Hello GameDev Community,

I am new to game development and after much deliberation I have come to the conclusion that Unity3d is a good platform to educate myself on game development (I am using the book level up first edition). As a student in college I took a 2 semesters of C++ and in my profession I regularly work with the C-Language. As a hobbyist I have worked with C# on a fairly regular basis because I enjoy coding in it.

I have looked at the unity engine and worked with through some of its tutorials. I know I will stick with Unity at least until I am able to complete some non-trivial application using the software. My question is should I backtrack to something more rudimentary after I have completed this goal. I have considered C++ and SFML. SDL or even going level deeper and working with Orge3d. Am I missing out on a rich experience by taking what I perceive to be the path of least resistance?

-Power Man

Nope, you're perfectly fine working with Unity, it's a great way to get off the ground and explore some fundamental techniques and concepts.

If, when you feel like you've reached your current educational goal, you want to continue advancing with Unity, that's fine. If you want to stop and go explore more "directly" programming things with fewer existing tools and scaffolding, that's also fine.

The intellectual curiosity you apply to the pursuit of game development is far more important than the specific tools you use. As long as you're always trying to learn about the tools you are currently using and trying to push the limits of your knowledge, you'll have a hard time finding a bad path to go down.

In addition to what Josh said, Unity isn't necessarily just for getting off the ground. You can continue using it to make complete, successful, professional-quality games - though this is all dependent on you, just like with any software.

The 'path of least resistance' in Unity just means you will get to all of the other complexities sooner. There are always really hard problems that you'll need to solve, regardless of the path you take. :)

C# is perfectly fine. You can start with one language and learn others later. I started out programming in BASIC. Now I write games for a living in C++. So don't worry.

If your primary interest is making games then Unity is very capable. If you start to develop interest in lower-level work then there's nothing preventing you from looking in to that as well.

Thanks for the information guys.