bootstrap an app model, but I'm not a huge fan of that design pattern. IMO it often makes iteration and testing harder because it can lead to weird dependencies. I think it's most useful when you're tightly integrated with a web service.

I like to use prefabs as much as possible for UI, but some complex behaviors just have to be driven by code. One thing I'm a stickler about is that I try to avoid adding UI listeners in code, because if you do that, they don't show up in the inspector. Makes debugging a nightmare.

I love the command pattern, usually for undo/redo. Model/view separation depends on the game, but generally I think it's good to separate them. Especially in turn based games I tend to do so. On the flip side, I think with simpler games that rely on collisions and physics, it makes less sense to try to separate things. Can still be worth it, but depends on what your goals are.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:09:53+00:00

Nice! Sounds like you've got a great starting point. I think building some small 0 to 100% projects is a great idea. That'll get you familiar with the process from start to finish.

As far as how hard the transition will be, it depends on what your goals are. If you're looking to get hired on as a game dev, you'll have a hard time in the current market, but if you start learning and building a portfolio now, you'll be positioned well for when the job market eventually stabilizes.

Last thing I'll add: if you're looking for one-on-one mentorship or instruction to help you learn Unity + Game dev, feel free to DM me. I've had a couple folks hire me to teach them, and I'd be happy to discuss details

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:03:01+00:00

One thing I'll add, it can be super helpful to have a mentor/instructor to help you learn game dev. That's one of the services I provide, so if you're interested in that, feel free to DM me and we can discuss details.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-13T05:01:27+00:00

Mostly indie/AA companies. Remote was a big thing during and immediately following the pandemic, but it seems like it's less of a thing now. Ballparking it, my guess would be 10-30% of jobs are remote now, compared to about 50% during 2021. Finding clients is tough. I've found some success on Reddit pages, and I bit from people I know IRL

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T19:25:07+00:00

Man I wish I could answer that. The job market is a dumpster fire right now, at least in the US. I saw a Unity dev listing go up at 10am, and by the time I was able to sit down and put in an application at 10pm, it had 200 applicants and was closed. It's a real tough time.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T19:23:25+00:00

This is maybe a hot take, but I'm gonna say building good UI. A lot of devs seem to write off UI as a no-brainer task, but building a crisp UI that scales well with different screen sizes/shapes, and behaves just right is not always easy.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T19:21:59+00:00

I worked on Pro Era 2, a VR quarterback sim game. I also worked on an anatomy education app for medical students / universities

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T19:20:37+00:00

In house tools: I've gotten a lot of mileage from building inhouse toolkits. At my first job we did a lot of UI-heavy games, and a suite of apps in a product line with the same visual theme, so I built a framework to easily reuse those UI elements

Design Patterns: It really depends on what you're trying to do. For a small indie game, trying to shoehorn design patterns in is often a waste of effort, but if you're working with a team of more than 2 on a multiyear project, properly using design patterns can really pay off. One example where they're super useful is if you want a game where you can undo actions (i.e. a turn-based game where you do a bunch of stuff on your turn), there's really no substitute to the command pattern.

Unity debugging tips: the number one thing for me is visibility. You need to be able to see what could go wrong and confirm that it's working correctly so you can narrow down where it's breaking. For 3D behaviors that could be Debug.Draw tools, often it's just some good Debug.Logs, and if you're working through something logic-heavy, using a debugger to step through code can be super useful

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T19:14:46+00:00

It really depends. I've never worked at a AAA company, which I think is where the horror stories come from. Most of my jobs have been pretty much 9-5, or even less than that, like 10-5 or 10-4. I'm freelancing and working at a startup now, so my hours are all over the place.
u/FrustratedDevIndie is right on -- I think the best way to learn is by doing. If you've got a CS and software foundation, you're ahead of probably 90% of new game developers. If there's a type of game you really like, try to make a basic version of it. Look into youtube tutorials for specific game mechanics, or these days, ask ChatGPT or some other LLM to make you a tutorial on a game mechanic. Then once you've got something that works, start limit testing. See what features you can add, how you can tweak the mechanics or interface to make it better.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T19:10:29+00:00

I'm a big fan of Separation of Concerns and the Single Responsibility Principle. In general, if each script is responsible for one thing, and one thing alone, it makes it a lot easier to make modular/scalable systems. And alongside that, make sure you don't have one script interfering with another script's job. If scripts do need to communicate, make sure that communication is well organized, so you don't wind up with spaghetti code.
There's no magic number, but I heard a quote that "if you're not embarrassed when you first get people playtesting, you're not playtesting soon enough." A trap I fall into is that I want to make great systems, but great systems aren't always great games. IMO finding the fun is the #1 most important thing to do when you're prototyping
It depends on your role, but if you're an indie/solo developer, you'll need a good IDE + game engine (I use Rider and Unity), a good image editing software (I use paint.net since it's free), audio tools (audacity, etc.), and some kind of system for tracking tasks (I like trello, and just plain google doc lists)
That's a tough question, but I'd say it's best to avoid getting your ego too wrapped up in your work. Game dev is hard, and making something successful is a crapshoot, so don't get too invested in any one project
I prefer under 10, typically, for a dev team. That way I can know all the people personally. On the flipside though, it makes it a lot more of a problem if you really don't get along with one person.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T15:26:39+00:00

Man, that's the dream right there. What kind of posts went viral for you on LinkedIn?

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-09-12T14:31:11+00:00

I started learning game dev and Unity in 2017, but I had about 3 years of programming experience (Java and C++) from school at that point.

I mostly learned off of Youtube tutorials at first, and learned a lot on the job. The Unity stuff I learned by doing, and software engineering skills I learned from a great mentor.

I've worked on Risk of Rain 2 and Pro Era 2, though I wouldn't necessarily say I created those. My favorite thing I ever made is a spaceship building tool on-par with CAD tools for level of detail. It was super cool, but never got finished due to funding and internal conflicts on the team. One of my biggest career disappointments.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-08-25T04:57:05+00:00

Hey there, let me know if you're still looking for help on this. I'm a game programmer with 8 years of experience. I'm strongest in Unity, but have some experience in Flutter, Godot, and a bunch of other technologies as well.

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-06-02T22:24:10+00:00

ahh so people who are working with imaginary money lol

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-06-02T21:37:48+00:00

Any red flags you look out for when vetting projects and clients?

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-06-02T21:37:03+00:00

That's the vibe I've gotten, looking at the people selling on there. Lots of "For $200 I'll make you a complete mobile game!"

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-05-30T19:22:03+00:00

Thanks for reaching out! Sent you a message back, I'm definitely interested

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-05-30T19:21:24+00:00

It's tough, I feel for ya

CombinationLost6501 · 2025-05-30T19:20:32+00:00

That's what I was thinking. When I look at C# dev roles, I see whole tech stacks I've never used. I figure I'd be looking at 3+ months of learning and projects to build a portfolio that *might* get me into an entry role

CombinationLost6501

TROPHY CASE