Hi.
If you're watching this I assume you've made it to the end of one of my Udemy courses.
Thank you so much for enrolling and going through the content.
I really hope that you've learnt something worthwhile.
Now I'm here in this last video to actually tell you a bit more about myself.
So I have a degree in computer science and computer graphics and I've done AP HD in artificial intelligence
for game characters.
After I finished my degree I started teaching at university and during that time I actually wrote a
few books.
So this book here was the first book I wrote which was programming believable characters for games and
you can format all these books on Amazon.
This was based on my pitch day study and it really looks at human behavior and all sorts of algorithms.
You can write for not only moving characters around but for making them behave.
After that I went on and wrote this one which is about the artificial intelligences that are portrayed
on Star Trek and it looks at all the kind of theories behind that and whether they could be real or
not.
And then more recently I'd been writing books about unity now you've probably already heard me talking
about these but I thought I would just show you there's this one there's a mobile version there.
This one is now in its third edition which is coming out very soon as I'm making this particular video.
So yeah.
So these are the books that I've done on unity and game developing so I really love the field and I
love being able to teach the content.
And if you're interested in learning more I have obviously these books but I also have a whole series
of Udemy courses that you can take a look at and if you go to my website which is a holistic 3D Dot
Com you'll be able to have a look through the catalog of those courses.
Now as a final thing what I'd like to give you is a little bit of advice on where do you go from here.
So a lot of students finish a course and they think well what do I do now I want to learn more about
this topic whatever it may be.
Well there are a lot of books and there are a lot of resources on the web in fact there's so many resources
on the web if you Google a particular topic you might be completely overwhelmed as to which one you
should do and which ones are actually valid.
And that's that's quite a legitimate concern.
I mean are you going to be learning from someone who knows this stuff.
So I guess the first thing when you do find some content you have to ask yourself where the content
has come from and who is producing and look at their credibility.
You know you want to look at their background.
Have they been in games development.
Are they a games developer.
Do they have qualifications to actually be teaching you this stuff so that you can really believe what
they're on about.
And it's the same thing when it comes to watching other YouTube things as well.
And what we're talking about YouTube on another site I've got a YouTube channel where there's a whole
bunch of tutorials going right back from when there was unity five and even kind of before that on different
topics which you're free to peruse through.
But there's a lot of other really good youtube is out there who know their stuff and I guess it's just
a matter of finding who they are looking how many followers they've got and possibly and looking at
their resumé in their background.
As for you and your own personal journey where do you go now if you want to seriously follow your passion
of becoming game developer.
Well the first thing is to practice and I tell my students this practice practice practice.
They say it takes about eight years to become a programmer and that's probably true.
A lot of people learn programming thinking I'm gonna get this in six months but it really doesn't start
to click for a very long time of a lot of practicing.
Don't be afraid to Google errors and to research things and find out what's going wrong when your code
goes wrong and don't think that you have to remember everything.
We programmers don't.
I think once you get to a certain point in your knowledge and skills of programming you start to understand
more of where to go to look for help.
And the only way you're going to know that is if you keep practicing and just keep looking never ever
be afraid to ask someone you might think back to the old classroom scenario where people sit up the
back and they're always afraid it might have been even you and I know I've done it myself.
Well you don't want to ask a question because you think oh this might be stupid but if you want to know
the answer to a question and there's probably a lot of other people that want to know too so just ask.
Ask me.
We're here to help you.
And we love that you have a passion for learning and we want to help you and there's no question that's
too stupid at that we probably haven't heard before and that we can't find an answer to.
If we don't even know it ourselves.
Now along with that after practicing you need to do a lot of reading and I mean get your hand on some
really good quality textbooks and go through those and they'll give you just so much insight and especially
all the background theory because you really need to know what's going on underneath.
And my mathematics course is all about that mathematics for games developers is about understanding
all of that math that's happening the background so that when things do go wrong you know you understand
what's going wrong and therefore you can fix it or you know where to look to actually go ahead and fix
it.
And I can't emphasize enough how that background knowledge and understanding is just so so critical
to moving forward.
And it's not just knowing how to use software but you want to be come someone who knows how to build
that software.
So you need to know what makes it tick and you need to know about the algorithms and the data structures
and the maths.
And that might sound really overwhelming.
And I guess it is if you're really just starting out but it is a long journey.
As I said so it's taken me definitely decades to get to where I am and absorb all the knowledge that
I have.
And you'll get there you will.
And it's just a matter of yourself absorbing and really getting into reading about it.
Also the other point I'd like to give you is to share your stuff.
Does it matter what it is.
It doesn't matter what you've achieved.
If you've got something to work and you're really excited about it then let the community know.
So there's numerous unity forums that you can share on.
There's the holistic game developers on Facebook.
There's other facebook groups.
There's discord.
There's there's a whole bunch of places start your own blog about your journey.
It's really important.
And I will make this point is as you're going through and developing stuff is to keep a record of it.
It doesn't matter how small your little triumph is now but you keep building on it as you go through
and you end up with this portfolio of stuff that you've done which shows your learning journey and how
you've expanded yourself expanded your knowledge and gotten better.
And when you're going for a job that's what your employees really want to see they want to see that
you're really good at what you do but that you've also come from the start you know where you've come
from and how you've developed and got to where you are now and that you're really motivated and ready
to work for them.
Finally help other people out.
The best way to learn something is if you try and explain it to someone else.
And that's what I do.
If I want to learn a new topic then I'll start making tutorials on it.
I start getting as much code as I can.
Breaking it all down and then figuring out what each little bit do.
So be very experimental about that as well.
If you want to know okay I've I've seen as really great networking application and I've got absolutely
no idea what it does.
Strip the code down and just go through it.
Bit by bit putting little bits back together and experiment and see what each big does because nowadays
there's not a lot of really good documentation out there of how things have been put together which
is why I guess we've got all these great courses that do help you navigate through that but it is possible
to do it yourself.
Once you've got enough sort of nous to know which direction to go to and getting back to helping people.
Yeah help people go on to the forums and if someone's got a problem you've sold put that there too because
it also adds to your own reputation on the Internet which you can then point to when you're going for
a job in the space.
You have a reputation in the space people will have heard of you and it doesn't even matter how small
the problem is that you're solving for someone just just do it.
Put yourself out there.
It's very scary when you start out but it's very important that you are seen because as so many people
in this space trying to break through.
And lastly along that side of helping if you have a particular set of skills and you for example want
to make your own game and you're an artist and you don't know how to program then find a programmer.
There's lots of programmers out there that are useless artists and you know I will I will vouch to being
one of those who I'm a programmer.
I'm not an artist.
I try the art side but you know I'm not the greatest artist.
And if you can find someone else who matches up with your skills that you can make yourself a little
game development team then go for it.
Do that.
Yeah.
Get your ideas out there and most of all just enjoy this space because it is.
It's a lot of fun.
The learning of the mathematics and the coding and the 3d art in space.
It's it's just so enjoyable so if you're doing this I know that you enjoy it and that you're hungry
to know more about it and I just love that.
So keep up the motivation and all the best of luck in your journey and please do keep in touch with
me as you continue.