I see so many people new to programming joining the Unity message boards, but so little effort to help them get started without a generic “go back to the basics” response.  The thing about Unity is that there are ways you can get started without only cracking open a boring programming book that teaches you how to write “Hello World”.  When I started to program with Unity, only half a year ago, I knew almost nothing about programming.  Today, I’m in the middle of a great looking 3D RPG thanks to the Unity Tutorials and learning tools I utilized below.  I’m here today to try and help advise the new Unity programmers on what options are available to them through Unity Tutorials.

Disclaimer: Because everyone learns differently, this list is not an ultimatum road map.  These are just the steps I personally took to start programming Soul Saga after extensively studying the Unity Tutorials available to me.

Step 1. The Playmaker Unity Plugin

Playmaker is a plugin for Unity that can be purchased on the asset store.  It is a little pricey (at the time of this writing it is $100), but definitely worth the price for the learning experience.  I started trying to do whatever I could think of with Playmaker, and even started to make some of my own custom actions.  The guy in charge of Playmaker has a forum that he checks daily and is always helpful with his answers.  There is also a lot of Unity Tutorials designed for Playmaker on the website for free.  Even though it was a great learning experience that was the key to me breaking into Unity, after a while I realized that there was no way I could make a fully functional and robust RPG without making custom scripts.  I searched thoroughly for a good site that could take me further and luckily came across 3DBuzz.com.

(Edit: There is another visual scripting tool for Unity called uScript that several friends are telling me works well.  However, I have not personally used it, so I can’t state for certain if it is better than Playmaker or not.  From what I’ve heard, it seems to offer a lot more power than Playmaker does, and might be a better option.)

Step 2. 3DBuzz.com Tutorials

3DBuzz.com has some of the most amazing beginner Unity tutorials.  And the best part is… they’re all free!  I watched all of their free Unity tutorials thoroughly.  However, I can’t recommend their MMO Unity tutorial class because it’s such an absurd concept.  It’s even looking like they may not get to finish the MMO Unity tutorial series anyways, since some of their biggest employees left.  Their Unity tutorial series will unfortunately leave you wondering about so much more.  Like… How do you make enemies attack?  What about AI? How do I make an Inventory?  Then I found BurgzergArcade.

Step 3. BurgzergArcade tutorials.

BurgzergArcade was the pinnacle of my Unity tutorial bootcamp experience.  Petey , the owner of BurgzergArcade, created a  Unity tutorial video series where he creates an action RPG in Unity with only free resources.  The video series spans everything from AI, to character customization, player input, saving and loading data, inventory, GUI, and everything else.  This Unity Tutorial series is OVER 400 VIDEOS LONG!  They each work off of the previous video, so follow them one at a time!   After watching 100 videos of BurgzergArcade I was anxious to start working on a real game…

Step 4. Just jump in and do it one step at a time.

After halfway through the Burgzurger arcade tutorials I was so impressed with my new found programming skills that I threw away all my 2D art for Soul Saga and started fresh with 3D.  Now I plan to have Soul Saga done within half a year.  I can’t promise you will learn as fast as I did, but I do know that if you want it bad enough, and take it one step at a time, you can definitely learn how to program if you utilize these available Unity tutorials.

Goodluck!