Working with Unity to build my VR game with my group mates has certainly been a fun and learning experience. Not to say it hasn’t come with its challenges but overall the Unity game engine is something great. On the fun and learning side of things we have the numerous tutorials and videos available to help you in your educational journey with Unity. It is awesome to be able to see the thing you are learning come alive and be able to see the fruits of your labor. For example I can think of when working through the VR tutorial pathway when they teach you how to add a ball and bat to your environment. I worked so hard to get the attach point on the bat just right so it felt like I was really holding it. Then I loaded my changes onto the headset and played around with this VR bat and ball for five minutes.
This is not to say that it doesn’t come with its own set of challenging moments where you just want to throw it away and give up. When trying to figure out how to just find the game I just built on the VR headset it felt like I searched for hours. It was frustrating as I had done what the tutorial had said to do but it was like the game just wasn’t there. So I load it again, search every file and folder on the headset, comb the internet for solutions. As I’m searching I find that some of the tutorials and info just feels old and out of date. I look at the dates when they were published and it was only a year or two ago and here is the real trouble I think I’ve had with Unity. The updates just come too quickly for any tutorial to stay 100% up to date with the technology. But then after I put it down for the night the next morning I jump back on to search for solutions and I find it. The YouTube that is close enough that I can reason and figure out where my game is located and I’m on top of the world again feeling like a million bucks.
Unity is an amazing technology platform and has definitely made learning to make games fun and interesting. It keeps me wanting to learn and try new things with the engine. Even though there are challenges once you work through them you feel all the better for figuring it out or finding a way. I look forward to what else I am able to do and learn with this technology.
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