The Rise of Dagon: Week of July 26 Update

This week I initially had decided I would dedicate to learning rather than trying to focus on getting a feature in and allocating enough time to actually get some learning done and potentially failing at a both..

So I did some research and found I was in a particularly odd spot in that I wasn't sure what level of learning resources I really needed? I was specifically interested in learning more about the very specifics of Unity 3D development and it was hard for me to self-evaluate if I'm a 'beginner' or sliding into 'intermediate' area when it comes to Unity 3D specifically.

I do know I'm constantly confuzzled by the way Unity 3D does things, its component oriented approach doesn't always make sense to me.

Having to type things like :

"messageSystem = FindObjectOfType(typeof(MessageSystem)) as MessageSystem; "

Constantly throws me off.

I want to type:

"MessageSystem messageSystem  = new MessageSystem;"

But again dealing with Unity's component system throws me off. And I'm never quite sure that I'm doing things right or just using a shoe-horn approach to get the functionality I want rather than doing things properly in Unity 3D!

So I decided to start with a beginner book - there's a lot of value in learning the basics, and learning them well!

After some checking around I settled on Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Begginer's Guide

I've wanted to try some of Pakt publishing's title's and I was able to get the Kindle version on Amazon at a very nice price.

I did the first six chapters this week and here are my thoughts on the book so far:

Pros:
- The book is written in a very witty style that keeps it from being too try.
- The author seems to have a solid handle on what challenges beginners will have like taking on projects that are too large, and does a good job attempting to demonstrate why those are a bad idea; and gives good suggestions on how to create a manageable project.
- The code examples seem to work (hey its worth noting; in some books they don't!)
- It really does approach from the base line for the beginner.

Cons
- It claims to have Javascript and C# , which it sort of does - but if you want the C# examples you have to go to the end of the chapter.  Which makes the read very disjointed.  I'm not interested in Javascript for Unity 3D at all so this is a really irritating factor.
- The book really is very basic ; I think it really is for the true beginner. As someone who is approaching intermediate I'm beginning to feel that the book may not have a lot to offer me.

I would definitely recommend the book to a beginner interested in using Javascript in Unity 3D.  If you were interested in C# and have the patience to scroll back and forth for C# I would still say its a good book.

Finally I do in fact have a development update! After doing 6 chapters in the book I took a break and put in LERP movement for the player.  Previously the player used to 'snap' forward to the new position, but by using a LERP between the two positions the now move forward smoothly which both looks nicer in general and gives the perception of 'moving' a lot more than just snapping forward.

I made a quick video to show it off here:

Thanks for reading, see you next week!