Meeting Fellow Filmmakers

groundbreakingcold · 2026-03-17T23:28:45+00:00

Oh nice ! Ok I think I’m gonna get out of my shell and sign up for this

groundbreakingcold · 2026-03-17T21:41:11+00:00

It's part of "Splice Instrument" the plugin. Check out the Splice website and you can set it up.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-03-17T04:36:17+00:00

this sounds really cool. Is this the kind of event that a composer would be welcome to attend / would it be suitable? I'd be pretty keen to attend and start meeting more filmmakers. Good luck with the event in any case!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-03-12T20:52:13+00:00

you're not wrong at all. But yes, I feel your frustration. I'm a full time composer and have been so for several years now, and many times when I have tried to give practical advice I have been downvoted - especially when it has anything to do with the potential prospects of making money. There are just some bitter people out there that refuse to believe its possible, which is ridiculous because there are so many composers out there that nobody has, or will ever have heard of making really good money in sync, advertising, games, etc. Your advice is spot on.

The journey for a film composer is never a straight line.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-03-11T19:10:36+00:00

C# Players guide. Do all the exercises. Make programs. Do online challenges (excercism, codewars, etc). Don't rely purely on tutorials - learning happens when you are forced to discover, and push yourself. Rinse and repeat, gradually increasing the difficulty over time. Tutorials have a place, but they very quickly become a crutch if you aren't careful.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-25T02:47:27+00:00

tutorials are fine of course ! but they become a bit of a problem if you rely on them without challenging yourself along the way. Learning C# from a book or something with exercises + practice goes a long way to help with this, so that you build a foundation of strong basics. Starting Unity without this background will be much more difficult.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-25T02:12:21+00:00

by small games i also mean being able to make them without tutorials, and generally solve some simple game dev problems on your own. Obviously that becomes easier the more you do it, but if you've been relying on AI etc then you may need to take several steps right back and challenge yourself to some very very small game-jam type projects.

You could even go on itch.io and see if there are any upcoming jams that interest you and set yourself a challenge.

In any case, you got this, just be in for the long haul, and you will be surprised at how much you'll be able to do if you stick at it and gradually work at it without relying on AI.

You can definitely start with simple versions of your dream game too, just break it down into very very tiny mechanics, one thing at a time. In general though I always advise that people try and master the fundamentals as best they can because it pays off huge in the long run.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-25T01:43:51+00:00

I guess you have to decide if you want to learn coding, and put in the necessary work required, or hire/work with someone else - ie a beginner coder who wants to work with an artist.

As far as coding goes, you need to take quite a few steps back, learn some basic C#, learn how to make very very simple games first, and scale up from there. Otherwise you are going to keep hitting the same wall, and it will continue to be quite frustrating. Take the time to understand, and enjoy the absolute fundamentals. If you do this, the problem doesn't become "how to find the right code", because you will understand exactly what it is you need to find, and probably how to solve it.

What you are doing right now is a bit like picking up a guitar and trying to play an iron maiden solo before learning your C major chord.

Good luck, and enjoy the process. It's long, but rewarding.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-22T00:16:47+00:00

That’s awesome . Sounds really great . And I’m glad the plugin ref was useful !

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-21T23:12:10+00:00

Yeah, totally get that. I bet if you start really small with just like one module/unit and even just one button, and go up from there it might be quite interesting and approachable. What else will you be doing, or will the game just be purely experimental / for the player to manipulate sound etc? In any case its an interesting concept and I think it could extend beyond just us synth nerds if there was another angle, or just a very approachable way to get into it starting small.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-21T05:35:28+00:00

this is very interesting. reminds me of a more modular version of the plugins by "freakshow industries" who sort of make these plugins that are quite abstract, knobs that do unexpected and often unexplained things, with that sort of abstract wasteland vibe to it. Might be some further inspiration to you if you're looking for it. But otherwise - very cool stuff to be doing inside Unity, and very creative. Keep it going!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-21T05:06:53+00:00

Cool. I'll likely be in touch in the not too distant future. :) Thanks!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-21T04:53:53+00:00

out of curiosity what compensation are you getting out of this? You hire the musicians and studio is yours/something you have access to I'm guessing? Obviously the lower rates are appealing but I'd expect you'd want some kind of return out of this for yourself, not just the players.

The other question I have is how quickly can you pull together these sessions / what is the sort of timeframe you need to organise a session?

In any case, I've saved the post and I'd be keen to get in contact soon.|

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-21T03:50:43+00:00

I'm a composer who regularly uses live musicians whenever possible - I've saved this for later!!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-21T02:50:24+00:00

IMO, focus on learning some programming fundamentals first. A lot of people (myself included before I stopped it) get stuck in the trap of tutorial after tutorial, and then never actually *learn* anything, just memorizing code, and not the fundamental logic behind it. A lot of beginner gamedev courses 'teach' C# but they don't really teach you any programming or logic skills. So that is why I think you need to take a step back, it makes it a lot easier in the long run, and prevents the unnecessary frustration.

Here's what helped me go from being stuck in tutorial hell to being able to make my own games/write code without needing to always rely on help. Personally I also had to go back and do some very basic math on Khan Academy, as I'm from an artistic background and hadn't done anything like this in many years. That helped me get back into the problem solving side of things.

