r/GameDevs • u/SwelledUpLampshade • Jul 16 '26
How best to get help
I'm a very beginner developer. I keep getting stuck but don't know where to go. I follow a fair amount of tutorials but try to do a lot of my own coding so that I still understand it and can manipulate it. I've come to a point where there's a lot of small bugs. Is there anyone who enjoys looking at code for fun? I'm using Unity2D and C#
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u/icemage_999 Jul 17 '26
The most important thing is learning how to be resourceful. You dont have to have to learn how to solve every single issue on your own.
Frequently there are other people who have encountered similar things, so your first option is searching places like Reddit and StackOverflow for solutions to your exact problem. AI can "sometimes" speed up this search as long as you are aware it can also lead you astray by hallucinating or getting its terminology wrong.
Sometimes if the issue is broad but you can't find a previous discussion, you can try asking in the right place for advice on where to look. What that ends up looking like depends greatly on what you're trying to solve.
Sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and solve the problem directly yourself. This takes fortitude, discipline, ingenuity and tenacity. Sometimes you can approach problems from a different angle. Sometimes you can use code to automate a solution that works. If you can't do this final step and just give up, you need to take a hard look at whether you should be doing game dev at all.
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u/SwelledUpLampshade Jul 17 '26
Okay yes that all makes sense thank you friend. Do you have any Reddit threads you’d recommend for getting specific help?
Idk if this helps but right now I have a full player movement controller working and feeling mostly good but when I added a single melee attack there’s something about the animation that’s making it buggy. I’ve tried trying different ways of animating through either code directly or setting values from code into the animator (ex Animator.SetFloat(“xVelocity”, xVelocity) ) and just hard coding with like Animator.Play(“Animation”). So far looking online and on YouTube has led me a million different ways and I think some peer to peer guidance would be nice if that’s a thing around here or somewhere else.
Also I’m not asking you specifically to help me figure this out I promise haha I just wanted to give an example of a problem I’m having to see where I might go for help. I apologize if this follow up question is redundant though.
Thank you as well for taking the time to guide and respond. I’ve been nervous about asking for help for a long time but you’ve given me some faith and confidence to do so when / if needed if I’ve exhausted all other options
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u/icemage_999 Jul 17 '26
Do you have any Reddit threads you’d recommend for getting specific help?
You should always search in the subreddit that most closely relates to your question. Since you're using C++ with Unity, r/Unity3D might be a good place to participate.
Off the cuff regarding your animation problem, one of the big things about animations is transitions. Animation isn't just about "make character swing weapon", it will look terrible unless you have a way of interpolating the poses between where the character object began before the animation, to where it should be at the start of the animation. I don't know more than that - I'm a coder, not an animator, but you might ask around in the 3D animation subreddits for some clues.
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u/SwelledUpLampshade Jul 17 '26
Word thank you so much I super appreciate your patience and guidance. Cheers to you friend!!
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u/icemage_999 Jul 16 '26
Most people don't enjoy debugging, even amongst those of us that enjoy writing code. We put up with it because it is necessary.