Understanding the "How" and "Why" in Unity?
Hi.
I'm an amateur/hobbyist game designer and I've started trying to work with Unity and C# so that I can make at least a prototype of my game a reality on my own. I have little coding experience, but I have been using various guides and tutorials to learn about the basics of programming and Unity.
However, as much as those tutorials help, they all seem to lack explanations of... well, I'm not really sure what to call it. Just... the broad picture of how to organize things? What I mean is, while I feel like I'm starting to understand how to code and how to make game objects, I still feel completely lost as to how it all fits together to actually make a game. I don't understand what steps to take and in what order, nor where to put each step and what to attach it to.
Right now, my prototype consists of a terrain with a bunch of prefabs and modular constructions on it. I also have a player object that has basic third person movement and camera control, which I copied from the Brackeys tutorial on YouTube. I've tried making a few of my own changes, with limited success. I can figure out what I need to make happen in the code, but usually not how to make it happen. If it's just a matter of figuring out what to write, I can usually figure it out via the API. But as soon as I need to create something myself, I get lost: Where do I create it? In the script I have? In a new script? Do I need a class, method, or variable? Can I put classes within classes? What can I call from what other scripts? Overall, the level of interconnectedness just causes my head to explode and I end up giving up for the rest of the day.
I already have a massive mind map of my own game design. I know what I'm making. I know the player controls. I know how the camera is supposed to move. I know how the combat works. The gathering/crafting system. The quests. And although I haven't written it all out, with enough time I can usually figure out the necessary logic to make these things work in code.
I just don't know where to put the code, nor what type of code to write.
I guess what might help the most is an example of a completed game (or at least a couple completed parts of a game) coupled with a step-by-step process of how to create it, all presented as a single whole, visualization. Like a mind map, or even a list. I realize that's probably a very broad and cumbersome request. But if I could at least understand the overarching starting point, along with how many individual starting points there are (e.g. player, camera, enemies, items, ...), then I can work on each part individually and understand how to create it. Because right now, I just feel like I'm starting in the middle and nothing makes any sense.
Thanks for the help.