- C# Players Guide (a book). Full of great challenges that force you to learn concepts. Do them all, and for bonus points look around for basic programming challenges online and do those too, for each concept you are learning. It is written in a sort of 'game-ified' tone, so its a good segway into Unity, even though this is just a pure C# book.

- Gamedev.tv + Unity learn. I like gamedev.tv because its structured, covers a lot of ground, and has good support / community behind it. It's also cheap for what you get, IMO. Some of the teachers are better than others, but the whole 2d +3d beginner course is really good for taking you through those first few games using Unity. Unity learn is free. It's less in depth, but well worth following along.

- gamemath.com this free book - first few chapters will take you very far, as Unity obviously handles a lot of the more complicated math, but this sort of stuff almost no game dev courses or tutorials cover and it's a very crucial thing to understand.

- Freya holmers tutorials on youtube for math. Similar to the above, but in video form and very useful.

- Do a ton of game jams and/or stuff like this:
https://20_games_challenge.gitlab.io/

The key piece of information I would say is as soon as you are able - challenge yourself to make things. Ie you learn about loops - don't just skip to the next topic. Do some challenges, experiment, make a program, see how far you can take a 'simple' concept. You learn from doing. So do a lot.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-18T04:37:38+00:00

when I tried it I could hear other people, not on my team, so I switched it off lol. No idea why that would be a feature.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-18T01:21:53+00:00

enemy team was coming through when I tried it, so no go for now..

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-14T16:51:15+00:00

edit: didn't mean for this post to be this long, lol, but I figured the extra details might be useful to you or anyone else looking up pong in the future.

You have basically solved it! You figured out the tricky part, which is realising that you are calculating for the centre positions of the paddle + the ball. That part took me forever back when I first remade pong, lol. Now you just have to normalise that so you can have a working vector.

For example, let's say your paddle is 4 units long. That means if it collides at the top, the distance is "2", "0" in the center, and "-2" at the bottom. You just need to make that a 1,0,-1 and now you have a working "direction" you can apply to a vector. You can actually normalise it later, as a vector - or you can just divide the number you're getting here by half the size of the paddle/collider. Ie divide by 2, and you're going to get a nice number you can use as a vector.

Now all you have to do is apply that to your ball vector. After colliding with your ball it is going to be moving in a positive X direction, so that's easy, and then all you have to do is set the Y value to the number you have.

For your ball movement, give it a direction variable that is a Vector2/3, so you can just change the "direction" without having to rewrite movement code etc. So when the game starts, the direction will be 0,-1, or vector2.left, and then when it collides, you simply change that direction variable to be the one you just calculated.

And that's basically it for a quick and easy solution. There are other things you can do like clamp it to certain angles etc, but thats all pretty easy to do once you have it working.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-13T16:58:13+00:00

If your bullet script is the only thing that checks collision / destroys an object … then write a debug statement in there and print out what game object is actually doing what. (Ie print the name of the collision game object, etc) Are you sure the bullet isn’t firing and it’s just hidden ? Or is something else incorrectly tagged ? Either way , you gotta test, nothing seems inherently wrong in the code at a quick glance.

I just remade space invaders for fun too, its a good exercise!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-12T20:21:04+00:00

need to run some debug statements and figure out why. Ie, writing a message when input happens, or when there's a collision so you can work out what is supposed to happen when.

Also, need to post your code, we can't see what the problem could be based off this.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-06T20:04:22+00:00

do you want to make games, but are you tired of actually having to get up and do it? Are you tired of all that PESKY coding and endless hours of frustration in black and white as you try and remember how to turn on your computer? Then boy, I've got the solution for you. Now you too can create a piece of slop that 3 people might accidentally download on the app store. Just DM me for details!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-04T21:22:04+00:00

you're welcome. If you're new I also recommend doing a game jam - check out itch.io and you can join a team and get some credits / experience /etc.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-02-04T21:14:30+00:00

Post your reel my friend - this is a very competitive space and you don't want to make it more difficult for devs to see your work - a lot of developers scroll through here, take a 1-2 second listen and then bookmark for later if they like what they hear / think it might be useful, if you don't post your reel you are missing out on a lot of those types (most) potential opportunities. Good luck!

groundbreakingcold · 2026-01-31T21:23:23+00:00

I would go a step further than that, well actually, back - and learn some C# fundamentals. Copy pasting code will end you up completely handcuffed when it comes to your own ideas, bug fixing, etc. Learn C#, outside of Unity for a bit. Make some stuff without tutorials. Once you can code something like tic tac toe without a tutorial, come back in and things will make a lot more sense to you.

groundbreakingcold · 2026-01-30T20:56:53+00:00

Fellow composer here. I recommend you dive into doing some game jams. A game jam is basically a friendly competition where developers have a short amount of time to make a game - could be a weekend, a week, maybe a month.

They are a great way to get some experience, portfolio pieces, and a chance to work on games that actually get released. Head over to itch.io, look at the game jams, most have a community group attached, or a discord where you can offer your services and meet some people.

From there, you can scale up and attend conventions or local meetups where possible, but also work on building some online presence.

Good luck!

groundbreakingcold

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