Unity is a great tool for creating multi-platform games. Unity's rules and concepts are relatively simple to grasp, but beginners might still somehow make mistakes when learning.

Listed are the major mistakes made by newcomers in Unity and advice on how to avoid them.

Underestimating the Project Planning Phase

The planning process might be lengthy. However, taking enough time to prepare before starting development will prevent you from having a major headache afterwards. Worst case scenario, you'll have to start your project again from scratch since the errors will be terrible to be corrected without creating a lengthy loop of revisions or fixes.

Therefore, the most crucial component of your project is planning. Before starting a project, you should make a thorough strategy. When working with a team, planning becomes even more crucial. You'll save a ton of time and money by doing this. So, creating Game Design Document before starting any project would help in the long run.

Finding Errors

Errors or warnings will occasionally appear during the initial phase of your journey with Unity. You'll review your code several times to figure it out, but you won't be able to resolve the issue.

In my opinion, the Unity editor should be used to discover a solution. You may always check the inspector, and it's possible that you made a mistake in the hierarchy. Examine every aspect of your editing window. Reading the Unity manual first is better than browsing the web for problems.

Common Physics Mistakes

Occasionally, while moving items in the scene, we fail to notice that they have colliders attached. This means that shifting their location will need the engine to recreate the entire physical world. If so, in the model, you should include a rigid body component (you may set it to non-kinematic if you don't want external forces to be included).

Always use Rigidbody.position to change the position of an object with a rigid body or Rigidbody.MovePosition to change the position of an object with a continuous movement. Always apply actions in FixedUpdate, not update methods when changing them. Consistent physical actions will be ensured. If necessary, apply primitive colliders on setup rather than mesh colliders, such as a sphere, box, or cylinder. You may combine many of these colliders to create your final collider.

Ignoring the Garbage Collection

It is true that Garbage Collector (GC) makes programming much more efficient and helps us stay focused on what matters most. However, there are a few things we need to be specifically aware of. The use of GC is not gratuitous.

In general, we should avoid making needless memory allocations to stop the GC from operating too frequently and ruining performance by spiking the FrameRate. There are certain guidelines that you should follow to fix the garbage collection issue:

  1. Don't make unnecessary allocations in the update loop.
  2. Pre-allocate collections of objects like arrays, lists, or other collections whenever possible rather than generating them during update loops.
  3. It's better to use cache strings in Awake() methods or events.
  4. Use a StringBuilder object rather than a string if the string property has to be updated during an update loop.
  5. Use the Profiler feature in Unity to find probable issues.

Mismanagement of Code

It is essential to organize your code properly before beginning any project. Writing clear and organized codes is a common practice in code management. You can avoid the problem of future fixes at the risk of destroying the whole game by writing clean scripts with appropriate syntax and classes.

Writing separate scripts that affect different game sections is usually beneficial. It allows you to ensure that other game regions won't require much time for adjustments later. Additionally, managing your code can help you save a ton of time and ensure that your game development is hassle-free in the future.

The Attempt of Making Big Games

There will be a desire to go big while creating your first game. You intend to make a game equally as amazing as all the ones you have loved. Yet, as soon as the development is done, you find the outcome unsatisfactory.

You find yourself thinking that the games that impacted your project are far superior to it. This is because experience plays a vital role in game production. Beginning with a big game is similar to beginning with heavy weights before you can lift light ones. You will only become disappointed.

The secret is to start off by creating smaller games. Maintain the big concept in your mind and refine it selectively, preserving only a few of its core features.
Once the game is successful, you can expand it. In these later stages, you can include the features you skipped.

Making an Effort to Make Everything Flawless

Failure should not be something to be embarrassed by. Rather, it is an opportunity to gain knowledge on your way to success. No one in their right mind would have taken the most iconic games of today seriously since they were such strange concepts.

Most game developers waste too much time deciding if a concept is ideal before working on it. You invest a lot of time developing your own 'ideal plan', but it has the same flaws as others. Making errors is a natural part of being human, after all.

Lastly,

I hope you will find these subjects helpful as you continue working on your Unity projects. Many things are project-specific, so they cannot be applied. Still, it is always helpful to have certain core concepts in mind while attempting to address challenging and particular situations.

You can have a different perspective or steps to approach these issues in your projects. The most crucial thing is to maintain consistency with your concepts over your project so that everyone on your team can understand exactly how the specific issue should have been addressed.

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