First off, Unity is not the most beginner-friendly game engine in my honest opinion. Its main saving grace is the plethora of tutorials at one’s disposal, but the amount of issues I’ve run into at every turn has me doubting myself in every sense of the word. Maybe it’s hard for me to focus under pressure or my attention span is beyond saving when it comes to learning C# from a simple YouTube video, but I simply cannot get through much of anything within a week’s time, especially not in an accelerated course. I have completed several tutorials on how to even begin to grasp what it is I’m doing, including but not limited to implementing player controls, collision, lighting, how to code an animated gun, the list goes on as does my frustration with the engine as well as myself. If I ever did manage to change one aspect of this prototype, if I could even call it that, it was through various attempts at getting the most basic of components to operate properly and they still have yet to do so in all the time I’ve wasted. After rewatching many tutorials and having nothing click, I’ve come to realise this course may not be for me in the slightest.
I don’t know why I thought Unity would be workable with my pitiful knowledge. It certainly would’ve been advantageous to the scope of my project if I had even half the wits necessary to start with. What little worked in my favor was getting as far from this prototype as possible, taking breaks to calm myself down, asking for help even if it accomplished little to nothing, finding tutorial after tutorial to make even an inkling of progress with the sheer amount of issues I ran into time and time again, and messing around with the millions of meaningless buttons until something worked halfway better than it did before. The difficulties I encountered could not be counted on one hand if I really dug into it. A majority of the options and settings within Unity made no sense to me, my laptop’s storage space is now severely lacking, we did not receive any coding lessons in C# prior to this assignment to begin with, my player controller still phases through walls and does not adhere to any declines in the map, and lighting seems to have a mind of its own in making walls facing a certain direction pitch black. I’m sure this is nothing, complete child’s play even, to the mildly adept Unity user, but I have spent days having one issue after the other to the point of reconsidering my life choices. As a consequence, I do not foresee the game I brainstormed seeing the light of day this decade, if ever at all. I initially thought I would have trouble making my player character move with the certain feel I wanted them to, making mechanics like wallrunning come to fruition. As it turns out, I couldn’t even come close to making a player controller that jumped without it already being coded into the asset, let alone fire weaponry if I could possibly have accomplished that before this assignment was due.
I’ve learned that I am not ready for this, I bit off more than I could chew yet again in my life, and I’d be better off not working by another’s deadlines or else I may pull my hair out trying to learn and work simultaneously instead of taking care of my mental and physical health. I may have been better off starting with Godot or GameMaker, but at this point I doubt my ability to grasp either of those much better within the same timeframe as I did here, any lack of tutorials quick to become the final nail in my dream’s coffin. Perhaps I could have found hope in Unity’s on-site tutorials, alas I doubt I could have focused on them and learned quickly enough to meet expectations. In fact, I should have done just this months before courses even began, yet for some confounded reason, I didn’t and now I pay the headaching price. Foolishly, I was afraid starting anything on my own would be interrupted by college and thought it better to waste that precious time doing nothing worth my remembrance. If I had been a smarter woman then, maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have had such a hard time as I am right now. I don’t believe I can finish either course of mine presently with passing grades, let alone a full year of this considering every last course will likely pose similar stressors and road blocks, and I genuinely have to consider my limits sooner than later. It has brought me to tears multiple times, even now as I write this I have to clear my eyes to see the text on the screen or my keyboard. I hate it, in all honesty, but that’s life and I have to be real with myself. I may consider switching majors because the course of this year is absolutely not for me if I struggle so horribly within the first half of my first semester at ODU. It’s shameful really, and I am honestly embarrassed that it had to be said, or that it took me this long to see the truth that I am not ready for this.
I close it off here to say this is not your fault. The curriculum is accelerated and I should’ve expected a bumpy ride, that’s my own overambition and insecurity I’ve been thoroughly humbled with, and I hope you have a good rest of your year. Thank you for your help, and I must say I rather enjoyed the class up to this point including the wonderful games and books you introduced us to. These are materials I never would have acquired otherwise, and I will hold onto them for years to come. My only wish was that I’d done better with the time I had and never let it come to this, but you live and you learn, sometimes the hard way. Rest assured that I will continue game development and learn on my own time outside of this curriculum at my own pace as I see fit. I am not giving up on this.